What's Good Comes Around
Rachel has a really interesting post, with fifty people who have influenced her life as she turns fifty. I'm considering something similar, more open in some ways and more restrictive in others. I'm following close on Rachel's heels, as we're only a couple months apart in age. I'm thinking of going with fifty things, as the mind's picture and memory of some things like the frigid caress of an ocean wave or the unexpected encounter with a seventeen year old girl's blood and gray matter splattering the inside of a small truck in a wrecking yard are inanimate yet were/are profoundly affecting. For myself, I'll work extra hard to avoid going over the same territory, so I don't gravitate towards the recent and more comfortable. I may group, for example my parents are vastly different in their effects, but there is a harmony in their affect, if discordant. The splattered truck and the brain dead young woman I met in the ER as the result of an ultimately successful suicide might be both a harsh memory, but sisters in their posthumous impact on me.
Kind of a dark example, eh? I canned a longish post on Friday iterating through my blues by paragraph. Maybe sentence and comma will be brief enough. The failed intervention situation has not improved, my friend at BD's World is going through a rough time which affects me too, our government still seems to be creeping more towards totalitarianism than back to democracy, I want to fall in love, but at least my sore throat seems to be gone. My favorite instructor, who I guess I'd consider a friend though we never hang out is getting a quintuple bypass. For my family and friends in this area, keep George Lewis in your thoughts and/or prayers. I was looking at my little medical gripes, which seem to indicate something like hyperglycemia (or mild type 2 diabetes) or mild celiac disease. All little things for me or big things for those I care about. They add up when you got the blues.
I feel the deadening, tightening of the chest which seems like it shares an apartment with weeping despair and hopeless fear. As I mentioned a few posts back, I've actually got some tools for dealing with those feelings. I know I'll feel better, and even with that creepy feeling the acute sensation is very transitory and the low energy not much more than a nuisance. How's this automotive analogy? These days I tinker a bit to tune up my engine, which seems to work better than pulling over to the shoulder and waiting for the engine to tune itself up. It would be nice to have a few more tools, but it is great to have finally learned to do the tune up. I'm still pissed I can't fully shake the blues right now, and they've been bugging me a little bit for about a month. Two wonderful concepts there. "A little bit." It always felt so big in the past. "About a month." That's not very long, at least not from my perspective. Longer than usual now, likely the longest in five years, yet it is likely shorter than any time between the ages of 7 and 42 or 43. Heck I don't think I was ever out of the blues for that long other than a time or two when I was deeply in love.
It doesn't matter when I struggle with the blues, that I'm actually happier than my old good periods. I've a new standard, thank you very much.
I've been thinking a bit about my Mom. Is that because of the blues, or contributing to them? I've been wondering if I should visit her if I do decide to leave the area. Who would it be for? Would it be a preemptive attempt to allay guilt I may have to deal with in the future, while teasing her in a deeply cruel way? "Hi Mom, I haven't visited you since I said piss off years ago, so I thought I'd stop by before I pissed off." I resort to lame wry/dry Brit humor just thinking about it. Why do I wonder about this? When I try to dive into my feelings for my mother I find nothing. Are they buried? Were they totally eroded away by an unending deluge of acid rain? I keep meaning to write a short card and the very thought makes me spiritually lethargic. I worry about giving her my return address. I'm afraid of getting sucked into her meanly furnished world of irrational and righteous resentment. I know I won't allow that to happen, I got out of it many years before I detached, but the conditioning is still there. On the up side, I'm glad the sallow Mother's Day ads are done for the year.
Even more up siding, I read again to the kids this morning. I was overly busy last week, but did have a chance to pick up a copy of the Winnie The Pooh books in a single volume for myself. They liked it so much the first time, I couldn't resist and picked another, but shorter story for today, then finished out the time with Shel Silverstein. It was as wonderful as last Monday.
I hope to get a good book about ASL (American Sign Language) for next week, and my initial library search was very encouraging. I want to find a book that touches on how it was taught surreptitiously at first. We have a hearing challenged girl in one of the classes, along with an ASL interpreter. When I get to a passage I read quickly I enjoy feeling the speed and energy of the signing which complements my reading. I told the interpreter I hoped to find such a book, and she was very excited. She told me her mother had rubella when she was pregnant (1965 I think) and would have put her in an institution had she been born deaf. As angry as I get with the brutish social devolution in this country it is good to be reminded of the good things which happen in spite of the seemingly tireless efforts the most fearful and hateful segments of our society. It seems we can't ever quite get past the commoditizing of fear by the vicious. They can't quite seem to stomp out the inherent goodness from everyone either.
Kind of a dark example, eh? I canned a longish post on Friday iterating through my blues by paragraph. Maybe sentence and comma will be brief enough. The failed intervention situation has not improved, my friend at BD's World is going through a rough time which affects me too, our government still seems to be creeping more towards totalitarianism than back to democracy, I want to fall in love, but at least my sore throat seems to be gone. My favorite instructor, who I guess I'd consider a friend though we never hang out is getting a quintuple bypass. For my family and friends in this area, keep George Lewis in your thoughts and/or prayers. I was looking at my little medical gripes, which seem to indicate something like hyperglycemia (or mild type 2 diabetes) or mild celiac disease. All little things for me or big things for those I care about. They add up when you got the blues.
I feel the deadening, tightening of the chest which seems like it shares an apartment with weeping despair and hopeless fear. As I mentioned a few posts back, I've actually got some tools for dealing with those feelings. I know I'll feel better, and even with that creepy feeling the acute sensation is very transitory and the low energy not much more than a nuisance. How's this automotive analogy? These days I tinker a bit to tune up my engine, which seems to work better than pulling over to the shoulder and waiting for the engine to tune itself up. It would be nice to have a few more tools, but it is great to have finally learned to do the tune up. I'm still pissed I can't fully shake the blues right now, and they've been bugging me a little bit for about a month. Two wonderful concepts there. "A little bit." It always felt so big in the past. "About a month." That's not very long, at least not from my perspective. Longer than usual now, likely the longest in five years, yet it is likely shorter than any time between the ages of 7 and 42 or 43. Heck I don't think I was ever out of the blues for that long other than a time or two when I was deeply in love.
It doesn't matter when I struggle with the blues, that I'm actually happier than my old good periods. I've a new standard, thank you very much.
I've been thinking a bit about my Mom. Is that because of the blues, or contributing to them? I've been wondering if I should visit her if I do decide to leave the area. Who would it be for? Would it be a preemptive attempt to allay guilt I may have to deal with in the future, while teasing her in a deeply cruel way? "Hi Mom, I haven't visited you since I said piss off years ago, so I thought I'd stop by before I pissed off." I resort to lame wry/dry Brit humor just thinking about it. Why do I wonder about this? When I try to dive into my feelings for my mother I find nothing. Are they buried? Were they totally eroded away by an unending deluge of acid rain? I keep meaning to write a short card and the very thought makes me spiritually lethargic. I worry about giving her my return address. I'm afraid of getting sucked into her meanly furnished world of irrational and righteous resentment. I know I won't allow that to happen, I got out of it many years before I detached, but the conditioning is still there. On the up side, I'm glad the sallow Mother's Day ads are done for the year.
Even more up siding, I read again to the kids this morning. I was overly busy last week, but did have a chance to pick up a copy of the Winnie The Pooh books in a single volume for myself. They liked it so much the first time, I couldn't resist and picked another, but shorter story for today, then finished out the time with Shel Silverstein. It was as wonderful as last Monday.
I hope to get a good book about ASL (American Sign Language) for next week, and my initial library search was very encouraging. I want to find a book that touches on how it was taught surreptitiously at first. We have a hearing challenged girl in one of the classes, along with an ASL interpreter. When I get to a passage I read quickly I enjoy feeling the speed and energy of the signing which complements my reading. I told the interpreter I hoped to find such a book, and she was very excited. She told me her mother had rubella when she was pregnant (1965 I think) and would have put her in an institution had she been born deaf. As angry as I get with the brutish social devolution in this country it is good to be reminded of the good things which happen in spite of the seemingly tireless efforts the most fearful and hateful segments of our society. It seems we can't ever quite get past the commoditizing of fear by the vicious. They can't quite seem to stomp out the inherent goodness from everyone either.
1 Comments:
My top ways to handle the blues:
1. Cry, then sleep.
2. A hot tub... or a workout followed by a hot tub. Worth paying the Pro Club's rates to slide into theirs. Go between 6-9pm Sat, or 9-11pm M-F when gym is fairly empty.
3. A sesh with a friend.
4. A good book, movie, or play.
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