Commence Random Weeping

After a few hours sleep, hopelessly awake at 5:30 am, I spent much of this morning under the effect of television paralysis, then went to take a shower for work. Somewhere in there I managed to clean up dried cat doodies and vomit from the floor.

I went to take a shower for work, that "you stupid, stupid girl" voice off and on. The ill feelings have gone from a generalized absence-of-God sort of feeling, as described in a recently previous post, to that clawing, agitated demon feeling.

I can't settle on anything - not a chore, not a song, not a thought, not a television station. I flip back and forth and all over the place.

I drove to work, arrived to a full parking lot with a stone in my gut. I was supposed to work a party today, along with another waitress, someone who has been there a while (longer than me) and that I trust to be of significant help for the event, so, I wasn't worried about it at all. When I came in, I found out that it was only supposed to be a "twelve top," which means, if you are an outsider to the profession and would have to guess, we were having twelve people (not a hard guess, is it?). My colleague - again, an experienced "server" (snooty name for "waitress" that we're supposed to use) - felt she could handle it herself (she could, in fact, and I probably could've as well - there was no need for the both of us) and was upset that she had to share it (and the tips), no offense to me (none taken).

I was so down in the dumps (what a ridiculous phrase for the mammoth beast), thinking things like how insane it is that people are going in to steakhouses and feeding their fat selves when there are people starving in the world (which is true, whether you are depressed or not; everyone should think about that now and then), and there was Christmas music playing and...I ended up in the office with another random weep.

The bartender came in at one point and told me that I looked the type to blow the place up and to let her know so she could leave before I did anything. I think she was just trying to cheer me up with some humor. It worked a little.

The manager came in and hugged me and told me to go home and to call my psychiatrist and then to call her later and let her know I'm okay, meaning not-dead, I think. I don't think she expects okay as in okay-okay.

So I came home and immediately felt like a fuck up for losing my shift.

It's not like I don't want to be at work - this isn't like teaching, I really do like my line of work. It suits me very well. I come home and bitch about stuff, but I like this so much better than teaching. We live in an area of high poverty, so tips aren't great; it should pay better, and I shouldn't have to work so many hours for so little money, but - the work, I like.

Fuck.

Last Rites

Too frail for this world,
long suffering be damned.

Now remains words, stone -
bring me no plastic flowers.

Put a lamb atop my marker,
let it wear down like knuckles, like bone.

A hundred years or more
and I'll be found, fine.

This pillow here is soft -
my scabs will fall off,
elbows, knees smooth as satin.

Name me a wife and mother,
frame a picture with roses.

Stop the clocks and cover the mirrors.

Make friends with death and kiss
your dear sister; she's done.





(photos taken in a very old cemetery in Rocky Mount, NC, with no personal significance to me other than that I saw the cemetery, visited it, and took the photos - oh, and got the idea for this poem)

Mood Waves

So yesterday was a depressed day, again, full on with Random Weeping. I had a double yesterday, which means I had two shifts; I was there for lunch then back again for dinner.

I arrived for my first shift only to find the front doors locked. Instead of going around to the back or even the side where I could surely go in, I went and sat on a bench in the cold and cried.

Returning for my dinner shift, I went to a long back room used for large parties and cried. That was a real weeping session.

The way I would have put it, if anyone had asked, was that it felt like God had gone behind a cloud.

And there were just suckish events yesterday which spurred me on in the direction of general life loathing, such as standing up and banging my head. Little things like that which you tally up when you're depressed.

Then today I popped up quite normal. Today has been just fine and I'm sure the new manager who inquired as to my state of mind yesterday might be a little confused as he continues to acclimate to his new staff, which includes me.

Things Fall Apart (not a book review)

First, random pet note: Some people like to think outside the box; some pets like to doodie outside the box.

Today I had a day off. M had to work, so I was by myself, which could be a good thing, to have some alone time to myself, but for me it wasn't. It seems like when I have any time alone, which I have a lot of lately because M and I are on different schedules, I am paralyzed. Things I want to do, from chores to errands to phone calls to friends don't get done. I do a few things - a load of laundry, a trip to the grocery store - but am not nearly as productive as I would want to be, or would think I should be able to be, as I have time to be. How do I explain this nothing? It's not just rest, actually it's more like restlessness. I wander around the house, picking up random things to take upstairs or back downstairs. I stand and brush my hair, I take a long shower, all the while painfully conscious of my own thoughts, sometimes repeating a nonsense tail end of a thought over and over in my head, or a fraction of a song lyric, different ones throughout the day, over and over (there's the butter, there's the butter, there's the butter). A skipping record is a more than accurate metaphor. A voice, my own?, comes out of nowhere at moments throughout the day calling me names - stupid, fat, etc. I walk around angry, depressed, lost. My mind is scattered and obsessively focused at the same time. I'm easily distracted, impatient and twitchy. I can't just sit at a red light, I have to fiddle with something. Today a car tooted me because I was fiddling with something in the car and didn't realize the light had turned.

I watched tv even though there was nothing on and I didn't really want to watch it. Again, the paralysis. I went to the library, sat down with a stack of books for a while, then went to put them back on the shelves, walked around for 5 - 10 minutes without realizing that I had left my open pocketbook and keys at the seat. I'm hyper-aware of everything else around me - a woman scratching her head, a man with a cough - and my brain takes those moments and holds them and I write tiny little stories about them in my head.

I went to a bookstore and saw a rather interesting selection in the comic book (or graphic novel) section. It was a fully illustrated version of the entire Holy Bible, in comic book form. Most notably, there was a parental advisory on the front cover - adult supervision suggested for minors. I quickly picked it up, much interested in how they were going to handle all those "begets," but aside from some truly exaggerated breasts on Eve, there wasn't much.

I called M to see where she was with her day, then went and got a cookie, sat on a bench in the mall and waited for her to call back. What else was there to do with myself?

I don't care about anything and at the same time I'm bothered by everything. It's a lonely feeling that I carry around and don't say to anybody (I don't want to be a problem, and I don't know of there's a cure). That isn't entirely deception, because as soon as I'm around other people, I pep up at least a little. Problem is, there are some things I would like to get done that require me to be alone. They would also require me to be more functional and clear-headed when I'm alone.

I'm scared and paranoid all the time, from the realistic to the hysterical. I went upstairs to change clothes this evening, and could tell that the lamp was on in the bedroom. I knew I had turned the lamp on earlier, but thought I had turned it back off. My mind went to the idea that someone, a person that might murder me, perhaps, could have broken in to the house and was waiting for me upstairs. Then my mind went to the para(anti)normally horror-ble - I imagined a rotting corpse lying on the bed waiting for me.

What the hell? Someone help me. As I said, all this seems to float away, for the most part, when I'm around people. Then I can just focus obsessively on what they think of me.

Hello. Thank you.

Iodine by Haven Kimmel

In this novel, Haven Kimmel again (as with The Solace...) deals with trauma, only this time in a more direct way.

In this case, the reader views the world through the eyes of Trace Pennington, a young woman with a traumatic past, as she works her way through her senior year of college. Brilliant, but also slightly psychotic (an after-effect of trauma, as I well know), Kimmel's narrator falls under the category of "unreliable," but the reader will become immmediately engaged with her and will go along for the ride. The narrator isn't unreliable in any malicious way, and is in fact unreliable even to herself.

The novel can be a bit disjointed, but I see it as a strength rather than weakness, certainly a display of the writer's talent rather than the text's short-coming.

In order to escape her horrific past, Trace, incredibly intelligent, having educated herself to the point that she has actually surpassed her professors, lives a sparce life, a life of scant circumstances, which shows a power of will and whatever-it-takes power of will I wish I had. She goes to school, returning after class to an abandoned farm with no heat or electricity, hangs out with people she could barely call friends, walks around the poor (dangerous?) part of town, all on the periphery of the priviledged, exclusive world of academia. Like her sister character from The Solace..., she (devastatingly to the reader) takes up with a professor in a torrid romance.

The story is familiar and achingly real in that the narrator's life is told in such a non-chalant way, the way many survivors of abuse live their lives and tell their stories - Kimmel's writing style is direct and to the point. This woman is healing in the way that real healing takes place - incompletely, and with scars. There is no deep breath and a sunset on the beach at the end of or anywhere within this novel. It is worth the read. Warning: Real becomes fiction becomes real. - 5 stars

The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel is my new favorite author. There, that's said - let's just get that out of the way. I want to read all of her books and my library only has a few of them.

This is the first of her's that I read.

The main female character, Langston, is a grad-school drop-out (like myself!), a bitter, selfish, intellectual snob (like myself!) who has just returned home after a life-breaking affair with a professor. She hates everything about her small town and, if hand sanitizer warded off small-town-itus, she would be one of those carrying around a bottle of it in her purse. She is melodramatic and highly unlikeable, even though I found myself relating to her in some (truly honest) ways (see above).

Langston's mother, who is a salt-of-the-earth kind of woman whom Langston finds unbearable, has become an admirer of a local minister, Amos. Immediately, and more than likely upon principal of the thing, Langston hates him.

The impetus for the story comes when Langston's best friend from childhood dies in a domestic dispute (how small-town redneck, right?) (p.s. - I am a sarcastic person, and sometimes people don't pick up on it; I'm well aware that domestic violence occurs outside of any socio-economic status barrier), leaving two small, young terrorized and traumatized girls, both dressed in matching, ironic costumes, without a viable, long-term home.

Langston and Amos enter into a battle against each other, both believing that they have the girls' best interests at heart. The reader finds herself switching back and forth between sides, at once surprised by Langston's eventual and apparent isolated selflessness when it comes to the girls, and rooting for the best conclusion, though you don't know what exactly that is or how in the world it would happen. Yay for Haven Kimmel! I'm so glad I discovered her. - 5 stars

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

If there were an official lesbian canon of literature (and I don't know that there isn't), Jeannette Winterson would be at the top of the list. Her writing just has that sort of air to it. I remember reading her Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit when I was first considering becoming a lesbian; the narrative seemed to me experimental in an intelligent, Faulkner (whose The Sound and the Fury I am struggling with now) sort of way. Really, I felt I could barely grasp it. I should probably give it a second reading.

Anyway, on toward the matter at hand, which is Jeanette's novel Lighthousekeeping. You wouldn't be surprised to hear that it is about a lighthouse, but also, and really, it is about the inhabitants of that lighthouse, an old man and a young girl. This novel is written in the same intelligent voice as the other that I described in the above paragraph. I'll have to study on exactly how she creates this voice, because it could probably do a lot of good if I applied it to some of my own writing.

The little girl in the novel is immediately, or almost-immediately abandoned by her mother, then passed along to a stern woman (a librarian or something, I can't remember, I've been hoarding/procrastinating book reviews for months now - I'm visiting my mom, which means I have some time off and am not sitting in a house I have to clean, so while mom's at work I'm finally doing this), who then passes her off to the old man in the lighthouse. The old man is a typical old man in that his wife has died (I think he was married, I think that's what happened) and now he needs someone to take care of him. He is blind, doesn't have any source of light in, oddly enough, the lighthouse, and the little girl (also her little dog, must adhere to this sort of situation.

The novel does go back and forth betwixt two (or more?) generations, and it gets confusing. The jist and focus of the novel is a) the relationship between the little girl and the old man and b) the little girl's coming-of-age.

There is also a poignant point made about the (negative) effect "progress," (or abandonment of tradition) has upon individual lives - as a result of man-free, mechanic lighthouses, the little girl is ultimately abandoned by the old man and, finally, must abandon the lighthouse.

As you can see, abandonment is a major theme (even of the subplot, which I will leave to you to read without my description here).

This is a good novel that will make you, due to Winterson's knack for it, feel like a very high-caliber reader - a suggested read. - 4 stars

p.s. - The quote for my blog comes from this novel - just an example of the sort of profound statements you can read from Winterson.