At least for the rest of this semester.
Today is a better day for perspective and poetry than I've had in a while. I know exactly why, though I don't have time to explore it just at the moment. Class starts soon, and I don't want to spend my whole evening in the computer lab.
Looking at Permeable (which may soon be retitled; right now I'm thinking Needle, since ambiguous noun/verbs are so much fun), I'm still dissatisfied but I can see why and have some idea what to do about it. The pacing at the start of the third stanza is all wrong; it needs more time to build to the frenetic rush of overwhelming, incomprehensible syllables. Not sure how to do that just yet, but I've got some ideas and I'm working on it.
Stanza 4 is powerful as a single line, but almost too cliched to stand alone, so I brought back a bit I'd cut from 3 and hopefully smoothed that transition a bit:
______
They’re only words, after all.
Exhaustion, indecision, insomnia;
the writers’ disease.
So I carve deep into their pathogen
until only pathos remains,
______
And I need something more there, another transition before I'm ready for cats and poetry. I know the gist of it; I need a source of perspective, something to motivate the sudden shift in tone. What's changed? More to the point, why has it changed? Did I learn something, find some peace, just give up? I think it's a little of all of that, and something more as well, something that maybe I don't understand yet and won't be able to write until I do. I think fear has something to do with it, and also maybe authority.
I just love that word. Authority. It needs its own poem. It's a hinge-point in my half-finished villanelle History Of Now. "...and then learned to say we. // It's you with my authority..." I can't remember the rest of that stanza (which means it's probably not worth keeping in its current state), but the basic idea is exploring the sentence "We are." Perhaps it would be worth breaking it out of its meter and seeing how far it could go.
Another little snatch of verse, started yesterday and will likely have some pals to travel with by the end of the week:
______
Promised myself something new,
certain stumbling blocks left behind.
Soft skin against my palms is still
soft skin, and there's nothing new about
my ink-stained hands. Stumbling
to my knees again, salty taste of spring.
Shallow, maybe, but there's so many
uses for skin.
______
Too much repetition right now, and not elegant enough to be a theme, but it feels like it has plenty of room to grow.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Going camping!
And I have about 10 minutes before I need to leave, so this'll have to be quick. I went to bed at 8 last night, got up at 7:30 this morning feeling really good. Baked bread, packed, listened to some good music and overall enjoyed myself for the last several hours. Not that this is earth-shattering or anything, it just deserved mention after that post yesterday. Have to keep things in perspective.
I've noticed alot of hyperbole and superlatives in my thoughts and language here lately. Something to ponder while I'm in the woods for the next couple days. After I get home (and shower) I'm going to try to do some last-minute birthday celebrating. Hopefully that'll work out well.
I've noticed alot of hyperbole and superlatives in my thoughts and language here lately. Something to ponder while I'm in the woods for the next couple days. After I get home (and shower) I'm going to try to do some last-minute birthday celebrating. Hopefully that'll work out well.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Dutifully blogging another sleepless night
I gave up on sleep at 5:30, thinking that there are plenty of people who regularly get up an hour before the sun. I'm not particularly thrilled to join them this morning, but at least I'm taking the time to record some of my thoughts here.
I have a pretty bleak opinion of humanity overall. It disturbs me to realize that this is so. I make light of my pessimism regularly, and though I can be perky and chipper in certain situations, anyone who knows me at all is well aware that, in general, I have a negative outlook on life and the future and pretty much everything. I've understood this about myself for long enough that I'm not particularly phased by it, and tend to think of myself as keeping it in check by being uncompromisingly positive on the topic of people. It's fundamentally disturbing to realize that that particular optimism is, at least at this point in time, a facade. I'm faking it, and poorly enough that I'm not even fooling myself right now. I don't like most people most of the time, I can't think of a single person I like all of the time, and I distrust pretty much everyone. I'm ashamed to read back over that, and that shame creates a tidy little coda for the thought: most especially, I don't like me.
Perhaps this is a temporary thing, one of those perspectives that will shift with my mood. I certainly hope so. I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that being depressed doesn't make me a failure as a human being. I've taken to telling myself that it's okay to be kinda withdrawn and mopey, because I'm fundamentally kind and generous. But is that even true? If I fail in my actions, if I'm hostile and withdrawn (and I have been for the past couple weeks), and my heart is all twisted up with anger at humanity in general and the people around me in particular... Is there anything good in me at all?
So often I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of simply being alive, of caring for myself from day to day. I resent the people who get to share that burden with their spouses and parents and lovers. I desperately want a partner, but I can barely trust that my closest friends actually mean it when they say they want to spend time with me. I've got this little lecture playing constantly at the back of my mind that starts off as affirming insight and ends up as bitter judgment. It's twisty and not-quite verbal, but a rough approximation would go like this: Am I taking care of myself today? If I don't take care of me, who will? I can't expect anyone to give me anything, and everybody leaves sooner or later, it's only a question of time, and I'm counting on other people way too much, they're going to see how needy I am and when I cling all I'm really doing is pushing them away, and oh god am I pushing them away even faster by being alternately needy and withdrawn, they must see through this and everyone's insecure, life's hard for them too, so they don't want to hear how bad it is for me right now, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all, just shut up already you stupid little girl, nobody cares.
It would be fair to say that this is unhelpful. I try to stop myself each time I catch myself on these familiar little trails, but I've been failing pretty spectacularly here lately. Maybe writing it out like this will give me some distance from it. It's exhausting enough to be filled up with this vitriol without having to be on the receiving end and be shamed into silence over feeling any of it.
So in conclusion, for anyone reading this who's frustrated with my negativity and moping: me too. I wish I could promise it will get better soon, but I honestly have no idea when, or even if, and I suspect that even if I perk up for a while I'll find myself back here eventually. For what little it's worth, I am trying to repay the kindness I'm given, but I'm doing so with a heavy, bitter heart, so it's likely to seem flat and insincere. Yes, I'm fed up with you and everyone else. Yes, I'm achingly lonely. No, you can't fix it, but your patient company is the only thing that actually cuts through this mess and lets me feel anything other than bitter and lonely, even if it only feels that way about 25% of the time right now.
I have a pretty bleak opinion of humanity overall. It disturbs me to realize that this is so. I make light of my pessimism regularly, and though I can be perky and chipper in certain situations, anyone who knows me at all is well aware that, in general, I have a negative outlook on life and the future and pretty much everything. I've understood this about myself for long enough that I'm not particularly phased by it, and tend to think of myself as keeping it in check by being uncompromisingly positive on the topic of people. It's fundamentally disturbing to realize that that particular optimism is, at least at this point in time, a facade. I'm faking it, and poorly enough that I'm not even fooling myself right now. I don't like most people most of the time, I can't think of a single person I like all of the time, and I distrust pretty much everyone. I'm ashamed to read back over that, and that shame creates a tidy little coda for the thought: most especially, I don't like me.
Perhaps this is a temporary thing, one of those perspectives that will shift with my mood. I certainly hope so. I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that being depressed doesn't make me a failure as a human being. I've taken to telling myself that it's okay to be kinda withdrawn and mopey, because I'm fundamentally kind and generous. But is that even true? If I fail in my actions, if I'm hostile and withdrawn (and I have been for the past couple weeks), and my heart is all twisted up with anger at humanity in general and the people around me in particular... Is there anything good in me at all?
So often I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of simply being alive, of caring for myself from day to day. I resent the people who get to share that burden with their spouses and parents and lovers. I desperately want a partner, but I can barely trust that my closest friends actually mean it when they say they want to spend time with me. I've got this little lecture playing constantly at the back of my mind that starts off as affirming insight and ends up as bitter judgment. It's twisty and not-quite verbal, but a rough approximation would go like this: Am I taking care of myself today? If I don't take care of me, who will? I can't expect anyone to give me anything, and everybody leaves sooner or later, it's only a question of time, and I'm counting on other people way too much, they're going to see how needy I am and when I cling all I'm really doing is pushing them away, and oh god am I pushing them away even faster by being alternately needy and withdrawn, they must see through this and everyone's insecure, life's hard for them too, so they don't want to hear how bad it is for me right now, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all, just shut up already you stupid little girl, nobody cares.
It would be fair to say that this is unhelpful. I try to stop myself each time I catch myself on these familiar little trails, but I've been failing pretty spectacularly here lately. Maybe writing it out like this will give me some distance from it. It's exhausting enough to be filled up with this vitriol without having to be on the receiving end and be shamed into silence over feeling any of it.
So in conclusion, for anyone reading this who's frustrated with my negativity and moping: me too. I wish I could promise it will get better soon, but I honestly have no idea when, or even if, and I suspect that even if I perk up for a while I'll find myself back here eventually. For what little it's worth, I am trying to repay the kindness I'm given, but I'm doing so with a heavy, bitter heart, so it's likely to seem flat and insincere. Yes, I'm fed up with you and everyone else. Yes, I'm achingly lonely. No, you can't fix it, but your patient company is the only thing that actually cuts through this mess and lets me feel anything other than bitter and lonely, even if it only feels that way about 25% of the time right now.
Monday, March 08, 2010
(updated version, for Laura)
Permeable
When I was five my mother called
old women to lift my shirt and say
german measles,
though the doctor only said measles
with a needle in my arm.
There were so many:
Penicillin in my hip and a dead leg
for three days, no bananas for fifteen years,
no cats and a bottle of benadryl in every room
with a k on top, and so saying
pediatrician
was easier than saying hero.
They saved me
from pneumonia, strep throat, asthma, chronic
sinusitis; pneumonia again, blood in my lungs, tuberculosis
tests (like everything else, so many needles in my arm);
ear infection, throat infection, lung infection: idiopathic;
pneumonia again, and every other winter a week in bed,
doctors' orders, pill bottles lined up and I speak
pseudoephedrine, diphenhydramine, acetaminophen, sertraline,
until the words come easily; depersonalization, anxiety,
suicidal ideation, comorbid major depression.
They’re only words, after all.
But when I carve deep into their pathogen
only pathos remains.
It tells me to gather up bananas,
cats and poetry,
laugh at the pollen on my grave.
(What do you think? I'm worried that in cutting so much I might have lost what little narrative thread I started with, but I'm not sure I liked what I started with all that much. In truth I'm too grumpy and guarded for poetry today, but I had to have something for class tonight.)
When I was five my mother called
old women to lift my shirt and say
german measles,
though the doctor only said measles
with a needle in my arm.
There were so many:
Penicillin in my hip and a dead leg
for three days, no bananas for fifteen years,
no cats and a bottle of benadryl in every room
with a k on top, and so saying
pediatrician
was easier than saying hero.
They saved me
from pneumonia, strep throat, asthma, chronic
sinusitis; pneumonia again, blood in my lungs, tuberculosis
tests (like everything else, so many needles in my arm);
ear infection, throat infection, lung infection: idiopathic;
pneumonia again, and every other winter a week in bed,
doctors' orders, pill bottles lined up and I speak
pseudoephedrine, diphenhydramine, acetaminophen, sertraline,
until the words come easily; depersonalization, anxiety,
suicidal ideation, comorbid major depression.
They’re only words, after all.
But when I carve deep into their pathogen
only pathos remains.
It tells me to gather up bananas,
cats and poetry,
laugh at the pollen on my grave.
(What do you think? I'm worried that in cutting so much I might have lost what little narrative thread I started with, but I'm not sure I liked what I started with all that much. In truth I'm too grumpy and guarded for poetry today, but I had to have something for class tonight.)
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