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.

SIMPLY LOST TRACK

Who knew, living mostly in cities in this life, that birds made so much fucking, (and I do mean that), noise? All night long. I know it is Spring and all, but I was unaware of the cacophony that accompanies egg production in birds. Crazy. It’s not unpleasant and it is somewhat amusing, but it does make sleep challenging. Particularly when I am sad and stressed and not so likely to fall asleep anyway.

On the other hand, the weather is sublimelimelimelime! Caressing, breezy, hopeful. Sumptuous! Delicious! And the peonies are starting to bloom here. I didn't anticipate this treat chez V.

Having laughed to tears at her website, I waited months to borrow the Brooklyn Public Library copy of Allie Brosh's book Hyperbole and a Half  Perhaps because I struggle so with depression, I am completely in love with this book. So much of it is perspicacious, resonant and true. And her ability to construct stories out of her experiences is fresh. I could quote so much of, and I well might here, but here's a start: I waited for my turn 

It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so that things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are ...

At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything anymore—even the things you love, even fun things—and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

That's enough for now. I am not feeling great and I think I will repair to the bed for some cats and Proust. First I have to go wash my feet as I am well into barefoot and flip-flop season. JV remarked tonight that my feet reminded him of his grandmother's, who preferred to garden barefooted. We're all peasants. 

HOPING TO BE CLOTHED

You open your heart up to this sort of thing. You lay there naked, hoping to be clothed.

–      Jimmy Page

That sure seems like life to me. As I understand it, you come into this world naked and there the game begins.

I am on a Jimmy Page tear. And it was one of those days where I missed Carl so very, very much. I desperately wanted someone I could call and rant about Led Zeppelin. There just aren’t that many people out there open for a random rave session about music. Carl and I never got to discussing and dissecting Jimmy or the Zep.

I never really liked Led Zeppelin back when I was a kid. I was alienated from their bullshit machismo and all the utter negative nonsense about women. There was no way into their music for me. It wasn’t FOR me. I was excluded, at least on the levels I had emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual access to at that time. And all that silly Robert Plant panting and what not. Even then I thought, "Oh get a life." That is male posturing for males. I don't think the testosterone fueled and maturity impaired should be exposed to the inane, destructive, whiny, misogynistic lyrics, lest they take them out of the blues context and mistake them for some kind of (romantic) reality. We had a recent tragic example of this line of not-thinking far too recently.

But the music. The damn production and arrangements and the stellar musicianship. NOW THAT is on a whole other plane. For mature audiences only.

I was on my walk, heading out to send a belated birthday card to my brother, when I hit play on Whole Lotta Love. The brilliance of Jimmy Page's guitar, and then layers of sonic nuance did bring actual tears to my eyes. For true. I thought, "Who would think, looking at the middle-aged walker on this fine, sunny day, that she is crying over Led Zeppelin and the guitar genius of Jimmy Page ?" I wanted to reach out to my lifelong pals, who were all Zep fans back in the day, including my birthdayed brother, and confess that I had seen the light. But I figured it was too silly and other people have meaningful lives, so this kind of talk is relegated to those tequila and bullshit sessions once happens into every once in awhile. 

I have the whole box set of Led Zeppelin, so I have plenty to keep me amused for the week. 

Then back to Jimmy's quote, well, getting clothed, knowing what clothes to wear in the who-am-I sense, is quite the challenge. And opening your heart to life ... that's even harder.

It was a rough day for me. JV's sister dropped by to pick up the contract for selling the house. She and I had a long, tearful, rambling conversation about family, life, challenges, and change. It wasn't how I planned to spend the day, but sometimes, if there's no compelling reason like work, you just need to go with it.

And then JV hisself helped me pot those herbs I bought in Brooklyn and gave me a sanding lesson on one of my refinishing projects. He does such beautiful work, I want to learn exactly how he does it. I'll try to take pictures. 

Meanwhile, it is late. Emmylou and Cooder are waiting for me. And I have fallen behind in Proust, so I will have to play catch up these next couple of days. Here's some good night music, Ry Cooder and V.M.Bhatt, A Meeting by The River.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE AND APPREHENSION

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.


— Italo Calvino

Now, there's some fun to end your weekend or cheer you on a Monday. I really shouldn't be writing or thinking about the people inferno as I have 40 pages of Proust to read tonight, and it's already 11:43. Listening to Elvis Costello singing Joni Mitchell's Edith and The Kingpin. Good late night music. 

I've been listening to a lot of music today. I have a new, unfortunate addiction, in the form of a new game of Solitaire and I spent far too much time today just spacing out, listening to music, and playing solitaire. Eventually, and I do mean eventually, I got dressed, did some laundry, and then went to work on the refinishing projects. Getting that paint off of the oak chair is such a mess. It gets caked and smudges and ugh. I'm getting close to the next phase of that, sanding I think. Hopefully, JV will have some time to coach me.

Tomorrow, the contract is signed for the house. Still not sure when I'll have to get out. I bought some herb plants at the Farmer's Market yesterday, as I mentioned. Guess I will try to buy a box of some sort so that I can take them ... somewhere ... 

We've moved on to Toots and the Maytals, Monkey Man. I don't recommend watching the video.