"In the depths of winter I discovered in myself an invincible summer."
--Albert Camus
Showing posts with label moods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moods. Show all posts
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Stasis
Most of my blog readers will already know this, but I'll post here anyway: my grandmother died this weekend. Tonight was visitation; tomorrow is the funeral.
I feel very much as though time is suspended right now. As a family, we're talking and catching up, trading stories, taking care of details, and doing the things that need doing, but it feels as though we're in a strange sort of time between times...as, I suppose, we very much are.
I feel very much as though time is suspended right now. As a family, we're talking and catching up, trading stories, taking care of details, and doing the things that need doing, but it feels as though we're in a strange sort of time between times...as, I suppose, we very much are.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Hidden Vision
"The virtue of those [respected literary] writers is precisely that they have refused to do what their imitators do so humbly. Each of them has had a vision of the world and has set out to transcribe it, and their work has the forthrightness and vigor of all work that comes from the central core of the personality without deviation or distortion."
--Dorothea Brande
Becoming a Writer
What one has to bring to one's writing, to share with the world, is one's own way of seeing. Especially in my blog writing I usually hide my vision, my way of seeing, rather than drawing my readers into it with me. Instead of honesty, I present a false vision, a substitution, a deceit. It is possible, I suppose, that the masking vision is born of the self that serves most often in my interactions with the outside world. (Ah, the joys of being an INFP, whose deepest convictions and being are most naturally held in reserve!) If so, then the word "deceit" may not be entirely accurate, since my public self is still a genuine, a true representation of my whole. Isn't it?
The other night I began looking over the language arts courses of the online certification program I've begun. I took the quizzes over the various sections, cold, to try to get a sense of where I am in terms of what I'll be expected to know. It's been 18 and a half years since I graduated with my BA, sixteen since I left graduate work. My quiz scores were not as high as I'd hoped. In spite of the fact that my scores had been higher than the average scores of people who take the quizzes after having worked through the courses, I went to bed discouraged and worried, and I woke up feeling worried and overwhelmed.
Out of irritability that morning I scolded The Older Daughter over something inconsequential and caught myself on the verge of tears. Then on the way to school the girls and I were laughing together when a wave of premature nostalgia hit me, choking me up, and I also got sentimental about the terrapins that are beginning to cross the highway, an annual occurrence.
When I realized what was going on and stopped to consider, it struck me that the underlying cause of both the morning's irritability and predisposition to tears was fear. Surprised, I began considering some of the most emotionally volatile periods of my life--high school, college, early marriage, early motherhood. How many of those wild moodswing rides originated from the same material: fear of failure, fear of not measuring up, fear of finding myself utterly unequipped and inadequate for the task at hand?
True vision, it would seem, is not only hidden from others.
--Dorothea Brande
Becoming a Writer
What one has to bring to one's writing, to share with the world, is one's own way of seeing. Especially in my blog writing I usually hide my vision, my way of seeing, rather than drawing my readers into it with me. Instead of honesty, I present a false vision, a substitution, a deceit. It is possible, I suppose, that the masking vision is born of the self that serves most often in my interactions with the outside world. (Ah, the joys of being an INFP, whose deepest convictions and being are most naturally held in reserve!) If so, then the word "deceit" may not be entirely accurate, since my public self is still a genuine, a true representation of my whole. Isn't it?
The other night I began looking over the language arts courses of the online certification program I've begun. I took the quizzes over the various sections, cold, to try to get a sense of where I am in terms of what I'll be expected to know. It's been 18 and a half years since I graduated with my BA, sixteen since I left graduate work. My quiz scores were not as high as I'd hoped. In spite of the fact that my scores had been higher than the average scores of people who take the quizzes after having worked through the courses, I went to bed discouraged and worried, and I woke up feeling worried and overwhelmed.
Out of irritability that morning I scolded The Older Daughter over something inconsequential and caught myself on the verge of tears. Then on the way to school the girls and I were laughing together when a wave of premature nostalgia hit me, choking me up, and I also got sentimental about the terrapins that are beginning to cross the highway, an annual occurrence.
When I realized what was going on and stopped to consider, it struck me that the underlying cause of both the morning's irritability and predisposition to tears was fear. Surprised, I began considering some of the most emotionally volatile periods of my life--high school, college, early marriage, early motherhood. How many of those wild moodswing rides originated from the same material: fear of failure, fear of not measuring up, fear of finding myself utterly unequipped and inadequate for the task at hand?
True vision, it would seem, is not only hidden from others.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Friday Quote: On Darkness
"Sometimes I forget that even though the darkness whispers my name it does not tell the truth."
--Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens
--Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens
Friday, June 01, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
Friday Quote: On Being Exceptional
"The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely."
---Lorraine Hansberry
---Lorraine Hansberry
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Unexpected Swing
It could very well be the sunshine, or maybe it's the sound of birdsong wafting through the open windows with the breeze. Whatever it is, I've awakened the last two mornings feeling more alive, lighter, even (brace yourselves) happier than I've been in a long, long time. Despite allergies and a wall of dishes to be washed by hand and a yard that in in desperate need of mowing and three tabards to make for The Older Daughter's school play, I feel wonderful when I open my eyes in the morning!
Know what I think it is? Not writing, no. Having written! Yes, thus far I'm two for two on the poem-a-day effort. (Well, two poems and a bit of horrible doggerel, actually, but who's counting?) I go to bed satisfied. I wake up...happy. The word is alien in my mouth, but sweet. Happy... Happy... Happy...
It's like living in a whole new plane of existence. Nirvana must be like this--only maybe with the dishes washed.
Know what I think it is? Not writing, no. Having written! Yes, thus far I'm two for two on the poem-a-day effort. (Well, two poems and a bit of horrible doggerel, actually, but who's counting?) I go to bed satisfied. I wake up...happy. The word is alien in my mouth, but sweet. Happy... Happy... Happy...
It's like living in a whole new plane of existence. Nirvana must be like this--only maybe with the dishes washed.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Friday Quote: Kitty Koans
I have found myself participating in compulsive activities of late, doing meaningless things in a driven manner simply to block out the rising rattle of thoughts have begun circling in my head like manic buzzards--like manic buzzards on meth. This morning, I need to slow down the interior. I also need humor. Following are several koans (thoughts or questions intended for meditation) from Henry Beard's Zen for Cats.
What is the sound made by a single jaw chewing on a mouse?
If there were no inside, would you still want to go outside?
If you encounter the Buddha on a garden path, bite him.
What is so special about the weeds in the big pots in the living room?
Why does the vacuum cleaner fall silent when its tail comes out of the wall?
What is the sound made by a single jaw chewing on a mouse?
If there were no inside, would you still want to go outside?
If you encounter the Buddha on a garden path, bite him.
What is so special about the weeds in the big pots in the living room?
Why does the vacuum cleaner fall silent when its tail comes out of the wall?
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Blog Break
I am taking a month off from church. I am lying low here at home, seeing only my immediate family and, when I take the girls to school and then go by her house, my grandmother. Occasionally I will talk to my siblings or parents on the phone, but for the most part, I'm scaling back all people activity. This time of year seems to take a lot out of me, so much this time around that I'm needing to pull back from my blogging activity as well. Needing to pull back from a lot of things, although I'm not able to entirely.
In a few days I do expect to be able to post a link to an online journal that will be publishing two of my poems. The first issue isn't up yet, but I'll link it when it is.
I will be reading emails, although I expect not to be blog reading for a bit. Feel free.
In a few days I do expect to be able to post a link to an online journal that will be publishing two of my poems. The first issue isn't up yet, but I'll link it when it is.
I will be reading emails, although I expect not to be blog reading for a bit. Feel free.
Friday, September 22, 2006
In My Sleep
Great Scott tells me I've been shrieking in my sleep again. Not horribly loudly, but enough to startle him awake. He's been sleeping on the couch when this happens, although he often switches to the couch partway through the night simply because if he wakes up, he has a hard time falling asleep again.
When we were first married, I often had nightmares or night terrors in which I would try to scream and fight myself awake and couldn't. In reality, I WAS screaming--very loudly--and sometimes physically fighting, too, although I didn't know it at the time. Great Scott would try irritably to wake me up, usually to no avail and often with some element of risk. ("It was the punching me in the head...like a speedbag...that sort of...got to me," he says as he reads this now. Hmmm...come to think of it, maybe this has something to do with why he moves to the couch.)
I don't think this round is quite as bad. For one thing, I'm told I'm not nearly as loud, and I'm not attacking anyone, either. Still, it's one more thing that tells me something needs to give somewhere, one more small red flag flapping frantically in a rising wind.
When we were first married, I often had nightmares or night terrors in which I would try to scream and fight myself awake and couldn't. In reality, I WAS screaming--very loudly--and sometimes physically fighting, too, although I didn't know it at the time. Great Scott would try irritably to wake me up, usually to no avail and often with some element of risk. ("It was the punching me in the head...like a speedbag...that sort of...got to me," he says as he reads this now. Hmmm...come to think of it, maybe this has something to do with why he moves to the couch.)
I don't think this round is quite as bad. For one thing, I'm told I'm not nearly as loud, and I'm not attacking anyone, either. Still, it's one more thing that tells me something needs to give somewhere, one more small red flag flapping frantically in a rising wind.
Tears
This week I have cried three times.
I am not a crier, in general. Crying is not reasonable. It accomplished nothing and more often than not muddies conflicts and intensifies difficult emotions, is merely complicating rather than productive to any given situation. This is my stance on the matter. Nevertheless, Monday when I walked in the door from taking the girls to school, I sat down on the couch, dropped my head in my hands and sobbed; Tuesday night, reading Mary Oliver's newest book, Thirst, in a bathtub full of warm, rosewood-scented water somewhere near midnight, I had to close my eyes and lay the book aside, choking on tears; and this morning driving home from the school drop-off, I found my knuckles clenching white on the steering wheel, the road blurring before me, my body tight with tears yet again.
Maybe it's just the season. Autumn has, as I've written before, always been a difficult time for me. Coming after the year it does, this time, it has quite a bit of deeply stored pain to tap into. Much has gone on this year regarding my extended family and church, and I've carried a heaviness that surfaces everytime we watch the movie Serenity (as we do often here at PossumBox Lane) and the character River Tam cries out, "...it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it. It isn't mine!"
"I need a month off from church," I told Great Scott, "as soon as the girls are back in school." How to explain the crush of sorrow when one sets foot in the sanctuary? How to explain the cessation of breath?
I am not a crier, in general. Crying is not reasonable. It accomplished nothing and more often than not muddies conflicts and intensifies difficult emotions, is merely complicating rather than productive to any given situation. This is my stance on the matter. Nevertheless, Monday when I walked in the door from taking the girls to school, I sat down on the couch, dropped my head in my hands and sobbed; Tuesday night, reading Mary Oliver's newest book, Thirst, in a bathtub full of warm, rosewood-scented water somewhere near midnight, I had to close my eyes and lay the book aside, choking on tears; and this morning driving home from the school drop-off, I found my knuckles clenching white on the steering wheel, the road blurring before me, my body tight with tears yet again.
Maybe it's just the season. Autumn has, as I've written before, always been a difficult time for me. Coming after the year it does, this time, it has quite a bit of deeply stored pain to tap into. Much has gone on this year regarding my extended family and church, and I've carried a heaviness that surfaces everytime we watch the movie Serenity (as we do often here at PossumBox Lane) and the character River Tam cries out, "...it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it. It isn't mine!"
"I need a month off from church," I told Great Scott, "as soon as the girls are back in school." How to explain the crush of sorrow when one sets foot in the sanctuary? How to explain the cessation of breath?
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Cold
Monday night after Great Scott's tests, I stayed up until 3:something in the morning, unwilling to sleep, wanting to stop time in the stillness of the night. I was cold. Very cold. Putting on another sweater didn't help. Putting on houseshoes didn't help. Sitting directly in front of the heat stove helped a little, but not much. When I did go to bed, I piled on the covers but couldn't sleep for my violent shivering. This continued all day yesterday and into today.
On the rare occasions that I speak (or write) of the most painful and frightening things that have happened in my life, I don't get emotional and am not tempted to. I don't cry; I don't feel like crying. I don't get angry. I don't feel afraid. My body, however, becomes very cold, and I tremble. I tremble hard. So given our current concern about Scott, I assumed that my feeling chilled was probably a physical manifestation of emotional stress.
This morning I took a walk. Last night had brought a hard frost, and even past 10:00 a.m. each grass blade and fallen leaf was outlined (when not completely covered) in its thick silvered-white. Halfway back to the house I knelt in the middle of the gravel road and cried, my hands in my lap, the stones pressing against my knees. When I thought I had my breath back, I lay down on the ground, my face buried in my arms. And this was good. There is a comfort in hard earth, in the chill of stone, in their solidness, their support along the body, their stillness. I lay there a long time, letting these soak into me, and if I went home feeling even colder than before, I also went home understanding that while I had been afraid of the cold after all, I don't have to be .
(Note: I discovered this afternoon that I am, indeed, running a fever, and I've been queasy all day, as has our older daughter. The stomach flu, I am told, is going around again. Ah, timing!)
On the rare occasions that I speak (or write) of the most painful and frightening things that have happened in my life, I don't get emotional and am not tempted to. I don't cry; I don't feel like crying. I don't get angry. I don't feel afraid. My body, however, becomes very cold, and I tremble. I tremble hard. So given our current concern about Scott, I assumed that my feeling chilled was probably a physical manifestation of emotional stress.
This morning I took a walk. Last night had brought a hard frost, and even past 10:00 a.m. each grass blade and fallen leaf was outlined (when not completely covered) in its thick silvered-white. Halfway back to the house I knelt in the middle of the gravel road and cried, my hands in my lap, the stones pressing against my knees. When I thought I had my breath back, I lay down on the ground, my face buried in my arms. And this was good. There is a comfort in hard earth, in the chill of stone, in their solidness, their support along the body, their stillness. I lay there a long time, letting these soak into me, and if I went home feeling even colder than before, I also went home understanding that while I had been afraid of the cold after all, I don't have to be .
(Note: I discovered this afternoon that I am, indeed, running a fever, and I've been queasy all day, as has our older daughter. The stomach flu, I am told, is going around again. Ah, timing!)
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Playing Whack-a-Mole
This morning, the first day of the girls' Thanksgiving break, I was awakened by the pitiful, heart-sinking sound of our younger daughter retching. With the exception of yesterday--glorious, glorious yesterday!--someone in our family has been sick since the 24th of October: the girls missed a week and a half of school each; Great Scott has battled colds and stomach stuff (ah, the joys of being a public school teacher!) all month; and after a literally painful two-week head cold, I only yesterday considered myself "safe" enough to not infect my grandmother and to resume taking her on her doctor's appointments and stopping by to check in on her several times a week. One day--yesterday--when everyone was well and life was "normal." And now, the day before Thanksgiving...upchucking bright and early in the morning.
Sometimes life feels like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole. One thing comes up; you tackle it. Another pops up; you wrestle it to the ground. Another raises its head; you bean it. Some days I'm not sure if I'm the one holding the hammer or the crazed little mole running around trying to find a safe place to poke my head up for a breath of air.
Back in September during an email conversation about being grounded and taking action from that place of interior authority and sureness, I mentioned to a friend that I have most strongly felt that sense of sureness/authority when I am doing a poetry reading and/or writing mentoring. He responded, "If I were you, I'd LIVE my life as a poet and mentor as well as a mommy...warts and all being essential parts of the package that makes you a poet and mentor." That's haunted me for two months as I've tried to put my finger on exactly how that applies to where I'm at right now, caught as I am between the professional training by which I'd intended to define my life and the motherhood I purposefully didn't prepare myself for back when I swore I would never have children. It would have made more sense to me if he'd said, "I'd live my life as a MOMMY as well as a poet and mentor...warts and all being essential parts of the package that makes you a mommy." Not that I'm criticizing him; he didn't have any way of knowing on which end of the role issue I felt more grounded, and to be fair, this may have actually been exactly what he meant. Communication is an art of inaacuracies.
So I'm asking myself lately what elements that manifest most easily for me as a poet can be transplanted to hopefully take root in the realm of building a home and family? The image comes to mind of a blindfolded Luke Skywalker swinging a lightsaber at a darting ball, learning to simultaneously relax and focus:
I've a suspicion playing Whack-a-Mole with lightsabers might just add a whole new level of satisfaction and possibilities to the game.
Sometimes life feels like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole. One thing comes up; you tackle it. Another pops up; you wrestle it to the ground. Another raises its head; you bean it. Some days I'm not sure if I'm the one holding the hammer or the crazed little mole running around trying to find a safe place to poke my head up for a breath of air.
Back in September during an email conversation about being grounded and taking action from that place of interior authority and sureness, I mentioned to a friend that I have most strongly felt that sense of sureness/authority when I am doing a poetry reading and/or writing mentoring. He responded, "If I were you, I'd LIVE my life as a poet and mentor as well as a mommy...warts and all being essential parts of the package that makes you a poet and mentor." That's haunted me for two months as I've tried to put my finger on exactly how that applies to where I'm at right now, caught as I am between the professional training by which I'd intended to define my life and the motherhood I purposefully didn't prepare myself for back when I swore I would never have children. It would have made more sense to me if he'd said, "I'd live my life as a MOMMY as well as a poet and mentor...warts and all being essential parts of the package that makes you a mommy." Not that I'm criticizing him; he didn't have any way of knowing on which end of the role issue I felt more grounded, and to be fair, this may have actually been exactly what he meant. Communication is an art of inaacuracies.
So I'm asking myself lately what elements that manifest most easily for me as a poet can be transplanted to hopefully take root in the realm of building a home and family? The image comes to mind of a blindfolded Luke Skywalker swinging a lightsaber at a darting ball, learning to simultaneously relax and focus:
1. Focusing on the matter at hand and letting all the other stuff go, including the ultimate outcome.
2. Trusting that doing my best will be adequate and that if it isn't, the sun will go on shining anyway.
3. Swinging with calm intent and purpose rather than flailing about wildly.
4. Choosing my mole.
I've a suspicion playing Whack-a-Mole with lightsabers might just add a whole new level of satisfaction and possibilities to the game.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Because it's Good for You
I hated those words as a child. They applied to everything from canned spinach to an early bedtime to that nasty pink antibiotic nuclear sludge the doctor prescribed everytime my mother dragged me into his office. I still don't like them--the words OR those other things, thankyouverymuch.
An odd thing about depression. At least the one I've been slipping into further and further all weekend. It saps your volitional strength, your willed ability to choose to do the very things that would help pull you out of depression's sucking muck and back toward some sort of solid shore. The things that are good for you are the very things for which you have the least desire. One of the disadvantages of being an adult, however, is that you can no longer deny that you know what is good for you, and since you know, you have a sort of obligation to put up or shut up, regardless of whether or not you feel like it.
I find this irritating.
So, with all the enthusiasm of a three-year-old downing a teaspoon of amoxicillin, I'm going to do what's good for me and take an active stance in the WAW (War Against Whining) that Randy is waging over at Everyday Thoughts Collected, by listing ten things for which I'm grateful.
1. I'm grateful my life is not an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (We watched The Phantom of the Opera--movie version--this weekend, and I was rather disturbed to find that the Phantom reminded me of a particular internet acquaintance, although I couldn't explain quite why.)
2. I'm grateful for the open patch of sky over our house tonight. The stars are cold and distant and set in much darkness, but they're also comforting and clear.
3. I'm grateful for the nap stolen on my mother-in-law's couch this afternoon.
4. I'm grateful that I'm going to be an aunt all over again next July.
5. I'm grateful for good poetry.
6. I'm grateful for ink and paper and beautiful blank journals.
7. I'm grateful that I'm not essential. That would be too much weight to bear.
8. I'm grateful for beads and wire, fastenings and tools, garnets, citrine, jade, tourmaline, freshwater pearls, peridot, onyx, picture jasper, red tigereye and silver. For solid materials to hold in my hands when my mind won't hold words or concepts with which to work.
9. I'm grateful for utterly ridiculously trivial nonsensicallities like Lady Macbeth (see the very bottom of Quotidian Light's main page) with which I can amuse myself for hours, if a bit maniacally some of the time, I'll admit.
10. I'm grateful for light, even when the sky is leaden and the sun, it seems, has turned to brass. And I'm grateful for darkness, also, as much as I hate it often enough. And for the interplay of the two.
An odd thing about depression. At least the one I've been slipping into further and further all weekend. It saps your volitional strength, your willed ability to choose to do the very things that would help pull you out of depression's sucking muck and back toward some sort of solid shore. The things that are good for you are the very things for which you have the least desire. One of the disadvantages of being an adult, however, is that you can no longer deny that you know what is good for you, and since you know, you have a sort of obligation to put up or shut up, regardless of whether or not you feel like it.
I find this irritating.
So, with all the enthusiasm of a three-year-old downing a teaspoon of amoxicillin, I'm going to do what's good for me and take an active stance in the WAW (War Against Whining) that Randy is waging over at Everyday Thoughts Collected, by listing ten things for which I'm grateful.
1. I'm grateful my life is not an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (We watched The Phantom of the Opera--movie version--this weekend, and I was rather disturbed to find that the Phantom reminded me of a particular internet acquaintance, although I couldn't explain quite why.)
2. I'm grateful for the open patch of sky over our house tonight. The stars are cold and distant and set in much darkness, but they're also comforting and clear.
3. I'm grateful for the nap stolen on my mother-in-law's couch this afternoon.
4. I'm grateful that I'm going to be an aunt all over again next July.
5. I'm grateful for good poetry.
6. I'm grateful for ink and paper and beautiful blank journals.
7. I'm grateful that I'm not essential. That would be too much weight to bear.
8. I'm grateful for beads and wire, fastenings and tools, garnets, citrine, jade, tourmaline, freshwater pearls, peridot, onyx, picture jasper, red tigereye and silver. For solid materials to hold in my hands when my mind won't hold words or concepts with which to work.
9. I'm grateful for utterly ridiculously trivial nonsensicallities like Lady Macbeth (see the very bottom of Quotidian Light's main page) with which I can amuse myself for hours, if a bit maniacally some of the time, I'll admit.
10. I'm grateful for light, even when the sky is leaden and the sun, it seems, has turned to brass. And I'm grateful for darkness, also, as much as I hate it often enough. And for the interplay of the two.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Thoughts on Seasonal Moods
In the comments section of my last post, Ben said, "Autumn used to be a time to get ready to hunker down and winter a time to hunker down. Maybe you have it right and everyone else is screwed up." Thanks, Ben.
Just for the record, I DO think I'm right, and I DO think everyone else is screwed up. Nice, conservative, evangelically-raised girls just aren't supposed to say that. Perhaps, though, it's time to chuck the pancake makeup of false humility along with the small-floral-print dresses and the big hair, eh?
It does make sense, does it not, that perhaps human beings were never meant to run full-throttle year-round? That perhaps we do ourselves damage by refusing to slow down in our intellectual and emotional lives as well as our physical? This is why I was thrilled to read the following in *McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly newsletter:
In the past three years I had begun to identify this pattern in myself, but only in the last few months had I begun to be able to put it into words. When I and others like me fight our annual slide into the all-too familiar fog of disconnectedness and loss (of energy, high spirits, enthusiasm and general interest in just about anything) that the inescapable change of seasons brings, the result is initially an increase in euphoria, drivenness, anger and instability and a PUSH toward frenetic activity, achievement, self-hatred and crushing guilt, all rolled into one. But when we acknowledge its approach, when we consent to accept it, to observe and stand witness to the yearly diminishing of our very human energies and abilities to achieve, we can find the fog that once threatened to overwhem us is filled with the possibilites of its own beauty: light caught and refracted, multiplied within each infintesimal water droplet hanging in the air, caught in our eyelashes, clinging to our hair, beading on the backs of our chilled hands, our weary and patient shoulders.
It is most often difficult for me to speak or write about the things that mean the most to me, the ones that are rooted the deepest and are most instinctually sensed. I've an inner reluctance to do so that isn't easily overcome. So thanks for the goad, Ben. It's led to a reminder I needed.
[*McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly is the email newsletter of McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web, one of the best sites available for information on bipolar disorder.]
Just for the record, I DO think I'm right, and I DO think everyone else is screwed up. Nice, conservative, evangelically-raised girls just aren't supposed to say that. Perhaps, though, it's time to chuck the pancake makeup of false humility along with the small-floral-print dresses and the big hair, eh?
It does make sense, does it not, that perhaps human beings were never meant to run full-throttle year-round? That perhaps we do ourselves damage by refusing to slow down in our intellectual and emotional lives as well as our physical? This is why I was thrilled to read the following in *McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly newsletter:
Metabolic Depression
Bear with me on this:
A speculative article in Medical Hypothesis by John Tsiouris MD of the New York State Institute for Basic Research proposes "metabolic depression" as the underlying biology for the vegetative symptoms found in major depression. Dr Tsiouris makes his case with reference to hibernating bears. Both hibernation and metabolic depression, according to Dr Tsiouris, confer survival advantages such as conservation of energy during times of life-threatening environmental stressors.
Prior to hibernation, says Dr Tsiouris, bears display features common to humans with atypical depression, including overeating, oversleeping, and decreased mobility. This changes when bears hibernate. Now they display features closer to humans with melancholic depression such as withdrawal from the environment, lack of energy, loss of weight from not eating, and changes in sleep pattern (studies on hibernating animals actually show sleep deprivation).
Hibernating bears experience mild hypothyroidism, increased cortisol, acute phase protein response, low respiration, oxidative stress, decreased neurotransmitter levels, and changes in cAMP-binding activity. These factors may also be present in individuals with melancholic depression. According to Dr Tsiouris, the way we think and behave may be responses to the biology underlying these vegetative states.
Atypical depression, speculates Dr Tsiouris, may be a precursor to melancholic depression or it may be a separate phenomenon triggered by extremes in temperature or sunlight. It may also be related to anxiety. Because atypical depression and anxiety are identified with bipolar disorder, Dr Tsiouris theorizes that bipolar "may be due to a vigorous attempt by the individual to prevent entrance into major depression with melancholic features," either by remaining atypically depressed or by "escaping" into hypomania or mania.
In the past three years I had begun to identify this pattern in myself, but only in the last few months had I begun to be able to put it into words. When I and others like me fight our annual slide into the all-too familiar fog of disconnectedness and loss (of energy, high spirits, enthusiasm and general interest in just about anything) that the inescapable change of seasons brings, the result is initially an increase in euphoria, drivenness, anger and instability and a PUSH toward frenetic activity, achievement, self-hatred and crushing guilt, all rolled into one. But when we acknowledge its approach, when we consent to accept it, to observe and stand witness to the yearly diminishing of our very human energies and abilities to achieve, we can find the fog that once threatened to overwhem us is filled with the possibilites of its own beauty: light caught and refracted, multiplied within each infintesimal water droplet hanging in the air, caught in our eyelashes, clinging to our hair, beading on the backs of our chilled hands, our weary and patient shoulders.
It is most often difficult for me to speak or write about the things that mean the most to me, the ones that are rooted the deepest and are most instinctually sensed. I've an inner reluctance to do so that isn't easily overcome. So thanks for the goad, Ben. It's led to a reminder I needed.
[*McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly is the email newsletter of McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web, one of the best sites available for information on bipolar disorder.]
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Blustery Day Rambling
Autumn is solidly set into the calendar of our daily lives, it seems, here at PossumBox Lane. The wind is shoving against the house, rampaging through the leafless, sketchy branches of the trees outside, and the cat has once again claimed the top of the old heat stove as his favorite perch, albeit somewhat gingerly, as he is never sure when it will be hot enough to burn his paws and when it won't. This morning the girls and I dug out their winter coats and found gloves that will serve, at least for a little while.
Autumn and winter have always been bittersweet times of the year for me. Early autumn has usually been particularly troublesome, as I'm plagued by intensity of emotion from both ends of the scale, usually simultaneously. Heading into the holiday season, though, the inner drive toward anger or frenetic joy tends to die down. In the past, I've hated this time, dreaded it horribly. After feeling so much, feeling so alive, this grey existence quickly extended into depression and despair out of sheer guilt for feeling less than I thought I should be feeling. This year, I think--I hope--will be otherwise.
I am doing my best to lay aside self-expectations this winter, to let myself off the achievement hook. If I don't write a single couplet, fine. If I don't get all the holiday decorations out, fine. If I neglect my blog shamelessly--well, that'll just have to be fine, too. One thing, though, I do fully intend to pursue. What I want, more than anything, is to be able to find something beautiful in the fog of "depressed" or diminished mood, something to show that there is meaning there, and worth, something that applies to the life I live everyday as the person I am in the circumstances in which I find myself. Instinctively, I know with that "knowing beyond knowing" that meaning and value do exist in this foggy grey winter existence. I will find it. And I will live there, rest in it, be content.
Autumn and winter have always been bittersweet times of the year for me. Early autumn has usually been particularly troublesome, as I'm plagued by intensity of emotion from both ends of the scale, usually simultaneously. Heading into the holiday season, though, the inner drive toward anger or frenetic joy tends to die down. In the past, I've hated this time, dreaded it horribly. After feeling so much, feeling so alive, this grey existence quickly extended into depression and despair out of sheer guilt for feeling less than I thought I should be feeling. This year, I think--I hope--will be otherwise.
I am doing my best to lay aside self-expectations this winter, to let myself off the achievement hook. If I don't write a single couplet, fine. If I don't get all the holiday decorations out, fine. If I neglect my blog shamelessly--well, that'll just have to be fine, too. One thing, though, I do fully intend to pursue. What I want, more than anything, is to be able to find something beautiful in the fog of "depressed" or diminished mood, something to show that there is meaning there, and worth, something that applies to the life I live everyday as the person I am in the circumstances in which I find myself. Instinctively, I know with that "knowing beyond knowing" that meaning and value do exist in this foggy grey winter existence. I will find it. And I will live there, rest in it, be content.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Bruising
Some days the various interactions you have with other people leave you feeling bruised. Not neglected or offended or upset or angry or hurt or abused or taken advantage of or foolish or guilty or misunderstood, necessarily. Just weary, worn thin like a faithful and threadbare old blanket. Bruised. It's times like this that I want to cry and could cry, but am not convinced of the need or reason to cry. There isn't anything wrong, after all. Then I think about our younger daughter. There doesn't have to be a rational reason for her to cry; she just cries when she needs to, often out of simple weariness. And it helps.
Since when did childhood wisdom succumb to logic?
Since when did childhood wisdom succumb to logic?
Friday, October 21, 2005
Friday Quote: Jamison On Limitations
"We all move uneasily within our restraints."
---Kay Redfield Jamison
An Unquiet Mind
---Kay Redfield Jamison
An Unquiet Mind
Friday, October 07, 2005
Friday Quote: On Spilling Over
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out." ---Ray Bradbury
Usually I let the Friday quote stand alone, but today some thoughts on Bradbury's words are chasing themselves around in my head. I have not been writing much of late. Here on the blog, yes, but not poetry, and not on topics of particularly deep concern. Call it a period of gestation; call it laziness; call it writer's block; call it what you will. I know its truest nature is my own unwillingness to see with "poet-vision".
Beth at Inscapes asked me on her latest meme, "When do you *see* the things you *show* us in your poems? Do your eyes ever just pass over the world as mine do, or do you always see things the way I always narrate events?"
I recognize the things that spill into my work only when I've come to a point of surrender, usually through physical exaustion or emotional despair. The cup, though, is always filling, always filling, always filling somewhere underneath the surface, deep beneath my desperate attempts to block its subterranean source with trivialities: compulsive reading, eating, internet perusing, cleaning closets, mopping floors--anything to block its flow. I can tell you why so many writers have been alcoholics and suicides: it hurts to "*see*". The vision is unquestionable, definitive, certain and strong, both in intensity of light and in depth of darkness, and for the poet, often it isn't just a matter of seeing (as in witnessing) these things, but a even more a matter of becoming at once both the light and darkness within the poem, especially during the writing process. There is beautiful stuff within the cup, yes, but it is so exquisitely lovely because its beginning was unlovliness. A poet is an alchemist who transforms not lead, but dung, usually his or her own, with no guarantee of gold as the end result of the process.
So, to answer your question, Beth, yes, the deepest part of me does continually interpret the world around me through transformative vision, but it's too painful to live a daily life from this place, so I "block" its insight purposefully (and too often compulsively) in order to be able to function like I think a "normal" person should. Not doing this would be the emotional and spiritual equivalent of walking around having had one's skin flayed from the flesh.
The blocking itself is problematic in other ways, of course. A guard can only be on watch so long before weariness decreases his or her effectiveness. That's what happened last night. I'd been blocking to the point of sleeplessness, and Teri's post yesterday on Bo of the Bales contained an unintentional challenge, one that an intrinsically contrary person such as myself could hardly pass up: to turn an unwelcome and somewhat bizzare phone call about menstruation and irritable bowel syndrome into something of literary value. My full intent in posting my reply (draft-y though it was) in the comments was to be satirical and above all, clever. Instead the cup tipped, and I got broadsided with not entirely comfortable observations on the human condition. Good insights, but not particularly warm fuzzy ones. Granted, this poem wasn't especially painful to write, but years of guarding the cup have made it harder to tip and made me more cautious about allowing it to do so, since I've no idea from poem to poem whether the "beautiful stuff" inside will be in its raw or refined form.
Usually I let the Friday quote stand alone, but today some thoughts on Bradbury's words are chasing themselves around in my head. I have not been writing much of late. Here on the blog, yes, but not poetry, and not on topics of particularly deep concern. Call it a period of gestation; call it laziness; call it writer's block; call it what you will. I know its truest nature is my own unwillingness to see with "poet-vision".
Beth at Inscapes asked me on her latest meme, "When do you *see* the things you *show* us in your poems? Do your eyes ever just pass over the world as mine do, or do you always see things the way I always narrate events?"
I recognize the things that spill into my work only when I've come to a point of surrender, usually through physical exaustion or emotional despair. The cup, though, is always filling, always filling, always filling somewhere underneath the surface, deep beneath my desperate attempts to block its subterranean source with trivialities: compulsive reading, eating, internet perusing, cleaning closets, mopping floors--anything to block its flow. I can tell you why so many writers have been alcoholics and suicides: it hurts to "*see*". The vision is unquestionable, definitive, certain and strong, both in intensity of light and in depth of darkness, and for the poet, often it isn't just a matter of seeing (as in witnessing) these things, but a even more a matter of becoming at once both the light and darkness within the poem, especially during the writing process. There is beautiful stuff within the cup, yes, but it is so exquisitely lovely because its beginning was unlovliness. A poet is an alchemist who transforms not lead, but dung, usually his or her own, with no guarantee of gold as the end result of the process.
So, to answer your question, Beth, yes, the deepest part of me does continually interpret the world around me through transformative vision, but it's too painful to live a daily life from this place, so I "block" its insight purposefully (and too often compulsively) in order to be able to function like I think a "normal" person should. Not doing this would be the emotional and spiritual equivalent of walking around having had one's skin flayed from the flesh.
The blocking itself is problematic in other ways, of course. A guard can only be on watch so long before weariness decreases his or her effectiveness. That's what happened last night. I'd been blocking to the point of sleeplessness, and Teri's post yesterday on Bo of the Bales contained an unintentional challenge, one that an intrinsically contrary person such as myself could hardly pass up: to turn an unwelcome and somewhat bizzare phone call about menstruation and irritable bowel syndrome into something of literary value. My full intent in posting my reply (draft-y though it was) in the comments was to be satirical and above all, clever. Instead the cup tipped, and I got broadsided with not entirely comfortable observations on the human condition. Good insights, but not particularly warm fuzzy ones. Granted, this poem wasn't especially painful to write, but years of guarding the cup have made it harder to tip and made me more cautious about allowing it to do so, since I've no idea from poem to poem whether the "beautiful stuff" inside will be in its raw or refined form.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Friday Quote: Bhagavad Gita
"No one should abandon duties
because he sees defects in them.
Every action, every activity, is surrounded
by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke."
(I8.47)
because he sees defects in them.
Every action, every activity, is surrounded
by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke."
(I8.47)
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