I took a short walk this morning and saw some exquisite “weeds” along the path. On my way home I decided to pick a few stems of this
Found Beauty
to photograph. I spent a happy hour photographing and editing photos of my finds.
It’s been a full week already and I’m feeling a bit worn out today after a poor night of sleep last night. The vertigo that I’ve been experiencing has continued frequently during the past month and a half. Yesterday was my first appointment with a physical therapist who specializes in vestibular therapy.
It was a wild ride doing the procedure to move the crystals in my ear to their correct position. Instead of moving to where they needed to go, they moved to another canal in my ear which created the strongest vertigo I have experienced. Though I was lying down at the time I was hanging onto the table for dear life as the room spun crazily around me. I truly felt like I was on a wildly spinning carnival ride.
Spinning world – an attempt to express how it felt during vertigo episodes
Fortunately it appears that after a couple more position changes and movements, the crystals moved back where they’re supposed to be. But because of the detour they took along the way the physical therapist instructed me to sleep in a single side-lying position all night. I didn’t sleep well and now I feel like I need a long nap and it’s just mid-morning.
Surprised by How Resilient the Brain is
We have senses we don’t know we have—until we lose them; balance is one that normally works so well, so seamlessly, that it is not listed among the five that Aristotle described and was overlooked for centuries afterward.
― The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
This vertigo journey has been teaching me a lot about how resilient we really are. Though I initially had significant balance problems along with the vertigo and each episode threw me for a loop, my brain adjusted quickly and within a week or two I was no longer having balance problems. In addition I began feeling quite blasé about the vertigo episodes. They came, they went away and were not a huge problem for me most of the time.
The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.
― The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
With the movement of the crystals in my ear back into their correct position, the physical therapist warned me that I may experience some balance issues again as my brain adjusts once again to changes. And sure enough I am a bit wobbly again especially when I first get out of bed. Hopefully this is it and I won’t have more episodes of vertigo (at least for awhile).
Book Talk
Tuesday evening I took a short class at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis. I learned how to use the cutting equipment there so that I can precisely cut the pages for my handmade photo/essay book. After a short pause in working on printing the first pages, I revised my plan once again. Instead of printing a four-page spread on my 13 inch x 19 inch photo paper, I plan to cut the paper into the precise page size I want — 6.5 inch x 9.5 inch. Then I will format and print each page separately. That way if I make a mistake on one page I’ll only need to re-print a single page, not an entire 4-page spread.
I’ve ordered another package of the photo paper I plan to use since I don’t have quite enough to complete the book after doing my starts and stops in my creation process. As soon as the paper arrives I plan to cut the pages and then begin printing them. Wish me luck. The assembly process is fiddly and hard and I hope that I can do a neat enough job of it to create the book.
There was a beautiful display at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. I made photos of some of the exhibit.
I hope you are enjoying these beautiful August days. What a gift to have blue skies above, mild temperatures and low humidity.
May you walk in beauty.
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