Month: February 2022

For years now I’ve thought of writing improv poetry at Farmer’s Markets. It sounds part terrifying and part good experience. It could be great practice to task myself with expression under certain parameters. However, I am afraid that my anxiety aphasia will kick in under that kind of pressure, and I will end up being unable to express myself well or on paper or at all.

I’ve heard and read about people doing improv poetry before, but I’ve never experienced it. There are so many ways it could be structured. The folks in the following article (link) asked to be given a topic, then they composed their poems on old fashioned type writers. In front of them was a sign saying: “Poems: Your Topic. Your Price.”

https://poeticchampions.com/tag/ballard-market/

I’ve considered announcing my intentions with a sign that says, “Poetry on Demand”, in which case I could call my spot the POD. “Welcome to the POD!”

But the word “demand” doesn’t feel very comfortable to me, so I considered, “Poetry at Your Polite Request”, or “PAYPR”. (Pronounced “paper”). “Come get some PAYPR!” my sign might say.

If I write the poems for free, or for voluntary donations, I might call the station “Gifting Random Ordinary Words.” GROW. “Come GROW with me.” Hmmm. Could be interpreted as sexual? If so, then no. This might be better: “Welcome to the GROW Zone!” Maybe that’s not so great either.

Another title I came up with reminds me of my “Word Fertilizer” theme: “A Piece of Original Poetry,” or APOOP. “Come over here for A POOP!”

I’ll keep thinking.

I organized my journals recently. They come in many different shapes, sizes, and formats, and though the entries don’t always follow a chronological order, they are now all in clear plastic bins, roughly grouped by year.

During the sorting process, slips or folded sheets of paper would occasionally slide out of a book or spiral binder. It was in this way that I found a story I thought I had lost. Written during the time my sister and I were roommates in the University District of Seattle in the early-to-mid 90’s, it was printed in the pixelated dot matrix format of the printer I used back then. I typed everything I wrote into my “Mac-in-the-Box”, a tiny computer/monitor combo about the size of shoebox (a large one, for boots) turned sideways.

I may have these writings saved on a “floppy disc” somewhere, a hard square-shaped, flattened Wonderbread slice-sized piece of plastic that is neither floppy nor the round shape of a disc. But even if I found it, I don’t know how I would ever get the data off of it. The lesson is to keep printed copies of everything I write.

The story in question, called Value Village, brought back many images, memories, and feelings – flashes of walking alone in the dark, sitting on buses, moving around in the world amongst mostly strangers. I Googled the locations of Value Village in Seattle, so I could go back and visit the one my sister worked at so long ago, but none of them seemed to be the right one . Did that particular branch of the store close down? Is the building still standing? Did I imagine the whole thing?

Please find the story, Value Village, posted under Stories (in the Writings category).

Seasonal depression always catches up to me slowly and sneakily. But by February, I am deep in it. I have found medication and routines that help, but I can still feel the pain of it.

I watched a show on Amazon Prime the other day – Raising Bipolar – about children who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the challenges faced by them and their families in living happy and healthy lives.

I was particularly struck by the story of a 10-year-old girl, one of the older kids featured. Video of her as  a preschooler shows her growling and clenching her fists, throwing furniture, and hitting people.  After years of therapy and medication she seemed much more stable, so her doctor tapered down her meds, which resulted in a relapse; yelling and crying uncontrollably and retreating under the covers of her bed.

She’s more stable these days, and she can recognize her symptoms of depression.  The cameras show the girl’s sweet younger brother standing outside her bedroom asking, “Can I come in?” Her answer from behind the door is a calm and sincere-sounding, “I don’t want to hurt you.” It’s not said as a threat but as an acknowledgement that she sometimes can’t control her behavior.

I often think of an anecdote about a doctors conference concerning depression.  An Indian doctor gave a presentation in which he described how most depressive patients in India present with physical symptoms, compared to American patients, whose depression is most often presented with mental symptoms. At the Q&A part of the presentation, an American doctor commented that people in India tend to somaticize depression. He said it as if that was the inferior way to be depressed. But the Indian doctor’s response was that Americans seem to psychologize depression, implying that maybe Americans have it backwards.

That made a huge impression on me, because, of course, the mental and the physical go together. A mental illness may have its origins in the mind or in the brain, one of which is thought-based, and the other which is body-based. But we conflate the body and mind together, when sometimes it might be good to look at them separately.

For example, one of my winter depressions was particularly harsh. Getting out of bed was a struggle. I would drag myself to work, but when I came back home, I would fall onto the couch, cover myself with a blanket and shiver, unable to get warm, sleeping my only relief.

I was feeling terrible about myself, knowing there were things I should be doing, but being unable to move. I starting thinking my character was faulty, that I should have the will-power to push through. These negative thoughts would form a mental cloud over me, until I thought about the somaticize versus psychologize concept. It seemed clear that I was in physical pain; my muscles ached, and my body felt stiff, heavy, and cold to the bone. It was one of the first times I acknowledged that my depression might have its origin in physical pain.

With an additional medication, those particular symptoms of depression abated considerably. And in the meantime, before the meds kicked in, I reminded myself to be nice to me, to recognize that my body was having a hard time, and that it was no excuse to berate myself.

When I have a cold, or I’ve twisted my ankle, or I have a painful sunburn I don’t tell myself I’m worthless. Why should I do that when my body is suffering from some other condition, like depression?

Sometimes my depression seems to have more thought-based origins. Disappointment, anger, twisting of thoughts into complete negatives.  In that case, I need to recognize that my mental challenges don’t have to prevent me from participating in what physical things I can handle and might help pick me up.

I was touched by the girl in the documentary film, by her maturity. Instead of yelling at her brother to go away, some part of her could appreciate that he loves her, cares about her, and that she cares about him, too. Instead of going to anger to protect herself, yelling at him to go away, she had the skills to make a decision that protects her and others when she knows her limitations. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I’ve been able to do that more as I get older. I know that I can handle a situation within certain parameters. For example, I can go shopping when I’m depressed, but not just any kind. Depressed me can shop for food with a list in my hand. But if someone would ask me to go shopping for clothes, maybe go out for coffee, check out a few different stores, depressed me might have to decline. I would want to say yes, and maybe worry that the person who invited me would feel rejected, but I know that the unknown, the socializing, the having to relate on an emotional level, the need to project empathy, and sorting through lots of stimuli, would get to me after awhile. And though I might be able to keep my pain from affecting other people, the toll it would take to hide it would wear on me and do some sort of damage.

I’m glad I can recognize the pattern now. February is always difficult for me. But I try not to let the physical pain of depression, so sneaky and hard to recognize, soak into my mental/ emotional state. I practice modified hibernation and wait for spring.

As a person without a traditional job, I feel a bit lost. I don’t have an employer  who expects me to be somewhere at a certain time, to accomplish specific tasks daily and weekly. I have no supervisor to give me feedback or train me, no co-workers a cubicle away to help guide my activities. When I had a job, my time was full of directions and instructions that resulted in a beginning, middle, and end for each day. Monday through Friday I would leave with an experience all framed up in a picture called “my time at work”, until I had hundreds of them stacked up in the storage of my memory, each one barely distinguishable from the other, and none of them a work of art. But they were neatly packaged and organized, which gave some sort of comfort, if not personal value.

Fast forward through a year of purposeful chaos, life being turned upside down & back again, and now I live in a new town, in a new house, with no fixed daily routine, no need to wake up at a certain time, and no physical connections to friends, family or co-religionists to suggest how to and when to spend my time. I am completely free to stay in my pajamas all day or eat a blueberry muffin for lunch at 11:35am because I suddenly remembered there was one left in the freezer. I can let the dirty clothes pile up until I have no clean pants – and suffer no negative consequences. I can watch TV all day on a whim. If I have a headache or leg muscle pain or depression heaviness, I don’t have to force myself to do anything – no social interaction or task accomplishment is expected of me, so I can sleep or read a book all day if I want.

I suppose having the time to rest and heal is a good thing, but it often feels more like I’m stagnating.

And then, when I feel well and energetic, I tend to flit around from whim to whim without goals or direction. I feel like I might float away on any little breeze and have no way to get back to my center.

Thinking of this situation, I am reminded of when I cared for a young child about 10 years ago. I will call this child Little.

Little was (and is) the daughter of a dear friend. I started watching her at my house a few days a week when she was a baby, and as she got older, I began caring for her every weekday. It became clear to me that Little needed structure, as all children do. Her mind would flit from desire to desire, and trying to fulfill every single one was exhausting and ultimately impossible.

Here’s a general example of how a day with Little could go:

Little says she wants to paint. So while she plays with Legos, I prep for painting. I cover the table with plastic garbage bags, taping down the corners. I set out paints, water, paper, brushes and paint smocks. But Little has changed her mind. Now she wants to go outside. So we get our shoes and coats on and go out. When I suggest we go in for lunch, she doesn’t want to, so when we finally go inside, she’s very hungry and tired. I now have to undo all the paint preparation so we can eat at the table. But no! Little wants to paint now! So I have to be firm about it being lunch time – I’ve waited too long to feed her, she really needs a nap, and here comes the tantrum meltdown. We finally eat some lunch, but her bed is covered in plastic blocks which she doesn’t help put away, and bathroom time and book time go roughly, with actual sleeping a long and hard time coming.

Indulging her whims has sidestepped her needs, and I’m left with hours worth of damage control.

That’s just an example – not an exact detail of a day. But it reminds me of my current situation, in which I am both the toddler and the caregiver. My inner toddler is running from shiny thing to shiny thing, while my inner adult is sideswiped by the enthusiasm, loving this energetic spirit, but not helping it in the long run by indulging it, letting it call all the shots.

In the case of Little, I learned that I needed to have a plan for every day. Hour 1: welcome, chat, play, eat breakfast. Hour 2: Inside project. Hour 3: Have a snack. Leave the house to play in a playground or store. Hour 4: Lunch. Hour 5: Nap. Hour 6: Wake up, eat a snack, play. Hour 7: Indoor project or game or play outside. Hour 8: Clean up and get picked up by Mom or Dad.

One thing I just realized is that no matter what time it was – meal/snack time, project time, even nap time and pickup time – it was all playtime. That’s how toddlers learn. Lunch time was a time to play with food. Little would painstakingly assemble her sandwich, getting bread from the bag, spreading mayonnaise, adding slices of lunch meat, cheese, tomato, pickle, lettuce. She would carefully , slowly cut her sandwich in half with a butterknife. Then she would pull her sandwich apart and eat it from the inside out.

Playtime was also playtime, of course, but so was cleanup time, complete with cleanup time song and high 5’s when done.

 Even pickup time was playtime. Almost every day, when we would hear Mom’s car arrive in the driveway, Little would “hide” (a telltale blanket squirming and giggling on the couch), and when Mom came through the door I would have to give her the bad news.

“I’m so sorry, M,” I would say, “But I can’t find Little.”

Of course, M would be very upset at this. “That’s terrible news!” she would say. “I’m so sad. I need to sit down.” And then she would sit on the giggly couch blanket which would suddenly fly off to reveal a child  underneath. “I’m here!” Then M and I would celebrate Little’s return. Variations of that scenario happened almost every pickup time for months and maybe a whole year.

So here I am, both toddler and adult, tasked with constructing days that are productive, playful, and meaningful. I’m excited that I have so much time to do things I didn’t do much when I worked. I can write, read, watch Master Classes online, make sketches of garden ideas, spray paint metal washers for a wind chime, experiment with baking gluten-free bread, go online to buy furniture for our new house, check out Facebook, play online games. Whee! Fun!

But I also have to remember that I am an adult, with responsibilities to myself, my family, and my community. I have to clean up the messes I make, wash dishes and clothing, organize working spaces, pay bills, make meals, shop for food and other necessities.

Maybe I need to treat myself like a toddler for awhile, while this job-free, newly awakened side of me matures. I need to lovingly give myself structure, but remember to keep a spirit of play. I’ll work on my writing, gardening, and crafting. And when I’m ready, I’ll throw my hiding-blanket aside and say, “I’m here!”

I wrote this in 2019 and edited it for clarity in 2022.

I’ve been stuck lately. There are different ways to describe it – hopeless, depressed, attenuated to failure.

Another way could be numb – to creativity, to possibility of change and fulfilling my potential. I go to my daily job from 8:30am to 3pm, maybe run an errand after work, go home, make dinner, and do very little the rest of the evening until I can finally put myself to bed with the justification that I have to get up for work the next day.

Somehow I manage to get the BARE minimum of my other duties accomplished. I do enough laundry to have something clean to wear, shop in little bits here and there to keep a modicum of food on hand, shower at least every other day. As far as my Baha’i responsibilities are concerned, there are assembly duties I have literally been avoiding for years, including archiving old papers, calling National to ask about assembly business, updating membership and records. Guilt weighs heavy on me, but is only partially why I have so little energy to move forward.

Doug sees my struggles. He’s amazingly patient with me – more than I am with myself. He found a person online who offers life coaching and encouraged me to give her a call. I have been considering it, but she charges $350 for a 1 hour phone call. And though the hour may give me some of the direction and momentum I need, there are several reasons I drag my feet.

1. $350 is about what I get paid for 3 6-hour days at work. That’s 18 hours at my day gig for 1 hour of her time. I get spending anxiety as it is, and given our money situation, I don’t feel good about this ratio of input to output. Yes, due to not having health insurance this year, we have some savings. But that will be spent on my dental implant, plus I would really like to replace the tub in the girls’ house, since it is gross, at best, and full of health-damaging black mold at worst.
2. The Baha’i writings talk about asking God for help – a version of “ask and ye shall receive”. It feels like I am betraying God, like I don’t have full faith in him if I ask someone else for help. 

Then again, I am reminded of the joke about the guy whose home is in the path of flood waters. People come to his door to warn him and offer to drive him to a safe zone. But his answer is, “God will save me.” Then, when the water enters his home, a rescuer in a boat comes by to pick him up. But the man refuses to go, saying “God will save me.” The flood is so bad that eventually the homeowner has to climb onto the roof to escape the waters. A helicopter comes to take him off the roof, but again he stays put, saying, “God will save me.” The waters finally drown him, and when the man dies and goes to heaven, he confronts God. “Why didn’t you save me?” God says, “What do you mean? I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter!”

I believe that a Divine Force created human beings. And I believe that Life, as an emanation of this force, offers innumerable lessons for humanity’s education.

Sometimes life feels so complicated, with too many unrelated parts to make them work together coherently. Then again, the human body is made of many seemingly unrelated parts that all work together quite wonderfully.

The human body is one of my favorite metaphors.

So, with that, I take my brain, with its current pre-migraine sensations, and my strangely tweaky left shoulder, and my skin, basking in warmth and reveling in the cooling breeze, and I ask God, the Creator, to take these disparate elements that make up this person I have been made to be, and to move them into a fully functioning, Self-actualized form.

And to please help me recognize the modes of transportation that have been divinely sent to help me get to where I need to be.

I remember hearing this story as a child.

It’s harvest time, and the ants are working hard to gather food. But the grasshopper doesn’t help and instead plays his violin, sings songs, and generally enjoys himself. Then, of course, when winter comes, the grasshopper doesn’t have stores of food and must turn to the ants to be fed and to survive. My young self came to two conclusions:

1. The ants were good – industrious, forward-thinking, practical.

2. The grasshopper was bad – lazy, disobedient, disrespectful of the serious and wise.

As an adult, I think of this story differently. It occurs to me that the grasshopper is not being lazy, but is in fact showing integrity and courage by being himself. He is a creative who brings forth melodies from the invisible realm. He crafts the magic of music, which speaks to hearts and lifts spirits.

The ants are more inclined toward physical preparation and logical action, and this has the positive result of allowing them to physically survive lean times. But I am sad now, thinking of how they shamed the grasshopper for expressing his inner truth, and then piled on more shame when they reluctantly fed him in the winter. Yes, the version I remember features a begrudgingly righteous ant population, obligated to help a fellow creature, but not happy about it. Considering the gruesomeness of many of old morality-based stories, I wouldn’t be surprised if older versions have the grasshopper starving to death and the ants carrying away the grasshopper’s dead body once spring arrives.

It’s an unfortunate situation when two different views resent each other to the point where they start to deny some of their own strengths. One of the ants’ strengths, for example, is that they are communal. They share with and protect each other, allowing all members to contribute their share and distributing everything equally.*

It seems that a group based on collective well-being could very easily accept the role of feeding an individual who contributes to society in a way that does not involve the gathering of that food. For example, there are ants whose jobs aren’t food-based: they breed and raise baby ants, maintain tunnels, etc. I assume these individuals are fed just as well as the food-gatherers.*

If the ants were open to it, the grasshopper could contribute to their group by being allowed to share his unique talents with them. A monotonous, back-breaking job can be made infinitely more pleasant and even easy when music is allowed to be part of the atmosphere.

But when the ants patently reject musical expression as a valid way to spend one’s time, the grasshopper is less likely to share his work with the ants. And that, in turn, makes it so the ants don’t realize the beauty and uplifting magic of music.

So, feeling mutual resentment, the two species, with their two different (albeit highly complementary) ways of being, isolate from each other, imagining themselves to be in greater opposition than they really are. Instead of being allowed to appreciate and benefit from each other, their unhappiness increases (in part, ironically, from not being with each other!), and the spiral of dysfunction continues to grind everybody into misery.

The ants seem to have the upper hand morally, since their actions ensure the physical survival of all those they allow to partake of their spoils. (The unspoiled spoils, of course) That is because physical things can be easier for us corporeal creatures to acknowledge. But the creative realm (which I here equate with the spiritual) is just as essential for us to be our healthiest and best selves.

It occurs to me that I may need to write a children’s story that addresses some of these issues, because children embody the lessons in these stories more than we might understand.

Case in point: I am a 53-year-old woman who has, at every turn, denied my creative tendencies for the sake of more “practical” endeavors. In college, I chose to pursue science, even though sometimes I found the study thereof to be spirit-deadening. I enjoyed being in college plays so much that I considered being an actor. But I rejected the “starving artist” idea for an alternative that promised consistent wages.

The only thing that kept me happy or even sane as I studied science was seeing it as a metaphor for spiritual things and writing, either in journals or on now-lost pieces of paper that were what I could find at the time.

Even now, after I’ve filled scores of journals with writing, written hundreds of stories and poems, and worked at jobs that were not my calling, I still have had an inscrutable barrier keeping me away from the thought that I could actually become a full-time writer.

It’s time for me to get my inner ants and grasshoppers to become friends.

*I am not an ant expert; these statements may not be entirely accurate. But I think they contain some truth, and they help with the analogy.