blogaday 8

too tired.
working on an anxiety lessening vision...
floating in a warm teal ocean...
free...not an itch, or a pain, or a thought
the slow lap lap the only sound
suddenly someone pops up out of the water beside me
it's...
President Obama
he grins and wants to discuss funds for Lupus research
but realizes that I'm floating and swims off, his long brown arms moving through the water in perfect rhythm
the sun smooths the skin of my forehead...fiveheard
I look up to sight the beach where my niece Halle is playing with Malia
they are practicing their catwalk walks
My heart grows.

blockaday 7

I offer a blanket apology to all of those I've inadvertently offended or caused to feel neglected during my latest depressive episode. Someone once said to me that depression is selfish, and though I believe that statement belies a lack of understanding of what depression is, I understand the sentiment.


It's an illness. During this bout I'm not suicidal, but I've lost all motivation to do anything. The fact that I'm getting treatment, going to acupuncture and sometimes making it to work is a force of will.  I'm taking meds to control this bout of lupus and that's all I've been doing. Thank god for netflix streaming video and ebooks.

And there is a recovery period which means I'm not going to be my cheerful self again for a while.

It is what it is.

Blogaday six Sunday

Sundown in this weird winter. I stood in the town center and basked in the sun with other slack jawed locals and a chocolate lab waiting for his owner to emerge from the cacophony of Starbucks. I opened the windows in my attic bedroom. I think our bodies are a bit confused, circadian rhythms out of sync. The weather tells me to go on my inaugural spring hike, my purple mountain sneakers waiting by the door. An ancient mama voice tells me to slow it down, put my hat on, wear my warm coat.

Later, I am mesmerized by Google Earth, the current world rolling slowly by on my phone. It makes the world seem so small, but don't be fooled by global news and the interweb--it's still as vast as our understanding is tiny.

Somewhere, another earthy woman with a hint of a moustache is looking at the same sunset, feeling the same hint of things growing, noting the same confusion of time out of time. I blow her a kiss through the night air out into shared space.

Blogaday - day 5 I think

I was fortunate enough today to come face to face with some home truths. They've come to me before in many ways, and will continue to come until they are inculcated in my bones. I'm sure it's the same for you.

1. Whatever you choose to call it--there is something bigger and greater out there and he/she sends us miracles and signs and helps us find ways where there seems to be no way.

2. Suffering is pain denied. It's not acknowledging pain enough so that it can be processed and let go. LET GO. We have to go through to get to it. The more we hide, deny, squash, tamp down, and mask it, the bigger it gets, the more it seeps out around the edges, corrosive, evil inducing, shame making, and life eroding.

3. If you don't know how to do something that you need to know how to do to make your life better, go find someone who is an expert and who can teach you, help you, listen to you, learn how to do it.  I often expect that I should know how to do things that I really have no rote knowledge of. Most of these things are about interpersonal stuff. And computers. And nutrition.  And laying tile. And how to get laid on my terms.

3.a. Be willing to pay a fair and decent price to these teachers, and therapists, and experts. You are worth it.

4. Express love. A nice young man I dated once had great difficulty talking about emotions. He didn't even like to say he liked a sport or a color. But he knew how to let me know he cared--digging my car out of the snow, or going out of his way to bring home Irish soda bread because he knew I loved it or leaving the planning of an evening up to me so that I'd be pleased about it. (Of course I was too young and dumb to appreciate this, sure that love had to look a certain way. I had the opportunity to let him know in later years how much I appreciated what he did for me).

I spoke to my baby bro when he was about to board a plane soon after the 9/11 attacks for a business trips. We were both nervous about him flying and I remember so clearly him saying to me "I love you." Not that I didn't know, and not that he didn't sometimes say it, but from that day to this we say it most every time we skype or email or talk. And, of course, it has such huge meaning--"I got your back," "I understand you," "we've shared experiences that no one else on earth can understand but the two of us."  And I don't think I understood before then in the full way I do now what it means to truly be a sister and a brother, how very meaningful that is.

5. Be willing. I was on the bus today. The bus was stuck in traffic. The man next to me was a noisy mouth breather and the girl behind us was delivering a speech into her phone about her love life in a monotonous nasal tone. Believe me--it was the perfect mixture of events to send me into a vitrolic internal monologue filled with bile, curse words, dirty looks, and harumphing.  I am in the harrumph hall of fame. But I took one of the lessons I learned earlier in the day and put it to work. Observe what you are feeling. Just observe. Reduce stress by not judging it. Just observe. My heart rate went down, my internal tirade abated and I was able to smile at a little baby, and admire her mother's red shoes. WILLING.

practice practice practice practice.

blogaday 3-pins

Hello needle
welcome to my third eye
join your compatriots
ankle, thumb, wrist
ear, hump, foot
the dull thrum-y ache and the finger twitch begin
hummmmmmmm
blockage ebbing
chi releasing
scalp a-tingle
zzzzzzzzzzhummmm
I dream
of rivers
of large, white rooms with huge windows
of spinning tales into yarns
of linking over an energy bridge
of
chocolate
orbs.

Blogaday tre--begging please

Cheating a bit because Eric Clapton's lyrics are so strong. Have you noticed that the simplest words and expressions can be the strongest, the most descriptive of a profound feeling?

I watched a film about Carlos the Jackal, the international terrorist who blew up so many things and people in the early '70s-80's in the name of several political causes. He's portrayed as a rather slogan shouting blowhard who is more interested in money and violence and prestige than in the causes he claims to espouse. There is a lot of convoluted jargon and one scene of fellatio for the cause, and it reminded me that most aggression comes from someone's elemental needs not being fulfilled.

We need purpose. We need music and art. We need love. We need sunshine. We need moonlight. We need tears. And words of one syllable. And chocolate.


Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?

I'll find my way
Through night and day
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven

Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please

Beyond the door
There's peace, I'm sure
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

[| From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/e/eric-clapton-lyrics/tears-in-heaven-lyrics.html |]

Blogaday - day 2

I was listening to NPR this morning and they interviewed a Chinese American journalist who described having a "Jackie Robinson" moment when watching Lakers rookie phenom Jeremy Lin play. The fact that Jeremy, a Taiwanese American, hasn't really been noticed until now is pretty amazing and the journalist thought that maybe it is because he's Asian. Even in the age of Yao Ming. How I understand this ethnic pride in the midst of living as the "other."

How do any of us, as Americans, reconcile the weirdness of a third world racism in a first world country? I can't really be anything but bemused by the stares and looks I got in China--it's like the staring I did when Shaq came to the Symphony. It's so outside of my experience to see someone that big (in a white tux, no less) that I found myself open mouthed. I hope he didn't notice, or that I was one of many who were agog.

And so we come to Samuel L. Jackson's recent comment that he voted for Obama because he was Black.  I understand this, too--the deliciousness of having someone with whom I can really identify as an educated Black person who truly cares about those less fortunate--and I'll never forget the election night I spent with some of you, where I could feel the understanding and triumph in the room because we as a country had surpassed an inculcated evil. And even though it's resulted in some back-sliding and a lot of turmoil, because all great change does, we still have and will always have that triumph.

So, play on, Jeremy Lin. Fly, my brother.

A Blog a Day - Day 1

So today I got the last 6 boxes of dad's stuff from his executor. Odds and ends like his graduation robes, and baby pictures of us, and many, many paperweights and certificates from the University; his yearbook from the year he graduated from med school, a dark brown face above a military uniform. A letter of recommendation from his mentor, co-author and friend, from the early '70's that says "Elson is Black. I am a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, capitalist pig. And yet this never affects our conversations." Eyeball slides. About 30 pictures of various fishing trips he went on where he was always wearing a silly hat. A photo of a party at his house showing ladies in the pool not getting their hair wet and dad wearing his gold medallion and grinning like a wolf.

Great book fodder. But, I'm still in deepest grief because I haven't yet accepted that he died in such ugliness. I hope I'm mature enough to accept that some people are just nuts, but that simple hope that he would get stuff, stop being so abusive, you know, a hazy deathbed scene where he'd apologize to my brother, and declare that he knew we loved him, that he could feel our love and regard--but life and death are messy things and some people are fuckin' nutz and perhaps there wasn't enough oxygen in his brain. For the past 30 or 40 years.

And it's odd, but I don't have the brick wall of his craziness to fight against anymore and it was such a habit, at least internally. It's a relief and quite scary.

And
I'd love to be able to call him up right now and ask him why his head is so pointy in his military photographs. What's up with that, dad?