Changes (or Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man)

 

I know the sensation of being lifted high, then dropped into a new paradigm. 

 

My life has been a series of such upheavals.

 

At age four, I was lifted out of my DNA haven of Hamilton, Ontario, and dropped into Southern California.

 

I was lifted from my mother’s home—never to live with her again—and dropped into my father’s house, where I stayed until I was nineteen.

 

I was lifted through public schools—elementary, intermediate, high—teased relentlessly because muscular dystrophy kept me from running, jumping, pulling up, sitting up, or throwing a softball. Then I was dropped into corporate America, where none of that mattered; the only currency was getting along with others, being smart (and educated), working hard and maneuvering around the chessboard of egos and prideful humanity.

 

I was lifted away from career paths, only to watch the company be bought or buy someone else, shrinking opportunities for those released or those left behind.

 

I was lifted away from skilled learned trades, only to see everything I’d mastered vanish like the dodo under the boot of technology. Then lifted into new ones, each swallowed by the next technical shift, until the last career path itself was gone with the wind.

 

Finally, I was lifted up out of Southern California and dropped into Austin, Texas—a city rebuilding itself before my eyes, at any given time fifteen to twenty-five cranes piercing and reshaping its skyline. In the same span of time, God the Father (the great psychiatrist) reconstructing my life from the ground up. 

 

This painting didn’t just capture that cycle—it prophesied it.