His Name is Bill

The Valley of Elah, the title of a film, also refers to the valley in which David is said to have fought and killed Goliath. An apt metaphor for those of us who battle depression. Except we never get to kill the giant. Walk away as David might have done, with a bit of a swagger, the cheers of the crowd rising around him. We fight our battles often in solitary ways. I am dropping down again. Keep telling myself I'm wrong. That my sleeping in to 8:30 am, then 9:00, then 9:30 today means nothing. My struggle to focus. Nothing. I may not yet be in the Valley of Elah but I am close enough. I've called my shrink. An angel is winging towards me. His name is Bill.

She's Ordered Lobster

I've seen The Mystery Men twice because I love Henry Macy as the determined Shoveler. One line of his always makes me laugh. "We've got a blind date with destiny, and it looks like she's ordered lobster."

Shhhh

"Instead of [...] stress, Claudia thought now of hushed and quiet words: glide, fur, banana, peace." (E.L. Konigsburg, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)

Diving into the Current

The trees along the canal today were burnished gold and had left hundreds of their gold currency in the water. As I walked by, a motor boat plowed through the leaves leaving a wide, glistening path. I'm reading Paulo Coelho's marvelous book, The Alchemist, again. All about finding your path. "When someone makes a decision, [she] is really diving into a strong current that will carry [her] places [she] had never dreamed of when [she] made the decision." I decided last week I still want to work in mental health.

Possibility

I heard about a job opening today that is so me. I decided not to talk about it so I wouldn't jinx it. Then I told everybody.

I Want to Be An Umbrella

Last week, I pulled a muscle in my right hip in the iliotibial band which runs down to the knee. I like to say iliotibial band--sounds like burly men playing Irish music. By Thursday, my lower back, not to feel left out, decided to go into spasm. My life, right now, is largely focused on ice-packs, stretching, and Tylenol. I am great with emotional pain--can handle a lot of it. Physical pain, not so much. I want to be an umbrella. A closed umbrella. Would just like to stop moving altogether and be put in the quiet dark of someone's back pack.

My Saltwater Pond

The shoe spell didn't work. No, not true. Started the day with my memoir class, two hours of listening to words hot off the press, fresh from the labors of other writers. Loved it. An hour later, I'm sitting by the fountain in the Seattle Center, one of my favorite places in this known universe, and I'm crying. The spray from the fountain is hitting me in the face and glasses so I figure no one will notice. Crying intermittently all day. I listen to myself at one point and think, "I am breaking my own heart." Maybe I am crying about the heartbreaks of the past year? I keep crying. "What can you make with tears?" one of my early therapists asked. "Can you water your plants?" I begin to feel like Alice. I'm going to drown in my own salt water pond. I don't drown. Friends and family call. My sister asks me to lunch tomorrow. My other sister and brother sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese. (My family lived in Brazil when I was small.) My brother offers me job tips. A friend leaves astromelias in my room and her exquisite small painting of a mermaid. She also makes me dinner. Other friends give me chocolates, tiny peanut butter cups, the kind I like from Trader Joes. Yes, I am jobless and single. These things are true. And at least eight people called to say I love you. My friend Gregory to ask for birthday gift hints and then to give me a gift of gold. "We don't have many of you," he said.

Happy Feet

I love my Converse All Star high tops. They offer faith to my feet. I often feel happy just looking down and seeing them. Today is the day before my birthday, and I need a sense that this year will be easier than the last, will take me in directions I can not dream of now, good directions...direction, any direction. I am going to put my Converse All Star high tops by my bed tonight and pray that this sadness will be gone by morning. That when I put on my shoes, I will feel joy. Even for a minute. For every place I've been. Every place I'm going. Amen.

Drawing the Circle

In her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes beautifully and sparely about an essential ritual, drawing the circle. "I grew up in California, John and I had lived there for twenty-four years, in California we heated our houses by building fires. We built fires even on summer evenings, because the fog came in. Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we we were safe through the night."

Olly Olly in Come Free

Not a sterling week. I made some mistakes. Now, isn't that terrible? It's not so much what I do out there in the world sometimes that's so hard to bear but what I do to myself inside my head. Would any parent be so merciless? On Monday, I took prompt action when the man sitting on a chair next to me at Peets on Broadway nodded out. Yes, cigarette in hand. I walked quickly into the store and told the barrista to call an aid car. What I beat myself up about later was that I didn't know how to take the man's pulse. Turned out that the man had gone into a diabetic shock. I may not have saved the guy's life but I certainly did him a favor. I have decided my problem is not so much my high standards: it's my impossible standards. I am sister to Sisyphus perpetually rolling the boulder up the cliff in Greek myth. Imagine the poor guy. Every time thinking, "I've done it. I'm almost there. I'm almost enough." Creak. Then boom -- the boulder rolls back down the hill, likely rolling over Sisyphus as well. Someone asked me once what I would want God to say to me when I died, the very first words. I said, "Olly olly in come free." Those words, floating on the summer's twilight when I was young, signaled that the game, whatever it was, was over. I could come in and not get tagged out. I want God to make the same offer. Want to make the same offer to myself. "Olly olly in come free. Game over."

Usual Bits

"Suppose you tell me what you're about?" said the little hairy man as they sat on the ground and drank their tea. Tristran thought for some moments, and then he said, "I come from the village of Wall, where lives a young lady named Victoria Forestor, who is without peer among women, and it is to her, and to her alone, that I have given my heart. Her face is--" "Usual complement of bits?" asked the little creature. "Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?" (From the incomparable Stardust by Neil Gaimon)

Licorice

Had six months in Al-anon today. You'd think I'd spend the day feeling clear and celebratory. Instead, I lounged around feeling wistful about women and eating too much licorice. Didn't call anyone in the program. Lounged. Ate licorice. If I was a snake, there'd long skinny bulges all over my stomach.

Drunk with Beauty

Last night, my friends and I saw All Tharp, the piquant brilliance of Tharp's modern dance choreography to Bhrahms and even Sinatra show tunes. A scene where a woman with a fifteen foot white train walked spectrally through the dark. In the last set, glorious colors -- magenta, lavendar, red -- for the dresses of the women, and elegant black tuxes for the men. We were transported to another world. Where the moon was a disco ball that spun lights throughout the performance hall. When I came out of the hall into the rain, I felt drunk with beauty.

Mood Shift

Amazing. You can have a terrible night and wake up feeling like crap, with a toothache. And then a kind of alchemy of spirit happens. Perhaps powered by a heart-to-heart with a friend who understood your terrible night and has them too. Or hearkened by a cacophony of birds in your backyard and the advent of the sun. Then suddenly life feels possible again. Maybe for a few minutes or for an hour. Doesn't matter. Mood shift #2,987,645, and it's all yours. All mine. Right now.

The Shuttle of Sleep

Anxiety. About the election. A possible recession. About being unemployed during a possible recession. Last night, I woke at 5:30 a.m.. Tonight woke at midnight, up til 1:30, awake again at 2:30, read a book, had a snack, watched a movie. I'm not the only one who's subterraneanly worried. I see it in the faces of people on the bus: a thinking, worried quiet. I watched The Astronaut Farmer earlier. Reminded me of videos I recorded for teachers while working for NASA at the UW. Astronauts in zero gravity eating bouyant m-n-m's, the blackness of deep space outside their windows. Tonight, the hours seem timeless like that, expansive, floating. I wonder if others like me are doing the midnight EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity), orbiting the insular shuttle of sleep.