the summer of my disconnect

“You need to slow down. Be­cause some­day, if you keep burn­ing the can­dle at both ends, life will slow things down for you.”
—my dad, about 30 years ago
 

I spent most of the 1990s work­ing on any­thing and every­thing I could get my hands on. Cause that was the goal, wasn’t it? Do wat you en­joy and get paid for it. 

Work hard, in­her­it the king­dom.

And fol­low­ing the ‘job you’ll love’ mantra, I man­aged to com­plete all my ‘ca­reer goals’ be­fore the year 2000. 

Which is sort of fun­ny. I didn’t come up with the goals, they weren’t too lofty, I just did them one af­ter an­oth­er based on wat was sold to me over the years.

And it felt emp­ty, of course. Be­cause that’s wat hap­pens when you fol­low some­one else’s dreams.

FLOMM straight­ened all that out – and writ­ing my re­al­ly long 10 year re­cap put that in per­spec­tive for me. 

Help­ing oth­ers is in there. Teach­ing, mak­ing art and a bit of DADA, it’s a ma­jor part of wat I do to­day. ChatGPT’s even fig­ured out wat FLOMM is.

But burnt can­dles start­ed to catch up to me. 

There was spine surgery in De­cem­ber 2019, where I ru­ined this young surgeon’s Per­fect Pro­ce­dure Score. I was his first mishap, and HE couldn’t ac­cept this; that was a bat­tle all its own.

My class­es sud­den­ly went on­line (lucky for me, I could bare­ly walk) and we de­cid­ed to do our 423 event that year to­tal­ly on­line, which fit the COVID lock­down quite well. 

A long­time friend rec­om­mend­ed a damn güd chi­ro­prac­tor and an ex­cel­lent mas­sage ther­a­pist. They helped me walk again. 

There’s some­thing about sur­round­ing your­self with peo­ple who are güd at wat they do. Re­con­nect­ing with my old acupunc­tur­ist com­pletes the trilogy. 

I see all three most­ly weekly.
 

Short­ly af­ter our 423 werk­shop in April, I found my­self in the emer­gency room af­ter half my body went numb on my left side. The con­sult­ing doc­tor on the mo­bile video feed was some­thing else. He de­ter­mined it wasn’t a stroke, nor a heart attack. 

Then, af­ter a long wait for an ap­point­ment, a neu­rol­o­gist said I had neu­ropa­thy and blamed my di­a­betes and snapped “get your num­bers down, it’s the only thing you can do.”

Prob­lem is: My num­bers ARE down, di­a­bet­ic neu­ropa­thy doesn’t oc­cur on just half the body, and weeks lat­er, my en­docri­nol­o­gist snapped back – “It’s easy to blame di­a­betes, and that’s wat he is doing.”

Doc­tor egos and pol­i­tics. Al­ways wait­ing in the wings. With months be­tween appointments.

Fi­nal­ly di­ag­nosed: ‘nerve com­pres­sion at the tho­racic lev­el’ and to­day, the numb­ness is still there. Con­stant ad­vice from my chiro/massage/acupunct tril­o­gy has been: This will take time to heal. Maybe 5 or 6 months.

Maybe.

So I did some­thing I haven’t done in a long time. I can­celed all the FLOMM phys­i­cal projects I was plan­ning – pod­cast in­ter­views, a cou­ple let­ter­press and silk screen­ing events, ad­di­tion­al col­lage werk­shops, an his­tor­i­cal film learn­ing thing and per­for­mance – and I took the sum­mer off. 

I could do Gabe’s YOU ARE HERE graph­ics be­cause I can still hold a mouse and click with my right hand. 

Post­ing things on­line be­came mor FLOMM than ever – we nev­er seem to run out of mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary tal­ent­ed artists – nor fri­day­nacht naugh­ti­ness – and our olde tum­blr arte blog is see­ing a resur­gence of content. 

I did man­age to fin­ish hang­ing gallery walls in our hall­way – vic­to­ri­an at left, mod­ern at right – tho it did take me about 3 months to com­plete. Not my nor­mal turn­around for an exhibition.

 

RADíO FLoMM is a bit mor in­volved, we have a bunch of stuff to sort thru, and will re­turn soon­ish – Milk has had some health prob­lems too. Luck­i­ly, we have a cat­a­log of past episodes that most­ly hold up.

But it’s been awe­some to chill these past few months, and FLOMM should be back to speed soon. 

No rush tho.

Sky­div­ing in Lodi will still al­ways be there. 

 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Top foto by Mari Yaslinskiy.

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