Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Why am I reading Neruda at a time like this? Masochism.

Instead I turn to a book of poetry Charli showed me, An Almost Pure Empty Walking by Tryfon Tolides. Never heard of him before. But man.

Two poems right now:

"Praying or Love Poem"

I go to the bookstore, where I don't
want to go, especially, or to be, after I get there,

as if being is burdensome, as if I might find a place
to set it down, instead of carrying it,

so I can rest. Perhaps I mean the body's
weight and entire containment,

the soul straining and fatigued.

The bookstore, in afternoon light, with comforting
jazz, a cafe, people absorbed

in reading and in conversation, is not the place
I want to find. Nor will the next place be

where I go dragging that weight as if I had chosen it
as a solemn and mysterious duty.

and the next, shorter but no less sweet:

Something inside myself keeps me
enslaved, yet saves exactly who I am
I don't want to give you an example--
it's too private, I think, painful--
Let's talk about the weather, how
humid it is these days, or
the war--why we are always at war,
or let's not talk. Is there a quietness
that can make us whole?

From Lowell's "Epilogue"

"But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?"

I take a lot of heat for writing about my mental illness here, but it's what I do. This bit of Lowell's (famously bipolar, himself) sums up how I often feel about anything I write...I'm laying down the moments that grip me in some way: "lurid, rapid, garish..." Why don't I write more about the happy moments in my life? To be once again brutally honest, for me at this moment happiness = peace and quiet. And when things are peaceful and quiet I am generally sitting very still enjoying it and hoping nothing will change. When things head back to hell in a handbasket then I thrash about and take action. And blog. My joys these days are small and private, while my catastrophes are loud and impossible to hide.

I need to stop typing, my hand is killing me. I tore a ligament and OW.

A friend bought me An Unquiet Mind a book by/about a bipolar psychiatrist. So far it is pretty gripping.

I am discovering the joys of pop music

And rocking out to Brandi Carlile's excelent album "The Story." Almost every song on there goes right to my heart.

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true...I was made for you

I climbed across the mountain tops
Swam all across the ocean blue
I crossed all the lines and I broke all the rules
And baby I broke them all for you
Oh because even when I was flat broke
You made me feel like a million bucks
You do and I was made for you

You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know what I've been through like you do
And I was made for you...

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
Oh but these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true...I was made for you
Oh yeah and its true, that I was made for you

My Duhpreshion

Another poem.

This is my song:
part gospel, part drink.

Fear of God.
Fear of self, of distance, change.
Fear of stillness.
Fear of being still.

Being still the same
after all.

After all this.
After all I am only one.
After all I am all alone.
After all I am still afraid.

Drink the cup that's set before.
Before question, before doubt.

Drink.

A poem by Charli Henley

lamplight and moth night
for amanda


solid glass ice cubes
rose dyed black
drought rain
you
knit
at the bar
and drink
books and books and books
things you know
a beacon, a lighthouse, a match –
lamplight, moth night


strange princess
tower of madness
shipwrecked, fighting for islands
weeping with life, treading water


(don't go, don't go)


angel voice a talent for sadness
triumph – if even only over death
circle girl by yourself
red shoes
real live make believe


(i love you and
that tower of madness on moth bitten night)


peach-colored maiden, maiden
here is your heart, bruised and still
dripping


(gauze)

Woah

I was poking around some dusty corners of the internet and found an old picture of me: 16! And skinnier...pointier. But otherwise exactly the same. Huh.

This is me before my life turned insane:



Life is strange. That seems like many many more years ago than 8. Though 8 years is a lot when I think about it.

I haven't written much in a while

It's been a difficult few weeks. I am having a minor relapse into depression and they won't let me take anti-depressants anymore now that I have a bipolar diagnosis. So they've added another mood-stabilizing drug, but it'll take about a month to kick in, so I have to tread water till then.

I'm reading a lovely book called The Small Rain by Madeline L'Engle, which I somehow can't believe I haven't read before, it feels so warm and familiar, unfolding into my mind as if it had always belonged there. It is hugely unlike her famous children's books, and somehow a strange synthesis of the classic girl's literature ( The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women) and more contemporary mature fiction. It was written quite a long time ago, set, I think, somewhere in the twenties. (isn't it strange to think I'll maybe be alive for another "twenties"? Do you think it will be "roaring"?)

What else? I read a wonderful book in two sittings called "The Speed of Dark" and I don't know how to talk about it except to say it's been years since I've been so drawn into a character's deepest bits that it felt like he and I were both real and I'd known him all my life. Amazing. Seriously, amazing.

I have been doing so much reading lately it's a wonder I have room for my own thoughts.

Which reminds me that I have a homework assignment due Monday (last week I celebrated my first instance of math homework accomplished without tears) and am supposed to have a calculator to do it and haven't bought one yet. I suppose that will be my Sunday afternoon project. I can also go to the course website and check how I did on my last assignment but I'm kind of scared to do that.

Ok, now I will go finish my book.

O Sisters Let's Go Down

My dear friend's sister tried to kill herself this week and really truly almost did. Being with my friend through this has been sobering. I love my friend C. so much and am so sorry she has to deal with this. C. struggles with the same illness as me and works so hard on maintaining her sanity and growing her happiness and she's an inspiration to me in a thousand ways. That she must also bear the burden of her sister's illness seems cruel. Please pray for them.

My own sister "rescued" me this week when I called her in the middle of the night, crying, having a panic attack, afraid my mind was going to run away with me again. She woke up and talked to me and loved me and helped me breathe my soul back into my body across the hundreds of miles.

As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way!

O sisters let's go down,
Let's go down, come on down,
O sisters let's go down,
Down in the river to pray.

As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the robe and crown
Good Lord, show me the way!


A prayer of thanks for all six of my sisters, Jenny, Gabriela, Anna, Bethany, Emma and Elsa. I am deeply and richly blessed in them.

(of course, I am as deeply blessed in my five beloved brothers, Jonathan, Miguel, Noah, Teddy, and Nathaniel. But this is a post about sisters.)

Yeesh, still not asleep

Listening to Belle and Sebastian and feeling terribly lonely. Ugh. I hate being lonely. My bird is crap, she is no company at all. She bites me every time I try to make friends and poops on me and runs away whenever I take her out of the cage and gets so grumpy at my late hours that I have to put her in the bathroom to sleep because I can't help staying awake and prowling. I am writing pretend letters to people full of confessions and pleas and explanations and then ripping them up.


Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so naive.

They always reach a sorry ending
They always get it in the end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the poor boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried

I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Falling against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye"
Said the hero in the story
"It is mightier than swords
I could kill you sure
But I could only make you cry with these words"

Oh misery. Up and down up and down. I am Lithium Toxic these past few days which has made my head a muddle, given me pimples, made me generally grey and dizzy with other unmentionable symptoms and the plunging corrective dose making me bipolar every three minutes. HAPPY! SAD! JOYOUS! HATE EVERYTHING! OPTIMISTIC! DOOMED! and now I get to have a blood test every week instead of every three. Poop. I'm getting so much scar tissue in my elbows it's going to freeze me up like the Tin Man any second now.

grumblegrumblegrumble have to go swallow my half a lithium tablet and will wake up my dashed bird getting the water and she'll yell at me.

PS as proof of my uppy-downyness there's another new post below this and it's killer cheerful, so feel free to scoot down and read that instead.

Me oh my oh

Well, it's good to be back in school. I have a double-header Mondays, math and then a great class called "The Madness of Crowds" which is a little psychology, a little neurobiology, a little sociology, a little anthropology, a little philosophy, and a lot of fun. There are students I recognize from last year, and one who is in both my classes with me. That and having the classes back-to-back makes it feel more like "real school" even though it's only one day a week. I am already snivelling over my math homework, but it seems like there's a lot of help available and I am going to push through. But what in the name of the gods does Sigma stand for! Ah, mysteries of the universe. My laptop rallied tonight, though there's no telling how long that will last. It will probably shut itself off in the middle of this post.

Yar, Monday is also my thickest day of cleaning in the meetinghouse, except Saturdays when I'm on. I am BEAT and I don't even have a job. Heh. Deadbeat. I am "working on my resume" which includes thinking about finding it buried somewhere in my gmail sometime soon and staring hopelessly at the giant layoff packet that came in the mail and browsing jobs on the company website. Gurgle.

Tomorrow I get to hang out with one of my best friends and go to craft shops and continue planning the gigantic Halloween bash we're throwing together. My costume's already almost done, just a little more sewing and spray painting of accessories. The whole thing is carnival/freakshow/circus themed and I'm ordering spooky old circus posters and making fiendish disgusting things to display in jars of green water, and were going to get lots of black balloons and make candy apples and popcorn. I haven't had this much fun in ages.

Also rereading lots of good kiddie books like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women.

PS. Good god, I still weep big crocodile tears every time Beth dies, every single time. I must have read it 25 times at this point and I still cry. Waaaah.

Beer and Peanuts

are especially tasty while reading medical anthropology. Don't ask me why.

School starts tomorrow....without my laptop I am feeling a tad nervous...the laptop revolutionized my note-taking and test-studying skills. Now it's back to the old tablet and chisel for me.

Recently discovered a friend is a hardcore-this-isn't-funny-detox-doesn't-work-he's-just-going-to-keep hurting-me-and-himself alcoholic. I finally had to tell him to call me when he was ready to try for something other than a tragedy. It was pretty horrible. He's such a lovely person in so many ways and it's heart-breaking to go from thinking "hmm, he drinks too much" to realizing that when he's in his way he doesn't care about anything but the drinking. I'm praying for him, but I wish I could do more. But I can't. You can't help someone who doesn't want help, and at least I know enough now to campaign for self-preservation, as foreign as that is to my personality. It's so, so sad.

It's beautifully fall now. I am wearing a sweater, a cap, and a scarf. Thank God for fall. I love layers.

Good, though full, meeting this morning. I gave ministry, which happens a lot, and that makes me uncomfortable, because it seems as if I need to spend more timre silent (though I spend a lot of silent time alone these days) but it seemed to be needed and it seemed to help people. I think there is a gift in my talent for self-exposure. God can use my #1 liability and mold it to be a tool, if I will let him. It is a strange and holy thing.

Okay, now I need a nap.

The Explanation

I won't explain since you can't understand,
nor would I expect you to climb inside
the jewelled crater of my skull and stand
among the ruins, scout among them, then hide

from me, your enemy, inside my own terrain,
crystallized from previous blows--not all yours.
Nor will I now expect you to refrain
from assessment as you stand outdoors,

canvassing my geode skull's smooth surface
and, seeing no clues as to the damage
or to the quirky beauty of old ravage,
urge me again and again to confess

that because I'm hard and hidden from you
you're forced to hysterics from nothing to do.

~Molly Peacock

I am killer depressed today. I know it is "The Date" -- six years later, but it's also six years since my first college class and six years since meeting my ex-husband, and my petty personal tragedies have as much weight in my selfish mind as the great tragedy that has sparked off a thousand thousand other tragedies. So I'm feeling aweful and feeling awful about feeling awful. And somehow the fact that it's Tuesday Sept. 11th again feels horrible too, as if we're on some miserable spiral. And I am lonely and still mourning my relationship(s). And then there's the time flying by...

Man oh man. It ought to stop raining soon.

I am back!

I had an odd email SNAFU but an awesome friend figured it out. That's why I was disappeared from both here and email. Google owns it all.

So, I'm now officially laid off but have found some casual pick-up work a few days a week with a florist. It's kind of nice, doing hard physical work after such a long period of practical uselessness.

I am craving cheese grits. Odd.

I am also getting serious about Canada. The only thing holding me back is a bunch of immigration concerns if I decide I want to move back here. I can get a permit that lets me leave for up to two years, but after that I forfeit my green card. Of course if I go to Canada and become a doctor and decide I want to come back to the States, I will get another green card in under a year as an EB2.

In any case I will be applying to Dalhousie and possibly King's. They are joined but still have separate applications. Kings is more of a liberal arts school while Dal is a big university attached to a medical school. And awesomeness:

"At Dal, we offer more than undergraduate and graduate programs in Arts and Social Science, Science, Management, Engineering, Computer Science, Health Professions, and Architecture & Planning. Here, you'll also discover Professional programs in Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Architecture, Pharmacy, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Social Work, and Dental Hygiene.

These Professional programs all require previous university study for admission. In all cases, we recommend that you start your university studies at Dalhousie. The level of preparation you'll receive as part of your Dalhousie education is held in high regard the world over. And consider that prior to being admitted to these Professional programs at Dal, more than half of these applicants have already completed their undergraduate work at Dalhousie."

Plus the medical school privileges students from the maritimes when it comes to admissions, and luckily, I was born in New Brunswick. Thanks mum and dad!

So applications for Fall 2008 open next month. We'll see what happens.

ETA: New info on the immigration stuff:
" For individuals who need or want to leave the United States for an extended period of up to two years, it is necessary to obtain a reentry permit. This permit often establishes permission to reenter the U.S. to resume un-relinquished residence. This works well for individuals who wish to work or study abroad, visit or care for family for long periods, take care of financial matters or property dispositions, or otherwise explore the world for more than a year.

You should not abandon your intention to reside in the U.S. If you do so, your Green Card could be taken away from you (forfeited at port of entry). A Green Card holder has to return at least once a year to maintain PR status. A person who spends most of her/his time abroad and returns only for brief annual visits runs the risk of losing the status."

Hmm.

Fantasy:

Move to Halifax. Attend the same university as Anne of Green Gables for under $6000 a year. Live in my own one bedroom house for $700 a month. Make $25,000 a year cataloging sea stars part time. Free health insurance. Get to spell all the extra U words the way I want to without taking crap for it. Visit Cape Breton and learn how to fiddle. Buy a golden retriever from my great uncle. Have all the sky stars I want 15 minutes out of the city. Finally learn French. Feel like I am somewhere I belong.

Sigh.

Huh

So I spent the evening trading pints and jokes with a guy I know from the local pub. We missed the T cutoff so I offered him my guest room. Hed followed me home in great humour but halfway through the tour he left to take a phone call and just disappeared.

WTF?

Strange how even this random thing, even when I

a.) had no designs on this person
and
b.) don't even know him that well

feels like a rejection. Sigh.

I did just have a few lovely days in Maine, stacking firewood till I was sore and cooking and drinking wine and lying in the driveway looking at hundreds of thousands of more stars than you can see in the city.

Okay

so I screwed around with my computer and the battery and voodoo until I got it to turn back on! Yay! Score 1 for Amanda! Finally!

And then I used my computer to try and register for school and was informed that my tuition benefits have been revoked, in direct opposition to what I was told at my "You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!" meeting. Score 1 for miserable mean universe.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. No, seriously, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

I may have to hand in my Quaker card for a day and go in search of someone to whom I can administer a serious beating.

I am alive

but my computer is dead. Sorry to post a really sad poem and go poof, but my dumb stupid second-hand mac decided to die and now I have no computer. Seeing as I have no job, computer access is even harder to come by. Seeing as I have no money, if the computer is repairable it will not be repairable for a while.

So, while I am EXTREMELY CRANKY about life at the moment (my cell phone is slowly dying, too, I don't even want to ask what's next, probably an amputation of some sort) I am EXTREMELY UNDEAD. Wait, that didn't come out right.

1964 Borges

I
It is not magic now, the world. Alone,
you will not share the clarity of moonlight
or the placid gardens. Now there will be no moon
that is not a reflection of the past,
mirror of solitude, a sign of sorrow.
Goodbye now to the touch of hands and bodies
that love brought close together. Now you have only
your loyal memories and the empty days.
We only lose (you vainly tell yourself)
what we do not have, what we have never had.
But, to learn the fine art of forgetting,
it is not enough to put on a brave face.
Some sign--a rose--can tear the heart from you
and a chord on a guitar can do you in.

II
I will not be happy now. It may not matter.
There are so many more things in the world.
Any random instant is as crowded
and varied as the sea. A life is brief,
and though the hours seem long, there is another
dark mystery that lies in wait for us
--death, that other sea, that other arrow
that frees us from the sun, the moon, and love.
The happiness you gave me once and later
took back from me will be obliterated.
That which was everything must turn to nothing.
I only keep the taste of my own sadness
and a vain urge that turns me to the Southside,
to a certain corner there, a certain door.

Oh man.

More later.