now

Yesterday was hard.

Now is easier.

Why? 

I can't explain in detail. I can tell you yesterday felt like being cut with glass in the same place more than once --the pain of more and more pain, & the anguish of thinking it won't stop. The knowledge that I broke the glass made it worse. 

Now feels clear. It feels tender, but clear.

I spoke with a friend, who offered comfort. I won't go into details about that, but thank you, Melissa, for that hour and a half of your life. You know what it meant.

And last night, beginning at 12:01 AM PST, I began reading a book my friend Melina sent me as a surprise some months ago called The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy (edited by John Brehm). I finished around 1:40 AM. Maybe it was the sleepless fugue, but it helped. 

It is a collection of poems that deal with those themes (impermanence, mindfulness and joy), with works by poets heavily influenced by Buddhist thought and beliefs. It was a relief to end with joy, and the joy poems were small and manageable. Reading the biographies of the poets also helped. These were people of varying personalities --outgoing, quiet --bound together by this search for meaning and the use of images and words to try and gather the meaning where they found it. All had difficult lives (including Robert Frost --who knew?). If their lives were hard, and they could find beauty in the midst of all of that, maybe it would all be okay? Maybe I had to let go to feel what they felt in those moments when they composed their poems?

Favorites included "Miracle Fair" by Wisława Szymborska, "Aimless Love" by Billy Collins, and "The Joy of Fishes" by Chuang-Tzu.

And now, an attempt at my own poem. It is for my friend. I would apologize for attempting poetry, but it helped me.

through tears

I watch the ash tree

outside the window

and I see

the leaves feel nothing

but the wind

days with no words

It's back again. It's been a while.

This is no seductive mistress. There is nothing glamorous about it at all. It is plain and unwashed and, similar to Benjamin Franklin's observation of houseguests who won't leave, it stinks. 

But at least today, I have words.

No, it's not writer's block --I've written about that in the past. Writer's block is a seductive mistress, comparatively. If you'd like some ideas on how to overcome that, please feel free to follow the link. That's really no big thing to work past, if you're a writer. 

Impostor syndrome (which I have also written about) is a bit more difficult, but that's not what this is. The way to work past that is keep writing and damn the internal and external critics while still trying to improve.

This is the total absence of words and an inability to see much of anything at all, except possibly nothing. 

If you are familiar with this condition --and I think writers tend toward this as they are sensitive, creative types --you know that words do not come easily at times like these. These are times for feelings and wishes that everything would just stop.

I made it to today. At least today, I have words.

I am writing this to tell what ...not worked. Distracted me? Distracted me.

I tried reading, thinking that someone else could provide some words when I had none. It did not work. In truth, I couldn't process words at all --not spoken, not written, not heard, not read.

Eventually, I settled on doodling. No words. Lines. Circles. Over and over and over. I wanted to fill pages, and so, I had to keep busy in order to do that. I could not think of anything except where to put my next line, my next circle. Repetitive actions are soothing. Knitting or worry beads or zen gardens would serve the same purpose. Doodling was it for me.

After doodling, I worked my way toward drawing --nothing technical. Just trying to put the lines and curves in the right place, going the right direction. I drew animals, some of the ones I wrote poems about a long time ago: a jellyfish, a cicada, a white worm. Details take you away from the larger thing that looms and steals your thoughts.

I think it is okay to admit there are times to take breaks from writing and from words. There are times, as human beings, when language is too much. It is okay to step back in order to be able to step forward again. I am a human being, first and foremost, and I write because I love it. I am a writer when I write, but at times, like recently, I cannot be a writer --I cannot write --and it is because I am working on getting myself to a place where I can function. I am a human being first. And that's okay.

And today, I have a few words.

Here's wishing you many words when they come.

take care of yourself

This is a story that may sound familiar. The characters and situation may be different from your own, or it might be similar --let's see ...

Once upon a time, there was a young lady who was under a great deal of stress. There may have been some hormonal issues thrown into the mix as she had recently had a baby --these things happen, you know. The stress related to her workplace, or maybe it was her home life? Maybe both?

Does this sound familiar so far? You needn't be a woman to have work and life stresses; however, you might need to be a woman to have a baby. But I digress ...

In the course of all of this chaos, the young lady wasn't doing very well --not well at all, in fact. She wasn't sleeping; she wasn't eating; and she was having these pesky thoughts about very specific ways to make all of the pain go away.

She took the unprecedented step of contacting someone for medical assistance. That kind doctor gave the young lady a prescription for medical leave and antidepressants. The doctor had originally wanted the lady to stop working altogether, but the young lady didn't want to disappoint the people she was working with or for, so she talked the kind doctor into making the prescription for working half of her regular hours ("It's not so bad. I only have these obsessive thoughts all of the time, but I haven't acted on them yet, so ...").

Ringing any bells? Maybe you have needed to seek assistance for a mental health issue, or maybe not wanting to disappoint the people around you is a regular theme in your life?

The young lady turned in her prescription to her boss at work, and what do you imagine her boss said to her? 

If you guessed, "You need to take care of yourself," you are correct. 

And what do you imagine her boss said next? 

"How will you [get all of your work done] in half the time?" 

The question was followed by an expectant pause. The expectant pause was not placed there because the boss wanted the young lady to realize she should have taken the full-time leave --it was a legitimate logistical question.

Which brings us to the point of the story: so often we say to people, "Take care of yourself." We don't mean it a lot of the time, though. We mean, "Take care of yourself as long as it doesn't inconvenience me."

This story was just an illustration. It happens in many different ways in life. When you come across a person who needs help, what do you do? I don't know. I'm asking. I would think asking, "What do you need?", and, if the person is unable to figure out what they need, maybe observing and asking specifically, "Can I help you with ___?" would be good. I don't think the general statement "Take care of yourself" is at all helpful, however --if the person could take care of him- or herself, that person would be doing it already.

And before signing off and making it seem I feel superior in this matter, I am guilty of doing this. Platitudes are much easier than showing up. I have done this --I have done this recently. I am also the young lady in the story, so I've seen the other side, as well. 

Whether or not I have an answer, I do know it's a problem that needs a solution. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. 

america

Disclaimer: I'm just me. This is not the work of a political expert.

Charlottesville. Everyone knows what happened there recently, and I have no need to replay the incident. And I have written about race and growing up in Virginia in a past blogpost --while that blogpost had nothing to do with the Civil War, it had everything to do with the Civil War. So does this one. It has to do with the Revolutionary War. It has to do with the founding of the United States, and what that means today.

There is no one America, and there never has been.

I've thought long and hard about how to explain 'American' to friends who don't know or martians who might randomly drop from the sky. The truth is, in order to explain 'American', you have to be willing to give whatever adjective or example you like and there will be plenty of adjectives and examples that contradict what you say. 

There have been families here since the founding in the 17th-Century; there are families who arrived yesterday; there are families who have been here since centuries before the founding.

There are families who came here for economic opportunity; there are families whose ancestors were brought here against their will.

There are people who descend from one race; there are people who descend from more than one race and may not be aware; there are people who descend from many races.

There are people who can afford gold-plated toilets; there are people who clean those gold-plated toilets and may not be able to afford rent; there are people who cannot fathom why anyone would need a gold-plated toilet (the vast majority, I would assume).

There are people who speak English; there are people who don't speak English.

There are people of all religions; there are people of more than one religion (yes, it is possible); there are people of no religion.

There are people who love jazz and country music; there are people who love jazz, but not country; there are people who love country, but not jazz; there are people who tolerate both; there are people who hate music in general.

Etc.

And yet, they are all American.

We are a nation of contrasts. We are a study in cognitive dissonance.

When I read people saying about what happened in Charlottesville, "This is not what America stands for" --it's not entirely true. 

Since the beginning, we have been a nation founded on high ideals like equality and freedom and opportunity, but we have also been a nation that --in practice --was founded on inequality and the lack of freedom and opportunity of some.

Going forward, we need to have hard conversations and acknowledge that. This may not be what we want America to stand for, but it is part of what America has been and is. It needs addressed. The one glimmer of hope in all of this horrible situation is that it is being addressed out in the open.

I have no answers, but I hope all of us --from leadership down --can try and move towards our ideals, so that we can in the future say it and mean it: this [hatred, fear and oppression] is not what America stands for. We can't truly be the Land of the Free until we figure it out.

how we spend our moments

Have you ever thought to yourself when reading a blog (like this one), "Hmm, I wonder how long it took to write that post ..." 

Most people don't, I don't think --they just read the content. Maybe it's an informative blog, or maybe it's a humorous blog, or maybe it's a blog about deep thinky thoughts. People gravitate toward the topics covered, and sometimes, the writing style.

There is a concept from economics called opportunity cost. My friend, Mr. Google, tells me opportunity cost is a noun meaning "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen." Our life is full of alternatives. We fill our time with alternatives.

Reading a blog is one alternative use of time. Writing a blog is another use of time. Both of them occur on computers.

Have you ever thought to yourself when reading a blog (like this one), "Hmm, I wonder how long it took to write that post ...and what else could they have been doing instead with that time?"

Have you ever thought to yourself when reading a blog (like this one), "Hmm, I wonder what's going on around me, beyond the screen ..."

I am beginning to wonder what is going on around me. When writing this blog post, and thinking about other blog posts I have written, I wonder, "What could I notice beyond what's in my head?"

I have been in my head a lot recently. In terms of opportunity cost, what was chosen was the thoughts in my head. Creative endeavors, particularly those that are not group projects, are fundamentally selfish acts, & that's what I chose --creative endeavors. But at what cost?

What did I miss while I was in my head?

It turns out, I missed a lot. My life will be changing soon --is changing now --because of what I missed. That is neither here nor there.

I used to pride myself on having a day job while also writing. It meant I would not be boring and overly writerly --that I would have something unique to share that only come from experiences outside my head (and fundamentally, writers inhabit their heads --there's a lot of ego in writing). I still do think that is a good way to be --having a job outside of writing professionally, but I am seeing that I need to apply this to the rest of my life, too.

I need to look around more. I need to accept and process what is going on around me. It may make my writing better (you know, less boring and overly writerly), but I am certain it will make my life better. I will continue to write to communicate what I notice because that's the way I think about things. 

I know how long it took to write this blog post --while I was doing it, my son requested a glass of milk to counteract wasabi seaweed and is now playing on his iPad. How else could I have spent this time?

fate

Trigger warning: current events

It seems like you were destined to stop by and read this blog post. It's kismet. This blog post drew the iron of your soul in like a magnet ...

Okay, I'll stop. You are reading this blog post because I wrote it and you were kind enough to humor me. Thank you.

I have been thinking about fate a lot lately --predetermination, luck, chance. etc. Whatever you want to call it, I've been thinking about it a lot.

I've been working on a play based on the short story, "The Lady, or The Tiger?" by Frank R. Stockton (click on the title and it'll take you to a free copy --it's a quick read and well worth the effort). 

Although it was written in 1882, it is extremely timely given the current state of affairs in the U.S. In it, a despot has devised a system of justice where the accused determines whether he (all of the accused are men in the story) is guilty or innocent by opening one of two doors: if he opens the door with the tiger behind it, he was guilty and gets eaten; or if he opens the door with the lady behind it, he was innocent and gets married. It is unknown to the accused which door is which, but whichever he chooses, he determines his own fate.

The current geopolitical climate also makes one think long and hard on fate. In my life, I am fortunate to know some Christians who try very hard to be good Christians --my sister, and my friends Melissa and Tela, and some other friends from work. I became aware of a theological approach within Christianity called dispensationalism back in the Reagan era (I was a really strange kid with unusual interests), and it was an anomaly back in the day. It seems that dispensationalism is catching on nowadays, though. I've had many discussions with my sister recently about End Times, for example. The idea that what is happening now was foretold in the Book of Revelation and that the end of the world is coming seems to be more popular now than it has in past years.

Spoiler alert: I have a problem with the idea of fate.

In the case of the short story, the despotic King decided who would be accused and would be forced to make the choice between the tiger or the lady, and it was in his arena. He designed the system, mainly as a way to distract people into compliance but also because he had a bit of an authoritarian sadistic streak. Examined that way, it wasn't fate at all that determined whether those men lived or died --it was the King's choice and the King's system. Maybe the man didn't have much say over it, but fate? Fate means it was inevitable. That system was not inevitable --it was one man's creation, and everyone else just went along with it.

In the case of the Bible, it seems a bit like when you have a hammer, everything's a nail. A man wrote the Book of Revelation --whether you believe it was divinely inspired or not, a man wrote it. Furthermore, it is not written in specifics; it is open to interpretation. Is it now? Is it a thousand years from now? People tend to think in the timelines of their lifespan, so naturally, it must mean now, right? Furthermore furthermore, if you believe in the Bible and believe that is where it all heads and you think this all part of a bigger plan, I don't understand why anyone does anything. It makes no sense. Why be aggressive? Why be defensive? Why do anything? If it's going to happen anyway, surely no one needs to do anything. It sounds to me like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I know for certain there are people who are exploiting it for their own ends in the here and now. If you are a true believer (and there are people who purport to be who ...I'm not sure about), why not wait and see what the actual plan is? Save yourself the stress. How come only people in positions of power or with money are the ones who are permitted to act and everyone else is supposed to accept what people in positions of power come up with passively? Surely we should all act, or we should all passively accept whatever happens next. What makes them different? Pretty sure they're human, too. To me, it all smacks of man doing what man wants again in a linear-compulsive thinking sort of way with a side of greed and ego and enabling, but what do I know?

Here's what I do know: I'm responsible for my actions. I do not turn that responsibility over to anyone else. Will things happen that are beyond my control? Yup. Daily. Other things will happen that I've set in motion through choices I made at an earlier time. Others are accidents. And there are things that happen that I don't understand because I don't know everything --I'm human. The worst is watching when other people make choices that make our collective experience here on Earth worse rather than better. I can make a choice to tell them to cut it out, but I can't necessarily control what they'll do next.

But fate? Inevitability? Meh.

It is my fate to sign off now. I hope that you are fated to have a great day.

Impostor Syndrome ...

Or is that Imposter Syndrome? I'm not sure about the spelling ...

Wait.

How can you not know how to spell that? You're a writer? Really? Really? Are you sure about that?

The honest truth (redundant) is I'm not sure, and from what I've seen, there are a lot of people who feel the same way about themselves. This happens in all artistic pursuits. Am I musician if I don't get paid for making music? Am I an artist if I've never learned about all of the technical aspects of the visual arts? Am I a poet if no one reads my poems?

There are ways of handling this, though --at least, I hope there are. I am going to walk you through what I did this morning in the hopes that at least one other person can use it. It's working for me, and I hate the thought that someone would go through the feeling alone. Incidentally, this syndrome is a chronic condition, and there is no cure --only medicine to help deal with the symptoms.

______________________

To set the scene: I finished writing the first draft of a play last night. I read some plays by Tom Stoppard this morning. 

I've never written a play before. I read Tom Stoppard.

Flash forward to now: I am not curled up in the fetal position. I have, however, recently experienced an unhealthy dose of, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I am not Tom Stoppard.

I am also not Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Joe Orton, Noel Coward, Eve Ensler, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Lillian Hellman, Lorraine Hansberry, or William Shakespeare (although people aren't sure about who Shakespeare really was, so maybe I am).

I am me. 

And I wanted to write a play. Why? Because I saw a notice asking for 1-2 person plays and because the structure fit better for a story I had in my head than prose or poetry. I enjoy writing. Does it matter why? Am I hurting anyone by trying?

If I measure myself against the list of playwrights above, I'm going to suck at playwriting. I am not being mean to myself by saying this --it is fact. The reason: I am comparing myself --little ol' me --to the collected wisdom and talents of those people, all of whom did it for a long time and are widely recognized as experts. Not only that, but I'm also likely comparing what I've written to their best works. Seems unfair.

And rather than feel threatened by the fact that there are other people out there who may do the same thing better than I do, wouldn't it make more sense to look at what they did? It is time tested. What worked? While trying to avoid becoming Tom Stoppard Lite™, I can still take a close look at what worked.




Okay, that's comparing myself taken care of --I'm not Tom Stoppard, but I'm sure as heck going to try and figure out how he does what he does. Now to the big existential question ...





So what happens if I put all of this work into this play and learning how to write plays, and it goes nowhere.

No one reads it. No one sees it.

What if it is the literary equivalent of one hand clapping or the tree falling in the woods?

Was it a waste of my time? Am I pretending to be something I'm not? Under it all, and especially if a person is trying to make a living off of her art, these are biggies. 

Do you know what happens if nothing happens? 

Nothing. 

I don't disappear. I am still here. 

I still feel the same creative impulses. I always learn a lot in the process. I plan on learning more and trying more because I am not dead yet, and have I got anything better to do than try and make sense of the world and maybe communicate to some people in the process? I have a day job, because survival is important in the meantime, but I am not an impostor --or imposter, or however you spell it. 



I am a writer because I write, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as I can. Maybe, at some point along the way, I'll learn to use a dictionary to look up spelling. It's a process ...

number four

Yesterday, on talk radio: One of the morning team was offering his opinions on something a local football player was opting to do with his money. The football player (who will remain nameless, as will the announcer, because that's not the point of all of this) had decided to set up accounts for the children of a local woman who had died in order to support them as they reached adulthood. The woman had four children.

The announcer said something along these lines in describing the 'scholarships', and please forgive me if I leave out a function word or two: "She had four children. One of them has some kind of mental issues, so three children."

He was referring to how many of the children could potentially go to college when they reach young adulthood, I think. 

I saw red.

I'm not normally a call-the-station kind of girl, but I was sorely tempted. I'm settling for a blogpost. I'm not sure this would have made it to the announcer's ears anyway, as it's only tangentially related to what they were discussing --a matter of some controversy.

Three points:

1. Why couldn't that fourth child also go to college? 

Why is there this assumption that everyone with a disability looks the same, acts the same, has the same abilities and (yes) disabilities, etc.? Why shouldn't a child have a scholarship set up in his or her name, ready for him or her when the time comes? Just because that child has a particular medical diagnosis --especially when that child's siblings have had scholarships set up in their names?

2. That child is a human being, same as the siblings. To erase them from the list of children that lady left behind? She had four, so three? What was that? 

I am not disabled, but I have had many years of observing as children with disabilities are forgotten about, not accounted for, and spoken over. It still irritates me greatly. I know how I feel when people forget about me --it's the same feeling. And it's not okay.

3. I don't know the nature of the child's disabilities. I know there are all kinds of disabilities. They differ in terms of how much they impact a child's (and later, an adult's) ability to engage in life activities they may want or need to engage in. 

If the child's disabilities are such that college might not be the best option for them --and here's where I get really angry --that child does not disappear. 

When children with disabilities finish with school, they are no longer children. Children with significant disabilities are permitted to stay with their local school district to complete job and life skills training through age 21 where I live, and this is called "aging out". They reach an age where they are no longer eligible for services through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (or IDEA), and any services they receive are community-based and may be funded through various government subsidies that don't cover much (and will cover less if we move to block grants as proposed in recent legislative attempts). Services cost money. Some of these now grown-ups get jobs, but they can have limitations put on their employment. Some of them cannot hold down consistent employment for whatever reason --and I've never heard of the reason being that they don't want jobs.

Does that mean they are worth less than people with jobs? Does that mean they are worth less than people who go to college? Because  people with disabilities who cannot work or cannot go to college for whatever reason still have to eat, have to have a place to live, and have to access the world around them --and that requires resources. Why would the accounts set up in the children's names necessarily be for 'college' and not for whatever they happen to need support for, with no judgment placed that leaves one child lesser than his or her siblings?

I'm sure the announcer had not through what he was saying, and it's the sort of off-hand comment that people who don't have to think about disability make. He was concentrating more on other aspects of the story. But make no mistake: number four matters.