48

Today. Can't remember what time of the day I was born,
but I think it was early in the morning.

Lauren and Ville came in last night. She cooked dinner
for me--well, for all of us. Nice meal. Great conversation.
I shared the letter with her, and I feel that this great burden
has been lifted from my shoulders though all she did
(and could do) was listen and share her thoughts
about its contents.

My mom sent over a birthday cake she baked for me.
I should call and thank her.

Pictures are back from the Florida trip. My god that can't be me
in those pictures. I don't see that woman when I look in the mirror.
I know if I stopped drinking so much I'd drop some weight,
but right now it's the only thing that gets me through the night.


I would exercise more, but in truth I don't like it much. Walking
is fine and cycling and swimming for that matter, but any time
my heart rate accelerates much I feel like I am going to have a panic
attack.

That's when I stopped exercising--when I developed
an anxiety disorder. The fear of having an episode will keep
you from doing many things you once enjoyed, and exercise,
or the way it affects the body, so mimics those terrifying panic
attacks that I am reluctant to give myself over to it.

There is no runner's high, there is no feeling that what you're doing
is good for your body. There's only the awareness of your heart
pounding so hard (as it should when you start exercising)
and the aura that comes with a panic attack and then that's
the end of attempting to exercise. It's just too frightening.

I ran track in high school and played tennis on a community
tennis league, but in my junior year I started having these
attacks. I didn't know what they were--I just knew I felt
that I was going to die. My heart rate would jump to 180-200
beats per minute, I couldn't breathe, and I felt I was going
to pass out.

I thought I was crazy, and so did my boyfriend
who had to take me to the ER when I had an attack.
I finally became more of a liability to him and he gave
up on me. I don't blame him. It's a weird thing to be around.

I saw doctors then, but they would just say things like

It's all about your attitude. You just have to think positively.
You just need to think more optimistically.

No one ever recommended seeing a therapist, so I never
saw one until I was already a mother of two who was suffering
greatly from these episodes.

I refused meds until 1994. At that time, my life was defined
by my disorder.

I could no longer travel more than a few miles from my home.
I couldn't drive over bridges (that's still a problem, but it's
better).
I couldn't ride in an elevator, and I couldn't take the stairs
either because, again, that's exercise, and I would get panicky
when my heart started beating faster as I ascended.
I couldn't stand to be in a large group.
I couldn't go one day without an episode.

I was utterly exhausted and certain that I would never
be better.

My medication gave me my life back, but once the panic
subsided, then I was hit smack in the face with full-blown
manic depression. The cycles were vicious.

It's a dangerous thing to be manic. You do so many things
you would never do if you were in your right mind.
You take so many risks. You feel invincible. You become
overbearing and arrogant. You just know you're all that
and a bag of chips.

But damn was it exciting. I never felt more alive than
I did during my manic cycles, and I have not felt that alive
since the mania subsided (which happened during menopause).

Now, I just feel tired. I can chalk up the depression to external
factors over the last 6 months--Dad's death, my father-in-law's
illness, my son's surgery, the letter I received, and the loss
of my job, etc. Those are all "real" events.

Depression before was always internally sparked and poorly
understood. Its origins were from before birth--I firmly
believe that.

So, today is my 48th, and though things suck royally
right now, I am happy to be here.

The Food of Love

I could never sing. In the grade-school operetta
I sat dark offstage and clattered coconut shells.
I was the cavalry coming, unmusical, lonely.

For five years, I played the piano and metronome.
I read Deerslayer in small print while I waited for my lesson,
and threw up after the recital at the Leopold Hotel.

I went to a liberal college, but I never learned
how to sit on the floor or help the sweet folk song forward.
My partridge had lice, and its pear-tree had cut-worm blight.

Yet this song is for you. In your childhood a clear falsetto,
now you sing along in the bars, naming old songs for me.
Even drunk, you chirrup; birds branch in your every voice.

It's for you, what I never sing. So I hope if ever
you reach, in the night, for a music that is not there
because you need food, or philosophy, or bail,

you'll remember to hear the noise that a man might make
if he were an amateur, clattering coconut shells,
if he were the cavalry, tone-deaf but on its way.




Happiness

I sent you this bluebird of the name of Joe
with "Happiness" tattooed onto his left bicep.
(For a bluebird, he was a damn good size.)
And all you can say is you think your cat has got him?

I tell you the messages aren't getting through.
The Golden Gate Bridge is up past its ass in traffic;
tankers colliding, singing telegrams out on strike.
The machineries of the world are raised in anger.

So I am sending this snail of the name of Fred
in a small tricolor sash, so the cat will know him.
He will scrawl out "Happiness" in his own slow way.
I won't ever stop until the word gets to you.

William Dickey

Test

Dresses I have never worn


Ruby Tells All

When I was told, as Delta children were,
that crops don't grow unless you sweat at night,
I thought that it was my own sweat they meant.
I have never felt as important again
as on those early mornings, waking up,
my body slick, the moon full on the fields.
That was before air conditioning.
Farm girls sleep cool now and wake up dry
but still the cotton overflows the fields.
We lose everything that's grand and foolish;
it all becomes something else. One by one,
butterfiles turn into caterpillars
and we grow up, or more or less we do,
and, Lord, we do lie then. We lie so much
truth has a false ring and it's hard to tell.

I wouldn't take crap off anybody
if I just knew that I was getting crap
in time not to take it. I could have won
a small one now and then if I was smarter,
but I've poured coffee here too many years
for men who rolled in in Peterbilts,
and I have gotten into bed with some
if they could talk and seemed to be in pain.

I never asked for anything myself;
giving is more blessed and leaves you free.
There was a man, married and fond of whiskey.
Given the limitations of men, he loved me.
Lord, we laid concern upon our bodies
but then he left. Everything has its time.
We used to dance. He made me feel the way
a human wants to feel and fears to.
He was a slow man and didn't expect.
I would get off work and find him waiting.
We'd have a drink or two and kiss awhile.
Then a bird-loud morning late one April
we woke up naked. We had made a child.
She's grown up now and gone though God knows where.
She ought to write, for I do love her dearly
who raised her carefully and dressed her well.

Everything has its time. For thirty years
I never had a thought about time.
Now, turning through newspapers, I pause
to see if anyone who passed away
was younger than I am. If one was
I feel hollow for a little while
but then it passes. Nothing matters enough
to stay bent down about. You have to see
that some things matter slightly and some don't.
Dying matters a little. So does pain.
So does being old. Men do not.
Men live by negatives, like don't give up,
don't be a coward, don't call me a liar,
don't ever tell me don't. If I could live
two hundred years and had to be a man
I'd take my grave. What's a man but a match,
a little stick to start a fire with?

My daughter knows this, if she's alive.
What could I tell her now, to bring her close,
something she doesn't know, if we met somewhere?
Maybe that I think about her father,
maybe that my fingers hurt at night,
maybe that against appearances
there is love, constancy, and kindness,
that I have dresses I have never worn.

Miller Williams

********************************************

That has to be one of my favorite all time poems. I love
it so. I can see Ruby. I know this woman. I know her
daughter. I know her man. I can see her dresses.

I want to write a poem called

Dresses I Have Worn

It would go something like this:

There's the long, black silk one
with the sublte sexy slit in the back. Three-
quarter length sleeves, fitted waistline,
zippered back, brass buttons in a U-
shape (that dips slightly away from the waist
and toward the rear for added affect)
that I wore to Papaw's funeral. Too small
now to fit the weight of the ages, I still
feel compelled to keep it there, at the back
of the closet, wrapped in plastic.

But it would say more without being so
desciptive about the dresses themselves.
I just felt something go through
my body as I touched those dresses--
something close to melancholy or wistfulness
or maybe even dysphoria.

Word retrieval problems march on!

Oh those dresses in the back of my closet
that I've kept though I can't wear them any longer,
and even if I could, I don't know that I would.

Each of them was worn at a wedding,
funeral, class reunion, or dedication
of some sort.

But there's a poem lurking somewhere
in them there dresses, there is.

God takes care of himself

What can I say? It's a Modest Mouse morning.


Styrofoam Boots / It's All Nice On Ice, Alright

Well all's not well
but i'm told that it'll all be quite nice
you'll be drowned in boots like Mafia
but your feet will still float like Christ's
and i'll be damned
they were right
i'm drowning upside down
my feet afloat like Christ's
i'm in heaven
trying to figure out which stack
they're going to stuff us atheists into
when Peter and his monkey laugh
and i laugh with them
i'm not sure what at
they point and say
we'll keep you in the back
polishing halos, baking manna and gas
well some guy comes in looking a bit like everyone i ever seen
he moves just like crisco disco
breath 100% listerine
he says looking at something else
but directing everything to me
ever time anyone gets on their knees to pray
well it makes my telephone ring
and i'll be damned
he said you were right
no one's running this whole thing
he had a theory too
he said that god takes care of himself
and you of you
it's all nice on ice alright
and it's not day
and it's not night
but it's all nice on ice alright

From the album The Lonesome Crowded West

Don't know how

I made it through the weekend.

It's 10:53. I haven't washed my face.

I am still wearing the clothes I slept in
(Bob Dylan t-shirt and black sweat pants).

Haven't brushed my teeth.

Haven't started on my mid-term.

Didn't answer the door though whomever it was
was certainly persistent. I think they knocked
for almost 20 minutes.

I have been home so little in the last 20
years that I don't know how to do this.

Many times through those years I would
think of all the things I was neglecting
because I didn't have time to do them.

My bedroom, for example. One of the last rooms
in the house to be renovated. It still has wallpaper
peeling off the ceilings and walls.

Three layers. Beautiful old floral print. 12 foot
ceilings. Beautiful crown molding and baseboards.

I was going to start on it in January as that would
be the first time in a number of years that I would
not be in school.

I was going to strip the paper off the ceilings and walls.
Repair the plaster cracks. Replace any rotted wood
around the windows. Prime and sand and wash
the walls. Then paint them a lovely eggplant or some
such variation on a purple theme. Then I was going
to accessorize with reds, golds, and sage green.



I could start it now but I have no enthusiasm for it.

I just sit here, sipping my cold coffee and not believing
this has happened to me.

After Reading Pastan's Notes to My Mother

I

You've never sent me one
letter, though you never forget
to drop a thank-you card
in the mail (always handwritten
on the back of a picture-you-took-
turned-postcard). Though I know
the shape of your headstone
and where you'll lie (your casket
stacked atop Dad's in the Veteran's
Cemetery), I can't say I'll visit and leave
you messages there. I can't give you
messages here, though I rehearse
the lines daily. It's as if you already
don't exist, and I am talking to a stone.

II

I'd like to think I wrote
you letters from camp,
but I can't remember if I ever
went to camp except once, at
fourteen when I thought I
was ready to exert my wing-
spreading detachment.
So I'll tell you now what happened
that summer: I fell in love
with the tanned, blonde lifeguard
and felt the rush of a long
tongue in my mouth; I confessed
my sins and let my sobbing self
be soothed in the arms of the christian
kids; I smoked pot for the first time
in the amphitheatre after the crowd
had dispersed; and I realized for the first
time that maybe home and the idea
of missing it might just be some grand
scheme from a very clever creator.

III

Your hair was always perfectly
swept up into a French twist
or an elegant chignon.
Your uniforms were so stiffly
starched it seemed they were
ready to stand at attention, so bright
white it hurt my eyes to look at them.
You never let one of us kids forget
how bad women had it out "there,"
how cruel men were, how backbitingly
vicious other women were, the drudgery
of spending ones entire life
cleaning up after others. Perhaps today,
my muteness can be explained by my
insistence not to repeat the pattern.
I won't complain (much), I nearly
always cut my own hair and refuse
to twist it into anything that resembles
some French-do, and I never wear white.

*******************************************

Started this in FL after coming in from the beach one
day. I love Pastan's poem. It makes me think about
the mom I didn't have and to think about the one
I do have in ways that are uncomfortable to think
about but true.

Truth is supposed to set us free, but I'll be damed
when I tell the truth. I just keep getting caught in the snares
and traps that litter the forest floors and the bedroom
floors and the dark ceilings of my life.

Bad day yesterday. I am wasting time letting myself
feel so badly about the recent turn of events. I keep
saying I can't help it. I'm tired. I'm shot. I'm bummed.
I'm in a state of despair. And that is all true, but I have
to do something to get out of this funk.

It would help if the sun would shine.

Rainy again this morning.

When I was working, I would entertain
the idea of how lovely it would be to just
lounge around in bed all day on the rainy days.
To just read books and sip tea and listen to some
great music.

Here I am. Not working. Unable to lounge
around in bed.

Doesn't seem so appealing now.