| | |
I'm finally feeling brave enough to link to my newest blog, simply called Another. Initially, it was meant to be a diary, a dumping grounds for posts that felt too personal and self-indulgent to inflict on this Cup's readership. But the new blog changed genres and became something more specific when I realized that the only posts I'm hesitant to put here are the ones dealing with depression; and so, Another became a "literary" mental health blog, focusing on the relationship between writing and depression, but also linking to abstracts of clinical studies, essays about therapy, and reviews of recent and relevent books.
Some posts that may (or may not) appeal to this Cup's readers include
Margo Jefferson writes on quote collectors and collections for the New York Times:
Unreliable or omniscient, I would be the narrator in control.From the age of fourteen to seventeen, I was an avid quote collector. So, after reading Jefferson's article, I entered, folder by folder, the bowels of my hard drive, launched OS 9, and spent some time with a rarely visited, but very familiar, quote collection. Here, the quotes that I loved in my most formative years (and still love in what I hope to God are my least formative years):So I kept notebooks of quotations. Lots of people do. Reading them over lets you scan your own temperament. The words of writers you admire provide a trustworthy language for your desires and for how you'll feel when life ambushes them. They relieve you from being brave enough to say what feels unsayable. Notebooks like this are an informal history of your reading. If you forage through books instead of reading one at a time, the order of entries can look random. Rereading reveals -- or imposes -- a structure, a map of associations.
BeautyPeople say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayCalifornia
Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
— Ross MacDonald(Note to readers: my high school was near the California shore.)
Change
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
— Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics
CynicismThe cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Menchen (1880- 1956)Education
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry AdamsThe test and the use of man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the excercise of his mind.
— Jacques Barzun, in Saturday Evening Post“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and then the different branches of Arithmetic— Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandOne had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problem distasteful to me for an entire year.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mostly in need of freedom; without this it goes to ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”You say I was an unschoolable boy at a bad school. But what is an unschoolable boy? I was greedy for knowledge, and interested in everything, and if school taught me nothing except that school is a prison and not a place of teaching, the conclusion is that pedagogy is not yet a science.
— Bernard Shaw, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
— G.M. Trevelyan, English Social HistoryI have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain (1835-1910)Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde, IntentionsEgotism
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
—Lucille S. HarperEgotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
—Ambrose BierceFear
Always do what you are afraid to do.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonFriendship
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonGoodness/Rightness
No good deed goes unpunished.
—Clare Boothe LuceAlways do right- this will gratity some and astonish the rest.
—Mark TwainHell
Hell is other people.
—Jean-Paul SartreHell is a half-filled auditorium.
—Robert FrostHonesty
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
—Tom StoppardHumility
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
—Golda Meir to a visiting diplomatIgnorance
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
— Sydney HarrisLife
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
— PlatoEverything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul SartreLogic
Logic is in the eye of the logician.
—Gloria SteinemMedia
lmitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred AllenMediocrity
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(Note: I wrote the last quote down when I was fifteen, after losing a creative writing contest.)
The average person thinks he isn't.
— Father Larry LorenzoniMind
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
— John Milton, Paradise LostOther
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. - Ashleigh Brilliant
In time of war the first casualty is truth.
- Boake CarterDiplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie! " till you can find a rock.
- Wynn CatlinIt is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
—Winston ChurchillSometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
— Sigmund FreudNever mistake motion for action.
—Ernest HemingwayFew things are harder to put up with than a good example.
—Mark TwainThe gods too are fond of a joke.
—Aristotle
How can l lose to such an idiot?
— A shout from chessmaster Aaron NimzovichNo Sane man will dance.
—CiceroThree o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
—Jean-Paul SartreIf you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt LongworthGlory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon BonaparteGive me a museum and I'll fill it.
—Pablo PicassoAssassins !
—Arturo Toscanini to his orchestraThe longer l live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)Prejudice
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
—Albert EinsteinCriticism is prejudice made plausible.
— H. L. MenckenSelf as Enemy
Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
—Thomas Browne, Religio MediciHe is his own worst enemy.
—Cicero of Julius CeaserSelf-criticism
All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-priase, and all the reproach of falsehood.
— Samuel JohnsonSelf-knowledge
He who knows others is learned
He who knows himself is wise.
—Lao-Tzu, Tao-te ChingReal knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
—ConfuciusSilence
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb ColtonWe have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
—EpictetusThe world would be a happier place if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
— Benedict De Spinoza, EthicsTemptation
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayThought
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
—Bertrand RussellWhether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
—Henry FordTruth
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
— Andr GideThe opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
— Niels BohrWords
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
—Abraham LincolnWhen ideas fail, words come in very handy.
— GoetheWriting
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
— Flannery O'ConnorWhy don't you write books people can read?
—Nora Joyce to her husband James
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
— T. S. EliotFrom the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
—Groucho Marxl have read your book and much like it.
—Moses HadasEverywhere I go I'm asked if l think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
—Flannery O'ConnorIn science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
—Paul DiracI can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody - who can write better.
—A. J. Liebling
I slept all day and, somewhere in those 14 hours, my cell phone registered a "missed call" from my apartment's land line. Should I be worried?
Because this image makes it feel like my rib cage is clawing at my heart.
I left New York at 6 am, having only slept an hour -- the night before that, three. And as the plane crossed half the country, sinking and rising in slow cycles, I fell into dreams, and was lifted from them by new altitude. In my dreams, I woke up to the plane setting down in Iowa, but I couldn't move, so limp from fatigue. And then I'd rise from the dream as the plane ascended, and descend into dreams of waking as it fell.
When we finally landed, stairs were wheeled up to the plane. I walked down them (--like a president greeting a crowd, except I swayed with nine days' worth of clothes and books in carry-ons--) and I thought I'd trip. And I struggled hard to keep my balance against the morning light (-- the anticipation of a crowd, I thought, not much different than my count-down, taken step by step, to level ground).
I could see, from the plane's window and then again, outside the airport, that Iowa had finally won its spring. But it wasn't a pleasant spring. The cornfields were dry and, since the land was flat, they looked like sand, and desert. I took an airport shuttle home, hoping, for my body's sake, that the monotony of fields was a fair compromise between the the nill of sleep and my short-term need to stay awake.
And now I'm home. And, as sad as this sounds, home partly means my own computer -- my email, weblog, cable modem -- which domesticate my apartment like pets do, waiting to be attended to when I come in from trips.
I've been feeling guilty about not writing more, or better, posts while in NY. It's not that I'm worried about my readers (-you-), but that I hate thoughts and ideas going to waste -- not being properly stored (in my weblog, my internet refrigerator). There's lots of things I did in NY that I want to post about -- and god no, not as journals. I might nap now, but I want to put up my thoughts on the Whitney Biennial, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and some books I'm reading. And I've bookmarked dozens of sites that I should sort through, discarding the links that other sites have used, and hoping some remain for blogging. So, this post means to say I'm back, and my weblog will, again, have links and commentary, and I hope you'll relapse into the habit of reading it.
(Ok: now to my bed, for napping.)
I'll be in NYC March 11 - 20. Despite a long roster of social phobias, I'd love to finally meet some fellow bloggers.
Maud, covering a profile of Jeanette Winterson, writes, "Naturally I honed in on the most vital information in the interview--namely, that Winterson's exactly my height":
"I'm five foot tall, how scary can I be?" she asks. "Sometimes you do wonder that people have this image of you as somebody who's going to arrive on a 1300cc Harley."Stranger yet, for me, is that Winterson and Maud are exactly my height.
My moods, their ups and downs, become obvious when I look at my changing relationship to books. At my best, I'm reading them. At my worst, I'm avoiding them. Usually, depressed but optimistic, I'm buying them; I can easily mistake buying them for possessing them, assign their physical presence intellectual effects. It's a parody of consumerism, or maybe consumerism perfected: I've turned the self-as-art of dandyism into a self-as-acquisitions. And, of course, this is the fake change that depressives love best.
Someone, in the comments on a recent post, encouraged me to start reviewing the books I read. I'd love to, except that, even when I read the books I buy, I rarely finish them. Here's a list of the books discarded around my apartment. I won't even bother with the book shelves.
Partly read, with length of time since last read
office floor: Milan Kundera's Ignorance (4 months), Rick Moody's The Black Veil (3 months), (ed.) Leila Sebbar's An Algerian Childhood (1 year), Michael Cunningham's The Hours (repeated efforts to read first chapter and convince myself I like it every 6 months), Gary Lutz' Stories in the Worst Way (7 months), Alice Flaherty's The Midnight Disease (1 month)
living room floor: George Vaillant's The Wisdom of the Ego (3 weeks), Michel de Montaigne's The Complete Essays (1 month)
bedroom floor: Jean Rhys' Good Morning, Midnight (3 weeks), Kate Moses' Wintering (1 year), Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1 year), Jorge Borges' Other Inquisitions (1 year), Richard Schechner's Performance Studies (1 month), Richard Klein's Cigarettes are Sublime (2 weeks)
Unread, and when bought
office floor: Armand Marie Leroi's Mutants (4 months ago), Sudden Fiction: American Short Stories (on sale for $2 -- last week), Daniel Amen's Healing ADD (last week), Edward Hallowell and John Ratey's Driven to Distraction (last week), Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine (last week)
desk: P. Mansell Jones' French Introspectives: From Montaigne to André Gide (4 months ago)
living room floor: latest issue of Fence (2 weeks ago), Jennifer Vanderbes' Easter Island (1 month ago), Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (5 months ago), J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello (5 months ago)
bedroom floor: Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce (2 weeks ago), Paul Auster's Oracle Night (1 month ago), Slavoj Zizek's Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (4 months ago)
currently reading
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (re-reading), John Haskell's I am not Jackson Pollock., Deborah Levy's Pillow Talk in Europe
I'm sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I'm trying out a new medication, and the side effects have been grueling. On the up side, I learned a new word today: asthenia, an abnormal loss of strength.
More later.
Some bloggers asked why I didn't include a photo of myself in my round-up. So, despite my better instincts, I'll point out that in this blog's first year, I posted many. And, the year after, I showed off a new monocle with this, a picture that's so easy to make fun you shouldn't even try. (Just Don't. Please.)
From a Nerve personal essay about being a baaaad girlfriend:
He thumbs through the New Yorker to some article about SUVs that he was telling me about earlier. He is the youngest person ever to have a subscription to the New Yorker. It's not normal.Where's Nerve finding these personal essayists? Dude, if people are talking to me I won't even acknowledge them if they don't have a NYer subscription. So back to my first question: Appalachia? New Jersey?
And, from The Observer's engagement column:
But when he noticed the profile of the nubile, chestnut-haired Ms. Birns, his interest was piqued, and he composed a mash note about his love for music, etc. "He didn’t have any typos in his e-mail, so I figured he must have reread it and therefore really was interested," Ms. Birns said. Ah, millennial romance!Amanda Birns, by the way, is 23. Mark Roth is 25. So, some comments. 1. People my age vacation? Seriously? 2. I often don't go out of my apartment for days at a time. My boyfriend would be lucky to expect a showered girlfriend during this time, let alone a made-up girlfriend with armpits fragrancing the room with baby powder. That shit's reserved for, like, date no. one. 3. I require a boyfriend who will make fun of people who write typos (unconscious stupidity! ha ha ha!), not one who simply doesn't make them. Fuckheads. Puerto Rico.…The couple reached a major milestone when she got stuck at his apartment in Murray Hill during a February blizzard, sans makeup or deodorant. "I had nothing that could make a girl feel comfortable, and I realized with him, it didn’t matter," she said. She moved in for good shortly thereafter.…
…He proposed by a hot tub when they were vacationing in Puerto Rico, handing over a filigreed white-gold ring containing three square diamonds.
Some bloggers can make their shitty lives sound funny -- intellectually hygienic, semantically consumable. But some lives have a stench that words can't hide; or, while some bloggers have words like quilted, ripply two-ply, others only have access to sad, ass-rashing, trice-recycled half-ply, which won't do the mess no good.
For example, I started this list as a set of groundrules and warnings for people trying to get in touch with me. At first, I thought it could be witty. But, the more I wrote, the more it seemed just sad.
Groundrules and Warnings for People Trying to Get in Touch with Me
-People may wonder why I don't call them back. This is because I don't ever check my voice mail.
-People may wonder why I don't write them back. This is because I try to spend as much time as possible asleep.
-People wonder why I don't get in touch with friends and family. This is because I'm altruistically encouraging others not to rely on me.
-People wonder what I do all day. Again: sleeping.
-People wonder when I sleep. My sleeping schedule goes like this: 10 hours awake, and then 12 hours not. If I have an appointment or lunch-date, I will alter my schedule to sleep through it.
-People wonder if I miss them. I see everyone I care about nightly in my dreams, and we have long, good conversations.
After that last item, which is true, I couldn't continue.
| DISCUSSED: comfort reading, middle school narcissism, hypochondria, hypergraphia in The Midnight Disease, ex-boyfriends' mental issues, the mind/body divide |
|---|
Earlier this week, some of my favorite bloggers posted lists of their top "comfort reads." Given the rate at which I buy books, three times the rate at which I read them, I rarely allow myself to revisit old books; so, I don't have "comfort books" so much as I have a "comfort genre."
That genre: psychological, psychiatric, or neurological studies of writers and the writing process. I first started reading these books when I was thirteen, and I can track changes in my personality by my choices within the genre.
At first, I read psychological profiles of "geniuses"; my favorite book at the time sought to find the traits or common life experiences of "geniuses," and because, at thirteen, I assumed my everday misery fostered or foreshadowed great intellect, I littered the pages with checkmarks and memorized all the indicators of genius that I could apply to myself: sickly, near-sighted, oldest or only child, Jewish, upper middle class, etc.
Over time, my reading choices changed. They stopped reflecting vain optimism, and, in college, began reflecting my losing battle with depression. For months at a time, I couldn't concentrate on anything outside myself; sometimes, I characterized this inability as a fear that, if I lost myself in a book, the losing would be literal. I could, however, read writers' autobiographies of depression, because they felt autobiographical to me, too, and my attention didn't have to wander back to my life, to make sure my life was still there.
If my readings first reflected narcissism, and then depression, they currently reflect hypochondria. The question while reading is, again and again, "Is that me?" But the inflection changes: from me in narcissism, is in depression, to that in hypochondria.
It might be strange to call books that inspire, or are fueled by, hypochondria "comforting." But the idea that there can be something out there which explains (and, in a sense, forgives or absolves) my lifestyle (both its invisible and visible components) is very comforting. It would be like locking a manifestation of a Platonic Idea to the Idea itself; a unified diagnosis for previously incoherent symptoms implies a deep sense of order to things, and this order could possibly extend to a cure. For me, hypochondria is not about worrying, but hoping.
But as first-year med students, and Woody Allen's doctors, can attest: hypochondria almost never leads to a correct diagnosis. Last month, I read a book about schizophrenic authors; even I couldn't take that self-diagnosis seriously. Now, I'm reading the much-blogged-about book, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, by Alice W. Flaherty. The book introduced the word "hypergraphia" into the blogosphere; and, in its early chapters, The Midnight Disease lays out the medical problems that can cause hypergraphia. One such problem is temporal lobe epilepsy, experienced by Dostoevsky and Flaubert (and possibly: Tennyson, Poe, Byron, Pascal, Moliere, Dante, and Petrarch). Flaherty writes,
Although the personalities of people with temporal lobe epilepsy vary, and in most cases patients are impossible to distinguish from the rest of the world, some exhibit a cluster of five personality traits often called the Geschwind syndrome: hypergraphia; a deepened emotional life sometimes described as hyperphilosophical or hyperreligious (a squishy category ranging from attending mass twice a day to believing oneself to be the Buddha); emotional volatility, including aggressive outbursts; altered sexuality (usually decreased sexual activity); and overinclusiveness, an extreme talkativeness caused by excessive attention to detail.Fortunately, I don't have "the Geschwind syndrome." Unfortunately, in the past I've chosen boyfriends who do. And that, like an epileptic's EEG spikes, might also "look" like something. Flaherty continues,
The Geschwind syndrome's constellation of personality traits is one of the clearest examples of a well-defined brain state causing high-level personality changes. It may also have implications for the personalities of some people without epilepsy. Those with the same set of Geschwind syndrome personality traits, but without temporal lobe epilepsy, still have altered temporal lobe activity, even though they do not have outright seizures. So there seems to be a spectrum of temporal lobe activities and of personality changes that they cause.Obviously, each subjective experience could "look" like something, given the right brain-monitoring equipment. But, what if personality could not just be a cluster of traits, but an implicit diagnosis of brain activity? If certain brain activities are more likely to occur together, we could begin to talk about "personality" like we do illness; traits would become like symptoms, grouped and verified by diagnosis.
Under the influence of hypochondria, we turn "traits" into "symptoms." hypochondria resists postmodernism's privileging of the signifier over the signified. It insists on looking for a deep structure or (metaphorically, staying on a vertical axis) a high-level ordering. Symptoms, unlike traits, imply and call for a diagnosis; without a diagnosis or the possibility of one, symptoms are only, simply, traits.
With personality tests, we already see traits being turned into symptoms. Their popularity relies on something like hypochondria, but hypochondria divorced from illness. Personality types confirmed by neorologists, though, might have more credibility than types confirmed by Jungians. But, more importantly, the idea of personality as brain activity might help undermine the mind/body distinction and shorten the percieved distance between fate and free will. It would be impossible to say that our brain determines us, or that we determine our brain's activity, if we more simply say that we are our brain, and consciousness does not take place in a different medium. At that level, hypochondria's search for "something else," something "deeper" or "higher" than surface traits, undermines itself.
And it would answer the question, "Is that me?" with yes. It would remove "that" and the grammar required of a question. My comfort reading is about imagining and hoping for that comfort.
I've always been suspicious of the term "writer's block." It's used so casually in articles and conversations, as if it were an objective condition, a word with steady weight and obvious meaning. But does it mean procrastination, a habit as unwilled and paralyzing as depression? Or, a mind-blankness, bleakness, a dearth of ideas and stories? Or, as is often the case for me, an inability, that can last hours, days, weeks, to piece words into sense-making sentences and paragraphs?
Tomorrow, I have a short film review due. Yesterday, I wrote up an outline that made perfect sense, and the day before yesterday I defended my view of the film to a friend. But today I've forgotten first grade grammar and most of my vocabulary and whatever's left of my style. If you think I'm kidding, I'm really not. Here's one of the discarded first paragraphs I wrote earlier today; it could be the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest's first nonfiction winner:
Critics often accuse postmodern thought of a repetitive and hyperactive un-productivity, too critical to be constructive, and too detached, or delusional, to be useful—like a OCD housewife vacuuming a carpet she’s convinced is a trompe l’oeil painted in dust over a hardwood floor. To a postmodernist, depth is an illusion that always gives way to surface.
A friend of Spalding Gray recently recounted to me Gray's battle with depression, which culminated in electroshock therapy. (Here's a quick online summary of Gray's battle.) The other people with me at the time were surprised to learn electroshock, or electroconvulsive, therapy still exists; maybe they'd recently read The Bell Jar ("Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant."), or they associated ECT with lobotomies: relics of a deluded and regrettably experimental era. ECT, though, is still used, often as a last resort for depression (esp. the catatonic variety) or prolonged episodes of mania.
Even in the deepest depression, I always have hope -- or more accurately, an escape plan, a fantasy of relief. For a while, I secretly wanted to be institutionalized, calmed inside a white womb, handed a doctor's note to excuse myself from life. But I've had enough friends involuntarily locked up for suicidal ramblings to know that a mental hospital would probably be the end of me. For ex., at my very worst, I still take some pleasure in good food, but I'd be forced to eat at a cafeteria (corn dogs? lukewarm chocolate milk? overcooked spaghetti with corn syrup-y tomato sauce? Life would seem bleak and tough, like their chicken breasts. My parents were chefs when I was born, and bad food, for me, is a small death.) More disturbingly, I wouldn't be allowed to avoid people, and the people I'd be unable to avoid wouldn't be annoying, but insanely annoying, or annoyingly insane. (Hospital cutbacks often put people suffering from all types of mental disorders in the same hall. A depressed friend of mine had to spend the night listening to her schitzophrenic roommie scream at blankets.)
So, ECT has become a new escape fantasy. I'd seizure, like possessed by a demon, and then the demon would leave me. I'd stop shaking and my health would be returned.
But, reading about ECT last night, it seems that shock therapy might, after all, be in the same class as lobotomies. Critics of ECT
claim patients are left with permanent memory loss, anxiety, lack of concentration and forget skills such as counting or music learned before the treatment.Among the article's quotes from those who have underwent ECT was this from a mother: "I can't remember hardly anything about my past life, only very little bits. As for bringing up my three daughters, I can't remember a thing."
Out of over 400 people surveyed by Mind, 84% said they had suffered adverse side effects. Four out of ten suffered permanent loss of some of their memories and 36% had permanent difficulty in concentrating.
But three quarters surveyed said they had not been given any information about possible side effects and only 8% were able to consult an independent expert before agreeing to treatment.
Anyway. On a lighter note, here's another article I found last night while reading up on ECT: The Ten Worst Publications in the History of Psychiatry, or what ideas modern psychiatrists hate. You'll get to read the word "anal" several times.
Terry Teachout links to Joseph Epstein's essay "Funny, But I Do Look Jewish."
FUNNY, BUT I DO LOOK JEWISH, at least to myself, and more and more so as the years go by. I'm fairly sure I didn't always look Jewish, not when I was a boy, or possibly even when a young man, though I have always carried around my undeniably Jewish name, which was certainly clue enough. But today, gazing at my face in the mirror, I say to myself, yes, no question about it, this is a very Jewish-looking gent.
The article "Types, Anthropological" in the old "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1901-1906), written at a time when the Jews were anthropologically still considered a race, notes that "persons who do not have the Jewish expression in their youth acquire it more and more as they grow from middle to old age."
Jews come in all shapes and sizes, tastes and temperaments. They can be garish and vulgar, pushy and wild, sensitive and cerebral, artistic and conservative, but they are rarely dull, except of course when trying to pass themselves off as something other than Jewish. Sometimes I think I can have had no better luck than to have been born Jewish, even though I am in my religious belief a pious agnostic and far from a sedulous practitioner of the Jewish religion. At other, rarer times, the complication of being Jewish seems heavy, or "fraught," as is nowadays said, and what it is fraught with, I believe, is the feeling of never quite feeling altogether at home anywhere.
"What are you doing here?" is a question that plays somewhere in the back of every Jewish person in whatever country he or she takes up residence. ("A Jew," André Aciman remarks "is always someone about whom one asked: Why on earth isn't he where he belongs?")
I'm about a month behind in responding to emails. To everyone who's recently written me: I'll try to get back to you this week. Many apologies.
In response to the posts at Old Hag, some things that make me cry:
-Disney's animated films. No other genre features so many killed-off parents. Claiming to be happy family fare, Disney singlehandedly introduces children to the concepts of mourning and loss. Best example, of course: the death of Bambi's mother. My young brain quickly learned a Pavlovian response to these films, and even at 17, watching the Michael Bolton-soundtracked Hercules, I cried and cried, and not because the music was so bad.
-The end of the movie adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was, by most standards, an awful film, but I cried so hard that I had to write a long essay for myself explaining the film's emotional effect. I was also very high. (If someone offers me money, I'll find and post the essay.)
-The Magnetic Fields' "Papa Was A Rodeo." Slaughters my heart.
-Skipping two days of my antidepressants.
-Thinking back to my first cat, Lucky. Lucky died of cancer but I didn't know that until years later. When my mother picked me up from school and told me Lucky had died, she said the doctors said Lucky died of "a broken heart."
I'm leaving for NY today so I can spend my 24th birthday (tomorrow) with my boyfriend. I'm returning on the 9th, and don't know how much I'll post until then. But here's some of the entries I plan to post soon:
-a question: does Halloween encourage suicidal tendencies? Expect some autobiography and pictures.
-a review of some lit.-related articles I should have reviewed two weeks ago
-random links and other good thought- substitutes
-an apology for not replying to emails that will only be read by the people it's not written for
-a list of actors I find strangely attractive. Or, simply attractive. Either way, it sounds like something I'll probably regret posting, and my readers will find icky.
So, lots to look forward to, including more facile self-deprecation (and then, cheap self-reflexivity). Keep checking back. And the facile self-deprecation: really, I don't like it either.
Sometime soon, I'l put up Halloween pics.
I finally updated to OS X, and I feel like I've moved into a new apartment: I've set up my bed, but I haven't found my sheets, and I'm sleeping on the mattress with a pillow and a blanket comprised of three sweaters. I wander from room to room and sometimes sit down on unpacked boxes and wonder, where am I?
I think I may be smoking too much. And the moment I write this, I think of how I want a cigarette, and now one's in my mouth. I've been chain-smoking for four days, reaching for one whenever I want to mimic interaction with my environment. I can't clean the dirty dishes, brush off the ash that's fallen on my bed, find my trash bags to clean my living room floor. But I can slowly fill my apartment with smoke filtered in my lungs.
My remedies to problems have always been the problems I hope to remedy. (Is that the structure of addiction?)
I know three or four types of depression, often as different from one another as classmates with the same name. There's depression which simply blocks action, like a finger pressing flat a vibrating string. The brain demands a bodily movement, and the signal buzzes, live, from neuron to neuron but dies before it reaches where it needs to go. I can feel action about to happen, my body preparing itself to move-- but it's just a body jumping up and falling back down on the stretcher when electricity is applied to its heart. The body moves but it's not revived.
Then, there's a more emotional and dark depression, which has some of the qualities of mania: I'm constantly thinking, and easily return to my old habits of reading and writing. But reading and writing now feels like a defensive gesture. Suddenly the world is unlike me, and I have to protect my personality with the authority of language. People seem vulgar and slow. Sunlight hurts, like my mood's vulnerabilities have made me photo-sensitive (or, I can easily see: photo-receptive. The trees' shadows on my arms turn permanent; the side of my face in the sun will now always be brighter).
My reserves are drying, and empathy, usually exapansive, shrinks under the sun into shrewd defensiveness, craggy as a raisin. I haven't felt defensive (competitive, elitist, so alone) in a long time, and I don't like myself this way. But, I'm reading and writing again: trying to build a moat with sentences, a palace with paragraphs.
1. From a Publishers Lunch email: "Authors Guild dues are $90 for the first year and follow a sliding scale after that based on your writing income (most members continue to pay $90 per year)." Oooh. Sad.
2. I signed up withmyspace.com to see how it compares to Friendster. Seems like it has more features, but is also more cheesy. Profiles require taglines; I hate taglines.
3. I'd sort of like to write an interview or article on "Vera Little" (pseudonym). From one of her many sites: "I am a multimedia designer, animator, and a doll-maker. I am a finger and leg amputee. I have an affinity for oddities and a tendency to accumulate things. I live with Max in an old factory in Boston." Some "Vera Little" places to go to: News, Leg Journal (very interesting), Animation, Links, Live Journal.
My birthday's Nov. 6. Now, you don't have to get me something. But if you do, here's a long list of items I've been eyeing.
$0 to $10
The Body Artist, Don DeLillo, $4.98
Tropisms, Nathalie Sarraute, $5.95
The Age of Grief, Jane Smiley, $6.99
Elbow Room James McPherson, $7.99
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender, $9.56
Compendium Maleficarum : The Montague Summers Edition, $9.56
Lancome blush, color: pink pool, $9.79
Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson, $10.36
Anagrams, Lorrie Moore, $10.36
Love, Stendhal, $10.40
Adultery, Louise DeSalvo, $10.40
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, $10.40
Couples, John Updike, $10.47
A Heart So White, Javier Marias, $10.47
Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet, $10.80
Two Novels, Robbe Grillet, $10.80
$11 to $15
Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories, $11.16
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace, $11.16
Tomorrow on the Battle Think On Me, Javier Marias, $11.17
The Romantic Movement, Alain De Botton, $11.20
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, $11.20
The Stories of John Cheever, $11.87
The World Won't End, Pernice Brothers, $11.99
Yoko, Beulah, $11.99
Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression, $12.55
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, $12.60
Intimacy and Midnight All Day, Hanif Kureishi, $13
Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors, $13.30
Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle & Sebastian, $13.49
eye glimmer, $13.95
Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec, $13.97
Haha Sound, Broadcast, $13.99
Work of Director Chris Cunningham, $13.99
Work of Director Michel Gondry, $13.99
Under the Influence, Morrissey, $14.99
lip gloss, $15
Urban Decay eye shadow, color: mildew, $15
$16 to $20
Stila eye shadow, color: mambo, $16
Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, $16.95
How to Be Alone: Essays, Jonathan Franzen, $16.80
Amazing face Reading, $17.95
Stardust Memories, Woody Allen, $17.98
Emily tee, size: small, $18
lipsticks, color: deep shade, $18
Secretary, $18.74
The Power of Face Reading, $18.95
Looking Awry: Jaques Lacan through Popular Culture, Slavoj Zizek, $19.95
Face Language 2000 E-Z 10 Second Personality Speed Reading System, $19.95
Chicken Run poster, $19.99
$21 to $30
Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction, $21.95
Stila lip glaze, color: cinnamon, $24
8 Altoids Tangerine Sours, $24.40
Basics of Design: Layout and Typography, $25.17
The Drag King Book, $24.50
Namco TV Classic Games with stick, $24.99
The Royal Tenenbaums, $25.49
The Art of Makeup, $28
Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self, Marina Warner, $29.95
Sex and the City: Season One, $29.99
$31 to $50
The Family Guy: Seasons 1, 2, $34.99
8 1/2, $35.99
Chanel eye shadow, $42.50 (also here for $40)
quilted sash, $45
Lip glosses, $45
Michael Stars tee, color: Loden, $48
fresh lobster at a tacky rest'rant, you choose price
$51 to $100
snow gloves, color: camel, $52
choker necklace, $58
$100 to $150
leather book bag, $110
menswear shirt, size: small, $123
The Body: An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism, $125
Seven jeans, size: 24/0, $128
Chica hoodie, size: small, color: black/white, $142
attn: wealthy fans
corduroy jacket, size: petite (that's smaller than "small," right?), $220
sneaker boot, size: 6, $315
cashmere tweed pants, size: xsmall, $460
also
pretty ties
a couch
all books, Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time (what's the best [and does that mean newest?] translation?)
cigarette holder and cigarette case
a gothic lolita dress
TIVO, ReplayTV, etc.
My Amazon wishlist, which ships to my current address, can be found under my full name, Nathalie Chicha. Friends and family: if you need my new address, email me at Nathalie_Chicha at hotmail dot com.
Everyday, I eat my first meal -- I'm hesitant to call it breakfast, because I sometimes get out of bed at 3 -- at a local diner, where I know the menu by heart and have decided on my meal before I get there. I left the house at around 9 today, and, while walking, settled on pancakes with strawberries (microwaved, but still frozen in the centers) and sausage patties. But Wesley Clark decided to use my diner for a morning meet-and-greet before his speech later today at the University, and the crowd spilled out onto the street: posters, film crews, no strawberries for Nathalie.
So, for breakfast, I had to go to my diner's neighboring diner, which is run by an old fat blond and a hunchback. A couple small dead flies are stuck to the tape on the window's display menu. The blond wears, depending on the day, a pink or purple short-jumpsuit, which exposes bulging varicose veins and induces a deep wedgie. The glasses always have orange food-like flakes stuck to them and the entire place smells of rotten meat. I kept looking at the hunchback, thinking, deformity kills appetite. Don't they know that?
-onion rings
-clean towels
-Sam
-altoids tangerine sours
-acceptance letters
-fresh lobster and butter
-magazine subscriptions
-Hannah and Her Sisters
-8 1/2
-good-looking dogs
-writers' autobiographies
-writers' interviews
-not running out of kleenex
-club soda
-sex daydreams
-arm warmers
-fried bananas
-cigars
-girls in drag
-boys in ties
-wireless networks
-personal libraries
-pens that aren't running out of ink
-soft hair
-believing I can write a novel
-cigarettes accompanied by music
-kisses that take me by surprise
-Edmund White, sometimes
-when I smile and can't help it
-a day writing a paragraph
-finally wanting to wake up in the morning
-walks
-a sense of self on airplanes, in airports
-Reel Around the Fountain
-newly discovered family albums
-Japanese noodles
-school supply shopping in elementary and middle school
-my mother playing guitar
-balconies
-sleeping when sick
-music when sick
-pajamas
-long letters
-alcohol, sometimes
-middle school karaoke
-nighttime car rides followed by sex
-beaches at night
-Sam
-my two ugly dogs
-conversations with, among others, SS, TM, JG, GL, ES, CD
-my mother's fully stocked fridge
-fiction that makes me jog around the kitchen island with excitement
-Sam
-graphic design
-best friends who unexpectedly wink at me
-wearing ex-boyfriends' socks, usually nicer than my own
-elaborate lists, esp. of ambitions
-bookstores
-new computers
-a boyfriend tying my tie
-my scanner
-having EU citizenship
-iTunes playlists
-hotel brunch
-people that aren't horrible at neighboring tables in restaurants
-proper ashtrays (not bottles, boxes, sinks)
-parks
-art books
-Sam's nose
-film trailers
-diners
-parmesan cheese
-11:11
-costume jewelry
Screw the sophistication of monocles and the glamour of tophats. This should be my new Fall look.
Yesterday morning, after another night of insomnia, I tried to decide what it meant that for each 72 hour period, I'd slept five hours. Perhaps I was witnessing the beginnings of FFI.
ABSTRACT - D T Max reports on case of Italian family afflicted with fatal familial insomnia, genetic disease that was not formally identified until 1986; FFI, as disease is known, is astonishingly rare; sometime in their 50's, half the members of aristocratic Giacomo family of Venice die of insomnia; in their search to understand their obscure gothic affliction, they inadvertently helped explain cause of mad cow disease; Elisabetta Roiter loes a family member to FFI about every three years; photos of Roiter, with her husband, and Prof Elio Lugaresi, who saw a connection between fatal insomnia and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (L) (Special issue of Magazine, The Cure Hunters)
Fears I might have:
Phobophobia - Fear of fear
Syngenesophobia - Fear of relatives
Theatrophobia - Fear of theaters
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I've been looking for a tophat (like the one in my "about me" drawing) to add to my pretentious collection of monocles and pocket watches. I was envisioning a black stovepipe hat, but at a hat shop, I fell for a casual brown "smashed felt" top hat; here's some pictures of my new and happy purchase.
I went to bed at 8 am, and flopped back and forth, awake -- until 10 am, when each flop landed me in a new dream. In one dream, I dreamt of Shannon Williams, the Berkeley teacher arrested for prostitution. ``I feel like a gay teacher must have felt 20 years ago after being outed,'' Williams said in a news article I read sometime around 6 am. ``I feel that prostitution laws are dinosaurs. That they're similar to sodomy laws, and they will eventually be repealed.'' In my dream, Williams pleaded her case to the public by setting up a personal installation and scrapbook in an empty dorm room. I visited the room, and flipped through her personal drawings of the prostitution act she was arrested for. But it quickly became clear from the drawings that she didn't have sex with a man, but with a goat; in a childish hand, she had drawn elaborate and shameless pictures of the positions they took throughout the night. I was horrified that the pursuit of pleasure could have no boundaries, that hooves could be as serviceable as men, and I wanted to leave the room immediately. But then, I looked around and realized I had moved into the room; it was filled with my art supplies and clothing. I tried to grab as many items as I could, thinking I could move out in four or five trips; but laziness kicked in, and it felt easier to wake up than move out. My subsconscious said, it's never good to leave so many personal belongings in a bad dream; you'll feel better if you go back and remove them. But I didn't want to see the goat drawings again (and by the way, how could a goat pay for sex?), so I said, screw it and got out of bed.
I rarely post journals, in part because I assume people come here for the links, and I don't want finding those links to be like wading through a private sewer in a PVC suit and galoshes.
But, today's the first day of the new schoolyear, always a day of news. So here's some life updates, with many links thrown in the sewage:
-I've already skipped around my apartment twice. I got into Edward Carey's fiction workshop. Link goes to Edward Carey's thoughts on being both an artist and a writer. Here's another link, an interview, in which the interviewer asks, "Is there something about downtrodden, socially rejected, and supremely bizarre people that invites your observation and veneration?" I wanted to get into Carey's workshop because his answer, of course, is yes. Or, to quote in full:
Yes, they stand apart from the world and look at it in an entirely different way; sometimes they complicate life, and sometimes they simplify it. They just have a very different way of doing things, and the more different they do something the more they make you think about the ordinary way of doing it—and to consider it in a fresh light. I can remember reading a truly wonderful essay by Diane Arbus, in which she discusses those people that stand apart from everyone else, and being painfully moved by it. I haven't forgotten it, or her astonishing photographs.
-As my students know, I'm not a very responsible teacher; I take too long getting back students' assignments. My MFA program, with a logic so perverse it could only come from writers, recently rewarded this irresponsibility by putting me on scholarship; I no longer have to teach for money, and if I'm not teaching I can't screw up as a teacher.
-Some of the authors giving readings this semester: Dave Eggers, Annie Proulx, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Letham, and, oh joy, yes, yes, Lorrie Moore. The oh joy, yes, yes, means I'm excited.
My days without internet access have made me productive. I've been writing for about five hours a day, and reading a book a day, except for yesterday and today, when I wrote for more than five hours (yesterday) or finally got a cable modem (today).
Recently finished books:
 |  Observatory Mansions, Edward Carey
A perfect example of self-contained logic. It's unfortunate, though, that the narrator of my novel also wears cotton gloves; if Carey's my workshop teacher this upcoming semester, I'll be embarrassed to show him my summer's work. |
 |  Rapture, Susan MinotThe back-story alternates between two points of view, both jumping back and forth in time. The result, meant to illustrate emotional fickleness, instead feels unfocused and, in its appraisal of romantic relations, pessimistic for literary effect. Much better is Minot's similarly themed Evening or her debut story collection, Lust & Other Stories. |
 | Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?, Lorrie Moore Lorrie Moore's first novel makes her short stories seem, in comparison, miracles. Here we have two young female friends, playing out archetypal roles with little flair. The narrator: underdeveloped, smart, leaves her hometown for cosmopolitan pursuits, etc.. Her friend, the focus of her narrative and binary counterpart: well-developed, pretty, with a bad-boy boyfriend. She never leaves the hometown. Blah blah blah. |
 |  The Dictionary of Failed Relationships, ed. Meredith BroussardStories by youngish women writers. Among the standouts: Heidi Julavitz (editor of The Believer), Susan Minot, Shelley Jackson, Erika Krouse, and Amy Sohn. Some of the other authors' stories, though, probably count as chick-lit. |
 |  April Witch, Majgull Axelsson Barfo. The story of four women, three of them foster sisters. The sisters are plotted onto one simplistic axis (promiscuous and unconventional <---->conventional and prudish) and, even after 400 pages, that's what counts as characterization. At the airport, my luggage was five lbs overweight, so I threw the book out. |
 | The Art Lover, Carole Maso I am an endless admirer of Maso's formal techniques. But her characters and her nonfiction self are always elitist artists/geniuses who feel no irony in self-romanticization. Art is reified, and since Maso makes it obvious that she is an artist, reading her is sometimes like watching self-applied cunnilingus. (Maso was one of my thesis readers at Brown, and was always encouraging, though in a way that seemed to be shirking the responsibility of close reading and critique.) |
Much liked, but not yet finished:
 | Notable American Women, Ben Marcus "Calling a novel 'The Corrections as imagined by Samuel Beckett' may seem glib, but glibness should be regarded as a tribute to the disarmingly brilliant Notable American Women. A bizarre work of experimental fiction by first-time novelist Ben Marcus, Women tells the somewhat straightforward story of a young boy (named 'Ben Marcus') whose parents subscribe to a child-rearing technique governed by various forms of 'behavior water' and peculiar language experiments." —Onion AV Club |
 | The Melancholy of Anatomy, Shelley Jackson "In these 13 well-wrought, mind-bending stories, grouped by the four medieval physiological humors, people interact with bodily parts, products, and processes, often at their peril. "—Booklist |
Just beginning:
I just realized this list is very Brown-centric (I did my BA there). Matt Derby and Ben Marcus are Brown MFA grads and recent teachers there. Shelley Jackson, too, has a Brown MFA. Susan Minot did her undergrad at Brown, and Carole Maso is a current Brown professor.
I'm at the one public internet kiosk in Iowa City, which is filthier than flies on shit. I won't have internet for another ten days, so updates will depend on my immune system's reaction to this keyboard.
In the meantime, I suggest picking up and reading the July issue of The Believer. It's what's been keeping me company in my new, strange, empty apartment.
July 24 - July 29: flying back to Iowa to pack and move out of my apartment.
July 29 - Aug. 5: returning to NY.
Aug.5: returning to Iowa, and moving in to my new place.
Updates will be spotty. But, if you want to get in touch, I'll still have email. I bought a new cell phone, too, but I don't have anyone's numbers; I lost my old phone a while ago, and all my friends' numbers were on it. If you're reading this, and you're a friend, and we haven't been in touch in the last few days, please email me your number. Thanks, thanks.
My parents bred me from birth to consider myself sophisticated -- to hand-paint with complementary colors, read the Iliad straight out of preschool, and know the ingredients in a dish by taste. But the truth has always been, my taste in food is suspect: I don't like olives, wine, dark chocolate, (bad, or good) coffee and most salads. Cause for familial shame---until last night, when I learned that my dislikes match up exactly with those of a supertaster, a person born with more taste buds than most. "Those with more taste buds are more likely to become professional chefs or wine tasters. [And] now there is a taste bud test people can do at home…"
On a Mac running IE 5.2, it takes Hotmail a minute to delete each message. I don't know if it's MSN's ploy to get me to switch over to Windows, or spam-sponsored encouragement to read all my messages. Lately, I've been biding the time it takes to delete them with a small guessing game: based on the subject line, what the hell's the product?
Here, you try:
1. How is it applied?
2. Do you need help? Guaranteed!
3. Tickets arrived
4. Stop this today
Answers:
1. "How is it applied? "
Introducing VP-RX Penis Enlargement Pills
2. "Do you need help? Guaranteed!"
PEF-RX will take your sex life to new levels...
3. "Tickets arrived "
NO.1 Penis Enlargement Pill on the Market!
4. "Stop this today"
Get Viagra online Now !
My mom's in town for her birthday, so I won't be posting [for the rest of] today and tomorrow. In the meantime, a question and a link.
The question: I need a new cell phone. Recommendations? Advice? I'm on a Sprint family plan (and please don't recommend I change plans; I like having my mom pay my bill…happy birthday, mom!).
The link, to tide you over: Let the Eagles Soar, an oldie but goodie. I laugh until I cry until I collapse onto the floor.
that I'm not updating my blog. Know that in NY, I've arranged for a cable model. So, on June 2 or 3, I'll resume updating at the rate you've come to expect (more than this).
1. My hotmail address is no longer working. I have no idea why.
2. I've been *#$^& sick. Slept all day for three days straight.
3. I haven't checked my voice mail in days. I know people are trying to get in touch. I'm so @**$*#)!@ sorry.
Trapped in LA w/out internet. I'll try my best to post soon.
NY: May 14 - 20
LA: May 20 - June 2
NY: June 2 - July 24
I'll still be on the web, but my posts may be less frequent.
I'm leaving for New York in less than a week, and tonight I've begun my digital packing. I'm spring-cleaning my IE favorites folder, which requires time; while my apartment is the tenth level of hell in Dante's unabridged Inferno, my favorites folder is immaculately organized, with folders ranging from "anti-capri pants" to "philosophy blogs" to "ugly stereos." The goal for tonight: go through all the folders relevant to my novel, and make web archives of all the sites I'll need when writing my novel this summer, without broadband internet access.
As I'm doing this, I'm also listening to music, selecting what songs, from my 15 gig iTunes library, will go on my 5 gig iPod. I'm not going to waste packing space on CDs.
It's hard work. I feel like I'm writing a crappy semiotics paper at 4 am, five hours before its deadline: nauseated by coffee, headachy with stress, and getting leg cramps from sitting still.
The regularly scheduled program is being interrupted by a tornado warning.
It's 4 am, my apartment is filled with smoke, and if I don't flap the smoke away from the fire alarm with a blanket, the alarm's going to go shrill again and wake my neighbors. A quick flashback: at 3:30 am, I couldn't fall asleep, so I got up and decided to draw myself a bath. I lit a couple candles, set them on the edge of the tub (as I always do), and browsed the internet while the bath was running. Three minutes later, I hear a loud snap, and check in on the bath. One of the candle's glass casings is broken, and the candle's top surface is on fire like a lit pan of oil. Now, I'd read as a child that water can actually aggravate fires, but the bath was still running, and it was too easy to splash some wetness in the candle's direction. The candle's flame paused, cackled, and jumped two feet in the air. Now, the fire alarm was screaming, and smoke was clouding my vision, and I went running. I got my fire extinguisher and sprayed the mother fucker out of existence, and I now have a bathroom that looks like a lunar landscape: mountains of white powder everywhere.
The candle-culprit, by the way, was one of those candles that's made out of gel, not wax. They're manufactured by Identity and look like this:
I wouldn't trust them.
I'm getting bored with my blog these days. Linking to what other people link to, hoping that my readers don't read the exact combination of blogs that I do. While I'll still post daily random links, I want to make this blog more useful: for myself and hopefully, by some logic that's too hazy to articulate, for others. I don't, though, want to make this a journal blog; when I go blog-hunting and see a page of text without links, I immediately hit the back button. But I want to add more commentary, and, since I'm not a scholar, my commentary will be somewhat autobiographical. If this new style doesn't entertain, write me, and I'll change back; or, more likely, if this new style clashes with my laziness, I'll change and blame it on your emails.
We are writing a book that seeks to capture every delicious detail of bar mitzvah celebrations from the 1970's, ‘80s and early ‘90s. You lived it. Now be a part of history. We need your help to tell the story of who we are and how we got to be this way.Why are we doing this?
If you are Jewish - or if you had a Jew or two or three in your class - there would have been a golden year when it seemed like you attended a bar mitzvah disco almost weekly. Each one was like a 'pee-wee' Studio 54, a potent cocktail of ritual, acne, insecurity, and hormones run amok.
I went to middle school in Beverly Hills. Do I have to say more?
Okay, more: a typical Bar Mitzvah theme was Wall Street. Entertainment included those glass cages where money is blown around, and you try to grab as much as you can. "Home movies" were shot on film, not video, and directed by established music video directors. The parties usually took place on an entire floor of a 4-star hotel. There were usually three Bar Mitzvahs per month during seventh grade, and girls were expected to wear a new dress to each. Coincidentally, that was the year my depression started.
Woke up late, and going to bed early. I'll post more tomorrow.
Look at this. Why didn't anyone tell me?
Junk mail is getting interesting. Most recent subject line: I Need To Gossip To You About Your Septic Tank.
Everyday, since I was 12 or 13, I've seen 1:11 and 11:11 on my alarm or computer clock. I never see 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, etc. Only 1:11 or 11:11.
A few years ago, my friend Michael said 1:11 and 11:11 are numbers you make wishes on, and so, two to four times a day, I make the same wish (always the same wish).
I wouldn't mention this -- I store away my obsession with, and exposure to, 11:11 under "personal superstitions." But today, cleaning out my favorites folder, I found a site that I swear I've never seen before.
Some of you have recognized this symbol as something of significance, yet have been unaware of its true meaning. With the advent of digital clocks many years ago, the significance of 11:11 began to make itself felt, often appearing on clocks at times of accelerated awareness. For those of you who have know that 11:11 was something special, we now need you to come forth into positions of leadership. For you are important parts of the key.
It's pretty ridiculous. But I decided to do some web research, and see what else people have to say about 11:11.
NVisible, some kind of religous cult, has a 11:11 forum for people to share their experience of seeing 11:11. Also, their website informs us, "The Doorway of the 11:11 opened on January 11, 1992"--which is creepy, because that's around when I started seeing 11:11--"and is now scheduled to close on November 11, 2011." They also have a page of intense New Age-y articles on the subject.
And, this is the most amazing page I found. Absolutely crazy:
After the mid 1980s adjudication of the Lucifer Rebellion, and with the beginning of the Correcting Time, the 1,111 Loyal Secondary Midwayers have found more purpose in life.Under the direction of our Planetary Prince, Machiventa Melchizedek, answering to Christ Michael's call and His mandates for this planet, the Midwayers, and many other Celestial Personalities are ready to assist us in our spiritual, social and technological, educational, ecological and economical progress.
The Midwayers 11:11 time prompts are now being received world wide -- directed at anyone potential mortal assistant who might dare to form an association with these brilliantly minded, and greatly learned creatures who exist "just outside our facet of time".
"The Search for 11:11" details my association of decades with these valiant and trustworthy creatures. Its 260 pages relate to my discovering who they are, and the many ways in which a platoon of Midwayers and a lone mortal can make themselves useful and for the benefit of many.
So far, the best page on 11:11 is this kid's ; it has a decidedly non-religous bent.
other 11:11 sitings:
11:11 merchandise
the 11:11 cult
111 and other triple numbers explained
Portal 11:11 (in Spanish)
11:11 googlism
scary 11:11 story (not real, right?)
quartet 11:11
random 11:11 google hit
11:11 magically (?) appears in a photo
Financial aid awards went out today, and I got a bum deal. So: I think I'm going to have some liquor.
And, tomorrow: Spring Break 2003. The weblog will take a short hiatus while I get drunk and drunker.
I found some left-over modafinil, and decided to make a night of it. Daniel, if you're reading this--- I've been cleaning my apartment.
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la.
