Two Years After

Posted on February 17, 2018 by matt ballou under Life

Well, I think I said all I really needed to say at the one year anniversary of my cardiac arrest – you can read about that here.

But I still wanted to throw a few remembrances up here to mark the occasion. What’s interesting to me is that even before I was really making memories again (because of the medications, etc) I got back some of my sense of humor.

Apparently I still felt waaaay out of it, as you can see here:

But I REALLY loved that oxygen mask…

It’s always nice to get a dose of high-percentage oxygen while pretending to be Darth Vader!

I woke up a couple times before being back to myself, which was about a week later on February 24th. Here’s a picture of me in my natural state – on the iPad :)

I like this picture because it’s the first one where I seem normal – holding my head up, looking focused – after the event. I think it’s good to mark these “traumaversary” days with thankfulness – and I am.

It’s amazing how little Atticus was then, how big he is now, and how that amazing personality is shining through. I loved how my kiddos came around me. Those notes and hugs are so precious to me. I have saved many of the drawings, notes, and other ephemera that came to me in that room in Utica, NY.

I have scars on my arm from where the port was in, and scars on my nose from where I tore out my intubation… man, I’m glad I don’t remember some of that stuff… throwing up, aspirating on the vomit… ugh.

Glad to be on this side of it. And to have worked out enough to shrink that massive neck paunch I had back then. Sheesh!

One Year After

Posted on February 17, 2017 by matt ballou under Life

It has been a year since my heart attack. Since my cardiac arrest. Since the trauma I don’t remember and that my family saw. Since members of my family kept me alive until the EMTs arrived. Since the radical changes of diet and lifestyle. Since the shift in horizon.

Three days before that I lost my big sister; a life of incredible value and service, gone. Two months afterward my estranged step-father died; a life wasted in self-concern and alcohol.

How would people have summed up my life one year later, if it ended that night?

Since I didn’t go, I have to assess it myself. I know my life has been valuable. I know I have taken deep draughts of experience and thought. I have been astonished. I have been disappointed. I have known love and sacrifice. I have seen things that made me cry in sorrow and weep in happiness. I have tried and failed, then barely hoped and succeeded. I have yearned and yearned, in spite of cheesiness or irony. I have worked so hard and received so much through no merit of my own doing. I have believed and doubted. All through I have attempted to be honorable and careful, passionate and present. Sometimes I have succeeded.

I am SIMUL IUSTUS ET PECCATOR.

I am AGATHOKAKOLOGICAL.

I have tried to understand what it all means. I still don’t. But I think I have some sense of how it feels.

It feels a little like these songs (click the titles to listen):

At Last

I can say that I’ve lived here in honor and danger

But I’m just an animal and cannot explain a life

Down this chain of days I wish to stay among my people

Relation now means nothing, having chosen so defined

And if death should smell my breathing

As it pass beneath my window

Let it lead me trembling, trembling

I own every bell that tolls me.

Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Driving home I see those flooded fields

How can people not know what beauty this is?

I’ve taken it for granted my whole life

Since the day I was born.

Clouds hang on these curves like me

And I kneel to the wheel

Of the fox confessor (on splendid heels).

And he shames me from my seat

And on my guilty feet

I follow him in retreat…

What purpose in these deeds?

Oh fox confessor, please,

Who married me to these orphaned blues?

“It’s not for you to know, but for you to weep and wonder

When the death of your civilization precedes you.”

Will I ever see You again?

Will there be no one above me to put my faith in?

I flooded my sleeves as I drove home again.

A Widow’s Toast

Specters move like pilot flames

Their widows toast at St. Angel.

Better times collide with now

The tears are warm, I feel them still.

They’ll heat to vapor and disperse

And cloud our eyes with weary glaze.

You raise your glass and may exclaim,

“I’ll put my hands on the truth, by God!”

But it’s faster, love, than you and me –

Faster than the speed of gravity.

That’s how it catches you from falling

And how it always, always, always slips away.

Specters move like pilot flames

Their widows toast at St. Angel.

Better times collide with now

And better times

Are coming still.

Neko knows what to say.

I find attention, clarity, and rightness in teaching. I find wonderful confusion in my art-making. I find solace and laughter in my wife. I find a strange wine of joy and frustration in my children. I feel both lost and found. I feel both at home (warm, in bed), and far away in the dark (clouds, wind). I’m in orbit around a great truth and yet my tether is strung out miles from safety.

Believe it or not, all of this is so much better than the 3 or 4 years before the heart attack.

I know that some would want me to declare something, some truth, some more faithful words, some thoughts that sound more spiritually centered. I’m sorry.

Today, I want to take the lessons – the cumulative astonishments of being – as they come. I want to have joy and camaraderie in my students. I want to be gentle and full of wonder with my children. I want to continue to cherish my wife. I want to be a better husband, father, son, brother, artist, teacher, mentor, helper, and friend.

No regrets. I have not loved every moment, but I have been given such grace and love. I’m thankful.

#montanniversary

Posted on June 1, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life

A year ago today I got to participate in one of the most amazing events of my life – I officiated the wedding of two of my former students, Amanda and Keith. They are awesome. The wedding was incredible. I was just honored to be involved (and get to quote some Hafez, too!).

Here I am preparing for the ceremony. Photo by Keith Montgomery, June 1, 2013.

One of the gifts the new couple gave me was an awesome sculpture made of graphite, created by Batle Studios in San Francisco (click there to see the objects – they’re beautiful). To honor them on their anniversary, I decided to draw a small picture with the sculpture itself. Though not quite as easy to use as a standard pencil, my graphite shell was perfect for the task. I drew a small china plate with a chunk of bread on it – a tableau I had seen at the wedding (Keith and Amanda shared Eucharist together during their wedding).

Here I am beginning the drawing, back on March 3, 2014. Below is the final product:

Congratulations on your first anniversary, Amanda and Keith! Thank you for all that you are!

Tenth Anniversary

Posted on June 14, 2013 by matt ballou under Life, Writing

Above: One of my favorite pictures of Alison from our wedding day, ten years ago today.

I wanted to do something special for my wife for our tenth wedding anniversary. Last year I wrote a short remembrance piece about some music that was with me on the day Alison and I were married (read it here). After that, as a gift to my wife, I made a commitment to write nine more stories and present them to her today. I wanted them to be personal, funny, quirky, and timely. More than that, I just wanted to be able to follow through and actually complete the project. I’m happy to report that I did it – 10,980 words, 8 pen and ink illustrations (converted to vector graphics in Illustrator) – 40 pages total. Just for her. Just for us.

I’m deeply thankful that I’ve always been a person who writes and, beyond this, a person who remembers through writing. Human beings – across all seeming barriers of creed, race, and historical context, desire narrative. We want a story that makes sense of our experiences. It’s crucial that we have a place in setting that narrative structure in place. I write, and have always written, to – as the old Christian hymn says – “raise my Ebenezer.” I write to sight the lay of the land, to set the landmarks, and to cite past precedent. The stories I’ve written for Alison are by no means exhaustive of our life together, but they are “Ebenezer” landmarks for us. They are our story. I’m glad I’ve written them down, and I think the importance of taking the time will reveal itself more and more as the decades pass.

As of right now she has not seen the book. That will come a bit later tonight. But I’ve already given her Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino for us to read aloud (I love his story “The Distance of the Moon” and can’t wait to read it together). Here it is in it’s wrapping earlier today :)

For dinner I handmade Chinese style pan-fried dumplings. I found a recipe last month, researched the ingredients, and then went out today while the girls napped and Alison worked to get all that I’d need. Once home I began the process. Here are a few shots taken along the way (!!WARNING, #foodporn AHEAD!!):

Prepping the ingredients…

Mixing…

Pinching the dumplings…

Laying them out, ready for cooking…

Post pan-searing, a bit of simmering in the broth…

GLORY

The presentation…

Ah, success!

Today was such a good day… time in the back yard with the family. Then good food, good books, a nice walk in the evening, a chance to chat with my mom (her birthday is today, too!), and now sleeping kids and time to kick back. I’m planning to reveal the Anniversary Stories ~ 2003-2013 book to Alison soon, and then maybe we’ll look back over some of our pictures from the honeymoon. And tomorrow we have good friends in town, so it’s Indian food for lunch after the standard Saturday morning Daddy-Daughters-Date!

So good. I’m so thankful. Ten more years, please. And ten more after that…

My Favorite Sketchbook Page, and a Surprise 14 Years in the Making

Posted on May 6, 2013 by matt ballou under Art, Life

Above is a double page spread from one of my most cherished sketchbooks. My main professor from graduate school (Barry Gealt) bought it for me during our trip together to Italy in the summer of 2005. The sketchbook is from Zecchi’s, the famous art store in Florence. I really cherish this handmade book. Every 6 months to a year I do a sketch of my wife, Alison, in the sketchbook. These two pages are amazing – the left page is from August 13, 2009, the right from August 7, 2010. They were drawn almost exactly a year apart, and yet what a difference! In the left hand image, Alison was pregnant… but we didn’t even know it yet. And there on the right side is little Miranda Grace Ballou, sleeping as we watch The West Wing. Such a juxtaposition. So much life.

And what a life I experienced today. After a full slate of teaching, I came home to fine china, wine, and risotto – certainly an event. And, of course, today is momentous. It was on this day in 1999 that Alison and I first shared our feelings, intentions, and hopes with each other. We began a dating relationship that would culminate in so much joy and growth for us. When I look into the eyes of our daughters, when I catch a glimpse of my wife across the room, when we come together to make firm determinations about what we plan to do with God’s grace… it’s in those times that I know how important this day was all those years ago. So we celebrate our wedding anniversary, but also find this day special. Here’s the spread Alison laid for us tonight – a simple, rich meal of Aline’s Risotto, fresh grapes, white wine, some flowers, and places set for four.

I am blessed – above and beyond, more than I could ask for or think of; it’s pure grace.

Thankful tonight.

Thirteen Years

Posted on August 18, 2011 by matt ballou under Life

I met my future wife on August 20th, 1998 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was 16 years old. 13 years later she’s been the most important human being – other than my mother – I’ve ever known. Everything I am I owe to the grace of God she’s been to me. Everything I do – all the different hats I have to wear, every competency I have or try to have, every correct comma – I owe to her. She’s 29 today. And still freaking awesome. I love you, Alison.

Here we are in Assisi, Italy in 2005, just a few weeks before our 2nd anniversary.

Here we are in McCormick Creek State Park (near Spencer, Indiana) on our 5th anniversary.

I Keep Your Picture Close to Me

Posted on June 14, 2011 by matt ballou under Life

Let’s keep going, ok? These pictures have been in my wallet for about eight years. I take them out to show to students and friends. And I frequently look at them myself – so thankful and appreciative for who you are. I want to see how these pictures look in another eight years, and another eight after that, and after that. I love you, Alison.

*see little Miranda Grace Ballou’s first bow there? I keep that in there, too:)

And here’s the link to last year’s remembrance…