Tag Archives: Doctor Flamingo Online

With a little help from my friends…

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Matisse Woman with a Hat; Diebenkorn Seated Figure with Hat

A recent visit to San Francisco’s MOMA for the Matisse/Diebenkorn exhibition and the purchase of a book on Matisse spurred me on to drag out my seldom used oil paints and create something myself. I do not consider myself an oil painter, perhaps more of a wanna be. A few paintings here and there over the years. So this is more about the inspiration to try something creative at any age than an expression of a true artist.

Vincent van Gogh Bedroom at Arles

Henri Matisse Interior at Collioure

I was inspired particularly by Matisse’s Interior at Collioure and also by Vincent van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles (Musee D’Orsay), a print of which hangs in my bedroom.

Karen Stephen Flamingo Dream

As my painting evolved, I found myself wanting to portray the sleeping girl as a child who has lost her dream of being a ballerina to a malady that requires her to wear a leg brace. But the common artistic device of showing the exterior through an open window, common in Matisse’s day, allowed me to bring a different world view to the sleeping child. There stands a beautiful pink flamingo in it’s natural pink tutu, standing proud and free on one leg, bringing her a message of wholeness no matter what our circumstances.

Paris miniatures, Renoir’s Dance in the City, photo of original oil created by Carol Quinn from photo I took of Albert Pub in London 2009

I’ve placed it near some of my other favorites in my living room.

An ode to my alter ego by Doc Flamingo

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flamingo_closeup_peeping_md_clr__stperfectly balanced
knobby-kneed leg tucked under
a fountain of pink fluff
bold black beak
ending in scimitar curve

2014-01-20 10.18.52instantly recognizable in any form
elegant
comic
tropical
plastic
neon

shall I compare me to thee
deserve I your name?
“doc” is well earned
“flamingo” perhaps
misappropriated

flying namibiado you scoff at my timidity
compared to your bravado
soaring en masse over wetlands
in the Carmarque or Namibia
or regally planted on lawns
dignity never lost
never needed

do I draw the same admiring looks
spark the same smiles
or do I swim listless in a sea of
beige humanity

Maddux Flamingos do I catch the collector’s eye
as you do
alive with form and color
or do the connoisseurs pass on by
leaving me to gather dust
on a nameless shelf
cluttered with equally
non-distinguished folk

would I keep your sense of humor
if caricatured in pastel hues?
or would I bristle
with high and haughty hubris

even faded and forgotten
in the aftermath of some raucous party
you remain an icon of delight
absent the rage I would feel
to be so ill-used

flamingo_sunglasses_drink_md_clr__stbut I stubbornly keep your name
and hope you will forgive
your pink passion gives off
a secondary glow
making me into what
I aspire to be
I can always hope for reincarnation
as the real thing
in my next life

My life as a novel

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An entry from my daily meditation writing from four years ago and still something to consider each day:

pulitzer prizeI feel better when I think about my life being like a great Pulitzer Prize winning novel—each chapter a new adventure or misadventure, each turn in plot clever and unexpected, and no cliched happy forever after endings. A novel that is an epic journey, chock full of interesting characters, whose lives unfold in mysterious ways. Plot lines that are wild and crazy, dramatic and suspenseful.

This is exactly how I should view my life. A future that will surprise me. A journey that will not turn out as I assumed, expected, or perhaps even wanted. I need to live and pray my way through this epic journey of mine. I hate novels that have predictable endings. So why would I want to live a life that turns out that way? I don’t even want to write a novel like that! And I haven’t. Watching my homemade trailers for Degrees of Obsession and Mother Tongue reminds me of how much effort I put into having story lines that both surprise and satisfy.

In my own fiction writing, I seek to create stories with a gritty realism and surprising plot twists. Ones with real meaning at the end, not just pat “happy endings”. I want my characters to learn something from the difficult experiences they go through, especially those of their own making. As an author, I know that what they learn is more important than what they originally wanted.

Every time I start boo-hooing over the fact that I don’t have that formula romance in my life, I need to remind myself that my life is indeed a great novel, one worth reading. As a reader of that life story, I don’t want the ending to be predictable, and I especially don’t want to read ahead and see what the final outcome will be. I just want to read each page each day and be filled with neither anticipation nor dread about what the next page will bring.

If I consider each day another page and not get ahead of myself or keep re-reading the past pages, I think that I will find that my life is interesting, unpredictable, and worthwhile. If there was a particularly sad or disappointing page in the past, re-reading it a thousand times won’t make it less so and, in the meantime, I won’t be focused on the new page for the day which might very well bring happiness beyond my wildest imagination. And if I miss the new page by dwelling on the past, hoping those past chapters will change their shape or character, I will never catch up—by then the new page will have become history and I will have missed experiencing what it offered.

Nor do I want to read ahead and skip pages because my story won’t make sense and again I will have missed the page for today. My life has been a great novel—pathos, excitement, romance in small doses, challenges, overcoming abuse, helping others, changing lives. The author of my life, whom I chose to call God, has drawn me as a main character with intelligence, humor, creativity, wisdom, the ability to figure things out and to adjust. He has provided juicy subplots and fascinating minor characters who have swept in and provided plot tension and then disappeared—but the protagonist (me!) has always survived and lived on.

As a reader I need to be interested in HER! She’s still here waging the war, having new adventures, being herself. Sometimes she’s sad and I can cry with her. I can hope that in the next few pages she’ll put it all into perspective, that she’ll realize that the author of her story has something much better in mind for her. She has been up against worthy antagonists—ones that added particular tension and suspense to her story. Will Dad come ever care? Will Mom be able to protect her? Will brother turn out to be sorry? Will so-and-so ever come back?

one pate at a timeThe author of my life story hands me just one page at a time. There is no other better version available at the next bookstore. After all, He wrote the Greatest Story Ever Told. Hey…I’m living in a best seller. And, to boot, He’s given me the talent to write myself. Do I want some sappy ending with a minor character that was written out of my story pages and pages ago? No, I want to see who comes into my life in the future. And I have to keep doing the footwork in the meantime. I can’t sink into inertia. I can’t stop looking for the opportunities for growth and happiness that are at hand. So, keep reading, Karen, and live out this day God has written especially for you.

Being enough…a mantra

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A friend passed this on to me. Certainly food for thought:

enoughWhat if for just one breath, I was enough?
That I didn’t have anything to gain or lose, to become or change.
That I, in this body, in this moment was enough?
How much more space would I create in my heart for happiness?
For contentment?
For love?

For just this one breath, I am enough.

flamingo_flying_med_clIn my Doc Flamingo persona, I am a licensed Psychologist in California and after a 40-year career as a therapist, am now serving as the Mental Health Clinical Director for a large health plan providing medical and mental health services to over 500,000 Medi-Cal recipients in 14 northern CA counties. In my Karen Stephen writer persona, I invite you to LIKE my AUTHOR FACEBOOK PAGE and tell me about yours.

 

Reframing ~ when you need a new look at life

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flamingo_flying_med_clIn my Doc Flamingo persona, I am a licensed Psychologist in California and after a 40-year career as a therapist, am now serving as the Mental Health Clinical Director for a large health plan providing medical and mental health services to over 500,000 Medi-Cal recipients in 14 northern CA counties. In my Karen Stephen writer persona, I invite you to LIKE my AUTHOR FACEBOOK PAGE and tell me about yours.

reframingOne of the most powerful ways to change our stinking thinking is to reframe persistent negative thoughts. It’s not a matter of just putting on rose-colored glasses, pretending that something which seems awful is just hunky-dory. Cognitive reframing is a dramatic shift that occurs simultaneously in our brains and our emotions, one that allows us to see the disappointments, even the disasters of our lives in a entirely new way.

saying about lossThis saying is a recent example of how reframing dramatically changed even my own pessimistic and stubbornly-held attitude about a loss in my life. The saying popped up on my FACEBOOK Profile. It was just the ticket that, first of all, perfectly reflected the painful event in my life, the unexpected loss of someone whom I had assumed would always be there for me. Then it turned that lost dream into a believable promise for the future, one that I would never have considered as a possibility.

My thinking shifted immediately. Yes, absolutely, life can deal me an unimaginable blow, but on the flip side, it can also deliver an unimaginable promise. Even as I read it, I could feel something deep inside of me change. And every time the old pessimistic thinking, the grief, the sense of unfairness, the “why’s” of it all sneak up on me, my mind and spirit immediately go to the new promise. I find myself opening my eyes, my hands, and my heart, in anticipation of finding that something or someone that I’ve never dreamt of having.

Maybe winning that American Library in Paris Book Award for my novel MOTHER TONGUE.