3. Unlocking LIS

First Key

Forced lounging all day on the ICU bed dragged on an inconvenient, potentially crazing side effect. Constant dialogue with myself, somehow appropriately dashed by flashes of details of my pre-life. And every now and then I would recognize among them bright attentionwitches that somehow point to a reflection on this state of matter. More details about this will be discussed at some other time and in some other place. One of these attentionwitches shone with particular bLISs—bright enough to characterize it as “The First Key to Unlocking LIS.” It has influenced me a lot to direct my rehabilitation to the mental/spiritual realm. First as a consolidator of a highly stressed, dismembered, and tantalized ego, then as its humbling and grounding anchorage.

It was The Tale of the Mountaineer, featured in Chapter 3.1. That first stem key prepared me for what appeared to be a disappointment with the development of rehabilitation. Thus, it was the basis for the growth of other keys. Namely, the redirected course of rehabilitation soon began to include the expansion of my interaction with the immediate environment to a globally active creative adventure.

Second Key

Shortly after returning from the hospital, my feeble head movements grew somewhat stronger and more dexterous. Good enough for engaging them to operate a computer and type texts by using various aids. Very quickly this strongly boosted the volume of my whole e-correspondence! It seemed that my newly acquired computer addiction would gradually turn me into an Internet addict. After 2-3 years, I stumbled upon an online support forum featuring stroke survivors. Their strokes were of very different intensity, location, and consequences, and I tried to explain to them what it feels like to be affected by LIS. Since I still couldn’t type much, especially not in a foreign language (the group was from the USA), it had to be as short and concise as possibleAfter all, that’s what my communication aspired to, so it strongly resembled haiku—condensed experience depicted through a few words…

I was very attracted to that discipline, especially considering that Zen Buddhism was rather close to me. I briefly & thoroughly informed myself about haiku, i.e., about Japanese poetry in general (whereas serious study takes a lot of time and practice). In short, soon “The Second Key to Unlocking LIS” shone in my sight—Japanese poetry! The subject matter of my spiritworks slowly moved away from LIS and included an ever-widening circle of the experienced world. And I tried to follow the spirit and form of haiku ever more closely. In the beginning, I necessarily translated my mental images into English words, later this turned into a bilingual trip, and it lasted a year or two. Chapter 3.2. briefly discusses Japanese poetry.

Third and Fourth Keys

I was constantly upgrading my elusive autobiography. But approximately at the end of its first third, in 2007/8, my inspiration twisted again, this time towards visual arts! First, towards photo-reactivation, which “silenced” the haiku section, and shortly afterward, also to fractal art. And as my intense activity in these two areas significantly marked the last 10-15 years of my bonus life, I call them “The Third and Fourth Keys to Unlocking LIS”. Both of these branches are described in Chapter 3.3. (Photography) and 3.4. (Fractals). As I said, the artworks created then had already been set up for the FAA. Their additional display outside of that platform was an indirect and secondary reason for the complete reconstruction of this website and is the theme of Part 4 (Portfolio)!