Posts From March 2014

Look, I know I said I'd blog daily in March but I didn't say it'd be quality. Too busy, so for now I'll just leave you with Buzzfeed's list of what women writers are sick of hearing. I post this as someone who is damn sick of people accusing me of just being mopey all the time. One time this guy at a reading called me the "death poet."

Well, OK, then, I guess, whatever.

Today's prompt: When and where do you feel like yourself?

A visual explanation, presented without comment:

Try not to get murdered, assaulted, discrimiinated against, condescended to or otherwise treated like a lesser being, OK? On a happier note, I'd like to give a shout-out to my main lady, my mother, who always taught me to speak up and stand up, be counted and make everything I do count for something. On that latter note, I hope she's not disappointed by all the trashy TV I watch. I hope I've made her proud.

So, I made this promise to myself that I'd blog every day in March--as part of BlogHer's NaBloPo March challenge. It's all part of my personal social media reboot - a reboot that actually means less time on Facebook and more time tweeting and blogging.

Anyhoo, I thought it would easy thanks to the prompts provided--but then I logged on today and realized there were no weekend challenges (I mean, so obviously I wasn't doing the prompts everyday since I just noticed this, but whatever).

My first reaction? Literally, it was: God damnit--do you mean I blogged yesterday and I didn't have to? Because god help me that I do something that's not required.

It's been such a long weekend filled with SN&R work and taxes and various other commitments, so if this means I can just finally kick back and watch some trashy TV (hello, Lindsay Lohan 'docu-series') well then, hell, pour me a drink and let's call it a day.

And then my inner guilt tripper kicked in and I reminded myself that this isn't just about official writing prompts, it's about me reconnecting with something that I used to love to do. Something that, in the last few years, I've been pushed away from thanks to an increase in commitments to everything else.

So there you go, I'm exhausted and grumpy but I blogged, thank you very much. I never said it would be pretty.

And, hey, there's still time for Lindsay and that drink (and yes I see the irony in that connection).

I've been dealing with some quality depression lately.

I mean, this is the good stuff--no weak-ass, I'm just having a meh day kind of shit. But rather, a deep and hearty depression.

Then again, my depression isn't the super bad shit as far as mind trips go. I don't suffer from something more hardcore like bi-polar disorder. I gotta check my depression privilege, I just have good old-fashioned clinical depression and luckily, it hasn't really hit a critical point yet and so sometimes it feels wrong to talk about it--like, how can I complain about this little ol' thing when so many people have it much, much worse?

That said,  I am trying to understand it better--and understand how, in some ways, these feelings can help me and eventually make me feel better.

That distinction—between being better and feeling better—is significant.

We all want to feel better. It’s our God-given right, damn it.

Mostly, I keep this matter private, because depression doesn’t make for good company.

But perhaps it should.

In 2010, The New York Times explored the benefits of feeling blue in an article titled “Depression’s Upside.”

Having a case of the blahs just might have a “secret purpose … [as an] unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction,” reporter Jonah Lehrer surmised, drawing on a lengthy Psychological Review article that combined research and anecdotes from the likes of Charles Darwin, David Foster Wallace and various psychologists.

Lehrer’s article is too complex and lengthy to adequately sum up here, but the general conclusion is such: Depression can be beneficial, and perhaps we should learn to “embrace the tonic of despair.”

It's been nearly 20 years since I was first diagnosed with clinical depression, and I’m inclined to agree with Lehrer’s point—which is not to make light of the affliction’s often debilitating effects: the fatigue and sleeplessness, the sorrow and the anger, the anxiety and the malaise.

No doubt, depression hurts.

And though I don’t wholesale agree with the idea of psychologists who claim that “medical interventions can make a bad situation worse,” I can fully support the notion that “sadness comes with its own set of benefits.”

Why should we, after all, be so quick to try to rid ourselves of the feelings that make up who we are?

I’ve taken the meds before—when the anxiety and heaviness become too much to bear—but mostly I try to listen to my feelings. Sounds kind of hippie New Age, I know, but I learned a lot about myself when, years ago, a therapist suggested I stop trying to “shut down” the depression and, instead, allow myself some moments of quiet and reflection—some moments of listening and absorbing and processing.

“The next time you feel awful,” she told me. “Try lying down, closing your eyes and just allow it—just feel awful for a while.”

And so I did. I closed my eyes and I felt awful.

Really awful. And as I felt awful I thought about those feelings and why they existed. Eventually, however, my mind—as minds are wont to do—started to wander off to different, lighter points. Eventually I opened my eyes, stood up and went about the rest of my day. The issues that contributed to my depression were still there, but I felt clearer and more resolute about my ability to deal with them. Happier even.

This kind of “rumination,” psychologists argue, can help us think better, process feelings better and, ultimately, be better. Happier, more creative, more fulfilled.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all fix. It’s not a works-every-time solution. But it’s part of the process.

(Portions of this post originally appeared here in a somewhat different form. Did I just violate some sort of blogging etiquette? Maybe, but three years later, I'm dealing with another cycle of this. So there's that).

Yesterday an interesting drama unfolded on Twitter and I'm trying to figure out how to tell the story.

Because by today, a big part of the story was just how, exactly, the media reported on the original events.

At some point yesterday a person I follow on Twitter retweeted an entry from a woman she follows.

"If you are not following @steenfox tonight you are missing something horrifying and powerful," her post read.

Curious, I clicked and started reading.

For the record, I'm not posting the Twitter ID for the first person in question because I don't have her permission, and this post is all about social media permission and the ethics of such. I am, however, posting Christine Fox's Twitter ID because she's very public at this point. I am not, however, reposting any of her entries. If you want to read them, go here.

Anyway, back to the story. Yesterday Fox asked her followers the following question: "What were you wearing when you were sexually assaulted?"

Fox asked the question as a way to dispel myths about assault and the way a sexual assault victim dresses or appears.

Fox, who has more than 15,000 followers, received an onslaught of replies that poured in over the course of several hours.

Frank, honest, startling, candid replies.

Powerful stuff.

Of course the Internet, as the Internet is wont to do, picked up on the story--retweeting, favoriting and mentioning many of the tweets.

Jessica Testa, a reporter at Buzzfeed picked up on the story and reached out to some of the people who tweeted their experiences and got their permission to quote their tweets in a story. The reporter also reached out to Fox but didn't hear back from her before the story was published. In the published story the reporter blurred out the pictures and names of some of the users quoted (I'm assuming those weren't blurred gave permission otherwise. Correct me if I'm wrong).

Fox was, to say the least, not pleased.

"Just spoke with @jts. She stated that she had the permission of every person used on her post. She did not however have MY permission."

That is true. And to err completely on the side of ethical fairness, perhaps Testa should have removed all of Fox's identifiying details.

Then again, Testa does have more than 15,000 followers (and has posted more than 345,000 tweets) and is thus, arguably, a public figure who was conducting a public dialogue in a public forum. Her Twitter feed is public--accessible to anyone to read at any time.

Fox aside, does that make it ethical to repost all tweets--even with the user's explicit permission?

I'd argue that yes, in the best of situations, it does make it ethically right--if not necessarily the right thing to do.

In the best of situations the reporter in question would have, in addition to asking permission, counseled each person on the possible repurcussions. Would have advised them that with the publication of this article by one of the Internet's biggest, most widely shared sites, their stories would no longer just be circulated to thousands upon thousands of people, but millions.

Did Testa do that? I don't know. I would hope so.

Either way the distinction here between what is right, ethically and what is simply the right thing to do is very, very fuzzy.

For the record, I am not criticiizing Testa. As much as I applaud Fox's ability to raise public discourse on this topic in a moving, compelling way, I also applaud Testa's attempt to chronicle that story as a collective whole.

Social media is an amazing tool--especially for journalists. But it's also a complicated tool that makes for complicated journalism. 

To that end, it was interesting to watch various print and TV news outlet tweet like crazy to the person who posted the now infamous plane crash selfie snapped after a US Airways flight crashed in Philadelphia today.

What's intersesting is that my highly unscientific study of a few sites shows that the user in question gave permission to use the photo--but her name is not mentioned.

Like I said, complicated stuff.

Cory and I had a pretty chill Saturday afternoon--well once we got done talking to the tax woman (and not about poetry, unfortunately). After that though, it was all nice. There was sunshine and lunch and record shopping and driving around in the car listening to oldies, including The Coasters' "Poison Ivy," which turns out to be a favorite of Cory's.

I remarked it must be the only song in the history of songs that references calamine lotion and Cory, as he is wont to do when it comes to all things musical, quickly corrected me.

"Lou Reed sang about it," he said. "I got my calamine lotion, baby, do it again -- I got a foggy notion baby, do it again."

Yep, Velvet Underground's "Foggy Notion."

The more you know people, the more you know.

Today L'Wren Scott, a noted fashion designer, reportedly committed suicide by hanging herself in her Manhattan apartment.

She was 49, and news of her death shook me.

I didn't know her of course. I knew her name though--I'd seen it in magazines, accompanying photos of celebrities wearing her clothes--beautiful pieces that were both modern and retro cool. 

But really that's all I knew of her. Until this morning I didn't know she'd been dating Mick Jagger athough following news of her death that seemed to be the most defining characteristic about her--at least judging by all the headlines that played on some variation of "Mick Jagger's Girlfriend Commits Suicide."

That angered and frustrated me--clearly L'Wren Scott was an accomplished woman in her own right--but that's not why I'm writing about her now.

I'm writing about her because news of her suicide took me to a very sad, very dark place.

She's not the only famous person to do such a thing of course (and here I'm making an assumption that the report of suicide is true, based on what little I know--perhaps it's not fair, I get that) but for me, today, learning of L'Wren Scott's death felt like a note of sadness that echoed to my core.

Have you ever felt suicidal?

I have.

It is a horrible, awful and dark, dark feeling. It is the feeling of loneliness and despair and pain and emptiness and a lack of hope and an absence of all things good--all things beautiful and worth living for. It is all those feelings, wrapped tightly into a home-made hand grenade barbed with self-loathing.

It is a feeling that creates a black hole, a vacuum. A vacuum that can feel near impossible to escape.

And, for some that vacuum does become inescapable.

When I thought about L'Wren Scott today, I felt my mind and my heart and my stomach return, very briefly, to the place that overcame her mind, heart and stomach this morning. And all at once I felt horrible and sad and something of a survivor's guilt but also relief that I climbed out of that place. When you learn that someone's succumbed to those feelings that relief is both overwhelmingly comforting, but also it's no solace at all.

Please, please, please if you feel yourself falling into that vacuum, talk to someone. A friend, a therapist, a doctor, a complete stranger.

Anyone, please. 

This is what I do when I'm feeling particularly crazy: Listen to the same songs on repeat. The same damn sad, crazy-making songs. Sometimes I make entire playlists.

Two years ago it was the title track from Arcade Fire's Suburbs record:

"I would rather be alone than pretend I feel alright."

Just over and over again in the car.

Last month it was an Elliott Smith CD, also in the car. You know, 'bottle up and explode' strikes a certain chord when you're feeling angsty and anxious.

A decade ago when I was in grad school it was, for a while, Aimee Mann's Lost in Space. The entire damn album, all the time.

Well, not all the time. But once or twice a week I'd make the drive to Oakland in the mid or late afternoon. I'd usually be running late and probably driving too fast and listening to Sahara Hotnights or Franz Ferdinand or Joan Jett or Jawbreaker or anything else to keep my energy high, primed for a long afternoon-into-evening of class.

Then at the end of the night--usually around 9pm--I'd head home alone, trying to digest everything I'd learned and observed and talked about in classes and workshops. The energy level would be quieting by this point, trending down. And although I'd still feel residual bits of it pulsating through my veins,  I also felt very, very alone.

I mostly loved graduate school, but being a commuter student made it difficult. I couldn't participate in a lot of the extra-curricular activities--anything from readings to just getting drinks after class. That was isolating. But it also gave me a lot of time to think (for better or worse). This was before smartphones so I'd often keep a digital voice recorder in the front seat and record story ideas, scenes, dialogue, etc.

But mostly I just rolled down the windows and blasted the music.

It's approximately 80 miles between Oakland and Sacramento and on a clear weeknight with little traffic it's a straight shot that takes your car out of the city's urban core into the Bay Area's suburbs and exurbs and finally spills you into s stretch made up of rolling hills and farmland. On cloudless nights, the sky is cut through with glittering stars and if you look to the left you can find the Big Dipper.

Lost in Space, which came out the year I started grad school, makes for the perfect soundtrack on such nights. Those two-and-a-half years I made the commute, that CD never left my car and many nights I'd hit play repeatedly on one particular song, "It's Not," as I tried to work through things in my head:

"I keep going round and round on the same old circuit

a wire travels underground to a vacant lot

where something I can't see interrupts the current

and shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot

and from behind the scene it can look so perfect

but it's not.

 

So here I'm sitting in my car at the same old stop light

I keep waiting for a change, but I don't know what.

So red turns into green turning into yellow

but I'm just frozen here in the same old spot

and all I have to do is press the pedal

but I'm not."

 

OK, I get it. I'm flying down the freeway and the song is about being static--stuck. But trust me, it works when you're feeling all sorts of feelings--sad, confused, exhausted, stressed, mixed up, angry, maybe even happy or just bristling with unburned energy, whatever--not to mention musically OCD and maybe it's just that one song that will get you through.

Or at least get you home.

Sometimes I'm not entirely sure how I became such an OCD freak about music. Neither of my parents was really into music (my dad liked 70s folk/rock/pysch stuff and my mom's tastes skewed mainly soft rock).

Beyond hearing tunes in the car radio, my memories of music date back to the third grade. That would have made me 8 or 9 I think, which means it must have been 1978 or 1979. In any case, that's when I got a clock radio so that I could set my own alarm and get up early and get my ass out of bed already and get ready for school so I didn't make my parents late in the morning.

That clock radio probably changed my life in some small way. Or big way, depending on how you look at it. Certainly it informed such a huge part of who I am now.

Some nights I slept with the radio on; listening to the Top 40 station in Austin: The Bee Gees, Billy Joel, Chic, the Rolling Stones, Wings, Abba, Styx, Dolly Parton, Donna Summer, Blondie.

(This was also the era for Patti Smith and Johnny Thunders and the Clash but, again, I was an 8-year-old living in Austin with parents who listened to Barbara Streisand, the Moody Blues and the Carpenters).

I wasn't really buying music at this point--I wasn't even making mixtapes. I'd start doing both of those things in the fifth grade when I got a stereo system--with a record player and a tape deck--for Christmas.

So for now it was mostly just the clock radio and, on weekends, watching videos and live performances on America's Top 10 and American Bandstand.

The Grease soundtrack was really big that year--several of the songs from the soundtrack made the Billboard Top 40 and were played on the air in what seemed like near-constant rotation.

At some point I got the record on vinyl. I must have been playing it on some rinky dink Fisher Price turntable. I'm pretty sure, for a while at least, it was the only record I owned. In fact I owned the record before I even saw the movie.

I loved, loved, loved that soundtrack and my favorite song was Rizzo's song "There are Worse Things I Could Do" on side four of the two-album set.

Rizzo, of course, was the bad girl of the story, played in the film by Stockard Channing. Even at that young age I identified with her character more than I ever could or would identify with Olivia Newton John's Sandy.

OK, to be fair, I aspired to be Sandy, but deep in my litte rough-and-tumble heart I knew I was really a Rizzo.

Again, I was 8--maybe 9. It's not that I thought of myself as the high school bad girl, sleeping with all the guys and getting a bad rep. Rather, I could hear the sadness and loneliness in her voice. The aching to fit in beneath a whatever-don't-care attitude. Rizzo wasn't the pretty, popular girl--she was the chick who ran around with the questionable crowd and relied on her wits to get by. Sometimes she was mean, but only because she had to be. She was rough around the edges and not always easy to love.

I'm not sure how much of that I got as a third-grader but something in that song, something in Stockard Channing's voice resonated with me. Maybe it was all just an early predictor of my high school years.

Who knows--maybe I'm reading (or listening) too much into it. Whatever the case, "There are Worse Things I Could Do" was my first song crush and  I listened to it endlessly, obsessed.

Put the needle down, listen and sing. Pick up the needle and repeat.

Over and over and over again.

Last night we hung out with some friends and over the course of the night I had a long and possibly drunken conversation about the things that scare us most.

It came up because my friend was sharing a conversation she'd had with another friend about what their fears when it comes to death--i.e., what would be the worst way to die?

For my friend that worst death amounted to drowning (I think I'm remembering that correctly. Again, possibly drunk). Her husband feared strangulation. Cory said he thought about drowning in his car if it went over a bridge.

As I sat there nursing a vodka tonic I could not think of that which frightened me most. I mean, I don't want to die, period, so death in general just seems fucking awful. I'd file death by stabbing or dismemberment or any other sort of torture under "least favorable" options but, call me naive, I don't particularly fear those deaths because I don't necessarily think they're going to happen to me.

I don't really fear death at all, I think. Which is likely only because I've never actually come close to it.

Which doesn't mean that I always only fear very real, tangible, possible, statistically probable things. Quite the opposite, actually.

It’s just that fear doesn't follow easy patterns. There's the kind of fear that comes from when horrible things happen -the bad health of yourself or a loved one; being struck by a car, getting robbed, finding yourself destitute and homeless.

And then there are the kinds of fears that nest in your psyche and although they may be rooted in veritable Bad Shit situations, often they're really just mental mindfucks that feed on insecurities, personal quirks, impressions and those bits of your mind that are difficult to parse.

Fear doesn't thrive on logic, it festers in a hothouse fertilized with batshit insanity, heart-strangling, soul-fed terror, and all things irrational.

For example when I was in the third grade I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica that had some sort of space alien vampire character who killed people in a vampire-like manner.

That episode terrified me and I spent probably the next three months sleeping so that I could face a certain corner of my bedroom because I was convinced this space alien vampire lived in that corner and would attack me if I turned my back.

Not exactly a rational fear. I mean, I was 8, but still.

My fear of spiders is, arguably, slightly more reasonable. It's nurtured by a childhood viewing of Kingdom of the Spiders. Stupid, cheesy movie that imprinted a life-long anxiety even though most spiders aren't poisonous and/or plotting to take over my town.

Still, I'm not really scared that I'm going to die by spider--I just scream a little scream when I encounter one in the house.

Other things of which I'm scared, irrationally or otherwise:

• Sitting still in a Ferris wheel. If the wheel is moving, I'm fine. But if we're just sitting there, motionless and staring at the ground far, far below--cue the panic attack.
• Going way too fast down the freeway and having the vehicle lose control. I have a lot of bad dreams involving this scenario.
• Parties where I don't really know anyone.
• Falling off the side of a cliff. Actually, that one's happened. I have scars.
• Being lost in the middle of nowhere with nothing to guide me home. I mean, really lost, not just Google maps lost.
• Losing my cats to some sort of horrible accident (house fire, etc).
• Bees. I'm allergic.
• Losing an arm or a leg. Or losing mobility. The thought of losing my independence terrifies me in fact.
• Being awful to someone I love.
• Losing someone I love.
• Losing Cory. That would be the absolute worst of the worst. Period.

Today's awkwardly worded prompt asks: What is your favorite personality trait that you possess?

After yesterday's post, I'll go with my ace ability to make hyper-intense self-reflective lists.

Today's prompt had something to do with traveling alone--as in, have you ever done it?

The short answer is 'yes, but not nearly enough.'

I've traveled a bit by myself and if I had more time and money I'd do it more often.

As it is, however, when I do have time to travel I usually want to (and can only afford to) do so with Cory.

Still, if the time and money were of little or no consideration ...

Travel, of course, is an amazing way to see the world in a different way. Or yourself.

In summer 1997 I was still struggling through a separation from my then-husband. We'd been together seven-and-a-half years so even though I think the relationship had burned out long before I actually moved out, there was still plenty of emotional turmoil.

Those first few months in my tiny Midtown apartment were challenging. I learned to live by myself again; to trust myself (long story), to like just being by myself. I loved, loved, loved that apartment. It was a studio but it was huge and sunny and overlooked a courtyard with a bubbling fountain. There, I slept with the windows open, listened to music, read, wrote and spent time with my new cat Sophie. Some of my closest friends lived nearby--Rachel and Tom down the street, Laura just a few apartments over.

I dated, I even had a boyfriend of sorts,  but mostly I hibernated.

Then, Jill asked if I wanted to drive with her to Chicago to visit her family. The plan was to go out together and I'd stay for a few days and see Chicago with her and then drive back alone as Jill wanted to spend several weeks there and was at a point in her life where she could just quit her part-time job between semesters and then pick up again in the fall.

The trip there was amazing; we drove from Northern California through Nevada, Utah and Wyoming and then cut up north to South Dakota so we could visit Mt. Rushmore. Jill took the picture at left somewhere outside of the Mt. Rushmore park. I apologize for the very '90s-ness of it. I am probably wearing Doc Martens and I'm OK with that but wish I could take the overalls and weird haircut back.

Throughout the trip Jill and I bonded like crazy (our friendship was only a few months old at that time). We shared deep, intense stories. We laughed a lot. We cried. We listened to music loudly and sat in the passenger seat with our toes waving out the window. It was perfect trip.

In Chicago the intense fun continued. We went to shows and parties and thrifted. We hung out with her family and stalked ex-boyfriends (hers, obviously).

And then suddenly it was time for me to go home. Alone.

Jill's parents lived in the tiny town of Crete, just south of Chicago. It's a rural/suburban enclave with cornfields and tractors and lots of hoopla about stoplights.

Her family was kind and the house was pretty and quiet but eventulally it was time to leave. Sometime after noon on a hot July afternoon, I hugged Jill goodbye and set out on my own.

I traveled south to Tennessee and stayed the night in Nashville in a crappy motel outside Music Row. The drive down had been beautiful--as I drove into Memphis it was raining but also sunny and I pulled the car over to the side of the road to join other travelers in the chance to snap a picture of a rainbow.

That night, however, I felt very very lonely. I may have cried. I definitely called my mother, seeking a reassuring voice. I heard people outside the door arguing. I felt scared and pushed a chair up against the thin motel door. And then I felt silly and just turned the TV up louder to drown out the noise.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast at a diner near the then-Country Music Hall of Fame. I can't remember if I visited it or not (I've been there since but the memories are blurring); I walked around some of the stores and took photos. Finally, I got back in my car and continued driving.

I stayed in Tulsa with my cousin for a few days and then made my way to Wichita Falls to viist my biological mother, and then Dallas to stay with my grandparents for a day or two. Eventually I continued on to Austin and stayed for a night at a hostel located near the river. There, I talked to a nice guy who saw my California plates and wanted to talk because someone he knew was from Southern California. The next day I went record shopping by myself near the university.

Eventually I got in the car and drove west to El Paso. Somewhere between Austin and El Paso I stopped for gas off of Highway 10. The station was the only point on the Interstate for miles and there a kind, older man warned me to be careful--a young girl out there by myself all alone. I thanked him, truly gratified by his sense of caring, and then jumped back in the car and probably blasted that damn Whiskeytown record for the millionth time. I'm pretty sure I lit up another cigarette; I'm pretty sure that, at least for a few hours, I felt amazingly carefree--all alone in the world but happy for it.

I rolled into El Paso sometime shortly before midnight. I still remember the sense of relief I had pulling off the highway--I still see the glittering city lights. There was, too, a little fear as I tried to navigate my way through El Paso's downtown in the dark, searching for the hostel. Once again I felt all alone in the world, but more afraid than carefree. By the time the sun rose the next morning and I ate my free Continental breakfast and coffee on the patio of this hostel--which was housed in a gorgeous old building--I once again felt alive, happy, happy to be alone.

I think that's the point. There was a lot of fear, but also a lot of happiness. A lot of singing in the car, a lot of where-the-hell-am-I? moments. The time I thought my car might wash away in a flash flood s I tried to make my way to Flagstaff--several hikers had died that way the week before--I felt oddly at once terrified but also at peace.

After Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon and then a 12-hour-drive home to Sacramento, I arrived home sometime after midnight on a Saturday.

The next morning Laura called me. "I saw your car, you're home!"

She sounded happy about this. I felt incredibly happy that she knew I was home. That she cared.

That trip changed me in ways I can't describe (I've tried; someday I'll archive that attempt here) and it also gave me the desire to travel again by myself. I've done it a few more time since then, most recently on a train trip to Fort Worth and back. The train's not quite the same experience as hitting the road by yourself but even surrounded by people, you find yourself very alone. Often in the best way possible.