THE MORNING AFTER THE SOLSTICE

Solstice backyard, Holbrook.

The longest day of the year. The first day of summer. JV, Emmylou, and I are sitting in the backyard enjoying the quiet (finally, the traffic has died down). JV and I are drinking red wine, reading, and reflecting. Emmylou is under her favorite tree. 

La famille V was over today cleaning out the garage. The move is on. I suppose anticipating a change is maybe the worst part of it. I don't know living with it, dealing with it, doing it, is pretty challenging, too. 

And there are so many questions, still, in my life. 

The next morning.

Outside with Emmylou now, enjoying the quiet of a peek-a-boo-sun Sunday, wind rustling in the many trees, and the incessant clicktinkle of Emmy's bird bell (not that she could catch one anyway, as she has all the invisibility and subtlety of a Mac Truck). 

I brought Cooder out for awhile. She's barely been outside in her entire life. She was sunning herself in the bedroom window and, as Emmy and I were out, I thought perhaps she would like a taste of fresh (supervised) air. 

It should be a good day. I woke up with Cooder curled in my arms purring, which is one of my favorite things, and which does not happen very often any more, Not sure if it is due to general cat cussedness to not give you what you want when you want it or another sign of her moving into the last phase. Her coat is still good, and she eats, but she doesn't move around much, and I am pretty sure she can't hear or see all that well. (I don't see that well myself.)

Today will be packing up as I am putting stuff back in storage in Connecticut in anticipation of the move. Later in the week, the cats and I plan on heading down to Brooklyn for a bit. I could also be hanging out in Rhinebeck a bit this summer, if the cats can stay in Brooklyn with M. Or I might just hang it all up and go back to SFS. 

One of the painful questions I have been asking myself is "How did I get life so terribly terribly wrong?" I didn't particularly want to get married, and I did not fully comprehend what it meant to go through life without a partner. I did want a partner, but somehow did not think I was worthy or attractive enough. I wanted all kind of things, but I didn't have a clear view of how to get any thing substantial.

And I know that depression has played a part in my life's failure. A friend asked me the other day why I went off my meds for a bit, and I really just kind of forgot how awful things could get without them. You think that has improved enough, as it did when I was working, that "Hey, I can handle this!" I should get a tattoo or a brain implant to make sure I stay on them (this is not a phenomenon unique to me). Plus, the side effects are a bit of a drag, but not, of course, as much of a drag as désepoir.

(Emmy is being the faithful retainer, sitting quietly by my side as I write, watching and listening to the birds.)

I probably mentioned this in an earlier post, but I am jonesing for books these days. I started reading Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted, and although I am not convinced that it is a must read, I want to get in some reading time before JV's brother arrives and I get to packing.

FOREIGN COUNTRY

Perhaps she did now, in this foreign country, because it was November here too or because she sensed how vulnerable people are when they have no idea what to do next, how to move forward or back.

— Gerbrand Bakker, Ten White Geese

Although this is not precisely how I am feeling, it isn't all that far off. In this current mental state, I don't always know what to do, but I do know that I need to do something, and so I do. Big or small steps. Upstairs or downstairs. Inside or outside. Change the venue, the perspective. Move toward some calm and comfort. Walk a few steps, get the blood flowing.

Much much much later ...

As Sandy Denny so trenchantly observed, "Who knows where the time goes?"

It has been an enormously difficult three or four weeks. I am not even sure when the dementors took over. Stresses in all the major stress areas. And hope can be a scarce commodity. 

Incrementally, I am getting better. I could tell you more about it, but pain isn't something you really want to share. (Okay, I wrote this about a week or so ago: Here’s what depression feels like: a slow, ice pick or pain around your heart and you collapse around that sliver of pain, almost deflating but more like a black hole.)

Here's some more Allie Brosh on the subject:

It’s disappointing to feel sad for no reason. Sadness can be almost pleasantly indulged when you have a way to justify it. You can listen to sad music and imagine yourself in a dramatic movie. You can gaze out a window while you’re crying and think, This is so sad I can’t even believe how sad this whole situation is. I bet even a reenactment of my sadness could bring an entire theater audience to tears.

But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work.

It's true. What does work is sleeping, being quiet, drinking lots of water, walking, eating well, and, for me, reading. I stagger around from book to book, like a drunk looking for the one shot that will take away the pain and get blessed with oblivion.

In the midst of all of that, I forced myself down to the Sans Souci county park where I walked a bit in the winter. More of the park was open and I found an estuary-kind of thing. It was really cool. Most of the hiking was in the shade, too, so that was great. 

And then there is the comfort of cats, who aren't digging the warming weather. Okay. Let's just see if I can get back on track here. I've missed you.

DEAD FISH

 The question of how fiction works can only be investigated by considering how the world is constituted and, most important of all, how we should live in it.

—  Peter Conrad, Celebrate the Force of Fiction, The Guardian, 16.2.08

Well, this is close to unprecedented: I was awake at 5:15 and actually got out of bed. As so many have said, “What a diff’rence a day makes.” It is not even bright and welcoming outside, so it was not the light that woke me.

Okay then. This day went the wrong way rapidly. JV and I have been plagued with coffee implement problems for the last two months. We acquired a new French press but, between the two of us, managed to lose a part in a week. And those things can be dangerous. A little too much boiling water, a little too much force plunging and the next thing you know you have a second degree burn down your arm. Yes, that was my morning. 

I feel crappy now, five hours later, although not sure if this is due to too much pain medication, the stress of the actual pain, or the muggy day (can't all be like silk, I guess). I did take a two hour nap and I could easily return to that state, but I did take care of some chores, or, at least, they are in progress here. Clothes, closet floor, and scoured litter box all drying in the intermittent sun. Wasn't that a Ramones cover ... "They're out there a-having fun in the warm intermittent sun ..." 

The next day ...

Raining now, and raining pretty hard. And, of course, I am driving to Brooklyn in about an hour. Oh well, I have James Wood's How Fiction Works  to listen to. And that should keep me amused. If that proves to be too difficult to concentrate on while driving in the rain, I can try Dicken's Barnaby Rudge (that should be delicious) or Greil Marcus' The Doors.

Yesterday was very hard, in a week of hard days emotionally. I was back in a depressed fog, which can be dangerous in several ways. When I quoted Allie Brosh on depression the day before yesterday, I did not know how close I was to stepping anywhere near that, and yet there I was found myself. 

The house in the evening.

In geologic time, I barely stopped writing this post, but in our limited-view-kind of-time, it was days ago. 

I had an emotionally challenging week, as I alluded to before. I am on somewhat more stable ground, but then again, the demons woke me up at 4:30 and bid me descend with them into darkness again. Fortunately, there is a new season of Orange is the New Black to watch, so that was compelling enough to mute the dementors. But, as of 11:45, I have been up for a long time and now it feels like nap time. 

 To continue with Allie Brosh, 

But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative, like maybe you WANT to be depressed. So the positivity starts coming out in a spray—a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope so that they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself. 

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something—it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it up. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound complete insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

It isn't something you can fight back with hope or positivity. That spray of hopefulness does not address one's depressed condition, particularly if there are contributing factors like life really sucking in the practical ways, such as "where am I going to live" and "how can I feed myself" ...

The Vietnamese coriander is loving it here.

At any rate, I am still musing on all of this. But I am going to take a well-deserved nap (clothes are on the line, JV and I went to the Farmer's Market this morning) ... and try to savor the sweetness of a beautiful day.