When logging into this blog, I'm starting to get the feeling I used to have when I attended a writing group in which none of the members wrote very much, if anything at all, between meetings. We'd have a writing exercise and inevitably someone would suggest the topic, "Why I'm Not Writing."
It's not that I haven't been writing lately; it's simply that I haven't been blogging.
When I sit down at my computer to write lately, I've been trying to tell the story of my youngest brother's death. It's a hell of a journey because it took him almost four years to die -- and because the weeks immediately following the car wreck that eventually killed him were a complicated, emotional time. I am on page 20 or so (single-and-a-half spacing), and I have only covered the ground of two weeks, plus some non-linear stories that help the situation make sense.
Technically, I'm writing this story as part of the independent study I'm doing around death & dying. But it seems I am also subjecting myself to a form of grief therapy that I have been thinking for some time is probably useful -- an airing of the entire story one has assembled around a death or other form of loss. Themes and vantage points emerge in this process that I think may offer insight to people who have engaged in a protracted grieving process -- or perhaps have not engaged in one and repressed their grief instead.
The situation with my brother and me is probably a combination of the two. I got pretty fucked up in my head while he was in a coma for those four years. I grieved, but in many ways, I couldn't grieve. While he was still alive, my grief was stifled by hope and socio-cultural ideals. After he died, I grieved, but at the same time, I was feeling really fucking tired of the subject. I talked about my brother to a point, whereupon I couldn't talk about him anymore.
Those who know me well, especially those who knew me during that time, might be surprised to hear me say I couldn't talk about him anymore. After all, I talk about him all the time! But the truth is that I have flattened out the story, simplified it, robbed it of some of its complexity and assigned meaning to events and the people involved that don't come close to doing justice to them.
And so I have started from the beginning, from the point in which an unexpected phone call intruded on my evening and created a sudden dividing line between my one phase of my life and another. I am trying to be as honest as I can, which means I have gone on a little fact-gathering journey. I've called family members and friends and asked them what they recall. I've attempted to get his medical records and the crash report taken by the highway patrol. I've dug out my old writings, videotapes and files and photographs.
Assembling all of the information into a coherent narrative is not all that difficult. But writing about my thoughts and feelings at the time is something of another order altogether. It requires me to re-inhabit that time, those events and my emotions and then try to find accurate words to describe them. It is the most tiresome bit of personal writing in which I have ever engaged. It is also the most personally compelling.
So compelling, in terms of drawing my attention to it, that I could not even finish this blog entry without opening the file and making revisions to the pages I wrote earlier today. It may be ambitious, but I have a goal of finishing the first draft of this story by the 27th of this month, when I am taking a week of vacation in Hawaii.
After I'm done with this draft, I'll have to turn my attention toward the analysis of the themes that emerged in the interviews I conducted with several friends last fall about death and dying. Then, I figure to analyze this narrative I'm writing for the themes that emerge in it. For my term paper, I'll weave those two together somehow and try to make sense of what I've learned in the process.
Theoretically, this will make me a better therapist. But in the meantime, I seem to be applying my own theory about grief therapy to myself. So I wonder what this process will do terms of making me a better-functioning human. Am I on the right track? Or am I just kicking up a lot of emotional and psychic dust?
Either way, I just want to state for the record: I am writing. A lot. Just not so much here.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Giant lusty lady
I walked into The Florist's shop the other day and saw this amazing specimen, a riot of orchids on a massive stalk. This photo doesn't do it justice, in part because that's only HALF the stalk. Yes, this orchid is twice as long as pictured here. The other way this photo doesn't do this sweet baby justice is by picturing it with a full-size lighter wand so you can appreciate how big BIG is. Alas, if I'd backed up my crappy cell phone camera -- someday I'll get a real one -- so the whole stalk of this orchid were visible, you wouldn't have been able to see the loveliness of the blooms.
It's one sexy thing. I guess enjoying these orchids is how I'm sublimating my sexuality given the dry spot I've been in for ... way too freaking long now. There are worse things.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Dreams
My dream life has been in a stupor for the past few months. I haven't had many, or just not many worth recalling. But this week, I've had a few doozies in a row. I'll share two of them that have really stuck with me, both visually and psychologically.
Dream No. 1
I am sitting on the grass high on an embankment alongside a great river, much like the Columbia or the Mississippi. There are dozens of people around, most of them enjoying the sun and picnicking. We (all of us people, as I am actually sitting alone) observe two planes taking off from a runway that runs along, then juts out into the river, kind of like the runways at SFO jut out into the bay.
One fixed-wing aircraft flies away. The second, a strangely shaped aircraft that is highly maneuverable, flips nose over tail several times as it ascends rapidly. It hovers above the embankment, and starts shooting small canon balls out it's "butt." They fall amongst the picnickers, causing pandemonium but hurting no one, as we are able to avoid them and they do not explode on impact.
Presently, the strange aircraft lands, and a crowd forms to scold its pilot for dropping those shot puts. Heavily armed men in black SWAT/assault team attire flood off the vehicle and start harassing the crowd, shaking, shoving and hitting them. People flee in all directions. It quickly becomes obvious that these dudes are dangerous, and none of us along the river are capable of responding without getting harmed. So we flee.
The guys in black rush toward me and another bystander. Just as he approaches, I drop down over the edge of the embankment and roll down the hill until I am standing next to the water. The bad dudes follow, and I am leaping and scrambling up and down the hill. I get up top again, thinking I will head for the highway, when I see the parking lots are being controlled by these invaders. People are still running in chaos on the grass. I hide at various times behind trees and benches as the bad guys run or march past. I see a young woman at a drinking fountain kneel as they pass, bowing her head to them in submission.
That's not going to help you, I whispered to her from behind a nearby tree. No sooner do I say it than she is grabbed by one of these men and hauled away.
I head toward a pavilion, where I find a star-shaped concrete construction of some sort. A bench? A table? I can't say, except that it had a large overhang with a void beneath it. I decided to hide in there, as does one other fellow. I push trash that has blown under there out the the lip of the opening, thinking it will make the site look undisturbed.
My ruse doesn't work. No one even bothers to look under the edge of the bench or whatever it is before sticking the end of what looks like a leaf blower under there and turning it on. Out rushes a fog of some gas. I try to hold my breath, but eventually must inhale and do so thinking I will surely die from whatever gas has been distributed.
Instead, it turns out that the gas alters my DNA, permanently changing me. I will, forever more as far as I can tell, smell and taste like cheese nachos. I learn this via an announcement from some unknown source. But after I get out from under the structure and try to flee the area, the news gets repeatedly confirmed. Wherever I walk people sniff hungrily in my direction. Several teenage boys claim they smell nachos.
I walk into a ferry terminal where hundreds of people wait, unaware of the chaos being caused by the invaders outside. A boy of about 9 whines at his mother, "But they must have nachos here somewhere! I can smell them! I'm hungry!"
I flee the building.
Down the river a few hundred yards, I see a small boat launch. I decided to enter the river there, thinking I might be able to wash off this smell, not really accepting my DNA has been altered. Just as I'm wading into the fuel-slicked water, I see S2 in a small motorboat pull into a floating dock about 25 yards from shore. I swim out to the dock.
As I climb out of the water, I notice Little Pea squat over the river and urinate. Her big sister, Getting to Yes, who's 7, instantly rats her out, saying, "Mom, Pea's polluting the Earth!"
I really think that's the least of our problems, I say to Getting to Yes.
GTY glares at me like I'm a traitor. "Pollution is a BIG problem," she corrects me.
S2 comes around the edge of the dock, surprisingly topless. Uh, I say, you might want to put your shirt back on.
"I'm sunbathing," she says. "What of it?"
I gesture up the river. I think we're being invaded or something.
She looks at the chaos continuing on the shore and shrugs a little, then wrinkles her nose. "What's that smell?" she asks, looking at me. I extend my hand. She sniffs it. "What is that?"
Cheese nachos? I offer.
"Yeah, kinda. I guess," she says, not convinced.
Taste it, I suggest. I'm supposed to taste like it, too.
She licks the back of my hand, then quickly spits. "You taste like gasoline-soaked nachos!" she says. "That's disgusting."
I wake up.
Dream No. 2
I am standing in the middle of what appears to be a dorm room. Stroking my chin, I realize there are long hairs hanging down below it. I feel around and discover they are braided, knotted messy things like dreadlocks. They hang like the giant whiskers of a catfish but instead of my cheek or chin, they are attached to the inside of my bottom lip. I tug on them, and they pull my lip into a frown.
"You really should stop playing with those," says a woman I recognize as a classmate from my internship class. She's a petite brunette who presents as demure in class. But in this dorm room, she's bossing me around. "Your side of the room is messy; you need to clean it up."
I look at the room and discover one side is an incredibly clean, simply appointed bed, desk and table of Japanese design. Two place mats with chopsticks and tightly folded napkins sit at corners of the table. On the other side of the room is a profusion of mess -- books tossed hither and yon, my sleigh bed covered in a quilt.
I tug on one of the dreadlocks hanging from my lip, trying to figure out how to get rid of them. "I'll get you some scissors and you can just cut them off," the classmate says. I nod my head. "And stop bowing your head to me," she snaps. "Just stop bowing down like that! I can't stand it!"
I am feeling verbally assaulted and confused. With my fingernail, I scrape at the skin on the inside of my lip. As I do, four dreadlocks fall out painlessly in a chunk, as an exceptionally loose tooth might. A second chunk of five dreadlocks comes out without much more effort than that.
My classmate returns with scissors in her hand and sees the dreadlocks -- with their spit-covered roots -- lying on the ground. "Those are really nasty," she says, then sighs, "Make sure you pick them up."
....
I'm not a dream analyst, but I have a feeling both of these dreams meant something. I'm going to ponder them for a while. If anyone knowledgeable in dream symbols has any ideas, let me know.
Dream No. 1
I am sitting on the grass high on an embankment alongside a great river, much like the Columbia or the Mississippi. There are dozens of people around, most of them enjoying the sun and picnicking. We (all of us people, as I am actually sitting alone) observe two planes taking off from a runway that runs along, then juts out into the river, kind of like the runways at SFO jut out into the bay.
One fixed-wing aircraft flies away. The second, a strangely shaped aircraft that is highly maneuverable, flips nose over tail several times as it ascends rapidly. It hovers above the embankment, and starts shooting small canon balls out it's "butt." They fall amongst the picnickers, causing pandemonium but hurting no one, as we are able to avoid them and they do not explode on impact.
Presently, the strange aircraft lands, and a crowd forms to scold its pilot for dropping those shot puts. Heavily armed men in black SWAT/assault team attire flood off the vehicle and start harassing the crowd, shaking, shoving and hitting them. People flee in all directions. It quickly becomes obvious that these dudes are dangerous, and none of us along the river are capable of responding without getting harmed. So we flee.
The guys in black rush toward me and another bystander. Just as he approaches, I drop down over the edge of the embankment and roll down the hill until I am standing next to the water. The bad dudes follow, and I am leaping and scrambling up and down the hill. I get up top again, thinking I will head for the highway, when I see the parking lots are being controlled by these invaders. People are still running in chaos on the grass. I hide at various times behind trees and benches as the bad guys run or march past. I see a young woman at a drinking fountain kneel as they pass, bowing her head to them in submission.
That's not going to help you, I whispered to her from behind a nearby tree. No sooner do I say it than she is grabbed by one of these men and hauled away.
I head toward a pavilion, where I find a star-shaped concrete construction of some sort. A bench? A table? I can't say, except that it had a large overhang with a void beneath it. I decided to hide in there, as does one other fellow. I push trash that has blown under there out the the lip of the opening, thinking it will make the site look undisturbed.
My ruse doesn't work. No one even bothers to look under the edge of the bench or whatever it is before sticking the end of what looks like a leaf blower under there and turning it on. Out rushes a fog of some gas. I try to hold my breath, but eventually must inhale and do so thinking I will surely die from whatever gas has been distributed.
Instead, it turns out that the gas alters my DNA, permanently changing me. I will, forever more as far as I can tell, smell and taste like cheese nachos. I learn this via an announcement from some unknown source. But after I get out from under the structure and try to flee the area, the news gets repeatedly confirmed. Wherever I walk people sniff hungrily in my direction. Several teenage boys claim they smell nachos.
I walk into a ferry terminal where hundreds of people wait, unaware of the chaos being caused by the invaders outside. A boy of about 9 whines at his mother, "But they must have nachos here somewhere! I can smell them! I'm hungry!"
I flee the building.
Down the river a few hundred yards, I see a small boat launch. I decided to enter the river there, thinking I might be able to wash off this smell, not really accepting my DNA has been altered. Just as I'm wading into the fuel-slicked water, I see S2 in a small motorboat pull into a floating dock about 25 yards from shore. I swim out to the dock.
As I climb out of the water, I notice Little Pea squat over the river and urinate. Her big sister, Getting to Yes, who's 7, instantly rats her out, saying, "Mom, Pea's polluting the Earth!"
I really think that's the least of our problems, I say to Getting to Yes.
GTY glares at me like I'm a traitor. "Pollution is a BIG problem," she corrects me.
S2 comes around the edge of the dock, surprisingly topless. Uh, I say, you might want to put your shirt back on.
"I'm sunbathing," she says. "What of it?"
I gesture up the river. I think we're being invaded or something.
She looks at the chaos continuing on the shore and shrugs a little, then wrinkles her nose. "What's that smell?" she asks, looking at me. I extend my hand. She sniffs it. "What is that?"
Cheese nachos? I offer.
"Yeah, kinda. I guess," she says, not convinced.
Taste it, I suggest. I'm supposed to taste like it, too.
She licks the back of my hand, then quickly spits. "You taste like gasoline-soaked nachos!" she says. "That's disgusting."
I wake up.
Dream No. 2
I am standing in the middle of what appears to be a dorm room. Stroking my chin, I realize there are long hairs hanging down below it. I feel around and discover they are braided, knotted messy things like dreadlocks. They hang like the giant whiskers of a catfish but instead of my cheek or chin, they are attached to the inside of my bottom lip. I tug on them, and they pull my lip into a frown.
"You really should stop playing with those," says a woman I recognize as a classmate from my internship class. She's a petite brunette who presents as demure in class. But in this dorm room, she's bossing me around. "Your side of the room is messy; you need to clean it up."
I look at the room and discover one side is an incredibly clean, simply appointed bed, desk and table of Japanese design. Two place mats with chopsticks and tightly folded napkins sit at corners of the table. On the other side of the room is a profusion of mess -- books tossed hither and yon, my sleigh bed covered in a quilt.
I tug on one of the dreadlocks hanging from my lip, trying to figure out how to get rid of them. "I'll get you some scissors and you can just cut them off," the classmate says. I nod my head. "And stop bowing your head to me," she snaps. "Just stop bowing down like that! I can't stand it!"
I am feeling verbally assaulted and confused. With my fingernail, I scrape at the skin on the inside of my lip. As I do, four dreadlocks fall out painlessly in a chunk, as an exceptionally loose tooth might. A second chunk of five dreadlocks comes out without much more effort than that.
My classmate returns with scissors in her hand and sees the dreadlocks -- with their spit-covered roots -- lying on the ground. "Those are really nasty," she says, then sighs, "Make sure you pick them up."
....
I'm not a dream analyst, but I have a feeling both of these dreams meant something. I'm going to ponder them for a while. If anyone knowledgeable in dream symbols has any ideas, let me know.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Come on down to the Mardi Gras...
My idea with this year's Mardi Gras has been to bring home the lush (elegant, decadent) flavor of the holiday. I knew it would be too hard to pull off what I wanted for myself, so I enlisted the help of two friends who have their own reasons for wanting to get into the spirit of things.
King Rex, a native of New Orleans who was evicted by Hurricane Katrina, will be supplying some of the culinary muscle for our endeavor. I will be dishing up a few of my standby favorites, including the jambalaya I learned how to make from my dear late aunt, a cajun culinary powerhouse also born in the Big Easy. So I think we will have some delightful dishes.
Of course, there will be intoxicants. So this alters the mood of things.
But HGM came over this evening and turned on his PowerGay Transformer Ray and freaking worked over the place. We daydreamed up the ideas together. I collected candlesticks and decorations and platters from friends (The Florist and S2) and used my personal supply of masks. HGM and I visited a fabric store and bought a bunch of materials. And HGM brought over more candles and holiday lights.
The end result of about three or four leisurely but work-filled hours this evening is ... well, let's just say we've gone off and created that mood-altering atmosphere I had in mind -- with HGM's queer panache creating an over-the-top effect well beyond my expectations. When it comes to staging decadent, dark, voluptuous atmosphere, the dude ROCKS!
I have no idea who will show up to this party and who will bail. I have had a couple last minute maybes and one rather grim I-don't-think-so from a friend who may not be up for socializing. Otherwise, all I can say is that those who do show up to this colorful affair will be entering into an mood-altering space, just as I wanted.
But I'll be honest about something: It kind of creeps me out to go to sleep in the middle of this bizarro-world that has overtaken my loft. There is some drapery hanging above my bed, atop which sits the most magnificent mask I own, which is adorned with a large headdress of black feathers. I'm a little worried about waking up in the middle of the night and seeing that thing staring down at me.
Also, I'm afraid of waking up and seeing this place in the daylight. It is staged like a ballroom party. There is drapery and tulle and ribbon and damask everywhere. I'm worried that when I wake up, I'll look around and feel like I fell asleep in the middle of a Macy's window display or something. I really don't like that particular startle that comes with feeling like I've accidentally fallen asleep while I was supposed to be entertaining guests. This is a recurrent experience for me, and in truth, I'm writing about it partly in hopes that I can stem off that experience tomorrow.
Anyway, that is also a way of illustrating just how much my living space has been altered. It has a very Cinderella meets "Eyes Wide Shut" thing going on. If it's hard for you to imagine, I assure you, one look at what's going on here, and you would know I have described it perfectly.
In the middle of it will be yours truly -- dressed as pirate. To be more accurate, that means that I, a fashion-conservative female, will be dressed as a male-to-female cross-dressing pirate. Seems like those kinds of roles are normally Oscar material. I'll do my best....
That starts with getting my beauty rest. Good night. And may you enjoy this here Mardi Gras.
King Rex, a native of New Orleans who was evicted by Hurricane Katrina, will be supplying some of the culinary muscle for our endeavor. I will be dishing up a few of my standby favorites, including the jambalaya I learned how to make from my dear late aunt, a cajun culinary powerhouse also born in the Big Easy. So I think we will have some delightful dishes.
Of course, there will be intoxicants. So this alters the mood of things.
But HGM came over this evening and turned on his PowerGay Transformer Ray and freaking worked over the place. We daydreamed up the ideas together. I collected candlesticks and decorations and platters from friends (The Florist and S2) and used my personal supply of masks. HGM and I visited a fabric store and bought a bunch of materials. And HGM brought over more candles and holiday lights.
The end result of about three or four leisurely but work-filled hours this evening is ... well, let's just say we've gone off and created that mood-altering atmosphere I had in mind -- with HGM's queer panache creating an over-the-top effect well beyond my expectations. When it comes to staging decadent, dark, voluptuous atmosphere, the dude ROCKS!
I have no idea who will show up to this party and who will bail. I have had a couple last minute maybes and one rather grim I-don't-think-so from a friend who may not be up for socializing. Otherwise, all I can say is that those who do show up to this colorful affair will be entering into an mood-altering space, just as I wanted.
But I'll be honest about something: It kind of creeps me out to go to sleep in the middle of this bizarro-world that has overtaken my loft. There is some drapery hanging above my bed, atop which sits the most magnificent mask I own, which is adorned with a large headdress of black feathers. I'm a little worried about waking up in the middle of the night and seeing that thing staring down at me.
Also, I'm afraid of waking up and seeing this place in the daylight. It is staged like a ballroom party. There is drapery and tulle and ribbon and damask everywhere. I'm worried that when I wake up, I'll look around and feel like I fell asleep in the middle of a Macy's window display or something. I really don't like that particular startle that comes with feeling like I've accidentally fallen asleep while I was supposed to be entertaining guests. This is a recurrent experience for me, and in truth, I'm writing about it partly in hopes that I can stem off that experience tomorrow.
Anyway, that is also a way of illustrating just how much my living space has been altered. It has a very Cinderella meets "Eyes Wide Shut" thing going on. If it's hard for you to imagine, I assure you, one look at what's going on here, and you would know I have described it perfectly.
In the middle of it will be yours truly -- dressed as pirate. To be more accurate, that means that I, a fashion-conservative female, will be dressed as a male-to-female cross-dressing pirate. Seems like those kinds of roles are normally Oscar material. I'll do my best....
That starts with getting my beauty rest. Good night. And may you enjoy this here Mardi Gras.
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