Black dogs.

I continue to be busy. I'm working and taking care of Buddy and going to TMS 5-days a week during work hours. It's been a lot. 

The weather has been unseasonably warm in Montreal, so the fall is only starting to make an appearance. 

I've been thinking about how I'd like to write about black dogs as a theme. I read a memoir called Killing the Black Dog, apparenly the black dog is a metaphor for depression. 

I find it an odd metaphor, since for me black dogs have always been symbols of companionship and familiarity, since every dog I've ever had was black. A black labrador retriever, a black schnauzer and now with Buddy, a black pug. 

The labrador, a confirmation of my fragility and the cruelty of life.

The schnauzer, a crescendo of anxiety and tumultuous happenings.

The pug, an acceptance of the absurd and an attempt to move on. 

Depression to me may feel like a fog that creeps into the brain and covers me like a cloud. Or an evil spirit that feeds off of my energy, joy and ambition. I don't think a representation of depression in popular culture has ever been as spot-on as Dementors in the Harry Potter universe. 

TMS has been going well. The appointments break-up my day. After the first week and a half, I felt my brain to be less cluttered and "cloudy" feeling. Less foggy. It's like there was this density and weight I couldn't see past, and it lifted. I would imagine it to be similar to feeling congested, except without being centrally focused in the sinuses. It's also similar to being sleep-deprived. 

The doctor at the TMS/neurology lab also wants me to be tested for sleep apnea, since I'm perpetually exhausted. I'll be doing that this upcoming Friday. 

If TMS continues to go well (I'm about half-way through the 4-6 week treatment) I may experiment with lowering my anti-depressant dossage, and see if it helps with my energy levels and sleep. 

TMS isn't invassive. It's a time commitment and a hassle to get to, but it's covered by medicare. I think one American I read about having done it paid for it out of pocket and he said it cost him roughly 15 grand. SO, I thank my lucky stars for Canadian healthcare because that's the entirety of my savings for a downpayment. For a treatment that may or maynot help me. 

The treatment itself is a little odd. You sit in a chair, not unlike a dentist chair, lean back, and a large flat thing is put on your head. It's places on your frontal lobe area and then you get tapped on the head. That's basically it. It send you magnetic pulses that feel like being tapped on the head by a woodpecker with a blunt beak. Tap tap tap, 5 seconds, beep, tap tap tap and so on. 

After a few sessions I started falling asleep. It's not painful, just weird and hard to ignore. Some times the magnetic pulses must be stronger, because sometimes it's harder for me to fall asleep since I really feel them, and they make my eye and nose twitch. Other times I feel like a cat leaning into a scratch and barely feel them, but it's comforting. 

I think about writing a lot, I just don't want to spend more time in front of a computer. In a few months time I may start working from home a day a week, in which case I could set aside a little bit of time on that one day a week to write. We'll see. 

I'll definitely keep updating about TMS, since I myself came to it through online blogs and personal accounts, and there's very little out there about it. 

More by @sosadtoday.

From her column on Vice:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Depression.

Started from the Psych Meds, Now I’m Fucked

Well, the Effexor piece (the second one) is nice and depressing, since I know I have that to look forward to if ever I mess with my meds... I've experienced a day of 4-day withdrawals from a  high dose and I felt legit detached.

Her other piece is another good example of writing to describe depression.

If you like her pieces, read her book. 

David Foster Wallace and depression.

From a piece on David Foster Wallace and his depression:

All of this is to say that sadness doesn’t possess the real teeth of depression. The symptom that distinguishes depression from any other state is something I would call terminal fragility, although it’s defined in a less hand-wavey way by the DSM as “guilt/worthlessness.” It’s the feeling that the world’s fundamental malignancy begins with oneself. It represents a categorical change in the way you perceive negative outcomes. You see pain as appropriate punishment, instead of occasional inconvenience. You see yourself as a burden—a net loss for humanity—somehow less worthy of life. Instead of thinking, “that shitty day happened to me,” you think, “as is consistent with my deservedly shitty life, that shitty day occurred, the pain of which is unmitigated by its predictability.” The normal thought, if your hair is misbehaving, is, “fuck, I’ve gotta buy a blow dryer.” The depressed thought is, “I am feeling paralyzing woe because my hair, finally, is as ugly as my soul.” That’s depression’s foremost distinction—it holds you responsible for your suffering.

The original article, The David Foster Wallace Disease by Sasha Chapin is over on Hazlitt.

Wallace’s story “The Depressed Person” opens like this:

“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”

I've never read Wallace. It sounds too intense for me. Intellectually and in scope. I don't know that I have the stamina or attention span for it. I also don't know that reading such well-developed writing on and around depression would be good for me. I'm already convinced, brother.

Lidia Yuknavitch's The Small Backs of Children.

Where are the borders of art? 

Where are the borders of a woman's body?
How unimaginable is one without the other?
When we think of violence, are we not aware, as women, of our place within the world of men?
The borders of our body, of our safe spaces, of hostile spaces?

I just finished reading The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch and I am re-committed to my impression of her as a fluid, visceral representation of what it is to write of art, trauma, violence and living a woman's experience.

I was floored when I read her memoir, The Chronology of Water. It's lead me here, to her novel, which kept me as enamored.

It's a novel, yes, but I feel as though the narrative of people and places is secondary to the passages that describe life so astutely. This book features a group of friends, all artists and creators, juxtaposed to a young girl in eastern Europe, orphaned by war and surviving through art, grit, and the persistence of young blood.

There are segments of her book that discuss art and experience, art as expression, as language, as reference point, as both anchor and catalyst. These sections created in me more questions. An infinite amount. Sometimes they fuse with and of the body, and gender and sexuality pour into her writing. Violence as commonplace, as a masculine language and threat. She has a similar juncture in violence, trauma, and women's bodies. One intrinsically stomped onto the other.

Our blood is all over this world.

Our greatest threat is so linked to us.

And of trauma, of death and loss and surviving the horrific, does our tongue split, now able to speak two languages? As if at different frequencies, two languages in parallel.

Yes I understand your desire for me to print this document, to do this grocery shopping, to celebrate this holiday, but do you understand that feeling, the deep rumble that comes from prolonged, wretched pain, where you become diluted by the incessancy of it, and become convinced your threshold makes you the undead, untouchable. Have you known that pain? No? Then we do not speak the same language. But yes, I do enjoy coffee. And yes, the weather has improved.

From page 69:

Who are we in moments of crisis or despair? Do we become deeper, truer selves, or life up and away from self, untethered from regular meanings like moths suddenly drawn toward heat or light? Are we better people when someone might  be dying, and if so, why? Are we weaker, or stronger? Are we beautiful, or abject? Serious, or cartoon? Do we secretly long for death to remind us we are alive?

This actually heavily links to the conversations I've been having with my best friend S regarding HBO's Westworld. There is an awful lot to unpack regarding the nature of trauma. If you have not watched Westworld - do not read anything about it! I went in blind and was able to discover and discuss things as I went and it's been very interesting!

Are our trauma's our cornerstones? 

I'd read something recently about the way in which trauma can root certain pathways in the brain, making it more difficult to adapt or change habits. Isn't this a scientific explanation for what we already know? How our wounds remind us, how old habits die hard? Aren't we creatures of narrative, of story? Isn't the story we hear most often our own?

Yuknavitch also has these really bodied moments, that represent those abstract experiences of being alive and sentient but not fully present in our culture and context. Detached. From page 93:

Then he thinks: love is an abstract word coming from a face hole.

I guess the only alienating bit to Lidia's novel is how it's populated by successful artists. Confident in their art. Monied. That's my alien experience. My unknown. Where art is a work, a calling, and not a form of communication and a way of being, of purging that is necessary.

Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay.

Just finished reading Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. I already follow her on twitter, she's a great cultural critic. I've read pieces of hers here and there, but this is the first of her books I've read. I've already pre-ordered Hunger as well. She has a novel called Difficult Women scheduled for release in January 2017.

It's a nice collection of current-culture feminist critiques.

From Blurred lines, Indeed:

It’s hard not to feel humourless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things. It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is happening: it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly. (Page 189)

Here she's discussing the pervasive misogyny we see daily in popular culture, but she's also projecting past that, it's everywhere, all the time. She's also referencing her feeling like a nag/debbie downer by her pointing out this sexism all the time, how it makes her seem humourless. This is something that's often on my mind, since stand-up and humour are very dear to me, but so is the resistance to bigotry.

From The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion

I don’t believe in safety. I wish I did. I am not brave. I simply know what to be scared of; I know to be scared of everything. There is freedom in that fear. That freedom makes it easier to appear fearless-to say and do what I want. I have been broken, so I am prepared should that happen again. I have, at times, put myself in dangerous situations. I have thought, You have no idea what I can take. This idea of unknown depths of endurance is a refrain in most of my writing. Human endurance fascinates me, probably too much because more often than not, I think of life in terms of enduring instead of living. (Page 152)

Gay comes to this passage through a critique of the concept of "safe spaces" and trigger warnings. I understand what she's saying, but I see no harm in using a trigger warning when creating something you know to be a representation of traumatic space.

If I'm down, and having a hard time, and I see a movie has trigger warnings regarding a lot of sexual violence I might choose to opt out of seeing the film, and keeping it for a day when it won't kick me while I'm down. A trigger warning is the option to say no, and to walk away. I absolutely understand that the world does not adhere to this type of nicety, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have it's value, or what it isn't at least an attempt at recognising the trauma of experience.

I relate to Gay's passage immensely. I also think there are parts of me that lean towards masochism. There is a way that trauma can dull certain synapses, in equal measure. Sure, maybe I have a high pain tolerance, expanded empathy, and deep emotional intelligence, but I also have a low understanding of romantic love and low level trust in men.

I live in pain-reduction so much, it limits my choices. I have nearly zero ambition these days. I'm always in crisis mode - in limiting my stimulation. I'm tired of enduring, but I have no reference for what living looks like.

Gay's framing of a bad feminist is based on what has traditionally been a white-upper class version of feminism. I'd argue that with millennials, there is more of an understanding of the fluidity of identity, and that like many things, it exists on a spectrum.

Feminism is the fight against patriarchy. More than that, it's the notion that women are people, and as such deserve the same unalienable rights as men. Furthermore, they deserve person-hood and autonomy.

Gay is a great feminist. There is no such thing as a bad feminist. You can be a racist feminist. You can be an elitist feminist. If you're "bad" and believing in equality - you're just not a feminist.

There is no one right way to be feminist. As there's no right way to be Canadian,  American, female, male, or queer.

So Gay might be a bad feminist of her own identifying. I'd argue she's a great one. But identities, especially those that hold on too tightly to a narrative, tend to alienate. And a reading of her work understands how she came to that title.

I recommend her book.

Atheist spirituals.

It's been a busy two weeks. Last weekend my friend C came down from British-Columbia for a few days. She was visiting her father for his 70th birthday, so she was able to stay at my house for two days before flying back West.

The weekend she was down meant a tight schedule. I took Friday off, spent it with her, dropped her off there, then went to a friend house then picked her up, then this then that then super full scheduling. It was a packed 4 days, so I was tired heading into the next week. That Saturday I had planned a relaxed say with S, watch The Purge: Anarchy. We watched the first Purge together - and she detests horror movies, she watched it out of political conscience, and wanting to discuss it. So then I got her to watch all the sequels with me. So we watched the final chapter while laughing and drinking tea.

That Sunday I got up early to have a last breakfast with C before she headed to the airport, and then I had my date with the dogs at the refuge. It rained all day, which sucked. But I was lucky because my teammate did not show up which could have been hellish, but I only had 6 dogs, so I wasn't overwhelmed. Luckily.

Then I got sick, a cold of some sort, so I stayed home Wednesday, watched the 3rd presidential debate (oh lordy America) and then got back to work.

I'm at home today, Sunday, and am taking the time to sit down and write, since it's been busy and if I don't take the time, nobody will do it for me.

A few official updates.

#1 - I love the new Lady Gaga album. It has a lot of references that I equate to the music my parents listened to when I was little. I hear Bowie, I hear classic rock nods, I hear songwriter nods that remind me of Joe Cocker and those type of sing-along spirituals, only her songs are bout drugs and female friendship. Much more up my alley than an actual spiritual.

Gaga definitely has a lot of religious iconography in her music, some totally over but I've never found her music to be preachy. My main issue with religion is it's a tool to separate and classify, and it's often used to suppress women and just be hateful dicks in general - but her catholicism isn't too guilt-based, it's more "lord help me," and less entitled. What I mean to say is I've never felt alienated listening to her religious references. Maybe that's because I like Gaga enough to have seen her live, and to hear her speak and know how subversive her work is, and how feminist she is.

I've always lamented the fact that I love spirituals but don't identify to their religious tone. I need an atheist spiritual, so songs about friendship, or just life and learning are as good as it gets for me.

There's just so much fucking soul!

I still sing "Down to the River to Pray" in the shower - even though I'm totally godless.

#2 - I just recently finished Stories to Hide from Your Mother by Tess Fragoulis and I loved it. There are parts that are so liquid and surreal, part prose part dreamscape, completely untethered and an absolute poignant representation of the absurdity of womanhood. I cannot recommend it enough.

#3 - my family doctor Dr. Rishi is in between practices which means trying to contact him over the last 2-3 months has been like a shitty version of Where's Waldo. His old clinic says they don't know the new information yet, but I also can't try and get a new doctor because I'm officially attributed to him. I finally got an e-mail from him saying he will not be available until mid-November. Hopefully by then we'll have some news regarding his new clinic.

Yesterday I spent the day with K a friend of friends who was introduced to me first here in Montreal then out in Victoria. She's in the process of converting an old atelier to a mini-house. It already looks amazing. I drove her out to St-Jerome to a specialized tile place, and had breakfast and lunch with her while running errands all around. Got home pretty pooped.

The temperature change has not gone unnoticed for me. I feel it in my bones. It's dark when I wake up, darker by the minute in the evenings - it's a difficult time for me. All I want to do is sleep.

I'm approaching the holidays, then the new year, which has me worrying about finding a job. It's been more than a few months that I've been looking, I don't want to stay where I am too much longer.

I will try and put more of a considered effort in writing, my days have just seemed much shorter as of late.

Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti

Just finished Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti. There is definitely some great insight in Valenti's book. I especially liked:

Men’s pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women’s pain is a backdrop--a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we’re needy or selfish, or worst of all, man-haters--as if after all men have down to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive. (Page 15)

I think the power of her memoir is in its personal representation. There's a lot about street harassment and lived misogyny that isn't necessarily mind-blowing to another woman, since most of us have lived variations of this. For these sections, I'm sure most men could learn about the daily hostilities women and girls face. For me, it was a little redundant. Not that it isn't powerful and important to address and name, it's just I'm part of the club so I have my own subway stories, my own stranger-dick horrors. In fact, a lot of them are eerily similar. Asking for directions with a dick in his hands... saying gross things to a young teen... etc. My "old hat" mentality towards it speaks to what a pervasive issue it is. Valenti's memoir is important in it being an act of being seen and heard, something still revolutionary (and potentially dangerous) for most women. She's able to call-out a lot of shady shit. And shady shit needs to be called out.

The book didn't shake me awake, as much as it just kind of said to me, hey, you know all that fucked up sexist, rapey stuff you've lived through - yah well, Jessica too. 

Reading her book makes me wish there was an organisation that went into 6th grade classrooms and told girls what they can do in order to protect themselves / how they can report the many kinds of assault. With the prevalence of cell phones, I actually think girls are more likely to have what they need to go to police now. When I was 15-16 and a guy stopped his car to ask for directions / masturbate to my friend and I we went to the cops. The cops told us unless he masturbated in front of a cop, there was nothing they could do. What fun. Now you can easily pull out a cell phone and get the fucking guys licence plate number.

Valenti shares a lot of stories that deal with drugs, sex, self-esteem and shitty relationships. At one point she mentions something her father says something that shakes her...

The things you do in your twenties are just things you do. Bus as you approach thirty what you do starts to become who you are. And there are some things you do not want to be forever. (Page 123)

I recognised myself in this. I've been looking at the lives of my friends, and thinking that the choices they make (who to hang out, what to prioritise) ends up being their choices, period. The same can then be applied to me. It's why I started volunteering. It's why I'm inching closer to vegetarianism one vegan or vegetarian meal at a time. I want to live my values. And to do that, that means actively choosing things that correspond to your values, to what you want.

That might seem so obvious, but when you're so depressed your general choices just focus on getting you through each day, it's hard to feel there's a greater rhyme or reason behind what you're doing.

Being a hot mess might be cute when you're 20 and can get by on being bra-less and naive. It gets less cute by the second. In fact, you realise how those who found that helplessness "cute" were patronising pervs mostly.

Eventually time starts flying by. There's more demanded of your time and your choices are all you have. The leisure of youth meant the privilege of being bored, of trying things. Every choice seems more important now. You see the ripple affect.

My friend E is about to finish her last graduate course. When she's completed it, she'll have obtained her Master's degree. This really makes me want to go back to school. Then I look into it, and I realise not only do I not have the money to go back, but I'm so exhausted that I can't fathom having the energy to go back and be engaged. The energy of youth. The ability to try something. I have to manage my expectations now. I hold back. I ration my energy.

Check out Valenti's work if it seems up your alley.

Tig Notaro is just a person.

I just finished Tig Notaro's book, I'm Just a Person, which was great. 

I read a lot of comedian memoirs. Many are not great. I love stand-up, I love comedy (I know, I know, who doesn't?) and Tig is in my top 5. I had the pleasure of seeing her live in a small space during the Just For Laughs festival, and listening to Live, was an experience.

Her book is excellently written, excellently paced. It's funny without trying too hard and she shares her story beautifully.

Her observation of the absurd is perfect for the absurdities of pain and loss.

I like Tig. I like her as a comedian and as a personality, and I got that sense of her throughout the book. It had me smiling on public transit (huzzah!) and also aching for her when she described the worst 4 months of her life. Puts vertigo and bell's palsy in perspective. 

She's philosophical but irreverent. That's my language.

She's so charming. So likeable. You feel the warmth and maturity in her writing. Many comedians don't translate to the written page. Tig absolutely does.

She's a great writer and storyteller, if you love Tig, this is a great read. Highly recommended.

See her live if you can, and watch her documentary on Netflix. 

Shrill by Lindy West. (Part 2)

I should have taken the time to sit down and write about Shrill properly when it was fresh in my mind. Instead, I did other things.

If you haven’t read the Part 1 of my review, please do.

She says a lot of poignant things throughout the book:

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time - that moves the rudder of the word. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women's safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience. (Page 19)

The book is great, but the part that really jived with me was her experiences with comedy and stand-up and feeling “othered” by it - feeling outward hostility. Stand-up and comedy has really helped me through some dark times, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t also had a lot of shitty experiences with it.

I feel like when I was in my teens and early 20's it was very much about being a girl that could hang. Amy Schumer had a great bit about this on her show. It's about being "cool" with the dick jokes and the sexist stuff because their sexism or objectifying you isn't the problem, your just a girl that "can't hang" with the dudes.

I remember the first time I saw stand-up that really dug at my guts. I’d always watched sitcoms and SNL, but it was the George Carlin bit on “stuff” that blew my mind. I was both laughing and thinking “man that’s so true,” while also feeling deeply existential. I was about 11 or 12 at the time, I remember it vividly.

But it’s hard to love stand-up when you’re a girl. I was the chubby girl. The girl who talks back. The girl who takes charge. I was bossy. The feminist. Then I was “the fat girl,” the “we gotta go girl” the shrew who cock-blocks. I have been all those women. The douche-bro telling the joke is not telling that joke for me, he’s talking about me. About women I'm friends with. About amazing women. I'm the chum. He isn’t talking about drunk-culture or bro problems, he’s ripping up the girls who don’t wanna sleep with him, and think he’s a joke (already). Fuck the girls who see that. Fuck women, he's saying.

It's not just being the butt of the joke, it's the anger with which this jokes are told. The really deep-seated disdain for these women.

The racist stand-up, whose jokes you don't laugh at and who then calls you out - how aggressive and misogynistic some spaces are, Lindy spoke to all of that.

And though there have definitely been nods to it from other comics, a lot of the women whose work I like are also deeply part of the culture, and have had to be the "women who can hang" in order to even be let into the space.

We're seeing some of this come to light now, through veiled stories about prominent comics being "known creeps." I'm sure there's a shit-storm of stories out there, I can't imagine.

In West's case, she’s a writer who frequents those circles, she’s friends with Hari Kondabolu (who is great, and whose new podcast is great) and she’s worked with known editors and personalities. She’s in the zeitgeist. She’s of it.

In my case, I’m just someone who appreciates the work.Could I be a comedy writer? Maybe, if I had more ambition and less crippling depression / bad life skills. Maybe I'm only a comedian for myself. I'm okay with that. But I feel tied to comedians. The process, the insight, the instinct.

I still take it personally. I still see creative spaces and comedy spaces as mine. I could be there. I do haunt them, through astral projection.

There has been a shift though. It’s been nice, being able to watch the TV shows centred around feminist (openly!), female comedians, (Inside Amy Schumer, Broad City, The Mindy Project) watch great stand-up (Again, Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Tig Notaro, Ali Wong, Chelsea Peretti) and see all of this represented in popular culture.

Tig Notaro has a show coming out (One Mississippi) as does Cameron Espisito (Take My Wife) and both shows, feature lesbian comedians and their relationships! If you know anything about television you know lesbians usually don't do so well (Tara on Buffy, Lexa on The 100, see more here) so having not one but two shows have lesbian main characters in actual relationships is a big step.

That’s not even mentioning Maria Bamford, who represents both mental illness and stand-up comedy, and just a general level of genius and originality I can barely really grasp.

SNL’s cast right now is female dominant, with Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong and Vanessa Bayer being my everything. I try and watch anything Paula Pell does.

I like being able to buy tickets to Jenny Slate’s Obvious Child (a comedy about stand-up and abortion!) and see Ghostbusters feature my favourite female comedians while also supporting a film that makes men’s rights activists shit/cry. Spy was brilliant. Melissa McCarthy is fantastic and game. She’s a fat, hilarious woman and I love that I can support her and her work. I can see Bridesmaids. I can see Trainwreck. I can see movies written by and starring people I like and can actually relate to. 

But that's only lately. Some of my favourite comedians have had shitty opinions or been rumoured to be fucking assholes and I can no longer enjoy their work. Sex crimes happen. Assault happens. So yes, when West discusses the way stand-up comedy has also hurt her, I get it.

The misogyny and trolling she faces is incomprehensible to me. The insanely personal attacks she’s had to endure is just batshit insane. BAT. SHIT. INSANE.

The vitriol she must get - and that she faces with charm, grace and (gasp) humour is just inspiring.

She’s got backbone. And talent. And I know it must get overwhelming and I hope she’s well surrounded and really hopes she gets good things and kind things to counteract the crap things.

Lindy West,

Thank you for Shrill.

Shrill by Lindy West. (Part 1)

Go out and get it folks! Shrill by Lindy West!

I'm about half way through and it's great. It's funny and she's great, and she's able to clearly describe and explain all sorts of realities I relate to immensely (fat joke!).

Right now I just finished a chapter entitled Why Fat Lady So Mean to Baby Men? which is just on point. She talks about her experience with trolling and she refers to how she often re-posts their hateful tweets and comments "goo goo ga ga baby man," which is now my favourite insult when dealing with ridiculous man-whining/misogyny.

So I've got a new favourite insult, "goo goo ga ga baby man." Thank you @thelindywest - thank you very much.

— krimrat (@krimrat) August 16, 2016

She faved it!

Yay me! After reading her chapter on trolling and how much vitriol she puts up with, the least I could do is publicly acknowledge her work.

I'm going to write more about the book once I've read it fully.

I also don't want to just quote her incessantly, which I feel I would do, I just really recommend reading it.



There are segments of the book that speak to pretty heavy issues, and just correlate to some of the more shitty experiences I've had, as well as to some I'd like to mirror.

I think West is more confident, and more together than I am, but it's really nice to read something so close to my own experiences when it comes to my body, fat and shame.

See Part 2, here. 

Lidia Yuknavitch interview.

The Lenny newsletter this week has an interview with Lidia Yuknavitch, whom I love, and whose book the Chronology of Water reached me, and moved me. Mainly because she was using language I understood in a way I'd never experienced before. 

Her interview with Suleika Jaouad is great, I'm basically re-posting most of it here:

Suleika Jaouad: In The Chronology of Water, you wrote: “Aspiration gets stuck in some people. It’s difficult to think yes. Or up.” When did that absence of hope hit you the hardest? 

Lidia Yuknavitch: When my daughter died on the day she was born, a traditional definition of hope was sucked out of my body. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, but it just happened. For me, what became important was learning to breathe again in a way that used regular air. The word aspiration has a breathing sense to it. It dawned on me that we have to breathe and to find reasons to stay alive on our own terms. Sometimes that doesn’t come from what we’ve been told our whole lives. 

I believe in art the way other people believe in God. I’m not trying to make a tricky sentence. It’s just true. I have found reasons to breathe again by living in communities of people who choose self-expression over self-destruction. It’s another way to form hope, without hierarchizing it so that you’re looking up toward a God, or someone smarter or more famous than you are. It’s a lateral definition of hope where you just need each other, and you need to stand up and not leave each other hanging. 

SJ: I think a lot about how much pressure there is to be someone who “suffers well.” There’s a mythology surrounding the “survivor’s story” that can be inspiring to some but can make others feel like they’re suffering the wrong way. 

LY: Boy, I hate that narrative so hard, to be honest. The truth is, suffering sucks and it can take you to a place of wanting to kill yourself, and there’s nothing beautiful about that. Suffering is not beautiful. Suffering, from my point of view, is about a real place in a real body where you face the other side of living. How you choose to understand that story probably determines how you’re going to live the rest of your life. I feel kindred with fellow sufferers, and I don’t ever want to romanticize the story of suffering, because then you’re just playing into making it a good story or a sellable story for a culture. 

SJ: You write with so much rawness and honesty about your life, but I’m interested in the experiences you touch on but choose not to delve into, like the specifics of your father’s abuse and your relationship to drugs and alcohol. How do you decide what to write and not write about? 

LY: You don’t have to read very far into my writing to find those things, but you won’t find them literally represented. There’s no scene of actual sexual abuse by my father in my writing. On the other hand, that sort of paternal sexual violence is threaded through every word I write. It’s as if it’s in the language. It’s in my habit of being. It’s a structure of my consciousness. 

You don’t have to always name the explicitness or literalness of a thing to represent the essence of it to a reader or listener. That’s the reason poetry works and it’s the reason painting works. It’s not explicit. It’s figurative, and it gives you the whole soul-body experience without naming it in a literal sentence. I think the work of art is to push for that so that the reader feels it in their body to be true, whether or not the explicit sentence is there. That’s how I work with material, but I am filled with respect and enthusiasm for people who also represent it explicitly. 

SJ: I think of you as someone who rejects tidy narratives and who doesn’t seem to care about the rules. I’m curious about where your outlaw spirit comes from. 

LY: If there’s one phrase that I should probably tattoo on my forehead it is this: “I’m not the story you made of me.” The more people I can convince to hold that mantra, the more I’ll have been of good use in my life. We don’t have to accept the stories we inherit, the ones that tell us who we’re supposed to be. We can stand up and say no at any point, even if we’ve been saying yes our entire lives. It’s never too late. We can always reject the story placed on top of us, and we can always revise and destroy one story and restore another. It’s a never-ending possibility. 

SJ: What are your best words of advice for fellow misfits and aspiring writers? 

LY: I’m trying to help us remember that we invent our own beauty and our own paths and our own crooked, weird ways of doing things, but that they’re not nothing and they matter, too. We’re the half of culture that doesn’t take the paths that are sitting right in front of us. Our song may be a little off-key, but it’s a kind of beauty, too. I know I’m not the person who thought that up, and I’m not the person who invented that as a truth, but I can sure stand up and help remind us not to give up, that we have a song, too.

She's someone I look up to. She's survived and she's living off her art. That's as much of a win as one can hope for. As I could ever hope for.

Rising Strong.

I just finished reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown. I’d seen Brené on Oprah a few times, but I was especially drawn to her Super Soul Sunday episode where she talked about her book, and specifically about shame.

There are things that bugged me about Rising Strong. Mainly the language she uses to list steps to dealing with your emotional processes. I find it too cutesy and it irritates me. Overall her work on emotional intelligence and effective communication is great, I just think it’s done a disservice by over simplification in order for it to be approachable. I feel like the book needs more meat.

Her work is interesting though, as are some of the points she brings up. 

The following quote had me add Alias Grace to my goodreads list:

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

- Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

There's something about narration these days. I find myself narrating section of my life, or internally describing myself and situations in lyrical language. It's odd. I have found though, that the blog has helped me a lot. It's been successful for what it was initially meant for, as a record of sorts. As a way of externalizing my frustrations and fears. But it's also been more than that. It's been a little part of me. I've written from memory, I've chronicled, essayed, some of what I do is part book review and lit review from what crosses my path, but it's also had creative pieces. It's had free thought word associations. It's had dreams cast out onto paper - where I can get them out of my head. Stories and patterns help.

Robert Burton, a neurologist and novelist, explains that our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns. Stories and patterns. The brain recognizes the familiar beginning-middle-end structure of a story and rewards us for clearing up the ambiguity. Unfortunately, we don’t need to be accurate, just certain. (79)

It's the satisfaction of a film like Momento. It's the satisfaction of a job well done. A period. milestone. A benchmark. A check-list. Boy do I love a check-list.

Jonathan Gottschall examines the human need for story in his book The Storytelling Animal. He explains that there’s growing evidence that “ordinary, mentally healthy people are strikingly prone to confabulate in everyday situations.” Social workers always use the term confabulate when talking about how dementia or a brain injury sometimes causes people to replace missing information with something false that they believe to be true. (81)

Gottschall argues that conspiratorial thinking “is not limited to the stupid, the ignorant, or the crazy. It is a reflex of the storytelling mind’s compulsive need for meaningful experience.” (83)

One of the many ways we can dip out of the norm and into too much. What is it about narrative? What is it about wanting an explanation to everything, wanting to understand it all? We stand guilty of it as an entire race! 

What part does the ego play in understanding, or thinking we understand something to our satisfaction? What kind of entitlement comes with that? Why does it comfort us so much? Does getting lost in trying to explain and understand help?

James Pennebaker, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Writing to Heal, has done some of the most important and fascinating research I’ve seen on the power of expressive writing in the healing process. In an interview posted on the University of Texas’ website, Pennebaker explains, “Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don't just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are - our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.” Pennebaker believes that because our minds are designed to try and understand things that happen to us, translating messy, difficult experience into language essentially makes them “graspable.” (87)

Language is indeed a mold in-which to smush the complex ingredients of our ego, our id, our dreams, our context, and ultimately our intangible experiences. So much happens to us in a moment, in a day, in a lifetime. If what any of us want is to minimize discomfort and pain while we're here, it makes sense that we'd want to understand what it is that causes us pain and discomfort, in order to possibly avoid it in the future.

If there is one thing that failure has taught me, it is the value of regret. Regret is one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary. In fact, I’ve come to believe that regret is a kind of package deal: a function of empathy, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom. Like all emotions, regret can be used constructively or destructively, but the wholesale dismissal of regret is wrongheaded and dangerous. “No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. (210)

This section of Brown's work I appreciated significantly. For a while in the 90's there was a lot of "no regrets"- t-shirts and pop culture paraphernalia. As I got older, I got increasingly irritated by them. I've always felt regrets weren't necessarily negative, as long as you understood them. Brown expresses what I feel well here, since reflection is a large part of the last few years of my life. I do regret situations where I was shitty, or blind, or disconnected, but I am also able to look at those times and understand why I did what I did or said what I said. She quotes George Saunders, in a 2013 commencement address at Syracuse University:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded. . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” (211)

Brown goes on:

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy. (212)

I think regret can indeed lead to empathy. As can most difficult, painful emotions. Courage can be hard. Even little pieces of courage. It seems some days all I can do is just minimize my interaction with the world in order to hold on to what little energy I have. For some, just getting out of bed is courage. I've had those days. I've had years of my life, lost to a cloud of disinterest and introversion. 

Brown also has a few paragraphs on nostalgia I found interesting. For a while, during the worst parts of my depression, nostalgia was a big part of my shame triggers. It was a lie though. It seemed glossy and young, happy and energetic, but there was also frantic bits, bits I feel in my guts when I sit with too long. 

It's so easy to romanticize youth. Perky tits. Hormones. The energy. I had so much god damn energy. So much naive hope about - everything.  

I can understand why nostalgia has become such a cultural cliché - the prom king and queen, the "good old days" - because it's an easy place to go to - a memory. And if we aren't careful, of course we could re-visit that place with rose-tinted glasses, but if you do have the propensity to look a little longer than is comfortable or to dig a little deeper than is (seemingly) necessary you revisit those memories and you notice the little things. The discomfort here and there. The limitations. The assumptions we made. How we didn't know any better. How dumb we maybe were. How much hormones made him seem greater than he actually was. How location and context made friendships happen. How much you had to learn. How naive you all were. But we now know better, don't we? 

Brown quotes The Great Beauty, a film by Paolo Sorrentino:

"What’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who have no faith in the future.” Nostalgia can be a dangerous distraction, and it can underpin a feeling of resignation and hopelessness after a fall. (243)

I think this actually further compliments what I was saying about my own experiences. I was deeply depressed, and a nostalgia trap made sense. I had no hope for myself or the future, and if what I was feeling was shame and frustration, it makes sense to then explain that shame and pain through blaming myself for how much I fucked up what was.

I think Brown's work could be helpful to a lot of people, and in a lot of different situations. She discusses her work with corporate spaces and teams. Implementing effective communication strategies can really revolutionize a corporate culture. It's an ongoing issue in nearly every place I've worked. To varying degrees of shittyness. 

She talks about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we interpret situations in ways that are often skewed in just an infinite amount of ways. How our interpretations of any given situation can be totally different than that of our partner in that situation. 

Throughout her examples, honesty and a conversation work wonders. This isn't news to me, but I can understand how her research can be considered revolutionary to those less feely, especially in a corporate culture. 

It's a lot of work, to be aware of how you're feeling, your reactions (both verbal and non-verbal) and your interpretations. I guess it's through practice that these things become habit. And I hope more comes of this kind of research because I'd like the terminology of emotional intelligence to become part of our everyday vernacular. Effective communication changes everything. It can diffuse so much.

I walk away from Brown's book with something she uses often throughout Rising Strong. She uses specific language to talk about interpretation: The story I am making up is ...

This acts as a took to facilitate conversation with a friend or loved one, openly. It's not accusatory, it's a peak into someone's brain. She uses personal examples, as well as professional ones.

In my experience, being direct about these things, in a loving way, has totally diffused situations that were uncomfortable or potentially unpleasant. Especially when it comes to my mother, who tends to be passive-aggressive and huff loudly instead of using words. I've yet to use it with friends, since we see each other so little these days it's not been an issue. Overall my friends are pretty supportive and great anyway, we're like, pretty emotionally intelligent (ie: depressed). lol. 

It becomes difficult when processes are so different. Someone needs to cool off where someone else needs to think about things where someone else wants to mind-vomit all over you. Being a person is weird. It's hard you guys! Why are we so neurotic! 

Anyway, check out Brene's Brown interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday if you can (OWN shows are hard to get online), if you're into it, check out her book. 

On Virginia Woolf.

I've been reading Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being, and it's been moving. Well, parts of it have. There are long segments that list names of lords and ladies, parties and calling cards. I resolve those dry sections to be equivalent to me telling anybody about my day, it would be tedious. Our days are filled with people and happenings of no real value outside of propelling our story forward. It seems only the peaks and valleys really make their mark. So I am drawn to Virginia most when she is lost in thought.

I've not read the interpretations of her, the forewords and notes, I want only to read what's written by her hand. I've been working my way through her work, and I've been increasingly drawn to her voice.

She describes concepts in a way that speaks directly to me.

She mentions "ancestral dread," (68) how she feels she's inherited the puritanical from her ancestors. She also briefly mentions what sounds like a sexual molestation, and the shame she feels in recognising her beauty, or even looking at herself. She's quick to move away from this, and focuses instead on her feelings of always having been older than herself.

During difficult times, I've often felt my depression was deserved. Inherited. That maybe it was a past life, manifest. Maybe I was fucking awful once. Maybe my people were. I'm white - that's likely historically accurate. Maybe I inherited this pain from someone. Maybe it's my birthright. This ancestral dread, is another way to externalise the depression, to name it. It's a demon. A curse. An ancestral dread.

She also names how much of our time is spent in a state of  "non-being" (70).  These, the parts of our day we don't really recall due to monotony and habit. These moments we move from one place to another, as automatons. "Every day includes much more non-being than being," she says, from over 70 years ago. Now we experience that non-being with a screen in our face. But it's easier than that. It takes so much energy to focus. It takes so much to be alert, to be active. It comes in bursts. Now like then.

She describes her depression as only a writer can:

"But it was not over, for that night in the bath the dumb horror came over me. Again I had that hopeless sadness; the collapse I have described before; as if I were passive under some sledge-hammer blow; exposed to a whole avalanche pf meaning that had heaped itself up and discharged itself upon me, unprotected, with nothing to ward it off, so that I huddled up at my end of the bath, motionless." (78)

 "The dumb horror" is indeed what it is. No doubt her use of the word "dumb" is meant in a dumbing sense, meaning temporarily unable to speak or communicate. And that would be an apt description. Both work, really. There's a cutting into you that disables the parts of you that communicate, that reach out. There's also a return to more rudimentary processing, more immediate and needs-based. I liken it to being sleep-deprived. There's a real pull you can't just "snap out of," no matter how hard you fight it.

Overall the read got long at times, Woolf goes over the social nature of 20th century England in a way that's exhausting to even imagine. Did these people have jobs? They're mainly aristocrats, so no, they didn't.

Woolf is best when she floats above the world, not when she's bogged down by social-decorum and the daily "non-being."

The suicide memoir.

Over on Lit Hub, from The Suicide Memoir: True Crime, Mystery and Grief, Al Alvarez quoted discussing Sylvia Plath's suicide:

“It was an act she felt she had a right to as a grown woman and a free agent.”
Oooof. First, when I write "ooof" imagine someone being punched in the stomach.It's the sound someone makes blowing out air after being sucker-punched in the gut.

Many things can bring you to suicide. Desperation. Pain. Fear. But ultimately we should all have an unquestioned right to our own bodies, so yes, suicide is a right. 

So sad today.

I just finished so sad today, by Melissa Broder. I've mentioned her here before, she tweets under the name @sosadtoday.

The book is great. I flew through it. It’s a short collection of personal essays, all about her life, living with depression and anxiety and the ways in which she’s coped and continues to cope with her daily life.

I've been reading a lot of books about mental illness. Most of which have been memoir and personal essay. This is the first time that I really feel a book was written by someone of my generation and with my points of reference.

So much of the book is both heavy and detached at the same time. Broder has a lot of deeply existential threads throughout her work - and that just really spoke to me. I feel like she wrote the book for “people like me.” And I mean, she did.

So much of her work is reference-able. In her essay on her addiction to nicotine gum:

I chew the gum, because I don’t trust the universe to fill me up on its own. I can’t count on the universe to sate my many holes: physical, emotional, spiritual. So I take matters in my own hands. I give myself little “doggy treats” for being alive.

Preach. We all do this to an extent, but for me, those "treats" are often the only comfort I get. Again, this links to deep existential dread. 

The book is just so rich. She has a section on Effexor that again, I felt was written for me. Many of the questions she asks herself are questions I've asked myself. And though she and I are very very different, there are really strong ties as well, and though I'm sad that both she and I speak that dark language, I also felt comfort in the recognition of another. 

Highly recommended read. 

Reasons to stay alive.

Just read Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.

Overall I thought the book was a "meh." It lost me on a lot of sections, and overall I just wasn't impressed by it. It did, however have some sections I highlighted for further inquiry or just to excerpt here.

Page 18:

Now, listen. If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain.

I think that's a fair statement. For me, suicide, or death, or just a loss of consciousness just sounds peaceful and nice sometimes.

Page 104:

The thing I hadn't realized, before I became mentally ill, is the physical aspect of it. I mean, even the stuff that happens inside your head is all sensation. My brain tingles, whirred, fluttered and pumped. Much of this action seemed to happen near the rear of my skull, in m occipital lobe, though there was also some fuzzy, TV-static, white-noise feelings going on in my frontal love. 

Well, this is me these days. Zapping, whirring sounds, frontal lobe throbs. Feeling like these's a white-noise swarm in between my ears. These are real symptoms, and Haig mirrors my experience here.

Page 125:

The main thins is the intensity of it. It does not fit within the normal spectrum of emotions. When you are in it, you are really in it. You can't step outside it without stepping outside of live, because it is life. It is your life. Every single thing you experience is filtered though it.
...
Depression for me, wasn't a dulling but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell and now the shell wasn't there. It was total exposure.

I feel that. Like an open, raw nerve. Like I hear everything. Like it's all too much.

Page 131:

If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world then being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.

Preach.

He also quotes Keats, "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?" And you know I'd be lying if I said this never crossed my mind, but there are those who do not struggle this way, and who do not have a relationship to pain the way I do, and they have souls, do they not? I understand Keats' wanting to romanticize the pain, since it's his job, but sometimes romanticizing pain does us, those who live it, a disservice.

And then he quotes Vonnegut, "Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found." And this is something I am exercising now. It is an attempt at exorcism through an art. Through a practice.

Overall the read was short. I thought Haig clearly had an anti-medication sentiment. And though he claimed to not judge those who needed it, he was always quick with a "but" which negated whatever non-judgmental statement he had just made. He also had these weird fake conversations between past him and present him. I thought they were simplistic and infantile. I also did not like his using twitter-based interaction as page filler. It just seemed amateurish. And I'm the amateur. Writing to the void.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book really. Unless you're drawn to "lighter" books about mental illness. I'm not.

Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer.

When I woke-up with Bell's Palsy at the end of March, I was reading Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer. I didn't read for a while, since I was exhausted and my right-eye wasn't really working, but I put it aside because I wanted to make sure I wrote about it here.

It had been recommended by a friend who had read it as part of her research around ability / disability studies. She's currently working on her Master's here at Concordia. 

She mentioned the notion of "crip time" which to me kind of correlates to spoon theory, in it's approach to creating a new way of understanding the way the context of ones abilities and limitations have a direct link to their own starting point / way of being in the world. 

Kafer's book has a lot of great sections in it, but overall it turned pretty heavily academic mid-point for me, so it lost me a bit. Though it reminded me of my time in Women's Studies, it also reminded me of how alienating academic writing can be. 

The book is a great place to start if you're interested in critical disability studies. Her early sections discuss the notion of disability as a "forging" of a group identity, but also how the ways in which race, class, gender, sexuality, and location being omitted in representation create a "white disability studies" reality, one which has been more visibly present and re-centred, as is the case with all whiteness. Her positioning herself as in a queer framework means troubling these ingrained systems of power. 

She also mentions that "disability" itself-though a term that can be used to gather around-and how those that identify with or as "disabled" can seek out that community. An issue she brings up is how "moving away from a medical/individual model of disability means that disability identification can't be solely linked to diagnosis" (page 13), something that's close to me since I've had so much trouble navigating the medical system and the mental health establishment. 

Kafer's work around "crip time" is something I found very helpful, from page 37:

Thinking about diagnosis and undiagnosis as strange temporalities open the door to still other framings of crop time, of illness and disability in and through time. What would constitute a temporality of mania, or depression, or anxiety? If we think of queer time as involving archives of rage and shame, then why not also panic attacks or fatigue? How does depression slow down time, making moments drag for days, or how do panic attacks cause linear time to unravel, making time seem simultaneously to speed up and slam shut, leaving one behind?

My memory, my use of time, the way I conceptualize time,  has been and continues to be a major issue for me in navigating my life, and in lately, worrying about work and taking care of myself. 

Kafer ends her chapter on time (page 46) saying:

Disabled people- particularly those with developmental and psychiatric impairments, those who are poor, gender-deviant, and/or people of color, those who need atypical forms of assistance to survive-have faces sterilization, segregation, and institutionalization; denial of equitable education, health care and social services; violence and abuse; and the withholding of the rights of citizenship. Too many of these practices continue, and each of them has greatly limited, and often literally shortened, the future of disabled people. It is my loss, our loss,  not to cake care of, embrace and desire all of us. We must begin to anticipate presents and to imagine futures that include all of us. We must explore disability in time.

Kafer's book is thick with examples of not only discrimination but the erasure of disabled bodies. There are examples of lived lives that would be very difficult for me to summarize here, so I recommend you read the book. 

Kafer discusses individualism, and how its often used as a way of depoliticizing disability, and more so removing societal responsibilities (page 89):

Disability appears as an individual physical problem that can be best overcome (and should be overcome) through strength of character and adherence to an established set of community values ... This focus on personal responsibility precludes any discussion of social, political, or collective responsibility.

We really are on our own. Especially in cases where disability is not physically identifiable. If a chronic disease is a mental illness, or is one that takes a lot of research and a lot of "negative diagnosis" it can be a tremendous amount of emotional, logistical and mental work to attempt to help yourself. 

The book is a staple of disability studies for a reason. If this area of study, or you know, reality interests you, check it out. 

Feminist Queer Crip, by Alison Kafer.

Uncharacteristically warm days.

It's been beautiful out lately. It's warm, and the sun is out. It's warmer than it would usually be this time of year, people seem in great spirits because of it. In denial maybe, of the upcoming winter. Last winter was so brutal here, it's as if we've all agreed to collective denial.

This past weekend we moved the clocks back an hour, doing our best to save some daylight. Usually I don't really have much to say on the matter, but this year it's made a difference for me. Maybe it's because I'm more aware of how much daylight affects my mood and my sleeping so I take greater care to get sunlight and to sleep at-least 8 hours (I need 9-10) or maybe it's because my higher dosage and vitamin regimen are taking effect, whichever the affecting party, it's been helping my mood.

I ended up waking up on Sunday and just getting a load of stuff done. I felt productive, and was happy with myself. I cleaned. I put tons of clothes away. I folded up clothes that are one and two sizes smaller than what I wear now, and stored them in a large moving bin. It's the plight of a woman with weight struggles, having a closet filled with a variety of sizes in it. There's always that pair of pants that's just too small. So, I put it all away. If I lose weight again, I'll have clothes to start me off. If not, at least those clothes won't be a lie I tell myself. This unhealthy inspiration, that's really just flagellation through fashion.

It's as if, after over a decade of living as someone who is recovering from an eating disorder, and disordered thinking, I can't think about the word diet, or certain marketing "health" terms anymore. They just make my angry. But beyond that, really, they don't register with me anymore. I just hear sick bullshit. Total garbage.

I still have a lot of stuff to work through in regards to my physical health, but I'm getting there, slowly.

I cooked a lot. I made (and ate) the best lasagna I've ever had in my life. Being able to cook on Sundays usually means having access to healthier lunches and meals during the week. This week I made a Gruyere, spinach and turkey meat sauce lasagna, with a vegetable potage of leaks, sweet potatoes and peppers, and some chicken salad.

I guess this helps get me off on the right foot for the week. I don't feel like a useless bum. I also spend less money going out, and eat more balanced meals.

I just finished reading M Train by Patti Smith. I'd read Just Kids, and loved it. It's an interesting read. She's a phenomenal writer, and is really gifted with language and in describing her own creative process. That's what I liked so much about Just Kids, the talking about the daily life of a creative person, in a way that's almost mundane. The ritual of it. It's just the way she is, it's a priority in her life, she still lives that mythic beat of being an artist in the romantic sense. The way it's represented in a film taking place in the 60's, with a hero that is barely unkempt, slender and androgynous, who moves slowly from place to place, with no wrist-watch and no seeming embodiment of pressure.

I read Smith's stories. Her traveling. Her reading. Her writing. Her adventures. She's seemingly unimpressed by herself, but there is no mention of money ever, no worry about money. This is where she loses me.

I would have, years ago, dismissed my own criticism by citing my age. When I'm older, I'll be making money (because we get older, and we support ourselves, naturally), things just seem difficult now because I'm a student. Or because I just started working. Or because I'm still paying off my debts. 

There seems to be so much privilege in writing. In taking the time to really imbibe someone else's art. In being able to travel in a way that isn't offensive, that isn't privileged horse-shit. In a way that's honest.

As I'm looking toward 2016, I can't help but think of this series of warm days, and my own lived experience of creativity. I am not Patti Smith. I do not have decades of work behind me. I am not a recognized artist. I struggle, often, to even identify as a creative. And on these warm days, more seems possible. Opportunity doesn't seem as exterior to myself.

If I want to dedicate time and energy to creative pursuits, what does that mean for me? Working less to have more free time? Seeing a 9 to 5 as a means to an end? Will I be "working-poor" for the rest of my life? Can I accept that as a reality? Is choosing a creative life, choosing poverty?

What does living on less look like? Smith survives on coffee and brown toast. I already live paycheck to paycheck. No financial safety net. Is a financial safety net a luxury of the 1%?

Am I unable to be original at times, because what plagues me is wholly unoriginal? Are the ghosts around me, ghosts of habit? Not only my habits, but the habits of this place, and my generation, and of my gender? Are these ghosts in my blood? Am I haunted by not only my regrets, but the regrets of my ancestors? If that my depression? Are these my anxieties?

There's something about being so near a large decision. This purchase of a home. A place to live. Something that would be mine and mine alone. This responsibility. This financial burden. All of a sudden money means something concrete. It's now a limit. It represents what I can and cannot afford. Where I can and cannot go. These numbers represent the way in which I will live my life. Spend too much and I will be shamed, I will be chained to payments that will suffocate me. Do too little, and then there's the voice of the "positive friend" saying you'll regret your choice, you'll eventually meet someone, you'll want more room, you'll eventually get a raise, you will make more money.

But I am the working-poor. If my little amount of savings can grant me land ownership, is that not an achievement? It is to me. To be near-dead for so long, and to then own something for myself and of myself,                        that                           is                    something.

All of it is noise. To a certain extent, so is Smith's representation of creativity. Just another barometer against which to measure myself.

There is something around all of this that circles around the notion of being established.

An established creative. Someone whose creativity matters. Is recognized. Is quantified.

An established person. Someone with a home. A space. Roots.

I would have something. Something in my name.

And though in the past I often felt this would tie me down, now I see it as a refuge. A safe space. My money leaves me regardless, at least this way I pay into something being mine. Even if it's just for a short while.

Sometimes all of this just seems like a question of luck and talent. Smith has talent. Some people have luck. Being born gorgeous. Being born rich. Being born convinced of your worth, and of the value of your production. These are things I was not born with. I get bursts of hard-work, book-ended by just doing my best.

Something Smith's book did bring home for me though, it how much longer I might have to figure all of this out. Smith is 68. I am 31. I could write, and try, for a very long time.

That is exciting but it also makes me tired.

Furiously Happy.

I just finished reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson. You may know Lawson by the moniker The Bloggess, under which she also tweets.

Here she is on Canada AM, promoting the book recently.

Reading Furiously Happy has been my introduction to Lawson. I laughed so hard on the bus once I had to hide my face in my scarf because I couldn't control the noises I was making, or the contorting of my face.

Stories involving shit do that to me. 

Lawson writes about her struggles with mental illness, namely anxiety and depression, but also trichotillomania and a few other disorders. So this book had a lot going for it. First, the cover "had me at hello," second, the book was by a woman living with mental illness, and third, she's funny. It's like the Three Musketeers of being right for me. 

First thing's first. The fucking cover.

Lawson's dad is a taxidermist, so taxidermy is an art form / skill she appreciates. The expression on this poor little guys face though, is just so extremely fantastic. I can't look away from it. Whoever made her this (she mentions it in the book) is just so successful.

Overall the book is funny, it's collection of stories and essays from her point of view. For me, I especially appreciate it because it's a woman, who is funny and who is writing, and is also ill. She's more than just one thing. She has many identifiers. She, like me, is funny. But being funny doesn't save you from feeling like shit, and being in pain.

She's pretty honest about her struggles, and every story that makes the best seller lists and features mental illness, comedy, and a woman's voice (three things that are rare as is) is a win for me and my team.

I read the book in 2-3 days. It was a real breath of fresh air, having just read a bunch of mental-illness-themed memoires that were dark as hell. That's fine. The dark stuff speaks to me too. That's part of my educating myself on my people and my place within a narrative. But this also speaks to me, because I am funny, and I am clever, and I do seek out humour in popular culture and art. These things are important to remember - the seeming duality of it. Because it isn't a duality. 

I think voicing someone's ability to be funny, bright, creative and part of the fucking world, while depressed, or sick is important. Policy is made, decisions are taken that directly affect us and we have to be visible. And right now, I'm on an up-swing. I'm feeling better. I am able to talk. To represent. 

Because how do you stand-up and scream for your rights when all you want to do is lay down and die? You don't. So with folks like Lawson, writing and representing us, it helps. 

There's never enough representation. We all have a story. 

Mindy Kaling + Nick Kroll.

Just about to finish up Mindy Kaling's Why Not Me? - and one of her last chapters makes mention of how many people in her life live with depression:

I should start off by saying that I am one of the only television writers I know who is not depressed ... I'm just bringing it up because depression is something that I've come to accept from my creative community and I realize that's probably alien to most people. I don't know why the funniest people I know are also depressed ... It's sad that so many of my friends suffer this way.

Depression in creative, and depression in comedy writers are themes I encounter a lot. I had seen a Buzzfeed article on Nick Kroll ages ago, and I kept the link to eventually mention it here.

As we start our gradual shuffle down from the observatory, I ask whether someone who hadn’t grown up struggling — for money, for comfort, for success — could succeed in the comedy world. He turns suddenly serious: “I mean, look, we all suffer in our own way; like,life is miserable. And I’m not, ‘Oh, I’m a stand-up who’s sad,’ but the reality is that just about everyone is quietly unhappy. I don’t think that pertains to comedians specifically. I think most people look at themselves in the mirror and are not happy with what they see.”

 I have a few archived sources I want to eventually get to on this subject, but it'll take some time on my part, since I want to watch a few segments and read a few articles. This is a reoccurring phenomena that I see in my life, that I experience personally, and that seems mirrored in the comedy community I value and "follow."

In the case of Kroll, he posits that general unhappiness is universal. Life is hard. But there's something about the development of humour and wit as a reaction to hardship or pain that I think is real. Part of accepting life as miserable involves also seeing part of it that are innately nonsensical and absurd. That recognition, when diluted with humour, is tangibly more palpable.