Yule Be Miserable

I just bought an album by this name, and it has made my night. It's a collection of Christmas songs by blues artists, like Louis Armstrong's "Zat You, Santa Claus?" and Ella Fitzgerald's "Santa got Stuck (In My Chimney)." It is RIGHTEOUS. Here's the cover art:



As for myself, I am back on my feet but in the middle of the worst panicky moments of packing. Moving day is tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Mending

I still feel like posterior but I think I am getting better. I just could not make it into work yesterday and have pretty much been in bed for almost 48 hours. I made it to the local cafe and bought some containers of good organic soup and like 50 bottles of vitamin water. I realized (because of massive leg cramps) that I had pretty seriously dehydrated and while getting a plain glass of H2O down is too much work, I will drink the silly rainbow water when I will drink nothing else. Good to do that before I got to the pedialyte or IV fluids stage. So about 3 gallons of brightly coloured nutrient-tinged water later and I think I am in better shape. I tried going to meeting this morning but bailed pretty fast. The kids left for first day school and I left for lying-under-the-covers-and-reading-blogs school. That's one thing I'll miss about living here...I only have to go up or down some stairs if I change my mind about going to meeting. No trudging through the cold.

Oh man, will I ever be trudging through the cold in about a week. I went ahead and put a deposit on some Very Sensible Winter Boots so that they'd order them in my size. The boots are not sexy or sporty and are probably more suited to the middle-aged but I needed something I could wear with professional clothes or jeans while walking 1.1 miles twice a day and these are just easy. Expensive as all hell, but easy. And hey, I can still wear them when I'm 40. They'll be just as stylish and age-appropriate. (those photos are kind of flattering, but really the boot looks like black leather knee-high galoshes. I just hope they are warm. To add to my attractive profile I've ordered them a little big so I can wear my super sexy double-knit wool men's socks under them. Pair these with my longjohns and I am going to be one hot cold-weather fashion model this season! Hoo yeah!)

Another sign of returning wellness is that I am typing comfortably with two hands and no brace. I was soooooo tired before that even my wrist ached and I couldn't deal so I was pecking everything out with the middle finger of my right hand. No disrespect intended.

PS. Tomorrow (at 9 am, wail...) I have another immigration appointment to get an appointment. Pray for me. Things are still complicated because of my two stupid last names.

Typhoid Mary Rides Again

I'm usually pretty stoic about accidents and illnesses. I'm such an immune-challenged klutz that I really have to be. But this has gotten me. I am a very sick rabbit. Last night I got home from work around 5:30. I left "early" because I was literally falling over, and a propped-up florist is only so productive. I came in my door and laid down on my bed in my coat and shoes to catch my breath. I woke up five hours later, hungry, confused, and still exhausted. I ate some grapes (how convalescent of me!) took some pills and syrup, took off my coat and boots and crawled back into bed. I am a big howling baby about this one. I think it's cause this bug makes you so weak and mewling and kitten-like. The bone cracking cough-til-you-hurl fits are unpleasant in themselves but I could deal with that. It's just that each of them is like an Olympic workout and I'm totally not in that good shape, so after each very challenging event I need to lie down and whimper. Then there's the fact that between the drugs and the cough/gagging, food is nearly unmentionable and way too much work anyway so I am lucky to average a meal a day. On thanksgiving, the ladies of our meeting saved a plate for me and that was lovely. Yesterday I found some very terrible (long-canned, industrial/institutional, served up in a Styrofoam bowl at the diner) chicken soup, but it did the job so I'll go back for more today. Other than that I can only manage random fruit, if I can drag my germy butt to the kitchen and muster the will to pick it up. (The fruit, not the kitchen.) Then again, lying around and moaning only takes so many calories so it is probably just as well.

Anyway, all I want to do is lay facedown in my pillows and whine, which is kind of what I'm doing at the moment, though my pillows are under my elbow and my whining is virtual.

I'm also creeping about my room "packing" after a fashion, which at this point is mostly arguing myself into throwing out a thousand scraps of this or that which I want to keep for "a project." I finally threw away two trash bags of stuff (the garbage juice of yore that plagued me when I wrestled with our giant barrels is now garbage ice) and put on another load of laundry. Every time I do a wash I pack half the clothes, and only keep out things I think I will want in the next two weeks. It is very liberating. Frustrating busy new roommates have not replied to my query about a good time to start moving in next Sat, key accessibility, and (!) street address (Don't laugh. It happens.) and I am frankly too tired to chase them very much. BUT HOLY EXCREMENT I AM MOVING IN EXACTLY A WEEK. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

And I have to go be a propped-up florist again in two hours. I hope I give all the roses cholera or something.

And I have to get better fast, because super exciting visit from friend is like ten days away!

Turns out...

That I have not only a sinus infection but whooping cough and may have infected my entire family, 2 buses, 3 airports, 4 airplanes and a partridge in a pear tree: MINUS 40

That I will be without an ATM card or a neighbourhood branch for 14 business days: MINUS 20

That I had to stand in line for an hour to see someone who would give me an appointment to come in Monday to stand in line for an hour to see another person who will hopefully give me another appointment to get my fingerprints etc taken. I would council myself to take deep breaths but that's not very easy what with the whooping cough. MINUS 10 BILLION

BUT

I have tasty narcotic cough syrup. PLUS 20

I got a beautiful package in the mail all the way from Ireland, nestled right at my doorstep after a long, cold, exhausting day. PLUS 15 BILLION

I got Skype working and can now talk to dear ones all over the globe for free free free. PLUS 25

I just noticed that my brain meds are working really well, and that makes me feel great and hopeful. PLUS ANOTHER DOZEN BILLION, LET'S GET RECKLESS

I have a job interview on Tues for a Harvard position that might be perfect and that I have a good feeling about. PLUS 20


I'm too wasted on cough syrup to do the math, but it's not so bad. Must find food, though. Also have to work tomorrow if I have any hope of getting the rent together for the moving that is coming too fast, and I am in no shape for that, so pray for me.


Happy Turkey Day, all. I know despite a really difficult year, I have uncountable blessings (even using billions) to be thankful for.

Rawr

The good: got home safe from a fun "early thanksgiving" with my family. Not even 5 hours in the St. Louis airport could bring me down. Shout out to awesome friend with the killer phone bill who entertained and soothed the savage beast (me) as I chugged $7 michelob or whatever the heck that beer was.

The bad: Some jerk managed to steal my debit card number and buy sheets from Bed Bath and Beyond in NY, gas in LA, and god knows what (beer?) at a convenience store somewhere else in CA before my bank figured out this was weird. The fact that I was buying stuff in NC at the same time may have confused things. Now my account is frozen and I'm going to have to go fight the good fight to get everything put back where it belongs. In the meantime all of my automated payments will be bouncing joyfully for the next week or so. There is an expletive right...here.

The ugly: Man, I am siiiiiiiick. Like run over by a truck that then backed up over me and spun its wheels sick. Sick as the proverbial dog that is sick sick. Why was I so smug about not getting sick yet this fall sick. I am alternately screeching and whispering at people as I can't hear myself through plugged ears and I have to talk through 7 layers of gunk before any legible words come through. Plus symptom symptom gross symptom symptom. That's all you want to know. Ewwwww.

The annoying: My stupid over-rated lemon iBook is killing me. Or rather, dying slowly while sucking my wallet down with it. I should just throw it in the dump where it belongs and buy a loaded PC laptop for the price of the constant repairs but I am now an apple junkie and cannot remove the OS from my arm. As I will never (never = at least not in the next 3 years) be able to afford a new apple I am going to have to perform continual CPR on its dinky dinged white carcass. (almost literally, I have to tinker and pump and prod and breathe on the brand new $80 power converter to make it work.) More expletives...here.

Prayers for me tomorrow please as I hit up the Department of Homeland Security for some paperwork I really need. I'll be giving them my fingerprints, my DNA, (free cheek swabs for all!) and my pretty pretty profile in return, so the least they can do is stamp my form, please? Love you too, Uncle Sam! Here, have a retinal scan on me!

On a Mini Vacation This Weekend

I took myself out of Boston for the long weekend and have spent it with friends and alone in a pretty perfect proportion. Lots of time walking solitary or riding the bus with my iPod permanently stuck on Brandi Carlile. At some point I will have to move on, but of all the music that's moved me in my nearly twenty-five years, who'd think it would be a country-pop cowgirl who would steal my heart and mark a musical epoch in my life? It may just be that this is a super intense time in need of a super intense sound track but I am becoming a broken record myself by repeating how much I love her. There is this one song that would make me cry by itself, but then, for the love of all that is holy, there is this remix from a live concert in Austin. With cellos, for the love of god. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?

That's right. Cry like a baby. You know, Ever since I got out of the hospital I cry on average about 10x the amount I used to. This is supposed to be good, but I am not sure. I don't mind so much when it's with music.

Sorry I'm only human.
You know me:
Grown up?
Oh no, guess again

My days always
Dry up and blow away
Sometimes I could do that too
But make no mistake that

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

Progress, changing
Growing, then giving up
Somehow we're never quite prepared
But I understand it

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

So taking me with you would be like
Taking all your money to the grave
It does no good to anyone especially
The one you're trying to save.
But it's so hard not to save.

When you need a friend
You could count on anyone
But you know I'll defend
The tragedy that we knew as
The end

It's the first few lines that kill me. As my last relationship wans ending and it felt like my heart was shattering into a million pieces, I said "I'm sorry I'm me." And I really heartfeltedly meant it, which is the sad thing.

But today I have to say I'm really not sorry at all. Not today.

So, I got the gigantic two-rooms-to-myself apartment in the hinterlands of Somerville with the awesome surprise-Quaker roommates. (no dog, though, I got mixed up). In exactly two months I will on here bitching about walking 15 minutes through a frozen urban wasteland to a bus that is never on time while paying $150 a month for heat. But for now I'm really excited. Half my room is packed already. It's disgusting how much stuff I have. Moving to Cambridge is the worst thing that could have happened to my used-book addiction. They are all awesome and they are all orphaned and they are all only two dollars! What else can I do?

So now I just need to get a job to pay for the apartment and the moving and the used books. Yeep. Thank you god, for flowers. Yes, because they are beautiful, but also because I get paid $12/hr net to slaughter them wholesale and stuff them into foam. Amen.

Oh, and another song that makes me cry hard when I'm insomniac and lonely at the same time. This one is on repeat a lot.

Look to the clock on the wall:
Hands hardly moving at all.
I can't stand the state that I'm in.
Sometimes it feels like the walls' closing in.

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me.
Alone is the last place I wanted to be.
Lord what can i say?

Try and burn my troubles away,
Drown my sorrow the same way.
It seems no matter how hard I try
It feels like there's something just missing inside.

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me:
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say?
Oh Lord what can I say?

How many rules can I break?
How many lies can I make?
How many roads must I turn
To find me a place where the bridge hasn't burned?

Oh lord what can I say?
I'm so sad since you went away.
Time time tickin' on me:
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say?
Oh Lord what can I say?

Damnit, Brandi Carlile, stop singing songs about me getting my heart broken or I will...

...

...okay, fine, please keep writing them.

For one night at least, I might be an insomniac but I don't feel lonely. Tonight I am in my favourite city, with people who love me, with a glass of wine and a good helping of hope.

The Usual

I've been something of an insomniac for much of my life. I remember when I was quite small having Existential Dread--Sesame Street Edition. I'd lie in bed and realize that everyone I loved was asleep, everyone who knew I existed was asleep, I was completely alone, and I would tremble and cry with fear and loneliness at this awful idea even while my sisters slept next to me.

It's not so bad anymore, but I do have these odd moments of lying wide awake in bed at some small hour, feeling like my life is rushing past, feeling unaccountably alone, wondering what will become of me, dipping my toe into the cold waters of nothingness. I am seriously the most hysterical existentialist to walk this silly world.

I've kept out of psychic trouble this week by trading long emails with good friends and keeping extremely busy. One of the reasons I am quite annoyed and anxious about my wakefulness is that I have a job interview for a new Harvard job tomorrow, and I need some rest. I have to pick up my suit from the cleaners and style my hair and I think I packed the shoes I meant to wear. And it suddenly occurs to me that I have no decent trouser socks that will match my brown suit because I haven't had to be professional in half a year. Blaaaah. I am also packing my room, looking at apartments and being mildly jerked around by potential roommates. Roommate interviewing is unpleasantly similar to internet dating, but with higher stakes. You'd normally spend a year or so before taking the big step of moving in with a significant other, but here you're going to move in with strangers. And the primping and earnestly putting forth of only your most charming, entertaining, low maintenance, tidy, generous, light-hearted self in the face of possible mass rejection is very tiring. But it's keeping me occupied. I can only be so self-obsessed and depressed when I am getting lost in Somerville. I went back to work at the flower shop. It is extremely painful with my farking useless hand and I've had to give up early every day, but it helps a lot to be useful. Last week was just awful, though with definite bright spots. Being back to work and actually taking action towards rebuilding my dismantled life makes all the difference.

Saturday I really thought I was going to lose it again. It was my day on duty at the meetinghouse and cleaning 3 floors of a giant building and the meetinghouse and moving benches all with one hand was BAD NEWS. Also it was raining and icy and dark, and I was so sad and lonely at various points I had to retreat to my room and cry into my pillow like a teenager.

I am missing someone but I don't know who
Now I'm standing alone and I'm trying to remember
Sometimes I wonder how I ever started loving you

Morning sun shine on me
Come light inside my window
And rest on my brow
Kiss my eyes when I sleep
And carry me back home
If my dreams will allow

Though the moods rage and come and go, it's getting a bit easier to remember that they do go, even the very worst of them. None of them last forever, good or bad, and you can ride them out.



I've been finding my friendships re-sorting in the aftermath of my breakup. It's been painful but interesting. And I'm making new friends, too, wonderful friends, friends I haven't known very long but already can't imagine ever doing without. I was remarking to one of these friends that although I really am spectacularly unlucky in some ways (Constant refrain: *head shaking in disbelief* "This could only happen to you, Amanda.") I am preternaturally lucky in others, and one of those is friendships.

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of listening to anything but Brandi Carlile these days. I swear.

I'm like the rain in a downpour
I wash away what you long for
And I wave goodbye with the sun in my eyes
I wish I could be there tonight

I'm like the wind in the canyon
I'm there then I'm gone in a second
You're growing older in peace where you're at
I wish I could be there for that
But I've moved on
Like a rolling stone
In a crowded room
I'm alone

I'm like the rain in a downpour
I wash away what you long for
And I wave goodbye with the sun in my eyes
I wish I could be there tonight
Oh, oh, yeah

You're like the tide in the deep blue
Cause you're always there when I need you
And when you need someone to carry you through
I'm gonna be there for you
I'm gonna be there for you

So November is going to kick my ass. Job interviews, apartment interviews, trip this weekend, trip to NC for pretend Thanksgiving next weekend, working, moving, and SUPER DUPER EXCITING VISIT FROM FRIEND the first week of Dec.

As it should be.

xkcd.com

Thanks to Zach for the heads up. I love this comic strip. It is my new favourite thing.

Quoting

I apologize to those who come here for more than poetry and song lyrics. Some days all I can do is listen to my music till my ears fall off or read my books till my eyes fall out, and I want to share something of what I've found there, but I can't find the words to talk about it. So I paste in the words that moved me, instead, hoping to get something across. I got a bit of a kick in the heart this afternoon so I'm wringing my tears into obsessive Brandi Carlile listening:

Someone told me a lie
Someone looked me in the eye
And said time will ease your pain
But behold, when you fall
It's that same old cannonball
Coming back for your heart again

Bright lights like white lightning
Who shot me down
Who will cut me down
I'm frozen in my bed till the day comes around
And it may come around
Until the day comes around
How I'm lost
How I'm found

I was born when I met you
Now I'm dying to forget you
And that is what I know

Ouch. In other news, I'm sending off emails to cool sounding people from the craigslist apartment section, and it really seems to me that rent has fallen considerably in the two something years I've been here. I'm finding rooms in prime "cool" areas like Davis for about $500/mo. Not bad. We'll cross our digits and pray. I give good email, so maybe it'll catch someone's eye. There's one cheap one in a cool part of Somerville that is TWO rooms, so I could have a studio/library, which would be amazing. And they have a dog. I love dogs but am too troubled and transient to have one right now. So we'll see. I offered cookies. Cheap move, but you do what you have to in this mean ol' world. :)

PS:
Edited to add this email I just got from the girl in my fav. apartment ad!

That's so insane! I was raised a Philadelphia Quaker--meaning I practice a little more selectively than most. What's absolutely crazy is my boyfriend is thinking about converting--and since we kind of stressed the conversation aspect, and then the subsequent potato salad, on what the Philly Quaker experience is.. well, I don't really think I brought home besides the open minded and non violent aspects of things. Small world! I couldn't imagine living in a meeting house. I haven't even been to one on Boston yet. I'm teetering on the side of agnostic, but I love a lot of the beliefs that Quakers have.

Oh man. You love beer and zombies. I wanna say, right off the top I think I love you and you'll mesh awesomely. I'm a lot less worried about stressing to find a good fit now. :)

WOOT! This is a funny old world, even if it's mean sometimes.

Dresden Dolls

They're overexposed here in Boston, but I'm loving them right now. Overwritten overwrought modern-day cabaret? What's not to love?

Thirty licks with a belt; same old tricks on myself.
And I wonder: Does everyone else live this way?
A succession of tests, a triumphant success,
Each time, I'm still intact, at the end of the day.

Thirty drops in a glass, keep my temper and pass
With my breath held. You bastards, you lucked out again!
It's not really so bad. There’s still mom, there’s still
Damage to do before they wrest the axe from my hands.

It's no mystery: you should obviously go,
Before I break everything.
You’re always telling me that you're dying to know;
But you’re not really listening.

How do I manage to station myself in harms way,
And only get hit with a ticket for loitering...
That I have no way to pay? And no strength to argue.
My personal demons can scheme with professional care...
Oh, god, they're after me!
If I could shut them out just for a second,
I swear:
I could stop this catastrophe.

Thirty day guarantee,
But they can't have meant me.
After all, I was born to a child-proof world.
No sharp corners, or glass,
Small objects, or plastic bags.
Please, these are death to a delicate girl.

It's no mystery - you should obviously know
That I’ll destroy everything.
So don't go telling me that you're dying to know-
'Cause you’ll get what you're asking for.

And I still manage to station myself in harm's way,
And only get hit with a ticket for loitering,
Stating I came the wrong day.
Now all the demons are screaming, their wages aren't fair.
I've left a secret kept.
If I could shut them up just for a second, I swear:
It’ll look like an accident.
I could be decent yet!
The magnificent end:
I could be president....

Yeesh.

La la la no sleeping for me. Someday this will come to an end and I'll be snoozing beauty in a castle for a thousand years, and it'll take one hell of a kiss to wake me up while I'm making up for all my lost sleep.

Somehow, for all the ways it sucked, today was not entirely awful. (wow, Amanda, you can muster better than that!)

The good today and lately:
-Woke up and ate hardboiled eggs for breakfast at Charli's. Love Charli. Love eggs.
-Wrote some poems. Love poetry.
-Made some art. Love art.
-Got rid of 4 bags of excess crap from my room. Hate crap.
-Got a big black brace that makes my frayed ligaments rest easier, my wrist sweat less, and my bad-ass factor go up by about 6000 points. It is like a ninja splint. Might even let me work tomorrow. Love splint.
-Got some painkillers. Love painkillers.
-Made a mix CD. I love making mix CDs.
-Got to hear part of a stunning concert while on duty at the desk at the meetinghouse. Love concerts.
-Got a spectacular grade on my psych midterm. Love psych midterm.
-Shared more of myself with a new friend and wasn't rejected, but affirmed. Love new friend.

The absolutely expletive obscenity blasphemy horrible:
-I'm losing my house. The average meetinghouse stay is about two years, and I'm coming up on that now. But the thing is, my concentration, focus and reliability haven't been the same since the summer. I never know when I'll be zipping through chores like an obsessive merry maid and when I'll spend two days straight under the covers, emerging only to half-heartedly swab at corners. I can't promise any time-line for getting better. I do what I can do. I've come so far this year, especially in the last four months, but it's not far enough. If I was doing better I'd likely be invited to stay another year, but no go. They've been so compassionate and forbearing so far, but there's only so much they can do. They're not throwing me out on the street but I am being firmly shifted towards my exit. Not sure when it will happen, probably I have till the end of the year. It's a bit crushing, not just because I have to figure out how to find and pay for an apartment while still functionally unemployed and partially disabled, but because it's so hard on the ego to really really try at something and not succeed. Not to sound cocksure but this is new to me. Which brings me to:

-Had to drop the math course. It was stressing me out almost to the point of hysteria and I just knew I needed to let it go. It's like chess...sometimes you need to sacrifice a piece to win the game. Don't know if I'm winning, but I wasn't going to sacrifice my GPA and sanity to a kiddie math course. But of course my inability to deal with simple probability, statistics and mild algebra is humiliating. A good deal of my energy since has gone into trying to keep myself from hyperventilating about the fact that if I can't do math I can't be a doctor and if I can't be a doctor what am I going to be, oh god, oh god, oh god, etc. ad nauseum.

Seriously, I need a break, this is all getting ridiculous. But still, look at that good list up there. Those are precious things, each of them.

Reading some Rilke:

Voices, Voices. Listen, my heart, as otherwise only
saints have listened: until the immense call
raised them off the ground; and they continued to kneel
and noticed nothing, these impossible creatures:
so completely they listened. Not that you could bear God's
voice, not by far. But hear that blowing,
its uninterrupted message forming from silence.

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.

HOLY RAMPAGING INSOMNIA BATMAN

Man, if I could just bottle my anxiety and sell it I would be a rich girl. No-Doze+Dexatrim in one nice, compact, rattling, jittery, internet-scanning, sitcom-DVD-watching, driveway-pacing, room-cleaning, 18th-century-novel-reading, incoherent-texting, obsession-filled evening/night/morning/whatever...and shut the hell up, bird, it's 6 am and I'm trying to sleep.

Anyway, don't worry, my meeting is not till 1:30 pm and I am armed with lip gloss, a palm-pilot, Professional Pants, and Klonopin.

Dun Dun Dun

that was a noise of doom. Fateful meeting is tomorrow. Gulp.

But I had a delightful evening watching the Red Socks get spanked by the Yankees. :( Stupid Yankees.

And eating delicious cake.

Edited due to insomnia:

Here is a very interesting article about reading. I've been reading a lot more contemporary fiction lately (though, natch, I just finished my 114th reading of Northanger Abbey about five minutes ago, so remember all measurements are relative) and I am continually frustrated, but for some reason I press on. I've read some good books lately, but they've mostly been poetry. And come to think of it, they've also mostly been old.

Holy Emergency Dental Surgery, Batman!

I even have a poem for that:

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

etc. etc.

~ Ogden Nash.

And that is that for now. (O joy to have a hole in my tooth and in my bank account all at once. Curses, foiled again...)

PS: Interesting site where they explain what's up with a root canal. Here is what they did to me to help today:

"On the other hand, some people present with what we call a hot tooth. A hot tooth is one in which the nerve is alive, but badly inflamed. The tooth is generally already very painful, especially to hot or cold stimuli. These are the ones that require multiple shots to get anesthetize. A vast majority of these will numb out with a few carpules of anesthesia administered in the normal way. A few, however, are so inflamed and acidic that the anesthesia cannot diffuse into the nerve fibers well enough to totally destroy the sensations generated by the nerve in the tooth. In these cases, we may resort to intrapulpal anesthesia. In this procedure, we will drill very quickly directly though the top of the tooth into the nerve chamber (a few seconds is generally sufficient time) and deliver a quick squirt of anesthesia directly into the nerve inside the tooth. It's fast, and always effective."

Roethke

Someone once sent me this poem at another hard time in my life. I have very little to say, so I'll give you a poem. As usual.

The Waking

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

~Theodore Roethke


This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

Hurting

I'm hurting pretty hard today, but some good friends saw me through it. Ugh, ugh ugh ugh ugh.

I'm so ready to NOT be hurting, you know? More Margolin:


Here a word of terror, there one of regret.
Here I cried out, there in sorrow I paused.
You transformed the roads into Golgotha,
and my blood runs in all the streets.

Here I wept. The dank walls
roared out the stern judgment at the weak and the lost
while many lords and ladies looked on
as the woman walked through the dusk in tears.

Pleading, raging, regretting,
now the last terrible note of life
blares forth, sinking into the dust.
And yet, O God, O Tormentor, I do believe:
With dying fingers, I will yet touch a star,
and I will hear an eternally profound,
an infinitely tender word.

It seems every time I am hurt it's as if I've forgotten just how hurt I can be. The pain is terrible, but here is a difference: for the first time, I feel the pain, but I don't want to die.

This is bittersweet. The thought of suicide can be an addiction, an out, an escape "if things get too bad I can always end it." But now I know I won't, and so I have to endure, which is both a triumph and a torment.

Well

I'm not even sure what to write about these days!

My mental health is really holding steady, which is almost scary. It's amazing what happens when the right drugs get together! Obviously we haven't figured out the sleeping drugs yet. I am one of those rare beings, a true insomniac. I remember thinking lots of strange thoughts at this time in the morning, even when I was a little child. My brother Jonathan was a sleepwalker...I rarely do that. (though I have , sometimes with unbloggable consequences!) But I do just stay awake. I have some sleeping pills but I have to remember to take them very, very early, and I rarely do. And If I take them after say 10pm then I'll just sleep through the next day. In fact, pretty much anytime there's a missing day on this blog that's the reason.

While I'm thinking of it, I'd like to ask for some prayers. I've been out of partial hospital, on disability but looking forward to returning back to work for several weeks now, but I've been given cause to worry about my job security. I really, really want to go back and show them how competent a properly treated, medicated employee I can be. I really don't want to deal with unemployment/SSDI right now, when I am feeling so much better. Please pray they'll give me a chance.

In other news, I had to make a really hard decision and defer my reapplication to my dream school by another year, in the name of reality and sanity. I so wish I was super-girl. There are so many things I want to do, so many things I KNOW I can do, that it's so hard to wait. I am really smart. I know that. I have a lot of minuses, but that's one of my pluses. You can count me a certified "genius", so I ought to be able to do and be whatever I want. Instead, I'm mud-wrestling in the trenches with my mental illness. I've been doing a lot of research, though, and apparently very high IQ coincides with a very high incidence of mental illness. I'm not trying to brag, I'm just trying to come to terms with who I am. For so long I've wondered how I could be so smart and still be such a screw-up, and I guess now I'm getting my answers. But I really, really, really, really hope that I can overcome the mess to be what I want to be.

What do I want to be? I think I want to be a doctor. Honestly, though? I'd be just as happy as a housewife. I think. So far my yeehaw IQ hasn't been much use to me.

Should I aim for somewhere in between?

I ask God, "what do you want from me? You made me really smart. You also made me able to bake a cherry pie, change a diaper, kiss away a hurt, sew a dress, knit a scarf, plant a garden, milk a goat...what do you want? What part do you want? Do you have a plan that uses all of it? Huh, God?"

But then, I've been asking God to tell me what I should do/be since I was 9. God doesn't write self-help books. He doesn't co-author "What Color is Your Parachute."

Phooey.

But I can tell you something cool: I've met an awesome new friend who is making me smile every day. Tomorrow we're going to St. Anthony's Festival in the North End. I may be a Quaker, but I still pray to St. Anthony. He's been my best heavenly friend since I was a child. In fact, I can talk to St. Anthony much, much more easily than I can approach any idea of Jesus. So I think that's a sign of goodness.

Okay, let me find you another Margolin poem. I bought the book for a friend, so I have to milk it while I have it.


Drowse on, my beloved, drowse on.
You are like new brown forest earth.
Your eyes are full of sky.

I your peace and I your sword
now watch over heaven and earth.
Every star in amazement hears
what I whisper in your sleep.

More Margolin

I have wandered so much, beloved,

through strange and dark lives,

through hearts like wastelands--

be kind.


Known a thousand deaths, beloved.

My bad blood,

the iron rod of desire,

has chased me an entire lifetime.

Man of velvet and of steel,

man, with quiet voice,

hover over me,

shield me from the world

and from my own blood also.

Be kind.

Full of Night and Weeping

A silence, sudden and deep
between us,
like a bewildering letter
that announces a parting.
Like a ship going down.

A silence, without a glance, without a stir,
full of night and weeping
between us,
as if we ourselves
had bolted the door
to a Garden of Eden.

~Anna Margolin

Oh man I missed Sunday again

but I had a good day. Got to hang out with a whole cartload of super people and only cried twice. The meds are still working and I am having a lot of fun. Somehow I got myself snagged to play makeup artist at a random photoshoot. Because of my theatre experience I used to make some extra money around Halloween doing sfx makeup and that sort of thing. I don't have my full kit any more but hopefully I can scrounge up the last bits somewhere. Not getting paid straight up but there is apparently a sales cut. I won't be holding my breath for that, but it should be fun. I'm a little nervous, though. It's been a while. We'll see what I can do!

HAPPY

Yay, my iPod seems to be feeling better. You can all let out your breaths and life can continue. Who knew there could be so much joy in consumer electronics? Walking around in my iPod I feel like I may have sucker-punched Plain. Hmm.

Simon(e) is in high spirits today.

It is very windy.

I need a nap.

SAD

Suddenly my new iPod won't take it's charger. Misery.

Not much to say about today. Still not feeling depressed, which is awesome, still feeling hella sad, which is not. :( Bah.

Okay, that's it for now.

In praise of music.

Hey hey! So I never got to do the game where you write down the first 10 songs when you put your iPod on shuffle. I've got a lot of random crap on there so it should be interesting. A little commentary follows each song.

1.)The Heathery Hills of Yarrow --Bothy Band (Oh saaaaaaaad song! Sniffl.)

2.)Jazz Police -- Leonard Cohen (Oh god, that's rank! Blagh, horrible.)

3.) For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her -- Simon & Garfunkle (This is the song that indelibly fixed my idea of romance, somewhere around the age of 4.)

4.) Tear Stained Letter -- Johnny Cash (Bitter! Bitter! Bitter!)

5.) Loveless Motel -- Jill Sobule (Meh,not a bad song, not one of my huge favs. Try her track Mexican Wrestler for the good stuff.)

6.) The Loving Time -- Mary Black (Holy cow, I really ought to buy some happy music. Though my last purchase was Johnny Cash. That's not exactly happy but it's not very mopey either.)

7.) Where The Trees Have No Name -- U2. (No way! U2? Me too!)

8.) The Beauty of The Rain -- Dar Williams. (Man, I have listened to this song about 6000 times in the last few weeks and I just am never tired of it "she says you've known her deepest fears/cause she's shown you a box of stained glass tears" Oh yeah.)

9.)A Summer Wasting -- Belle & Sebastian. (Ooh, nice:

Seven weeks of reading papers
Seven weeks of river walkways
Seven weeks of feeling guilty
Seven weeks of staying up all night

Summer in winter
Winter is springtime
You heard the bird say
Everything will be fine)

10.) Little Sister -- Elvis. (Random...)

So, last night I had a mock gallery opening and a few friends came by, we looked at the stuff I've been making and I served limeade in tiny paper cups. It was nice. Two other friends swung in from Vermont the night before. and we got to have some really fun times together. I already have weekend plans! My room is clean, my laundry is done, and I have a working to-do list and a fetal budget. It's really shocking how much better life gets when you have the right medication. I kind of feel like a normal person. I'm bracing for the downswing while trying to enjoy what's here. It's a delicate balance.

I am beginning to be certain that Simon is actually Simone. Whoops. That explains the fussiness and non-tameness. I may have to get her a boyfriend because she's unlikely to bond to me. Only boys really do that. Gah.

My mom has a little widget on her blog that lets you listen to music. I wonder if I can figure it out so that you could go over to the sidebar and click on the songs I keep posting.

Also, loneliness is better with a soundtrack, cleaning is better with a soundtrack, exercise is better with a soundtrack, making art is better with a soundtrack. I may just have to marry my iPod.

PS: I just did it. It makes my blog ugly so you'll have to forgive me while I figure that out. In some cases I had to make do with an inferior version of a song, some songs I couldn't add at all, and so on, but click play and pick a song to enjoy some of the mopey and less mopey things I've been listening to!

I know it must seem

as if I cannot make a post without quoting a song or poem. I was thinking about that today. I got a free second hand iPod, through a pair of lovely people, and in celebration I bought an older Belle and Sebastian record on iTunes. I was listening to a specific song, and as I experienced it, I thought "wow, I should really share this on my blog..." Upon further reflection, I think it's just that right now I am living quite intensely inside my poems and music, leaning on them, and they are very relevant to how I'm experiencing the world. Here's the song that grabbed me...

Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find something you can eat?
Cause the word out on the street is you are starving
Don't let yourself grow hungry now
Don't let yourself grow cold
Fox in the snow

Girl in the snow, where will you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight

Boy on the bike, what are you like
As you cycle round the town?
You're going up, you're going down
You're going nowhere
It's not as if they're paying you
It's not as if its fun
At least not anymore
When your legs are black and blue
Its time to take a break
When your legs are black and blue
Its time to take a holiday

Kid in the snow, way to go
It only happens once a year
It only happens once a lifetime
Make the most of it
Second just to being born
Second to dying too
What else could you do?

I pronounce today "BE NICE TO ME DAY"

So I am.

(PS I began this post 12 hours ago, stopped somewhere in the middle of the poem, and now I'll finish it....)I woke up in such a good mood I was almost nervous. "What the hell is this?" I thought. But I decided to run with it. Anyway, I got up, went to the bank, rescued my checking account from peril, and bought some good healthy groceries. I've been eating like an obese lazy bird recently. I made plans with a sweet friend for the evening and went about the rest of my day letting myself do exactly as I liked. Poor as I am, I let myself buy some $2 books of poetry from my favourite homeless bookseller guys. I used to have quite a collection of poetry but it's one of the things I left behind when I ran away to NYC. So I've been slowly picking things up here and there. I bought Ariel which I haven't read in a long time. My passion for Sylvia Path had cooled considerably by the end of my adolescence, and I pushed the poems away as so much trashing about and moaning. Going back over them with a (slightly!) more mature eye I am understanding a bit more of what is so good about them. But there's one poem I never stopped loving, and all of its meanings are new and different to me now. It has some of the most evocative and heart-piercing images I've ever encountered in a poem:

The Moon and The Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday the bells startle the sky--
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness--
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness--blackness and silence.

Okay I am still counting this as Monday so there.

Well I have a lot on my mind so I'm just going to keep typing and we'll see what comes out.

I have been dealing with some of my loneliness by going out and talking to strangers. I met "Mayor Marmaduke" at the Davis Square station tonight. He told me he liked my shoes, and that in his native Senegal, everyone piles on a bus and talks together and that it's too lonely to ride the T without someone to talk to. So we went ahead and piled on the T and talked together, and it was lovely.

I met another new friend tonight, too. We went out for a beer and then watched Becket, a 40 year old film I could have sworn I'd seen before but never had. It was really moving: a tragic love story, really. My friend, not familiar with Western history, kept saying it was a comedy and I was like, "Um. I don't think so. I really don't think so. I mean, maybe, but that would be pretty creative." There were some funny moments in the beginning but in the end it was as I thought. Some good heart-wrenching moments..."My heart! My heart! It is my heart! It is too fond! Too fond!" It really hit home for me in a lot of ways: first, it made me nostalgic for the church of my childhood, and it was also a story of the misery wrought by conflicting loyalties. (not to mention frustrated love.) I don't write much about my experience with the Catholic church here as I know my family reads this blog and I love and respect them and their deep faith so much that I am always afraid to give them pain, but it is a real and ongoing issue in my life. I was so deeply religious as a child, and so convinced of my truth. My mother, knowing I was feeling down, recently wrote me a very loving letter. She ended it with "though you may have strayed from the cradle of your faith, you have never strayed from our hearts." Though I chose to take it in the spirit it was intended, it was still painful, at least before I had given it a lot of thought.

Sunday, I was sitting in meeting in a lot of pain. It was nearly a silent meeting, and I was able to center quite deeply, something that's been extremely hard for me for a very long time. As I sat, the words to a song I haven't sung in over ten years popped up in my mind.

I will come to you in the silence,
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear my voice,
I claim you as my choice,
Be still and know I am here.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I am hope for all who are hopeless,
I am eyes for all who long to see.
In the shadows of the night,
I will be your light,
Come and rest in me.

I am strength for all the despairing,
Healing for the ones who dwell in shame
All the blind will see,
The lame will all run free,
And all will know my name.

I am the Word that leads all to freedom,
I am the peace the world cannot give.
I will call your name,
Embracing all your pain,
Stand up, now walk, and live!

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I didn't have all the words right, but it was close. I was deeply moved to have this song come to me at such a black, dry time. When I learned that song I was 14, visiting the Daughters of Saint Paul. I was sure I wanted to be a nun. I was secure in my knowledge of God's love. Squirreled away in a vacant nun's cell after a busy day of vocational activities, I'd sneak out of bed, past my snoring roommate in the middle of the night and secretly pad my way to the adoration chapel in my nightgown and kneel there for hours in ecstatic prayer. In fact, at that time my main objection to joining the order the moment I turned 18 was that the third Star Wars movie would not be out and I might miss it, being busy with nunly duties. If I had known then what I know now about the third new Star Wars movie, I might be writing to you from under a veil.

But I "strayed." Did I? I certainly wandered. I've certainly spent my time lost. I've traveled aimlessly through deserts in my time.

The specific words of that hymn touched the most broken parts of me. I sat there, lost in thought and memory for a long time, until I was sure that I was being led to share them. I felt a great pain. Never in my life have I felt less like singing. I was afraid I would not be able to deliver the message without bursting into tears. I shakily stood and sang the best I could, very low and very trembly. I was soon released, and sank down to my bench in gratitude and fatigue, shaken and still grieving, but at peace. I didn't cry until I sat down, and then not very much, though other sobs broke through the silence. I was disturbed for a moment, worried I had done the wrong thing, but I was assured. All of our tears were between us and God.

I have been nostalgic for my "cradle." And it was a cradle. I grew there. It is still a matter of pain to me that I cannot see any way forward to reconciliation with that church. I was driven from it by force, in miserable circumstances, but by the time I began to grope my way back towards God, I found that I could not reconcile my conscience and my revealed truth with certain matters of church teaching. Watching Becket struggle silently, in agony, with the contest between what he had been shown was right and his love for his king brought back to me all the pain of this conflict. It is a hard path, being rocked out of the cradle and onto the ground, expected to stand up, walk, and live.

My friend and I listened to some Leonard Cohen in the car.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh man.

I think I had more to say but I'm drying up. Good night, good morning, and good luck.

I wish my bird were friendlier

We have been cheerfully yelling at each other all day but he hates to come out of his cage and I hate forcing him. I've been sitting on my bed for 90% of the day. There are practical things I could be doing but instead I am just sitting here yelling at my bird (Even though he's just a parakeet, he's still a parrot, and so to him loud=HAPPYHAPPYHAPPYHOORAY plus I yell nice things at him like "HEY YOU STUPID BIRD YOU SURE ARE GOOD LOOKING, TOO BAD YOU'RE SO MEAN THOUGH, I GUESS YOU REALLY LIKE THIS JOHNNY CASH SONG HUH!") and reading and staring at the computer.

I am not used to being along so much. I have lots of awesome friends but company requires planning and calling and scheduling and things. No more just sitting in the same room with someone all day, doing your own thing but talking. Unless you count the bird. I'm not feeling sorry for myself but I am wondering how to adjust. When I lived at home my life was the obvious other extreme--never alone at all. When I lived in Brooklyn there were several standing dates around town, so company didn't require coordination, and here I was spoiled by being in a relationship. I've always been good at doing things alone, going to dinner with a book or a movie by myself, but it's the in-between stuff that smarts. For some reason I've always pictured myself as a loner but I really don't think I am. I always thought I was an introvert but I think I may just be an atypical extrovert. I think I am happier when I have someone to focus on besides myself or the silly yellow feathered thing over there. I don't know if that makes me co-dependent or simply a functioning communal mammal.

sob whine snivel.

Last night I did go to a party. I got to hold a very enormous, friendly, warm and cuddly python or boa constrictor or something. He was seriously lovely, would look you in the face very intelligently and then lay his pointy little head on your shoulder. He could have eaten me for dinner but he just liked snuggling up to my body heat--I was like a well upholstered rock in the sun as far as he was concerned. A very classy reptile. It was an odd party, tattoo artists giving tattoos in an upstairs bedroom which seemed a little dubious (beer + tattoos = just don't.) though everyone came down looking fairly un-maimed. In case anyone is alarmed, I remained happily unmarked. I wouldn't want to go to a party like that every day, but it did pep me up a little, reminded me of the life I had back in NYC. I wouldn't want that life back entire, but it's nice to know I can still go out and rock the fishnets and all on occasion. I didn't sleep at all though, so that wasn't very clever and may have something to do with my miserable mood.

Something (not the snake) bit me at some point last evening and raised a horrible stinging welt. It's swollen and painful even now. I should put something on it maybe. I have no idea what kind of bite or sting it could be. It's so severe it's bruised in the middle. I'd say spider but my spider-studying friends mock the blame-the-spider approach and say spider bites are outrageously over-reported. They may be biased, but they are probably right. Whatever the hell this thing was it was mean. Ow. Whine.

I need a new playlist. These songs are killing me. I have about 3 happy songs in my entire collection. I should go outside (I've only left my room for meeting) and I should eat something (I've only had some sunflower seeds so far.) There should be some sunshine left, and maybe I'll get a sandwich and eat it by the Charles. I can pick one of my books I haven't read yet or recently and bring it along. That might be nice. My dumb bird is not invited.

There will be shooting stars tonight.

Boring boring boring

Not much to report today. I'm on duty at the MH, waiting for a concert to get out. They were supposed to be done 1/2 and hour ago. I just went over and got assertive with them. "I'm the official party-pooper...' Okay, not that assertive. But hopefully they'll be wrapping it up soon. Good music, though.

La lala

Hooray it is done!

Yay. May I never see the inside of another psych hospital as long as I live. *superstitious spit*

Don't have much today. Talked to some school people who assured me that they do not send the "call us and try again" letter to many people. It looks like I am going to have to dive headfirst into math and science, without any warm-up, so I am a little scared,and need to take out all my workbooks to prepare. Still, I am not stupid, and I am sure that especially with help I can manage this.

Also I've been feeling that as long as I have the scaffolding up around my life I might as well continue renovating. I've still got lots to pull down, build up, scrape away, paint over, replace, etc. Onward, self-improvement.

After that spasm of bad temper

Here is a nice bit of poem:

Now for a breath I tarry,
Not yet disperse apart--
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
~A. E. Houseman

Well, yay

I "graduate" from my full-time therapy program on Friday. I'll have a few weeks of disability left to get steady on my feet and all. I may not be traveling after all, who knows. It doesn't really matter what I do, especially since some people in my life seem to think that these past months have been a tropical mickey-mouse-island-hopping vacation, and I really have to push down my anger. I'll trade places, people. See how you like being shuffled in and out of hospitals, warehoused with angry addicts and criminals, spending all your money on pills that make you fat or give you headache, staring at the ceiling every night praying for sleep or death or something in between, losing the love of your life to the ravages of mental illness. Oh yeah, it's been awesome.

I'm not really that bitter, at least not every day, it just comes out sometimes. I was on the phone with some college admission people today and they wanted to know how I'd spent my summer. I so wanted to tell them I'd done a semester abroad, or an intensive summer program at Harvard, or interned for some fascinating lab, or even "just working hard." I couldn't tell them everything I've been doing. All I could say was:

"I've been ill."

and those few words just don't cut it.

Gloom and doooom.


This is making me laugh, though. You may have to be a certain type of nerd to understand why. Thanks, SKB!

http://www.notablogtm.com/category/lolcat-bible/

Okay

The bird's name is Simon. No offense to the real Simons I know out there, it's just that he reminds me of a mumbling cranky character in the (potentially quite offensive) Adult Swim cartoon Frisky Dingo. New season at the end of this month, yay. You can check it out on YouTube if you are curious.

Spent the day sleeping, knitting Christmas gifts, reading, talking on the phone. This Much I Know is True ended with every loose end tied squarely in a neat bow, which worried me, but I can't say I know what I would have preferred. I still recommend it highly. I am planning a trip to San Fransisco and ignoring well-meaning acquaintances who recommend I renew my online dating account. I can see it now:

Hi! I am an overweight, insane, rebounding 24 year old divorcee. I've got lots of dirty baggage and three hospitalizations under my belt, and I'm ready for friendship and much much more!"

Gag.

Blaaaaah. (this is Snoopy's noise of despair)

Maybe later.

A lovely friend in England sent me a bunch of gorgeous wool. I am dreaming up patterns I'd like to use it in. It's a deep sage green with a metallic gold thread running through it.

God bless knitting.

Budgie-Face

Maybe that will stick. I don't know. I keep accidentally calling him Percy, the name of my first bird. I don't think he was actually mine, I think he was a birthday present to one of the little kids. But I'm the one that trained him and cleaned him and hung out with him as long as I was home. I don't speak Budgie so I am not sure if he is happy to see me when he makes these crackly static noises and puffs up his face. From the poop-patterns (sorry) it looks like he hasn't moved around much. Poor Budgie! The people on various budgie forums assure me that many budgies take weeks to settle in. I don't know if I was more patient or Percy was more personable, but I don't remember him being such a sad feathery lump. Poor Budgie-Face!

I think I love my Dr. Please Fix It. She did! She didn't yell at me for deep-sixing the horrible medications the horrible doctor at the horrible hospital gave me, especially since I kept the important one that I'd been on all along. She agreed with me that the other pills were inappropriate. She also appreciated my saying that I was feeling terrible but okay, that given what was going on in my life it was hard to separate which "symptoms" were pathological and which were situational. She gave me back my sleeping and anti-freakout medications and said if I was happy off the rest of it then I could

(hey! Budgie just chirped at me. You talkin' to me? Hey he just did it again. Maybe the static noise is him imitating my keyboard! Wow, he's making all kinds of pretty noises at me. Yay!)

stay off. And oh my I just saw that she gave me all kinds of refills. Huzzah for Dr. Please Fix It!

According to a Bird Body Language Dictionary (nobody ever said I wasn't dedicated), Budgie-Face is feeling okay:

Preening themselves when receiving attention
May be initiated when you scratch their neck or just when they are sitting with you. "Thank you. For you I'll make myself look better."

Opening up the feathers on face and neck
Head may appear puffed. Symbolizes calm contentment - happy, pleased.

Now that makes me want to puff up my face, too.

Three Posts Today, Whee!

Well, my little bird is looking a bit better. He even scooted a few claw-lengths nearer to me while I talked to him tonight. If he doesn't die I think I will call him Pistachio. Pissy for short, because, well, he is.

Back to meeting today for the first time in a long time. Very empty, nearly everyone off at Yearly Meeting. I choked back a message that wasn't ready after a rather heated internal debate, and was glad--that was right. People talked about the gospel of Matthew. I've spent a lot of time in there lately, and noticed that Jesus had...a few problems. I was reading it for the healing stories...in the past I have compared my illness to the possession stories, or even the story of the woman with the hemorrhage. Most of the healing stories are almost interchangeable: Son of David/Have Mercy/Your Faith Has Healed You/Go In Peace/Tell No One. But there are a couple of odd ones in there, ones you don't hear about very often. One that always chills me is this:


Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."
But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."
He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.

I wonder if that woman was being humble, or if she was reproaching Jesus. I wonder if he felt ashamed for a moment when she answered him like that, if he blushed, swallowed, looked away. If he broke eye contact. Was she old enough to be his mother? Was she young and beautiful? Was she angry? Did he regret what he had said to her, then, thinking about the suffering daughter? Did he realize he had basically called this suffering stranger a dirty bitch and then repented of it when she called him out? Had he forgotten for a minute his mission of peace or was he still learning about it? Was she relieved? Frustrated? Humiliated to be publicly scorned and insulted by this famous Rabbi from the dirty little town, this wild-eyed young preacher with the magic hands and magic words? Did her love for her daughter overcome all of that?

I don't know. Could be the scene never took place. But it haunts my heart. All of the famous intersections of suffering and humility and faith are curious places. Is it a dog's faith that God requires of his Friends? Take a kicking, bow our necks to the blows, go howling away and then come whinging back to the table, tails between legs, pleading for crumbs, endlessly forgiving, endlessly loyal, endlessly patient, dumb suffering beasts? I don't think so. There's much more there, crammed far back out of the reach of theology. There's deep marrow in these bones.

"Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Still awake, still reading, still typing. Feeling deeply lonely on the one hand but warmed by the invisible presence and thoughts of far-away friends on the other. I took myself to a funny movie today and cried, then laughed at myself for crying and then cried some more. I wasn't keeping score but I think I'd have to say the laughing won this round. Thank God.

"Lord, help me."

I have been singing to the bird

and also playing him Elvis. He seems fairly interested by these developments, and he will step onto my hand if I gently poke his belly, but he's just not thrilled about life. I'm like, "Little dude! I have treats! Eat this!" and he just stares at me. And if I don't come up with something soon his name is going to be Little Dude.

I could name him Pistachio, another delicious green thing I have been eating lately, but the point is to convince him that I DON'T mean to eat him, so maybe it's not a super name. He's yellow and blue, and supposedly will become green with age. He looks like he might be grooving out a little bit to Ain't That Loving You Baby.

I could just name him Elvis...

Oh dear

I missed a Saturday post by one minute. I could cheat and turn the time back on the post but that's not fair.

I had a day very full of friends and a new little feathered friend who does not like me very much as yet and has no name. But he has a big beautiful cage and may eventually forgive me for abducting him from parakeet paradise in a small takeout box.

I am deadly tired, eating watermelon (not green! except on the outside) and reading I Know This Much Is True, a veryvery sad and veryvery good novel by Wally Lamb about a middle-aged man and his schizophrenic identical twin brother...and much more. It is such a good book and such a long book that I am constantly clutching the pages and wishing loudly in my head "don't mess it up! don't mess it up!" I am not sure what I am more afraid of, some sunshiny plot twist, or some melodramatic tragedy when the book is already pretty much pure tragedy.

I smell and need a shower. Yucky.

Pretty much all my friends and compatriots have now fled to NEYM. I can't make it this year, as I said, just too many things going on. I'm feeling pretty sad about it tonight though it was the right decision. But I am praying for them and their very difficult work this year. If you have an extra prayer or thought, I am sure they'd be glad of it, too.

As would I.

Oh my

It is almost the end of this day but I don't want to write about anything. I ate a bunch of falafel, which is also green, and so mildly disturbing. And now my friend Sarah is here and I would rather talk to her than to the computer so this is all I have to say.