rebellion

My daughter's first college was Simon's Rock College of Bard. I lived in Amherst, MA, getting a masters degree while she was a freshman and sophomore in college. It's a two or three hour drive to Great Barrington from Amherst.  I only saw her at the required mid-term break, when students were expected to leave the campus and, for the most part, go home. The students at Simon's Rock, now integrated fully into Bard but, back when Katie went, a separate institution, were high school sophomores and juniors. They had those required mid-term breaks so the younger college student spent time with their parental units.

I did not go to campus except to pick her up and drop her off for such breaks but to hear her tell it, I hounded her with visits. I would call her about once a month, which is not very much for a parent who lived with the kid for sixteen years, but, gripes, she angrily recoiled at my calls. She angrily denounced me for sending her U.S. mail, too, even though I typically sent her mail accompanied by money.  She was ready to individuate, I guess.  The way she angrily attacked me for staying in touch with her, one overhearing her might easily conclude I was a monster. Is showing up for parent weekend being an intrusive monster?  I didn't go to parent weekend the second year but, uh, yeah, I went the first time. Keep in mind that the summer before Katie left home for Simon's Rock, she had spent the entire summer in full-time treatment for an eating disorder. First she had been in residential treatment and then in outpatient day treatment.  Her health was fragile and I was her only parent.  I don't think it was being pushy to show I cared.

In the spring of her freshman year, as it happens, she got kicked off campus when her weight dropped dangerously low.  I had been very worried about her starving herself but I had held my tongue. A friend turned her in.  Not me. Thank goddess.  I had seen her during that mid-term required break.  I saw had dangerously thin she was.  I worried. I grieved, imagining my daughter keeling over from a heart attack because she weighed 98 pounds, but I said nothing. A very anorexic child can take on a strangely incandescent glow. The anorexic female's thinness is praised by most.  When Katie was at her thinnest, men, esp. older and older ones, would openly drool over her thinness.  These people did not see, I think, that she was not thin, she was starving.

I remember a story she told me when we were spending time in NYC, staying at my sister's Central Park South apartment (which my sister no longer has, sis now living in Illinois, married to someone else).  Some guy had followed her on the sidewalk along Broadway, speaking to her about how hot she was. He followed her long enough, scrutinized her closely enough, that he noticed her panty line. Then, apparently, he closely scrutinized her panty line  (this was before everyone skinny wore string panties, around 1999) to note that her panties were a little baggy. Her panties were 'baggy' bikini briefs because she was literally deathly thin. She knew the guy had been following her, scoping her out, openly commenting on her, on how much he would like to do her, yet when he got up close and whispered in her ear that she needed to buy smaller panties, only then she did feel invaded. Or, at least, this was the story she told me.  I don't really know what kind of relationships my daughter had, or encouraged, with men who openly talk about women's bodies on the street.  I suspect that there were times when she encouraged such behavior, seeing their interest as flattering. I remember once, when she was still in high school, around age 15, telling me about a guy asking for her number. She told me she didn't give it to him. She had her first cell phone at that time. Then she was hospitalized, for the eating disorder, and her phone was with me. It rang and I asked the caller if he was the guy who had just tried to pick her up at the So-and-So (whatever sidewalk cafe Katie had described:  it was something at the corner of Lake and Hennepin, a coffeeshop). He said 'Yeah', and I said "Do you know my daughter is fifteen?"  He hung up and never called back.  I know he didn't call back because she was hospitalized for several more weeks and she did not have the phone with her.

I sold my house to finance Simon's Rock, then used some of those proceeds to finance her education at  Cornell.  I gave her private schools for all but two years of her life.  I gave up stuff for her, as most parents do.

So. In the fall of 1998, as I drove her back to her college campus after her first college-mandated mid-term break with parental units, I asked her to sew a button onto an article of clothing of mine. I have never learned how to properly sew on a button but in Waldorf schools, all the children have handwork classes. All the children in Waldorf schools learn how to sew on buttons. There is a trick or two to how you knot the thread between the button and the garment. I had never learned that trick. When I sewed buttons onto coats, they fell off. When Katie sewed them on, they stayed on.

So I had planned that button repair for the trip. She had refused to do it the whole week she had spent 'home' with me in Amherst. She didn't have much to do that week but she resisted doing it. I had naively imagined that, trapped in the car with me for a few hours, and aware that I was putting wear and tear on my psyche by driving 2.5 hours to her campus and then 2.5 hours back -- she had never driven and she was probably unaware that five hours of driving is work, not a joy ride -- I had totally expected, and assumed, that she would do it. She had been living apart from me for a couple months. She had not done anything for me since college started. She had not lifted a finger during the week she had spent at home with me.

I still don't think it was much to ask, to ask her to sew on that button.

When I asked her to do it, in the car, she initially said she would do it. But later.  When we pulled off the turnpike, for the final half hour or so stretch through side- and back-roads to Simon's Rock, I said "Now, Katie, this is your last chance."

She angrily informed me that she was not my servant and she would not sew on that button.

I pulled to the shoulder and said that we were about thirty miles from her dorm and maybe I would refuse to take her further, just let her and her luggage off right there.  I pointed out that I was doing something for her, not to mention that I was paying for everything in her life. The meals on campus were not free. The single dorm room that cost extra was not free. The  clothes on her back were not free.

She was furious with me.  I don't think I was furious. I think I was hurt.

When I saw that there was no fucking way she was going to sew on that cursed button, I pulled back on the road, drove to campus in relative silence and did not get out of the car when she unloaded.

I guess that was the day she left me, although I did see her a few times after that.

me and Tricky Dick

After Richard Nixon left the presidency, maybe five years later, I happened to read that he had developed blood clots and had been hospitalized. The article explained the phenomenon of blood clots. As I read it, my inner voice told me I was going too have the same condition someday. This was, maybe, around 1980, 1981. Maybe a little later.

Then, in 2006, I did develop deep vein thrombosis, then pulmonary emboli.  I had been awakened in the middle of the night with pain in my left calf. It hurt like a fatherfucker, let me tell ya. Then I went back to sleep.  I ignore physical pain. I always have aches and pains. Doesn't everyone?

Then, several times, for no reason, I was unable to breath. Just for a few seconds. It didn't last long, just long enough for me to notice 'hey, I can't breath' and then my breath would resume and I forgot about it.

At the time, I had monthly visits with my doctor.  When I saw her the next time, her nurse skipped a question in her standard protocol. Every time I had seen that doc for every month for a year or so, the nurse had asked me "have there been any changes in your health in the past month". So I saw the doc, she checked whatever I was there to have checked and as Martha, the doc began to leave, my visit with her over, I said "Hey, the nurse did not ask me if anything is different since my last visit and something is different."  I was mostly kinda kidding.  When I had been unable to breath, I had flashed to my upcoming doctor visit, imagined the nurse asking her standard questions, so I had noticed she had not asked.

Martha closed the door, sat back down at the desk, ordered me to sit back down and questioned me closely. I had chuckled but she was very interested. I guess doctors care about patients not being able to breath. She pulled out her stethoscope, listened to me breath again, asking me to take those deep breaths they ask you to do. Mid-big-breath, I stopped breathing. She asked "Like that?  You stop breathing like that?"

She ordered a blood test. The next day, I was out all day. My doctor personally called me, not a nurse. She left several messages, each one more anxious-sounding. I finally got home around 4:30. The receptionist passed my call through to Martha, calling her out of a patient exam to talk to me, as Martha had instructed.

My blood test indicated I most likely had some clotting going on. Martha told me to take a cab to the a testing place that would check for clots. I said "It's Friday, by the time I get to the place,  they'll be closed. I'll go on Monday." She said "What kind of doctor would I be to let you go walking around with a potentially fatal condition over the weekend?" I said "I promise, if the breath thing happens again, I will go straight to the nearest ER. I'll tell them what you have said, and make sure they check for clotting."  She said "And what do you think I would look like if you walked into an ER and told them that your doctor had let you go around all weekend like this? Promise me you will take a cab."

I lied to her and promised to take a cab.  I took public transit. I had to transfer twice. And the final walk from the closest bus stop was a steep incline. The Seattle area is about as hilly at San Francisco but folks from other places don't really seem to register that Seattle is very hilly. With each step, I fought for air. When I got to the place that would do the test, which was across a parking lot from a hospital, the receptionist and the lab tech person were upset, waiting for me. My doc had called them and asked them to wait for me, told them I was coming in a cab. The bus ride delayed my arrival and my doc and the lab folks were sitting around imagining me dead somewhere.

I did have a gigantic cluster of clotting in my left thigh. And, as discovered that evening, clots (emboli) all over my lungs. Lots of blood in my lungs. It was actually amazing that I had been able to walk at all.

The next day, still in intensive care, a nurse told me that radiologist (or whatever title the person had who had read my chest screens to diagnose the pulmonary emboli) had actually called ICU to see if I had lived through the night. He had not met me -- he had looked at my scans on his home computer. And, by the way, I guess sometimes doctors in India practice medicine with US hospitals by computer, from India.  The nurse said it was unusual for the radiologist (or whatever) to call, but he had been amazed to learn that I had walked into the hospital, that I had been breathing at all.

It was serious.  They put me in ICU partly because I could have stopped breathing with each breath. They didn't even want me to stand up to pee. An ICU nurse cried when I objected to peeing in a bed pan. She said, in Filipino accented English, "You could die when you stand up. Do you think how I feel?"  I did not feel empathy for her tears.  At the time, I barely registered them. It was only later that I noticed that she had been more concerned about my wellbeing than I had been. I told her that I had been walking around for at least two weeks with pulmonary emboli, that I was unlikely to die if I stood up to pee in the adult-sized potty chair and I was not going to pee in a bed pan. Have you ever tried to do that?  I did once when pregnant:  it is very uncomfortable. You get pee all over yourself. Well, just a little over, but you feel that wetness, know it's pee. Yuck.

They put me on oxygen. When I got to the ER, my breath did not show enough oxygen. And they administer some kind of intense drug. The way the doctor explained it was that the drug would thin out all the blood in my body, make the blood so thin that my body was at great risk from the drug. I had to be very closely monitored. She said it was a bit like a very intense chemotherapy. It was chemical therapy, if you ask me, just not cancer-chemo. She explained that they hoped this chemical would make my blood so thin that the clots would begin to 'melt'. That's how she put it, melt.

And, just 24 hours later, they scanned my lungs again and saw much improvement.  I was going to live. I stayed in ICU a couple more days, very sick.

ICU is a bit like a spa experience. Everyone is very intensely focused on the patient's wellbeing. If I moved, someone came to my side.  I didn't move much. I didn't talk much. The drug didn't just thin out all my blood. It thinned out my consciousness.  It was somewhat pleasant, in a weirdly indirect way of being pleasant. I was so debilitated that I didn't have to do anything. I didn't try to do anything. I zonked out for two and a half days in that ICU.  No TV, no conversation. A friend came to visit. A few days later, when I was in a regular room, many friends called. As soon as I was not completely out of it, they removed me from the ICU.

My answer to Oven Bird's question

In the last line of Robert Frost's poem, Oven Bird, he, or the bird perhaps standing in for Frost, asks "what to make of a diminished thing".

Here is Oven Bird:

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past,

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Robert Frost

If you have never done so and if you imagine yourself a lover of literary art, pick a favorite poem by a highly renown poet. Google the poem for literary analysis. And dive in.  If you have ever thought that language amounts to mutual agreement, that words have objective meaning, only an hour reading literary analysis of one poem will demonstrate that language has as much mutually agree-upon and/or objective meaning as Marc Rothko's paintings. Marc Rothko's work or any great abstract expressionist.

It is an illusion, perhaps a delusion, to think words are mutual agreements.  Words are what we have to try to connect.  One of the things we have to try to connect.

I set out, in this post, to answer Frost's question, 'what to make of a diminished thing'. Here is my answer, a poem by Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent virtually her entire life, with only two or three trips away, in Amherst, MA. And, as most people know, she stopped leaving her home almost entirely after she reached adulthood. (She did frequent the house next door where her brother, a beloved sister-in-law and a beloved nephew lived. The path is still there, between the houses. A visit to her home, open for tours, is worth it, especially to people who love her writing.  I swear I felt her standing at the window of her second story bedroom, as she dropped a basket down to children playing on the lawn. Several times in the tour, I had a sense of someone ducking out of sight. I felt a rush of air, the sound of skirts moving. It was her. She used to stand at the top of the stairs so she could listen to the many visitors in the parlor. Sometimes she sent down word, requesting a particular song when someone was playing the piano. She was present in the parlor but upstairs. Her sister Lavinia sometimes joined her at the top of the stairs and sometimes mingled with the guests.  As time passed, Emily stayed out of sight from all but Lavinia and her other family.

Robert Frost also spent many years in Amherst, also writing poems.

Here is my answer to the question, what becomes of a diminished thing.

  The Black Berry—wears a Thorn in his side—
But no Man heard Him cry—
He offers His Berry, just the same
To Partridge—and to Boy—

He sometimes holds upon the Fence—
Or struggles to a Tree—
Or clasps a Rock, with both His Hands—
But not for Sympathy—

We—tell a Hurt—to cool it—
This Mourner—to the Sky
A little further reaches—instead—
Brave Black Berry—


Here is my analysis of the poem.  I do not know, nor do I wish to, the language of poetry criticism. There are labels for various poetry patterns. A sonnet has fourteen lines, so many consider Oven Bird a sonnet. Iambic pentameter is about syllables but as soon as poets agreed upon what iambic pentameter meant, they seemed to have felt free to play around with it, as Frost does in Oven Bird. Shakespeare, I believe, wrote all his poetry in iambic pentameter. I remember being so amazed by that fact when I first learned about Shake's iambic pentameter in high school. It seemed impossible for someone to create so much rhyming, in rhythm,  to discipline one's self to hard numbers of syllables per line.

Then I had a kid.  I wanted to stretch her thinking as best I could so I played around with language a lot. Sometimes, I would try to speak in rhyme all day long, partly to have silly fun, partly to get her to pay closer attention to me, partly to sharpen her own thinking, sharpen her verbal skill.  As a mother, I was not always on, but I was on a lot. I saw learning opportunities in everything we did and, as best as I could, I turned everything into learning games. If she wanted an apple at the store, I asked her to notice the different colors and choose one. When she knew her colors, I would buy as many apples as she could count, incentivizing her to learn how to count.  I don't know if my homemade lessons added up to anything but she did get an academic scholarship to an Ivy.  I digress, again and again, eh?!

Emily is not writing about blackberries in the above poem. She is offloading a bruise in her being, telling us she has a hurt that needs cooling. She hides this vulnerability as one might hide a bruise on one's forearm by putting on a long sleeved blouse. Being a gifted word artist, she hides her hurt inside a beautiful paean to the blackberry, using the blackberry's thorns to protect her hurt as she describes for her readers how the blackberry is protected from deer and other hungry animals by surrounding itself with thorns. Those thorns, protection, guardedness, both protect and allow the blackberry bramble itself to grow. Protecting one's self from the slings and arrows of life is necessary in order to thrive.  Humans need guardedness, comparable to the blackberry's thorns. And then, since the thorns are already there, why not use them to allow us to grow.

Now, if you are interested in a language game, google Emily's poem for literary criticism and read the amazing array of what others see in the poem. I have never read any literary criticism of this poem.  I am protecting my own analysis, my refusal to read others insights into the poem are my thorns, protecting my own tender self confidence.  I am pretty sure Emily would have understood what I am getting at, even if no one else does.

I have told no one, speaking out loud, of the hurt I am feeling. I only write about it here on this blog that no one reads. No one I know. Occasionally, an internet traveler stops by. 47 people follow this blog. I wonder if any of them are someone I actually know. I think not. I do not know.

I understand a person needs to be guarded, to be a little thorny so one can 'be', and being implies growing, yes? When does pure self responsibility become mutual interdependence? When is a relationship codependent and when is it mutual support, a positive interdependence?

Ouch.

It might matter, esp. to Frost fans, that many poetry experts think the Oven Bird in the poem represents Frost himself, and that his Oven  Bird poem is about poetry.  People read all kinds of stuff into it.

I am still holding onto damage from my undergraduate experience.  I would have been an English major but the head of the department, at my small liberal arts school, was a bully. He seemed to believe that all literary work had just one meaning. He blasted my papers for him because he said I always interpreted whatever literary work I was writing about wrongly. What the fuck? There is no such thing as a wrong interpretation of art.  He seemed to think there was one right one. But, come to think of it, I wonder if I projected this onto him? Maybe I thought he thought everything I wrote was wrong because I thought everything I wrote was wrong.

Sometimes, life feels like what Lewis Carroll was trying to convey, at least I think he was, when he wrote the Mad Hatter scene. Gobbledegook and nonsense passing for people talking.

breaking up is hard to do

We have all heard the song with the lyrics 'they say that breaking up is hard to do'. That song is about the end of a romantic breakup.  You rarely hear songs about friendship breakups, or longing for friendship.  It can seem like only romantic/primary/partner relationships matter.

I am struggling over the end of a friendship. This male friend and I were not lovers but we love one another. We still love one another. But we are no longer friends.  I am heartbroken. And pretty much alone in this loss.Friends don't matter, right? Not as much as a lover, or, it sometimes seems to me, a beloved pet. This guy mattered to me. It's like losing a family member, only he's not dead, just dead to me. There is a hole in my heart, my being.

In my mind, in my heart, I still turn to this friend, still want to talk to him about my life. Nevermind that we have broken up because turning to him had stopped being a positive, happy stream.  We have broken up because we just couldn't find the right stream of energy to hold our friendship. We wanted different kinds of connection. The dissonance between what each of us wanted was unsettling, a growing strain for me and, I am pretty sure, for him.  It's a good thing we have stopped interacting.

I am grieving.  Bereft.

soup

I have become, if I do say so myself, a soup master.

the way to San Jose

Tomorrow, I'm headed to San Jose. I used to go to San Jose more regularly when I lived in MV. I could hop on Caltrain and be in downtown SJ in about fifteen minutes.

I've been putting off this trek for weeks. It is going to take more than two hours each way. A bit onerous, but it will be worth it.  I'm headed to the San Jose Museum of Art,  a nice little art museum that focuses on contemporary California artists.

I wish I could blink and be there. I am so dreading the train and bus rides.

sidewalk sleeping San Francisco

Yesterday, on a bus at a bus stop in San Francisco, I noticed a homeless-appearing man sound sleep on the sidewalk. He was curled up in a fetal position, leaning against a garbage bag that seemed to be his belongings. His face was weathered, as if he spent lots of time outdoors. And this guy was sound asleep.  It was my sense that he was sleeping from exhaustion, not that he had passed out from drinking or drugs but who knows? This human being looked as thoroughly tired as a person can. And he was sleeping so soundly, as if he was in a private, cosy bed.

It looked as if he had sat down, leaning against the wall of a restaurant, and fallen asleep, then fallen to the sidewalk.

It is against the law to sit on the sidewalk in San Francisco, and it is also against the law to sleep on the sidewalk. This law has been strongly debated. The homeless challenge San Francisco in many ways.  I think most decent humans have empathy for homeless people. I certainly do. But it can be intimidating to be approached for money by drunk or high people. And if they are unclean, maybe smelly because they have no way to bath regularly or launder their clothing, well, you get smelly, messy, vaguely intimidating and unpleasant humans, which is bad for the tourism that is important to the San Francisco economy.

It's a complex issue. I am mindful that anything I might say can sound condescending.  I have empathy for homeless people. And I know there is a wide range of homeless. People who lose their jobs and then their homes because they can't pay rent or mortgage payments are a different category of homeless than the chronically homeless with addiction and/or mental health issues.

The sleeping homeless guy that I saw yesterday looked like chronic homeless, homeless by choice. But I don't know.

The bus was stopped longer than usual because a wheelchair passenger was getting on. As I observed the guy sleeping on the sidewalk, I became aware of the SF police officer as he pulled out his citation book, then took out a pen and started filling out his form. He was going to cite the sleeping guy.

I guess the cop was going to do whatever paperwork he could do before awakening the guy.  And I thought it unusual for the cop to be alone. Nowadays, it seems cops always show up in pairs. Maybe the reason the cop had not yet approached the sleeper was because he was waiting for another cop.

I don't know what the SF official response to sidewalk sleepers is.  I think I have read, in the news, that cops issue warnings first.

It was a calm, quiet moment. I imagine as the incident proceeded in time, the cop would have awakened the sidewalk sleeper. If the guy was unconscious, I suppose the guy would be hauled off in what used to be called a paddy wagon.

Modern life.

Someone swaddled that sidewalk sleeper when he was a baby, changing his disapeers, encouraging him to learn how to walk and talk. At least I hope so. And he went to school, probably learned how to read and write, probably had jobs at some point.  There lots of unhappiness in this world.

a snake sheds its skin

An old friend and former biz partner owned a gigantic snake named Elsa.  I don't know what kind of snake Elsa is (was? how long do gigantic snakes live?).  I think Elsa might have been six feet long and, at her widest the approximate size of a large apple.  I can't 'think' in terms of circumference.   How many inches all the way around a very large apple?

If Elsa ate a mouse, which Lynn, my former biz partner, sometimes fed her, the lump of the mouse would bulge out as the mouse's body moved through Elsa being digested, gradually melting away until Elsa resumed her regular roundness. I guess the snake swallowed a mouse whole. Also, Elsa was not the same diameter all the way. She was thicker in the middle, with each end tapering. One end tapered to the end of her. The other end tapered to her face.

When I stayed with Lynn, who lived in Baltimore when we were partners -- I lived in Minneapolis then -- she put Elsa in her large glass 'cage'. Elsa's box was a very large aquarium.  When Lynn was home alone with Elsa, Elsa had the roam of the house.

During a visit, Elsa was shedding her skin. I had always known snakes shed their skin. Humans shed their skin, too, but it is not as clear-cut. Human skin sheds in microscopic flakes, something that happens steadily all over the body.  I guess all living organisms change steadily, growing and dying simultaneously.  I have not had a science class since my high school biology class. I never even took chemistry, which I regret. Chemistry was not required for most colleges or for my graduation.

I never felt any draw to study science, although I find myself increasingly interested in understanding some science.  We have all, I bet, heard one kid or another complain that many of the things they are asked to learn in school are useless in life.  This is not true, of course. As I age, I find myself often wishing I knew more about science. Nothing prevents me from learning and I think I will undertake some study of science.  This post is not about my academic regrets, which might be a topic for another day.

Watching Elsa literally slink and slide out of her old skin, seeing her new skin emerge, penetrated me. I watched her for hours at a time. Her movement out of her old skin, emerging into her new one, was glacial.  Her skin was made up of an endless number of tiny flakes. The dead cells were dried flakes. The new skin wet, alive, moving. Some flecks of the old skin became light flakes that might be moved with air movement, but the bulk of her old skin retained the form of the snake.

Anyone who is into reptiles has seen snakes shed their skin, I guess.  My observation of Elsa's shedding was not special or unique. But it is special to me, unique in my experience.

Humans don't just shed skin. I bet all of my body sheds old cells and steadily grow new ones.  My heart does not retain any of the actual, physical cells that I was born with.  The tiny pancreas baby Tree had on August 16, 1953 is the same pancreas in my body today, but all the cells in today's pancreas are new.

Life is so amazing, isn't it?

Just as physical matter changes constantly, my being constantly changes.  I change how I go about being me.

I have shed lots of people as I have moved through life. And people have shed me.  I know this is life, growing and changing is life.  I know it is right.

I wish it did not hurt so much to be shed by someone I love.

Wislawa Szymborka died today

True Love

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

It's hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who'd want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.


Wislawa Szymborska

movement qigong eurythmy swimming

Just musing here, rambling through my mind. . . .

I have been severely depressed. I tend to think that present unhappiness feels worse than past unhappiness, analogous to the way I tend to believe present physical pain is worse than past physical pain.  I forget what physical pain felt like. For example, I can mentally recall that I experienced serious pain when I was in childbirth but, reflecting backwards, that pain doesn't seem to have been all that bad. When my pelvic area was wracked with the body cracking crunch of my baby coming out, the pain seemed bigger than my body, my being, my mind.  Anyway, my fuzzy, poorly-written point is that even though I sincerely believe I have been in the deepest depression of my life, maybe it's not true. But I am pretty sure this is the most depressed I have ever been, although maybe in the past I just wasn't able to surrender to depression the way I am now. In the past, I had things going on that drew me into the world. I could not stay in bed, only getting out to use the toilet and grab food and water from the kitchen, when I was raising a kid. She had to get gotten off to school, or picked up after dance. She needed stuff all the time and it was my job to go into the world and arrange for it.

In the past, I had jobs and commitments and all kinds of relationships that involved active interaction. Friends would call to talk. Gosh, I used to talk on the phone for hours and hours.

Recently, throughout January I think, I have only left my apartment a handful of times and only because I absolutely had to go out.  I had to deliver my rent checks in January and February to the management office in the lobby.  I had to go out and buy food. I had a dental appointment, a colonoscopy.

The most onerous task in my life right now is going to the drug store.  I am steadily shocked to see how hard it is for me to pull myself together, which includes having to get dressed, check to see that I have keys and wallet, and then walk one block to the pharmacy, stand in the always-too-long line, and get my meds.  This is so stupid but I can't get the pharmacy system to work to me. I have tried to request refills from home, so when I get to the pharmacy, my stuff will be ready but, for some reason, this never happens. Getting my scripts refilled always involves two trips, one to prod the pharmacy staff to refill a prescription and then a return trip to pick it up. Once in awhile, the staff offers to fill it immediately, which tends to mean at least a thirty minute wait. I will wait but these waits can seem interminable to me because I am so depressed.  I hate being out in the world, humans humming around me. I wonder if the word hum has any connection to the word human?  Hmmm.

I am crying now, thinking about how hard it can be for me to wait at the pharmacy. Such an outing leaves me feeling totally wiped out but it was nothing.

I have done trials in courtrooms, as a lawyer.  I have designed and lead awesome trainings and group experiences for years.  I have cleaned my homes, done laundry, gardened, sung in choirs, lobbied state legislatures, ridden bikes, driven cars, traveled abroad, laughed and loved but right now, lately, I don't want to do anything.

On Tuesday, I tried as hard as I could to sleep all day. I am amazed to have discovered that I can actually sleep for 20 hours in a 24 hour cycle. It's not restful sleep but I can zone out. Am I catonic when I am sprawled in bed for 20 hours in a 24 hour day?

The last time I saw my mom, in 2007, I was amazed by how much time she spent in bed, and, for the most part, sleeping. Now I understand that behavior. If there is nothing in the world that interests you, it is possible to draw into myself, block out the world, mostly avoid all thoughts, numb myself from feeling, and lay in bed doing something like sleep for 20 hours.

flat tap broke

It used to be much harder for me to go without money for a few days than it is now.  I am deeply accustomed to spending my money very carefully. I buy a monthly bus pass so I always have transit. When I first became poor, I would become painfully aware of moving through this capitalist culture with zero money.  I always tend to have some food in my freezer and cupboard. Always pasta, jars of sauce, frozen protein.  I don't have to eat fresh vegies.  Also, I always have protein powder.

I have gotten so good at it that I virtually never run out of cash.  I have all kinds of tricks. I have a zippered pocket on the left arm of my daily jacket. When I get prescriptions filled at CVS, I get $35 cash back and tuck it in that sleeve. Sometimes, I will tuck in two $35 stashes before I tap the sleeve.  I like laughing at myself that this silly trick 'works'.  I have another zippered pocket in the front of my jacket that  I put in fifty bucks. I get fifty bucks cash back at Trader Joe's.  My bank is in another state and it costs money to use ATM machines so I get my cash at CVS and Trader Joe's.  The front pocket is my weekly produce budget. I usually spent it at farmers markets, but not always. Sometimes the cash in that pocket piles up.

This past month, I had two big bites. A $150 payment for something and a $140 payment. $300 is about the amount of money I float all the time. At the end of January, I was flat tap broke.  Well, I had $30 in my checking account on the last day of the month. I checked my balance on Saturday and my being kinda froze about money until today, February 1st.  I did not spend another cent. I cleared out my pockets at the market on Saturday, holding back twenty bucks just in case. Then I remembered I have another $20 or $30 in quarters for my laundry.  It feels good to know I am not totally broke. And it also feels like I am totally broke when I have $30 in checking, maybe twenty bucks in my jacket and about $20 in quarters for laundry.

Does this qualify me as a hoarder?  I don't think so. Silas Marner was a money hoarder, right?!

I got down pretty low in January. In a way, getting flat tapped is a kind of cleanse. It feels good and it feels bad.

But now it is February 1st and I am back in the chips.

Lou Reed - Why can't I be good