Portraits

Twelve months ago I meandered into a stand up drinking bar in Shibuya by accident, because I had a bit of extra time in the late afternoon, and because it seemed like an interesting place to be. I had been living in Tokyo for three months and had just come through an unreasonable series of travails. Still weak and recovering from a bad bout of pneumonia that had seen me hospitalized a few weeks earlier, and only arriving in the country six weeks before that, I was still completely and passionately in love with the enormous city of Tokyo, a place  that seemed to pull to it my kind of people; creative, eccentric, and brave souls. Being happy hour, the bar began to fill up with an equal collection of Japanese and expatriates who were winding down from a long day out on the job. It was there and then that I met the talented photographer Alfie Goodrich, who would more importantly become my friend. Alfie was with another photographer, and the two of them and myself began a fascinating and humorous conversation with an interesting young journalist from America who spoke with a strong Southern accent. 

Sometimes you meet people that you understand very quickly, and who understand you. Alfie and I were like that. We were born in the same year, 1969. We were the baby busters who arrived on this planet after all of those baby boomers had already blazed their path to greatness and used up a considerable amount of resources in doing so. Both of us understood what it is like to get to the table too late for the big helping of easy come opportunities. Alfie and I also had the shared history of being freelancing artists, him as a photographer and me as a performer, who had managed the pressures of supporting children without the security of being an employee. Pursuing your professional passion when it is only your own provision that you are risking is one thing, but to pursue your passion with a small crowd of foot growing dependents that need supper every night, that is a more complicated and costly type of bravery. 

After discovering that we had a lot in common, Alfie suggested that we do an exchange of talent. He would photograph me and I would write an article about portraits for his website Japanorama. This would also allow me to meet his beautiful family. About a week later the two of us did the planned portrait shoot and I got to spend an afternoon with the Goodriches. I even got to take a nap in the kids room before eating the delicious supper that his wife prepared for us that evening, because people who are recovering from pneumonia need a lot of naps. Supper with the Goodriches was actually my first meal shared in a home since I had arrived in Japan. Until that evening for almost four months my every meal had been in isolation, in public, or in a hospital bed. 

During the photoshoot before my nap and supper with the Goodriches, I was surprised at how quickly and accurately Alfie was able to capture the images that expressed what I was feeling. Before we got together I had confided in Alfie about some of the things that were happening in my life and what I wanted to say in the portrait. At that time it had taken everything I had within me in order to survive and to overcome the initial circumstantial difficulties that met me upon my arrival in Japan, the place where I felt so passionately it was my destiny to be. My youngest son was eighteen and back in Canada living in a small apartment on my friend's property during his grade twelve year. The trials I was encountering in Japan were making it hard for me to predict my long term situation and my ability to provide for him. Popular opinion back home was that I should give up on things working out in Japan and return to Canada. However after almost dying by myself on my apartment floor in a city full of strangers a few weeks earlier, and experiencing fever induced hallucinations, and honestly being terrified that my young adult children were possibly hours away from not having a mother anymore, I had come to believe, possibly for the first time in my life, that I was actually an incredibly important person. Since those scary moments of facing my mortality I  believed that I was important enough to pursue my dream of having a life in Japan where I felt I could be of much greater benefit to others than in a dead end local job back in Canada. It was in consideration of the way that I was feeling, stronger than ever in spirit, albeit still needing frequent naps due to my physical state, that I wanted Alfie to record those emotions visually through the medium of a photographic portrait. I wanted him to capture my feelings of spiritual strength during a time of physical weakness. I knew that I did not need to return to Canada. I knew that I just needed to be myself, to stick some tough things out, and to believe that things would work themselves out, which they did. 

A brilliant photographer and a beautiful person, Alfie put into images the sentiments that I was feeling. He helped me to express that I was not ashamed to be who I am, to pursue what I feel is my fate, and to ask for and to receive help along the way to it. The photographs that Alfie took remind me that I am an intense woman who resides in a physical form that reflects exactly who I am; strong, solid, mature, feminine, and non apologetically passionate. I do not behave in a way that has a stamp of socially accepted responsibility on it. Instead my life is about learning, experimentation, and the determination to be of the greatest benefit possible to others by using my talents and accepting and rejoicing in the life experiences that are uniquely mine while following the exact pursuits that bring my soul the greatest amount of joy. I found almost dying while alone in a foreign country a wonderful reminder of such things and I am grateful for every single circumstantial trial that met me upon my arrival in Japan. Those experiences made me a stronger and more determined person. 

The above would make a wonderful conclusion to what happened when Alfie and I collaborated on a portrait session, however there is more to the story that makes those photographs from one year ago even more meaningful to me. The unexpected and unpleasant event of having plastic surgery on my face four months ago due to a cancer diagnosis has permanently altered my appearance. I will never again have the scar free face that Alfie photographed. How much more precious to have those Alfie Goodrich images now that I am temporarily disfigured and awaiting my physical healing and long term facial changes as created by my plastic surgeon? Alfie and my portrait session and the circumstances that followed reminded me of the importance of grabbing the moments of now, to work with the artists and circumstances that are available to us in each moment in order to create what we can, when we can, things that may no longer be available to us in the future. I believe it is the fleetingness of opportunities that makes our 'now's so precious. Thank you Alfie for grabbing that winter now with me and for giving me the gift of documenting images of my strength and beauty in Tokyo in January of 2012. You are a wonderful artist and I consider myself privileged to have been photographed by you and to call you my friend.

To see more of Alfie's amazing photography click on the links below;

More of Alfie's work

A couple of roosters meet up in Tokyo 

trying out those crazy ass japanese boots... not so much

Now That I`m Less Pretty

Two days before the shock of my more serious surgeries. This is me arriving home on Wednesday morning after walking from the train station during a huge downpour after my date in Hiroo. You can see a small scar on the bridge of my nose from my first cancer removal surgery a few weeks before.

Friday afternoon five minutes after my two surgeries, the larger area of skin cancer removal, and the  reconstructive plastic surgery to cover the missing skin over the bridge of my nose.

Friday night, six hours after surgery

Saturday September 22, 2012, the very WORST morning after of my life.  Enduring the hell of excruciating pain, social isolation, physical hunger, and worst of all, being the owner of an asymmetrical nose. 

Saturday afternoon, managed to have a shower in hopes of feeling human again

Monday morning, back to work. After all, this is Japan. Weeks later my adult students confessed that some of them cried after seeing me for the first time after surgery. I received several very kind get well gifts during my second week.  

Wednesday one week after my date in Hiroo. That morning I started to suffer from a fever and what appeared to me as an infection on the incision. I ended up in emergency that evening after almost collapsing during teaching a class that afternoon. I started a cycle of antibiotics upon leaving the hospital.

Me in the natural light

Maybe Friday or Saturday? On antibiotics, starting to heal up, no more fevers.

Three weeks after surgery, me in the classroom

Three weeks ago I was on an operating table getting my face changed for the rest of my life. I know that there are people who have endured much worse events, but for me, losing my original face was hugely traumatic. It was a loss. Each of us are managing our various losses in life, losses of our health, our youth, our relationships, our dreams, or our loved ones, we are all losing things. I do not have the corner on losses, but I do understand what it is like to suffer them. I see our losses as something that we balance every day. We tell ourselves `I don`t have this, but at least I do have that.` or `Then I had that, but  its okay because now I have this.` When the balance that we have reconciled ourselves to is upset by losing something that we might have felt was our compensation, it shakes us. I have always had such a pretty face and it has made the other things that have been difficult in my life easier to bear. When I lost some face in that Japanese hospital surrounded by strangers and a language that I do not yet understand, I lost an important part of my life`s compensation package. In less than an hour I lost my `pretty` and ever since I have been thinking about losses and about what our faces mean to us. Our faces are our first foot forward out into the world. Our faces are what we present to strangers to convey confidence even when we are feeling less than so. Our faces are also where we express our most intimate feelings to those who are closest to us. Our faces are a really big deal.

The abrupt loss of the original prettiness of my pre-surgery altered face happened within a matter of hours. I was attending an appointment with a surgeon because a previous surgery that was supposed to remove skin cancer on the bridge of my nose had not been successful. When the surgeon saw me at ten that morning he told me through my interpreter that in only a matter of two weeks since the previous surgery the cancer looked to have visibly spread. This meant that he needed to operate as soon as possible. He informed me that because I would be losing quite a bit of skin during the second surgery, he would be doing plastic surgery in a third surgery to cover the bridge of my nose where the skin that had cancer would be taken from. He told me that as a result of these two upcoming surgeries my nose would be pulled up for a year until gravity stretched out the skin to make it look more normal again. As I sat in the chair of his office reviewing the photos of other people`s faces who had needed the same kind of surgery, I concentrated on not throwing up or passing out in horror at their various levels of resulting disfigurement. I was in shock. How do you prepare to lose your pretty face? Only 48 hours before I had been recovering from one of the most exciting dates of my life, I was on top of the world, and now in approximately three hours I was about to become dramatically less beautiful or risk my life expectancy. With my family and friends on the other side of the world in Canada, but for my interpreter and the hospital staff, I was completely alone in a foreign country and about to get a different face for the rest of my life. 

Although I am not used to being unattractive, I am used to loss. The first traumatic loss in my life was also a sudden one and it happened when I was still quite a little girl. I was seven years old when my beloved playmate Davie Johnson who lived just down the country lane from our farm, died in the night of meningitis. Davie and I had adored each other from toddlerhood. He was fascinated by my endless stream of imaginative ideas and my almost white blonde `popcorn hair `. I was enraptured by Davie`s playful creativity and his incredibly gentle and sensitive heart. When my mother told me that Davie had died in the night, but that it was actually fortunate for him as otherwise he might have become something called `a vegetable`, I remember collapsing onto her bedroom floor into the fetal position and sobbing on the fresh new carpet from my deepest deepest place. These new and terrible words, `died`, `meningitis`, and ` becoming a vegetable`, which was apparently some sort of physical state where you cannot move or speak, had completely broken my seven year old heart. What a terrible way to be initiated into this world of earthly mortality and devastating disappointments. Over the next year and a half of my childhood I remember having random and unexpected emotional breakdowns and crying in situations that brought up how much I missed my beloved friend, until eventually Davie no longer being with me became normal in my world.  I think the things that we lose during our lives become such a part of who we are that eventually we cannot imagine who we would be without having lost them. I cannot imagine who I would be without the experience of loving and losing such a close and special friend during my childhood. I could never ask for or want that kind of pain in my life, but I would not trade the love I felt for Davie for escaping how much it hurt me to lose him. I think it will become the same with going through this trauma of losing my original face. I think this experience of being less pretty will become an integrated part of who I am. 

People lose all sorts of things during the course of their lives. I know that losing a portion of my beauty a few weeks ago is so much less than what others have lost or are losing. People have been diagnosed with terminal illnesses and are losing things like being with their children or grandchildren as they grow up. I don`t know what the things are that you have lost or are losing. Davie`s parents lost a beautiful and brilliant child and his older brother lost his best friend and his only sibling. Some people lose parts of themselves during their childhoods because of the harmful actions of others, and other people are the children who`s parent is leaving them in an untimely death before they are ready to face this world without that mom or dad. There are much more difficult things to lose than having such a pretty face, but this loss of my beauty has triggered me to write about the exploration of the journey of losses.I  don`t know or have the answers, I only have the curiousity and the desire to learn more, to be more. I want to do the work on the inside, on the way that i spiritually think and feel about life, in order become even more beautiful than I was before this most recent physical loss, even if it is with a less pretty face. I know that I am fortunate to have had a skilled Japanese surgeon, and I know that this time of having dramatic scars will pass. I don`t know exactly what I will look like after my scars heal, comparative to the disfigurement in those photographs I saw when I was in the hospital, but I do know that this experience of loss and trauma is now a part of who I am, just like Davie`s and my friendship will always be an important part of my life and the person that I grew up to become. I will always love Davie Johnson very very much, because some things, things like love, unlike our beauty, can never be taken away from us.