WEEK 04 - CLASS EXPRESSION
Due to ongoing health issues, I did not attend this week’s nature walk at Boundary Bay Regional Park.
ARTIFACT 4.1 > DIGITAL PHOTO COLLAGE > Steven H. Lee. “Three.”
ON THE TOPIC OF DEATH: Today, October 9, marks 57 days of my receiving antibiotics IV. Some days have been smoother than others, but today was particularly difficult. On the worse days, the Ertapenem ejection takes a particular toll on my body. On these days, my body ends up feeling particularly lethargic, to the point where I’ve often felt as though I am going to pass out. I also end up sweating profusely, beads forming across my face and body. My shirt becoming a damp mess. On these days, the worse days, I end up in the Peace Arch Hospital cafeteria, sipping tea, water, and sometimes a bottle of apple juice. I’ll try and scroll through a book on my Amazon Kinidle App, or journal a little bit in a journal I always have on me. But the lethargy sits in my blood like a brain fog, leaving me to want to just sleep. And that’s what I’d do when I’d get home.
That kinda happened two days earlier, on October 7, 2023.
“How are they?” I asked in a reply to a story my friend Shandis Harrison posted on her Instagram profile. In hindsight, I don’t recall what her highlight was about. It might have been a photograph of our mutual friend, Robert Kovacic.
I read her response that’s saved still in my Instagram’s direct messaging, “Perfect. Literally perfect.” In hindisght, I’m not sure who she is talking about, as it sounded present tense. The next part though, was so perfectly clear, “I don’t know if you heard yet, but Robert passed away 2 days ago.” Sitting in a chair in my Mom’s family room, my knees had been providing a resting place for my two hands as I had been wasting time appraising Pokémon in my Pokémon Go collection for deletion so I could earn more candy for the Pokémon I decided to let go of. I think I had something on Netflix playing, but in all honesty I don’t remember what my Mother and I had been watching. When she wasn’t up cleaning the kitchen, or putting on another load of laundry, I remember that my Mom was laying on the couch, drifting in between moments of sleep and moments of watching the film. I read the line again, “… Robert passed away 2 days ago.” Some people might have started crying, sobbing. But I didn’t. I was just frozen. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do. I felt empty inside. Lost. I can’t remember but I see I placed a 😮 emoji on her message. “…passed away.”
I want to say my next thought was George Carlin, proclaiming, “…like a magazine subscription.” But it wasn’t. “Oh wow 💔” I typed, hitting send. Frozen. “I hadn’t seen him since last year cause of my stroke” was what i wrote next. I swiped over to my text messages, searching for our conversation. Specifically, it read…
Friday, August 4. Ten days later, I would be in the hospital to receive treatment for my infected feet. I had resolved in my mind to reach out and spend time again with Robert once my feet were back in good condition. But that’s something that will never happen again. “August 3 was our last text” is what I typed next to Shandis.
“It’s ok. You can’t base a relationship on things like that” were her wise words of wisdom in reply.
“He had said something had been wrong with his liver. A week later I was in hospital cause of my feet so i haven’t been talking to anyone. We talked a bit about my stroke and health eating.” It’s more than the texts reveal, but I swear we spoke in person for a time one afternoon following my release from my daily antibiotics and wound therapy treatments. I remember being parked in the first parallel parking space on Vine Avenue, across from the entrance to the Peace Arch Hospital’s new emergency room building. I remember the late afternoon sun was shining down into my car, providing it with an uncomfortable warmth even with the front driver’s side and passenger’s side windows rolled down. Our last phone call.
Since his passing, I made a short video featuring the last photo of a beer he had on a day trip we took to Whistler in December 2019. A last photo of Robert goofing off, being another body next to an Indigenous artwork in Whistler. A last video of Robert behind the old Ernest and Margaret Westerman household I shot on my iPhone on March 31, 2016, a few months before the old household would be demolished by Kwantlen Polytechnic Universtiy. The last voicemail Robert left me on Christmas Day in 2020.
ARTIFACT 4.3 > VIDEO > Steven Hanju Lee. “December 25, 2020 @ 1754.” YouTube, December 14, 2023.
For better or worse, I can safely say that I’ve not had many last moments with people who were close to me. Many people I’ve known deeply are still with me in this life. But Robert was probably the first person who has had a major impact on my life (that is, someone who I hung out with almost daily for such a long time while we worked and studied at Kwantlen Polytechnic University) to have passed away. I often remember what Prince William and Prince Harry of the British Royal Family said about the last time they spoke with their late Mother, Princess Diana, on the telephone. Writer Stephanie Petit, in a November 2023 article for People Magazine called “Princess Diana’s Final Phone Call with Prince Harry and Prince William: What The Crown Got Right,” notes how:
Prince William said he recalled his last conversation with Princess Diana but did not reveal details. He shared that he and his brother were having a good time with their cousins at Balmoral when the call occurred.
"Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, 'See you later'... if I'd known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldn't have been so blasé about it and everything else," the Prince of Wales said.
Prince Harry confirmed that Princess Diana was in Paris when the phone call took place.
"I can't really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is probably regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was," the Duke of Sussex said.
He added, "If I'd known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things that I would – the things I would have said to her..."
It‘s probably a fairly standard response, that so many people on this Earth have made after losing a loved one. But I know that it’s a response based in a reality that’s unique for each person who has this thought.
In looking at old photos of Robert, I’m sad to say, as with most of my friends in my lifetime, my photos are photos of the people I cared about; rather than photos of me with the people I cared about. Today, as I worked on this post, I browsed through and forwarded many photos of Robert and my friends that I have on my smart phone to friends, each of whom had touching recollections to share about their own memories with Robert. The most poignant though, was from our friend Janny, who replied to one of the photos with a simple, “I miss him.”
“Me too,” I responded. “Me too.”
This sharing has provided me with a means of connecting with people that I otherwise wouldn’t have engaged in had Robert not passed away this year. In his book, MINDFULLNESS & THE JOURNEY OF BEREAVEMENT, Peter Bridgewater notes how:
“Bereavement can feel like a deadweight – solid, heaviness that threatens to eclipse our lives; grief is also a common thread that finds humanity. Losing a loved one feels unbearable, and yet, mostly, bear are sore and face the day. Willing us to accept the pain of loss, eventually melts into mercy and relief” (Kindle - Location 249 of 1736).
Losing Robert has definitely felt like a deadweight - like a weighted blanket that has been soaked in water, making it even heavier, smothering my body and face, making it difficult to move or breathe. Difficult to overcome. Tied to this idea, Bridgewater also describes how:
“Recovery occurs slowly and on many levels: physical, psychological, and spiritual. If we are to be holy restored after a death, we must learn to let go and greet the present fully, moment by moment. Everybody can discover the source of healing, because, potentially, it lies within us all.” (222 of 1376).
On that night of October 7, I reached out to so many people over Instant Messaging on my smart device, as well as on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I e-mailed others too, from past professors and workers at Kwantlen who I knew didn’t have a social media presence, to people who had passed in and out of his life during the time I knew Robert. There’s still people I haven’t contacted, not because I didn’t want to, but rather because their names had slipped my own memory. At one point, during the month of October, another friend I had been talking with, Paul Browning, started passing on names of people we knew, in case I had missed anyone. One name he mentioned I had just tried e-mailing earlier that afternoon - and I didn’t know if the individual would even get my e-mail. My last correspondence with them had been in the mid-2000s, but I knew Robert had been talking to them in the early 2010s. Their e-mail did work thankfully, and they responded within minutes saying, “Hi Steve, thank you for the info. Robert was a close friend, and I frequently thought about him. Peace, Bro.” I didn’t respond, but instead screenshot the reply to forward to my friend who had helped me remember them.
Another former professor of mine, Scott McBride, forwarded to me the video shown in Artifact 4.4 below. Robert had created the piece in Scott’s advanced digital open studio class. Using software wasn’t necessarily Robert’s strong point but no matter how difficult, Robert could form a vision for a project and push through the software to create it every time, no matter how many questions he had to ask Scott, or me, or more appropriately, Jessie - who was a master of vectors and illustration software.
ARTIFACT 4.4 > VIDEO > Robert Ian Kovacic. “Video Self Portrait.”
ARTIFACT 4.5 > Robert Kovacic. “ME, MYSELF, & I.” Acrylic & Oil
The first digital photo collage posted to this page as ARTIFACT 4.1 above was originally just three shots of myself taken in finding something to use as this day’s subverted selfie post. It wasn’t until later that I decided to use all three in a kind of collage that paid homage to one of Robert’s paintings he did in the late 2000s. Due to my own health struggles lately, I haven’t had the range of boisterous emotions that Robert so often had when he was in his own peak health. Before the cancer. My three photographs were taken mere seconds and minutes apart, my goal being to capture the sweat that was slathered across the skin of my body. Robert’s painting was based on a series of photographs he had of himself, photographs that likely taken weeks, if not months, or even years apart.
SUBVERSIVE SELFIE PROJECT POSTS
This week, I composed three Subverted Selfie Project Posts, two of which were for a month long exploration of self course by Vancouver photographer Vivienne McMaster called BE YOUR OWN BELOVED, as follows…
OCTOBER 3, 2023 SUBVERTED SELFIE PROJECT POST (BE YOUR OWN BELOVED EDITION)
DAY 3: EMERGING INTO THE IMAGE
HOW HAS IT BEEN EMERGING INTO THIS EXPERIENCE?
Today's prompt is all about emerging into the process and our photo using one of my favourite creative ways to take a photo. It's a great one to help us emerge a bit more into the photo and this experience. How has it been emerging into the experience as a whole far?
Today was truly tiring. By the time I got to my Mom’s, I wanted nothing more than to just sleep the night away. All day, it felt like I could do nothing right. This morning, I slept in. Again. It’s what usually happens in my life when my insomnia leaves me tossing and turning, endlessly scrolling on my smartphone or thumbing through a half-finished book. I don’t bother having the television on, although sometimes I watch a movie or television show on my phone. Before my stroke sometimes I’d lay on my side and sketch in a sketchbook, fooling around with different coloured pencil techniques. But since my stroke I haven’t even done that, even though my physiotherapists have said it would be good to help rebuild the connections between my brain and my body. I don’t even enjoy myself that way some people do late at night. The stroke impacted my ability to be a man, and the various heart and antidepressants they have me on also leave me feeling empty inside when it comes to intimacy. Reflecting back, I don’t think I even took my morning medication. And by the time I was ready to face the world, it was after 1 in the afternoon.
I first went to Peace Arch Hospital where the elevator ride to the sixth floor felt like it took a hour, stopping at almost every floor with little to no people riding with me. I went to the IV Therapy clinic, to get a new copy of the bloodwork requisition form I needed, as I’d misplaced the one I was given a week ago to take with me to my 2:30 LifeLabs appointment. The nurse obliged, disappearing for awhile into a back office before coming back down the hall with the all important paper: my passport for another month of weekly tests. The bright light of the afternoon sun had broken through the clouds and shone down the corridor, making me squint a little & placing a hazy aura of white light around her silhouetted figure. I thanked her & left, feeling confident I’d get to the lab on time. Thankfully I did make it to LifeLabs on time, But LifeLabs rejected the form I was given, as they were adamant that there is no CP6 test the form asked for (which I later googled & learned stands for Chemistry Profile 6, or Chemistry Panel 6 in British Columbia). So I had to leave, with the hope I could get a third form during my IV appointment at 4.
I next went to Choices Market, as my Mum wanted one of their cooked chickens, which they didn’t have. So I got some slices of their own baked maple glaze ham, and a few other things before dropping it all off at Mum’s just in time to head back to the hospital for day 50 of my antibiotics IV. The same nurse who gave me the purportedly wrong form found it funny that LifeLabs didn’t know what CP6 was, and I heard her in the hallway joking about it with a few other nurses. They felt bad I’d been sent away. She also changed the bandages on my feet and toes, taking time to gently clean each toe. She told me that she was going to book time for me with a wound specialist on Friday to remove some of the hardened calloused skin that if left on the foot could stop the wounds from fully healing properly.
I then got a large bowl of pozole to go for my dinner from a local Mexican restaurant, Ay Chihuahua, as well as a couple of enchiladas, some rice, and refried beans. I then drove over to get something for my Mum from Boston Pizza, specifically, Boston’s Mac n Cheese. I had placed the order online before leaving the hospital, & I added shrimp as a surprise I thought she’d enjoy. But when she dug into it at home I found the addition was something didn’t like. At first she thought they were hunks of cheese to which I said “…no, those are shrimp. It had an option to add protein so I thought you might enjoy shrimp.”
She bit into a piece, spitting it out almost immediately. “It’s dry,” she replied with disappointing frustration. “Next time, just get me Mac n Cheese. Nothing else.”
My heart sank, as it seems whenever we get takeaway something is wrong with Mum’s meal. The only positive today was that I got her meal home quickly, so it was still hot. “I’m sorry,” I said, to which she said “…don’t be, it’s not your fault.”
I USED THE WORD 'EMERGING' BECAUSE I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO LET OURSELVES EASE INTO THE PROCESS. WHAT ARE THE COMFORT ZONES YOU'RE NOTICING SO FAR?
Are you noticing that some prompts are more outside your comfort zones than others? If you find yourself coming up against a comfort zone, could you let yourself use a tool like this and emerge into the photo gently rather than push yourself and make it all or nothing? Can you think of any other times you let yourself stretch into an experience, step by step and let yourself emerge gently?
After eating, I went to the guest room at Mum’s, which since COVID has become my home away from home. In fact, since my stroke & my issues with my feet, I haven’t been to my own place much at all in 2023. I crawled into bed and my little dog Kira jumped up to snuggle down next to me. My head throbbed as I mindlessly scrolled YouTube on my iPhone. Soon, I fell asleep. A few hours later my Mum woke me up, asking if I’d turned in for the evening and saying the garbage had to go out. She then looked down at the fan next to my bed, saw that it was dusty and that it needed to be wiped clean “…as it might catch fire!” She then went into the bathroom to get a cloth. I got up to attend to the garbage, & to make tea. That’s when we got into words, this time over the state of the guest room toilet which I haven’t cleaned since August. It’s these little messes that sets her off, as over time they’ve added up bit by bit. Every other day now the frustration over my laziness boils over into a war of words between us. The worst part is that I’m not mindful when Mum gets upset, my empathic nature picks up on her exasperation, raising the heat in my veins as well. It’s something I’m not proud of. It’s something I wish I could deal with better. I’m tired of my anxiety, depression, and now the 50 days of antibiotic therapy, all of which drag me down. Little victories of tackling the messes in my life seem few & far between, as I find it impossible to emerge from beneath their weighted strain that pulls me down. I want to get better, I long for it, cry for it, hell, I’d even die for it.
This was originally posted on Flickr & Instagram.
Today’s photo prompt and reflective journaling questions for today was a part of the BE YOUR OWN BELOVED photo workshop challenge which is run several times throughout the year by photographer VIVIENNE McMASTER. It’s well worth signing up for, and doing alongside other participants.
OCTOBER 4, 2023 SUBVERTED SELFIE PROJECT POST (BE YOUR OWN BELOVED EDITION)
DAY 4: THE STORY OF YOU
Today we're exploring tell your story, your body's story. Let's get inspired by one part of our bodies and tell their story, focusing on a part of your body you can invite in compassion towards through this story.
You might use some of these suggestions or create your own. Let some of those stories of you spill out onto this page and into your photo today.
THESE FEET HAVE TAKEN ME...
THESE ARMS HAVE HELD...
THIS BELLY HAS NOURISHED...
THESE HANDS HAVE CREATED...
THESE EYES HAVE SEEN...
THESE EARS HAVE HEARD...
These hands have created a vanilla sundae with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, & a maraschino cherry in a small clear glass desert bowl with a short stem & pedestal - only the sundae itself was crafted out of melted wax crayons for an art project Ms Reed had our grade 5 class make.
The fingers of these hands have created the sound of music as they learned to dance across the ivory keys of the wood grained upright Yamaha piano my parents enrolled me to learn when I was ever so young. And these hands wiped away tears from my eyes on the days I’d have a temper tantrum, fighting with Mum over not wanting to practice.
These hands have created pencil drawings of the Cariboo-Chilcotin region I grew up surrounded by, in the heart of British Columbia, Canada when I was twelve years old - inspired by the pen & ink drawings of Canadian artist Al Ranger whose book “The Cariboo: Sketches, Maps & Trip Notes by Al Ranger” still has a place on my shelf today. One of those drawings won an honourable mention at a retreat in Portland, Oregon I attended through my first high school, the White Rock Christian Academy.
These hands have created oil paintings on canvas at the age of fourteen, when I told my Mum I wanted to learn how to paint like that easy going painted on television, Bob Ross. Somehow Mum found a local woman, Artist Vee Hansen, who ran a small framing & arts supplies store that also offered classes for adults. She let me join her class of adult painters, where I caught on quickly, recreating a scene of Mt St Helen’s before its explosion. It was a curriculum that eventually replaced playing the piano, a decision I’ve often regretted as I got older. But the painting has been something I’ve continued to do, on & off, ever since.
These hands have created a scar in me, when I woke to find them frozen with a tingling sensation akin to the feeling one has when their foot falls asleep. I’d felt sick before going to bed that night on the last day of January 2023, so much so I remember taking some nighttime cold & flu medication before falling asleep early, around 7pm. Around 10pm I remember waking from my slumber to a strange sensitivity that ran up my arms, into my chest & down my right leg. I remember laying in bed, slightly scared as I wondered what was happening as the awareness of something normal returned to my left side. I stumbled out of bed, & through my fog I wandered down the hallway to the kitchen to find my Mum, and explain to her how I was feeling. FAST, the acronym society uses to identify the advancing onset of a stroke didn’t seem to apply to me. FAST, but my Face wasn’t droopy. FAST, but I could lift my Arms above my head. FAST, but my Speech wasn’t impaired. So I decided to return to bed, hopeful the feeling in the rest of my body would return by morning, just as it had in my left side just a few moments before.
But it didn’t. I woke again around 6am, & struggled to even manoeuvre to the toilet. Pulling down my pyjama bottoms was a struggle, & wiping my own ass felt impossible due to that damn lingering sensation of a tingling numbness in my arm & what was my once dominant right hand. I flushed as it took all my strength to hoist myself up onto my legs, & I stumbled down the hallway to the entrance to the garage.
I sloppily stuffed my feet into my shoes, lumbering across the garage to go outside. There, I trudged through the snow to the mailbox that hadn’t been checked in days. I made it, collected the few pieces of junk mail in my left hand, and headed back towards the house only to find my right shoe had slipped off near the foot of the driveway not long after I had ventured out. It scared me that my bare skin hadn’t even noticed the cold, damp, snow as my foot took slow step after slow step to the community mailbox a block away from the house. Something was wrong.
But I still decided to ignore my aching distant desire to call 911, instead I chose to sleep some more. So, when I woke again around 11am, almost 13 hours after a part of my body decided to go on some kinda permanent vacation, I finally made the decision to call 911. After being taken to the hospital by ambulance around 2pm, emergency room staff put me through a barrage of tests. I remember the sound of my gurney’s smooth wheels gliding along the white medical grade vinyl flooring with grey speckled spots as I watched the two by four ceiling tiles pass by overhead, broken up by panels of fluorescent light tubes that lit our path. I was still conscious when a doctor came to my emergency room bedside to break the news to me. It was now around 10pm, almost 24 hours after I had awakened to my new reality of which this middle aged man offered clarity without comfort: I had suffered a stroke.
A stroke. Something old people have. A stroke. His words were scolding, for my not coming in right away, as any of the pharmaceutical cocktails they could have given me would now be ineffective. A tear streamed down my face. I’m certain anyone could have smelled the fear that was wound deep in my being at that moment in time. A stroke. Sometimes called a brain attack. An event the CDC describes as occurring “…when something blocks blood supply to part of the brain or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts. In either case, parts of the brain become damaged or die. A stroke can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or even death…” A stroke.
Part of my brain was damaged. Part of my brain was dead. This was my new reality. Would these hands ever create anything ever again? Not knowing was the most terrifying of all. I sobbed deeply with the wail of a moan, a broken cante jondo. Nothing prepares you for these things. For things that have the potential to change the trajectory of the rest of your life.
(277/365).
This was originally posted on Flickr and Instagram.
Today’s photo prompt and reflective journaling questions for today was a part of the BE YOUR OWN BELOVED photo workshop challenge which is run several times throughout the year by photographer VIVIENNE McMASTER. It’s well worth signing up for, and doing alongside other participants.
OCTOBER 5, 2023 SUBVERTED SELFIE PROJECT POST (BE YOUR OWN BELOVED EDITION)
DAY 05: OUR REFLECTIONS
HAVE YOU EXPLORED TAKING REFLECTIVE PHOTOS BEFORE TODAY? HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?
I know for many of us we hear 'reflection' and we think the mirror. And the mirror is often another place like through the camera where we might find old stories come up. We'll connect with the mirror later in class, but today is about reclaiming a playful and inquisitive relationship with our reflection. How did finding your reflection in this way feel?
From October 5, 2023: With photo challenges like this, I have to be careful that I don’t overthink a challenge & become paralyzed by the process. So, as I headed out, I reminded myself to keep it simple & just be mindful of recognizing those brief moments when my reflection appears on surfaces that aren’t traditionally considered mirrors.
With the injuries to my feet, my adventures have been confined to taking short drives to grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, & the hospital. Today was no different, as I drove from my Mom’s to Peace Arch Hospital. After registering, I head to the cafeteria to get an oatmeal cookie, a bottle of water, & a hot tea. When the cafe is closed, I stop to see what the vending machines have. When I was young, they stood as shrines of sugary, addictive junk food. But now they only offer purportedly healthy snack food items in each slot of every row. My finger reaches out to type 1, 4 & 4. The machine’s readout displays the price of a small bag of peanuts: $3.75. I roll my eyes at the price, even though I’ve purchased this item before & knew what it would say. I walk away, deciding not to get anything.
HOW IS BUILDING YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOURSELF THROUGH THE CAMERA FEELING FOR YOU SO FAR THIS MONTH?
We're only on Day 5, but we're already in the process of creating a habit of taking a selfie each day and building a relationship to ourselves through the camera. What has that relationship been in the past between you and a photo? And what would you like it to be like in the future? Proclaim it here in this space...what are some words to describe how you'd like your relationship to seeing yourself in photos be in the future? Open? Kind? Inquisitive? Exciting? Thoughtful? There is no right or wrong here...let whatever is coming up for you have a place to land here!
It can be a struggle to stop myself from binging. Crawl out of bed in a depressed state? Head to the kitchen to have a bowl of Corn-Pops; a few slices of toast with either butter, peanut butter, & jam on it, or instead of jam, honey; a muffin, heated with butter; a few glasses of fruit juice; a small yogurt with granola sprinkled on top; & a large cup of tea with milk. Head back to bed. When I’m driving, it can be a challenge not to turn into some place like the Dairy Queen to order a chocolate dipped vanilla soft serve cone, or a peanut buster parfait. And it’s also a challenge not to load up on an extra large popcorn; Reese’s Pieces peanuts wrapped in smooth peanut butter & a crunchy candy shell; as well as an extra large Coca-Cola when I go to the movies.
Even writing this reflection in bed makes me wonder what junk may be sitting in the cupboard, the fridge, or hidden in the garage. I haven’t gained weight since my stroke, but it’s a fear. I hate fat Steve. He kept me from being photographed with friends, & in selfies.
(278/365).
This was originally posted on Flickr and Instagram.
Today’s photo prompt and reflective journaling questions for today was a part of the BE YOUR OWN BELOVED photo workshop challenge which is run several times throughout the year by photographer VIVIENNE McMASTER. It’s well worth signing up for, and doing alongside other participants.
END OF WEEK REFLECTION