Sloe Gin Vritti · 5 December 2009
Separation from god, separation from Los Angeles. Same difference.
I’ve been looking at the pithy definitions of depression. Spinoza called it a recognition of the ego’s loss of power. Most of the mystics after him called it alienation from the divine. Your shrink calls it a treatable chemical malfunction. Your teacher says it's an opportunity for personal damn development. For me it’s so mechanical and such a mind-altering substance that, after two weeks, I’m done denying it.
I suspect the low-grade migraine is some kind of reaction to the way I’ve been deleting lesser indicators from my organism. Humid sinuses, heavy chest, repeating thoughts of very bad things, desire to eat carbs, sleepiness: scram. We don’t serve your type around here. But then, I actually had to throw up yesterday, in the middle of the primary series. Apparently sadness wants suffrage: it will rise up to make my manic operating system recognize it.
Why can’t I just deconstruct this inefficient emotion? Isn’t emotion fleeting – gone the moment you try to pin it down? I don’t know. This is different. It keeps hanging around, and is all mixed up with despairing stories and ways of thinking.
I wonder if I may as well capitulate to a full experience of sadness. The spring of my senior year in high school, right before I left rural Montana never to be the same again, I started going down to the basement every day at 3:30 and sleeping until 7:00 the next morning. I said I felt fine, but a prescription (which I never took) was written. Maybe the impending separation from home really did bother me.
So, I’m sad. The giveaway is that my sinuses are all—how to put it—humid. Weeks of a kind of high pressure storm system in the head and chest. Threatening rain, never delivering. I don’t really want to stand up straight. At home, the little kittens won’t leave me alone. One is purring vigorously in to my chest right now, and the other is actually curled up on the pile of exams at my feet. They probably know things science does not, about distress phermones and cuddle interventions.
So that’s the most obvious physical stuff. I’m also bizarrely attuned to the lachrymose. I catch myself zoning out in search mode, scanning experience for reasons to feel sad.
The first place I rest is on is the person in my life who has died, the fact that everyone I love will die, and the relationships with the living that I’ve fucked up. Separation! This is sadness. What about those four avatars—the stalker, the shit-stirrer, the bully and the universal hater—I’ve blocked from this space in the last three years? What usually seems good damn sense resurfaces as tragedy and personal failing.
So I keep all that separation in the back of my awareness, perhaps because it makes sense of the sadness and gives it a place to rest and reproduce itself. These sad thoughts are very difficult to disentangle from the heaviness in the body; and I don't know which comes first.
More consciously, I get in to this loop of punch-drunk despair about the nature of humanity. Damn if we’re not all selfish jerks. Ninety five per cent of the people I know are uncommonly compassionate, in to service and good books and being kind to their parents. But there are a very few among those I care for very much, and give to however I can, who at the same time genuinely don’t give a shit about me. Naturally, I only give a shit about their not giving a shit when I’m sad. I start suspecting that all humans are just free agents, sucking each other’s energy, empty of care, driving madly forward on the twin engines of superiority and neediness. I think about mean girls, and the venom that comes up there; and compassionless boys who view everyone as a tool. How can the people who keep me close because they need me not be here now? Are they all Dick Cheney? Why do I love Dick Cheney? I should just hide with the kittens.
It’s actually funny. Sadness is a whole channel of thought and feeling, memories, fantasies: the separation channel. Now that I’m finally willing to admit I’m sad, and that this isn’t just some fast little vritti that’s gone the second I touch it, I can sort of reason myself out of the more self-indulgent aspects of despair—the pathos I’ve been circulating around the back of my mind.
Quieting down that frequency does take the edge off the sadness, but… it’s still sad now. Separation is really painful. Loss of relationship, loss of intimacy with an environment and rhythms and wonderful people that are my home. Writing that, a tremor starts at the tip of my nose and rushes right up in to the tear ducts, down over the cheeks and in to the shoulders and chest. You know? The whole face wants to fall. And the kitten just stirred, turned the bubbles back on, and pressed her little heart in to my belly. We’ll see how long it feels this way. And if leaving my second home will be anything like leaving the first, which turned in to something unimaginably good.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: having a body
, integration
, self-deception
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beautiful owl: at despairing moments like this, i find it helpful to make a list of those who are never allowed to die— in fact,i woke up writing one this morning, sadness already snaking from heart to eyes: mom, dad, sis, j. want to be on it? mortality is such a gyp. or, it is like folgers in your cup.
my relatively puny time on this planet has brought with it big ol emotions. i think now the negative emotions are only negative if we call them so, really. they are about as fleeting as the sky is— always there somewhere, always different. but then again, so is happiness. phew.
elizabeth kubler-ross visited the concentration camp at maidanek, not too long after the war, the smell of gas chambers still mostly in charge of the place. she found something on the walls of the barracks that she says changed her forever: butterflies. over and over and over. people had carved them, somehow. how to go on, possibly, when the train car just beyond the fence is filled with your breathren’s scalped hair? make a butterfly.
and make another one.
if you want to weep, beautiful owl, weep. tears probably want to be set free like the rest of us. i hope a butterfly lands on your cheek.
Posted by: Sara · Dec 6, 02:01 AM · #
Sit up from the block where you have lain, torn by the inside edge.
Slices, some skewed, some straight, opened organs endochrined to salvers,
Scarified sinews, wracked back to glean a pulse, pooling nerves
A swished libation to the swingeing air, response and repose
Duly noted, held for an audit, the long suit of this lacuna,
And the gush body, beakered and held to a frowning light
Filtered in by the unspoken weariness, drop-smears dried by the
One favoured wind: soft-bellowed, revived.
Sit up, still-beater. What’s there?
Past the evanescent seethe,
Past the shunned void of blinding night,
See those kindled hearths, here, there,
Lit by your presence, fired in your absence.
‘Nodes and roads’ the wry one taps through the cortex,
‘Nice. But what shawl will stay the gust of exile,
Or soothe this salt-scoured, cutaneous agony?’
No. None. That is the course of beloved bones through the dust mill,
Grinding groundless; passim, passing.
But I would say, look again. These wrought pillars of your wide hall,
Crude-kiltered colonnades catching, here, there, the minding light,
Look (in a stare, at a blink) like those of hers, his, mine,
All the wandered, one-wondering, courted life.
But now and then (don’t tell), our clasping hands outlive
Official fables, the while is worth the willing soil,
And you will not face the exquisite fear alone.
Posted by: srs · Dec 6, 04:50 AM · #
It’s always about fear. The rabbits fear of being eaten is the same as the coyotes fear of not eating.Santa loves you and is making your toys. Thats what gets him through having to live in the cold and wind and having to live with those annoying elves.Look at someone today and with your eyes give them the peace of knowing you dont want to eat them.
Posted by: aggregate · Dec 6, 05:00 AM · #
the cuddle interventions sound the way to go. take care and do cry, it feels good sometimes to let it all flow out, a tear at a time
Posted by: fatou · Dec 6, 06:49 AM · #
In this moment, right here, are you here? I am here. Far out. Its all lawful no matter where you are in space.
I saw this – it comes from a yoga teacher: ....heat cranked, big blanket, glass of wine, last few chunks of chocolate… and my favorite tv shows. feeling good on so many different levels…. This approach may work temporarily yet is fraught with toxic byproducts. You, my dear, dear friend have chosen the higher road. I love you for that. And that road is often the less traveled and at times lonely. Yet, how, having opened the eyes could one do it any other way?
Your sadness brings solace to me, as I feel some of those very same things, and I know you have looked deeply (viveka-khyati) and you have seen some of the things I have seen so I am not alone in the horror. Campbell said participate in life’s sorrows joyfully. I can see that but yet its quite hard to do. And on one level there is a certain awesomeness to the inexpressibility and fleeting nature of it all. So I go to awe and then let it go as it will.
Posted by: e&sj · Dec 6, 09:24 AM · #
I’m stopping myself. I’m offering poetry instead. By Indigo Moor. And the broken-open quality of things.
Pull
I am told it was moonlight that ripened
your failing heart until it finally
cracked, sent the clockhands spinning
off your flesh. I was a coward, still 3,000
miles away, convincing myself that if I
came at all, I could never catch the dying hour:
arrive too late and reconciliation falls
on upturned soil; arrive too soon and
stuttered gushings peak, then sour in the air.
Forgive me, brother. For decades, your
name has stretched my tongue to breaking.
But love and pain often anguish logic
Long ago, on a night like this,
I watched uncle rocket a coyote
skyward with a fistful of buckshot.
It slammed to the ground twisted,
skidding across the grass. Somehow,
it didn’t know it was dead.
Front legs pawed the air as if leveled
by nothing more than errant moonlight.
Chicken feathers lined its muzzle.
It mewled, eyes tunneling through me
to the underbrush where its mate stood,
crosshaired down uncles’ barrel
and already dead by every book and clock.
It stood, mesmerized no knowing, in this
world, every fool carries a twin heart.
Bang! I shouted and the underbrush
went wild with the mate’s running. Still,
if animals have souls, two died that night.
Uncle cursed me under a killing sky.
Why, Boy? You know she’ll hit
the coop later .Dont’cha know that?
This is my understanding
of the fear and silence
of these wounded nights:
the moon snares in the sweet
spot of the throat. Everything
that lives on is trapped in love.
by Indigo Moor
Posted by: Sara · Dec 6, 11:14 AM · #
Very beautifully written…
Sorry for your sadness. Loss is hard, and i’m not an expert at knowing how to deal, so I can’t offer anything other than regurgitating your own words:
“And if leaving my second home will be anything like leaving the first, which turned in to something unimaginably good.”
Snuggle up to those kittens! And cry into some biscuits.
Posted by: Liz · Dec 6, 11:19 AM · #
I think aggregate may be right, that it’s always about fear, though that may just be the influence of the Tolle I’m currently reading.
I do find in my own self that denying the sadness sometimes makes it more insistent. Whatever the reason for it, sometimes I have to give up & wallow, really sink into it. If it’s really bad, I might disappear for a weekend. I call these moments my Franz Kafka periods. I hope your really looking at an admitting to yourself has helped.
But yes… kittens. I didn’t know you got kittens!!! They will surely provide comfort. Is anything cuter than a kitten?
I hope you didn’t REALLY have to throw up during practice btw. How traumatic!
Posted by: boodiba · Dec 6, 01:22 PM · #
SHOWIN LOVE,
Posted by: Senmaru · Dec 6, 02:48 PM · #
showing some love,
Posted by: Tomshine · Dec 6, 02:49 PM · #
One thing I’ve noticed in 58 years of exsistence is that my transitions from one stage to another are marked by extreme turbulence. The being there is once again peaceful and in retrospect I swear it I wont do that again but I’m beginning to realize that it’s part of the process you cant avoid.Survive it and give it perspective in retrospect.As powerful as it was it was just a state that indeed did just pass away.
Posted by: olddude · Dec 6, 05:44 PM · #
Even the spam is good today. I’ll leave those two, but don’t click on them.
Anyway thank you. I’m a little overwhelmed, and will need to re-read this thread a few times.
And it’s weird. What reshuffling may come, I suppose I am grounded here in the web. Maybe big life transitions are easier for that.
Aggregate is referring to the podcast I linked in the last post. And I was about to agree with all of you who said this is more about separation anxiety than separation itself.
But now I wonder… does grief reduce fully to fear?
Stop reading now if you don’t want to be more sad.
Today I learned that a huge fear, the worst case cancer scenario, has in the past month come down on a wonderful friend back in Montana. I won’t talk about how much I love this person, but she is wonderful. The doctors just sent her home from the hospital, in to hospice care. The details are intimately horrible. FUCK! No solace anywhere. Lots of tears.
There’s this line in The Road, about how fear confirms the life inside you. About how the real horror is when you stop having nightmares.
I don’t know. Tonight I’m a little reverent of the reactive vitality that fear expresses. The grief of radical fucking loss is a different kind of animal in me.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 6, 06:10 PM · #
I experienced my recent transition as both actual loss (the grief) and the reminder of potential loss (the fear). The first is real, but the second is paralyzing. I agree with OldDude that the transitions are turbulent, and the turbulence gives way to something new (and hopefully something “unimaginably good”). But that doesn’t mean that this is just about “anxiety”, it’s real loss. But then there’s also anxiety — I guess that’s what breathing is for. Transitions are f-ing hard. Take heart.
I hope you can go and sit with your friend in MT.
Posted by: Wombat · Dec 6, 08:56 PM · #
Ugh, the C word. NG.
On the moving front, though, you’re going to have a great time once you get over the horrible hump of packing. Is that what you were doing before you wrote your last post?
There used to be a site called Heimatseeker. I love that title, and I can report that she seems to have found her Heimat in moving to NZ. I’m sure that your move will bring some good changes, too. Bon courage.
Posted by: cij · Dec 7, 12:19 AM · #
Thanks for putting it out there. Sending affection and tears from this end of the continent.
Posted by: Liz2 · Dec 7, 04:44 AM · #
oooh cancer… I still haven’t coped with my own, personal loss. I just can’t. It might take years.
Posted by: boodiba · Dec 7, 08:34 AM · #
Wombat, C, Liz… greetings. I really like the glimpses of who might be in the woodwork.
I actually haven’t packed yet. End of the week.
Briefly, before lunch… I just got a note that there’s finally sun in Paris today. Meanwhile there’s a DELUGE here. A hole in the skylight, too. You know those stupid pop songs that say things like “I wish it would rain” when the idiot lyricist is feeling gloomy? Well… the rain is most welcome. They say it's going to do this all week.
When it rains in LA, everyone talks of nothing else and claims they can't cope. As if their town has been taken from them. I won’t bother with FB this week because it’ll just be a stream of grousing about the weather.
Rain does turn LA in to a hassle, grey reflected in the mirrored buildings, oil slicks all over the street. It’s great. I think we’ll walk the mile down to Westwood for lunch.
love,
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 7, 12:09 PM · #
You’re in my head and in my heart.
Posted by: RE · Dec 7, 01:09 PM · #
While you move closer to this side of the continent, I prepare to move back across the oceans to the land of Oz… sometimes I feel that the shedding of the possessions and the packing of the boxes in a big move is welcome distraction from the huge-ness of shifting your life in this way… my thoughts are with you as you deal with your friend’s illness.
Posted by: Sally · Dec 7, 05:57 PM · #
Oh, to the question about whether I was packing before I wrote that post. Actually, packing and preparing the car for a 2500 mile road trip will be happening this weekend. Except for the portion of it I spend with you, there. Yes you.
Until then, seriously underwater with all kinds of unrelated tasks. It would be crazy-making if the limited time didn’t totally focus my mind. Blessing/curse.
Sally, I can’t believe you’re off. We are ships passing in the night, including that night two years ago, when we were both at the reception in the San Francisco Asian Art museum. Best to you as you bring the time at Penn to a conclusion.
‘Night.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 7, 07:49 PM · #
Oh but P.S., yes a road trip is coming.
Tim's old idea of ashtangacrossamerica will be happening, with Tim's being the destination. Meanwhile, the infamous ashtanga blogger Tabby Cat is currently casing Detroit...
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 7, 07:52 PM · #
I’m aware this doesn’t do jack to help you, but I’m pretty certain that everybody gets depressed. Most of us don’t get so debilitatingly depressed that we need chemical adjustments, but it happens just the same. There’s always stuff out there to see and to experience that shifts us back to the center again. Kittens are a big help, but maybe you could use a dose of exposure to wild things to spruce up your inner whatever. Something with a visceral presence, and light on the weighty contemplation.
Beware of that Tabby Cat.
Posted by: Carl · Dec 8, 01:40 PM · #
here here! maurice sendak has some wild things viz carl’s prescription, and i’m pretty sure he wasn’t a nihilist.
sometimes just the relative bigness of the U.S., and the highway that couldn’t care less whether you are insightful or totally inept, is helpful— that and car snacks and pine-scented air-freshner, for when the prana goes sour.
and keeping a little dose love on the dashboard for easy eka-hasta access—
Posted by: Sara · Dec 9, 11:05 AM · #
Maurice Sendak…
Yes, I have purchased some air freshener. And someone just sent some CDs for the drive… otherwise it is going to be a concatenation of local-by-local radio stations, probably full of polka, bad country, and holiday music. All pretty trance-inducing.
Until there is talking. Having grown up with an excessively verbal older sister, my brother is a man of relatively few words. But… Texas is big.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 9, 09:40 PM · #
I recommend against listening to The Bell Jar on tape when driving across country (after a breakup). I also have to recommend against listening to The Hobbit on tape because it can result in a four hour detour when one gets too involved in the story… However, I do recommend The Origin of Species: it’s the only way I ever read it and you can zone out as he goes into great detail on the breeding of fancy pigeons.
Safe travels.
Posted by: Wombat · Dec 10, 11:20 AM · #
YES, I will avoid The Bell Jar at all costs!!!
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 10, 12:42 PM · #
Hmmm, where to begin?
a) Love love love the opening line
b) Welcome to my world. Two years later and still livin’ it
c) When I left LA in November, I bit the guy’s head off who sat next to me and cried the whole way home
Hugs.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Dec 10, 06:07 PM · #
Yes :-)
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 12, 09:44 AM · #