One must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous—dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.”
— James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village (via Erica Avey)
So, I think I am getting sick, again. Well, last time I thought I was getting sick but nothing came of it. This time I think it and I actually have the sore throat, the cough, the sinus pain, and the fatigue to back it up. This time I know it’s not all in my head, I think.
But, I’m pushing through because today we are heading going to the ballet! I have been looking forward to this for months, we both have, and I will not let a little cold get in the way. I remember years ago when I went to the ballet with a migraine. It was awful, but this won’t be as bad as that bad I think. I have a plan.
I’m going to consume and combine cold medicine, ibuprofen, copious amounts of caffeine, and just the right amount of alcohol (at brunch). I know on the surface and this sounds like a bad idea, but I know from previous experience that this recipe is almost magical. Trust me.
The work week is finally over, but instead of going home to rest and tune out for the evening I’m off to my baby nephew’s very first birthday party. Part of my is lamenting the loss of my relaxing Friday night routine, but another part of me is a little excited to go to.
I love each of my siblings’ children the same, that is, I love each of them so much that it almost hurts. I love how they are all little versions of my brother’s and sisters (all of whom I also love like they were my own kids), but different too. I love getting to know them. I love how distinct each of their personalities are. I love being near so much potential and hope. I love being an aunt and birthdays are when I get to show that off a little.
I’m actually feeling really good this morning. I have no earthly idea why, since I didn’t sleep any better and work is as stressful as ever, but I know overthinking will ruin it, so I’m choosing to let myself simply enjoy it.
We have cloudy and cold conditions again for the third (or so) day in a row. I was trying to hold out as long as I could but I think it’s time to turn on the heat and to put away my summer things. It’s time to let go and to move on. Fall is firmly here.
I’m getting sick, I know it. My throat has been swollen and raw since yesterday but I had been holding on to hope that it just got burned on some hot food I ate or something and would heal up in a day or two since I had no other symptoms (and even felt great just this morning). Since then it’s only gotten worse. Now I have an occasional cough and a persistent worry.
I really wish I hadn’t already taken a day off of work this week…
Today was incredibly chaotic, but, like, in a good way. I love feeling a part of something and not just any part, but an important part.
As much as we could do without the obligation of work, we can’t deny the community of it. Some of us try to and those people usually don’t last. They move on from job to job in—what I think—is a search not for their passion (which can be found anytime) but for something that feels like a home away from home. My workplace is far from perfect but I practically grew up there. It matters to me what they think. It matters to me to have a place and to contribute.
I’ve been cleaning up the “creativity room” this week and tonight there was finally enough room to actually be creative in there. I took just a few short minutes to make some little cut-and-paste things. Nothing I feel like sharing yet. Honestly, it might be awhile before I’m ready to feel the pressure of social media and the anxiety that comes with “likes”, or the lack thereof.
I’m just happy to be creating, even just a little tiny bit. I’m happy to get away from my phone and from people and from expectation and productivity. I am happy to just be and to have fun for a change. Not that “adult fun” that’s really just hanging out with other adults and complaining about being adults. I’m talking about the kind of fun we had when we were kids, the kind we forgot to bring with us when we grew up, and it was exactly what I needed.
Saturn Devouring His Son is a painting by Francisco Goya. It is part of a series of 14 painting called “The Black Paintings”—so named because of their dark pigments and somber tones—completed during the later years in his life when he had become isolated, bitter, and fearing both madness and death. These “Black Paintings” were murals he painted directly onto the walls of his home. Saturn Devouring His Son was located in his dining room.
Goya himself never named these paintings. He never discussed these painting with anyone and never intended for them to be viewed by the public.
The dark and disturbing piece depicts the myth of the Titan God Cronos, Romanized here as Saturn, who, obsessed with preventing a prophecy in which he is overthrown by his son from coming true. promptly eats each of his children moments after birth.
Most artistic renderings of the myth depict Cronus with a powerful and God-like appearance and distinctly unsympathetic disposition and the child is usually an infant as in the stories. Here Goya has painted Cronus as a dirty and dishevelled madman appearing almost ashamed of his act. Here his child in not a baby but a full-grown man headless and dripping blood.
The disturbing nature of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son is exactly what makes it such a fascinating work, and among my favorite paintings. What disturbs us about it is how human Goya has made this inhumane act. It is not a God devouring another God who will later rise to power and overthrow him as he did his own father. No, this is a God made in man’s image. This is a father murdering his child out of fear and jealousy. This is a final, disgusting, and evil act.
When I woke up this morning, the house was so cold, and I was still so tired, and my body ached, and my head ached, and my will to push through just wasn’t there. Getting up and rushing through my morning routine felt physically impossible. So, I listened to my body and took a self-care day.
Around midmorning my youngest sister stopped by to chat before school. Being the oldest sister I sometimes get caught up in feelings of bitterness and jealousy over the lives my younger siblings get to lead. I remember how much I gave up or how much I was never even allowed to have in the first place just because I came first. It get a little down about it sometimes, but sometimes but I feel an overwhelming pride too. They all turned out to be such good people and I’m honored to have played a role in that.
After she left, I wore myself out cleaning the house and doing a couple of small house projects because I never can take a whole day just for me; I feel too guilty, but I did get some reading in, and worked on the courses I’m taking, and made time for some fun blog things too.
I wish every day could be like this.
“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.”
― Henry Rollins
This September contained all the summer I was able to have this year. After the wedding—after all the wedding planning—we needed to rest, and it took just about all of August to recoup. That meant a month without expectations, without deciding, without so many people to see, to please, to make a part of us. We took time to retreat back into our bubble to begin working out what being married meant for us. We haven’t figured it out by far but we are at least able to peek out from the honeymoon haze and start getting back to a routine we haven’t known for over a year.
As the month began we quickly got down to the business of having some summer fun. We explored the city, saw our friends, enjoyed the warmth, the sun, and nature. We went out for dinners and drinks. We went hiking. We spent days downtown and went to backyard parties. We got out and got away, a little.We still had work and September has never been a month we could keep just for us. In total, there are about seven birthdays in our calendar, including my wife’s. That means there were gifts to find, special days to plan, and time and money to give. September always feels like many months in one and this one felt especially overfull of both hardship and joy.
But now it is time for October. Summer is gone and this time I was mature enough to know that neither stubbornness nor denial would keep the leaves from changing or chill air from blowing in. This time I said my goodbyes and this time I’m (in a way) looking forward to what autumn will bring and be. This time (I think) I am mature enough to change with the season.
But before I do, here is what I am currently…
Writing little bits and things here and there but never enough to post or share or pitch anywhere. Lately, I’ve just been going with the flow placing no expectations or constraints on myself but in October I would like to try—gently but firmly—to get under some sort of editorial schedule. I’m ready to get moving in any direction at all as long as it’s away from where I’m wallowing at. To jumpstart my journey, I have started posting more than just my writing here. I’ve moved from having a blog to providing a feed of art, quotes, questions, journal entries, updates, and (once I get my ass in gear) essays and poetry too. It feels good to have a place to collect and share not just my words but what inspires and moves me too.
Making cut out and cut up poems and collages. They’re dumb, but I like them and making them centers me. I suppose I just like making things out of other people’s work and words. I haven’t made any recently because I haven’t had much “analog space” in the Creativity Room since it became a storage space for wedding things but I’m slowly cleaning it up and turning in to an almost purely analog and art space. Having a phone and a laptop makes the whole rest of the house, and the world, a digital space, I want this one space to be for the real world, for concrete things, for tools, for play, for discovery. This room and the work I do there, for now at least, must be done with my hands. It’s something I need.
Planning for fall, and after, for winter too. I’m trying to prepare emotionally for the cold, the gloom, the boredom, and the hopelessness. I’ve never done well through the colder months but these past years I have been trying to make some use of theses later seasons rather than letting myself wallow in despair. I want to come to a place where I can at least be content and preferably productive through them. Perhaps these seasons can be a time of real writing to me. A good time to create the conditions of an “at home writing retreat”. No internet, no distractions, nowhere to go, just a germ of an idea to explore and time to do it in.
Reading Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky and Moral Letters to Lucilius: Volume 1 by Seneca. Behave will take a while, it’s nearly 800 pages long and I’m less than halfway through. Moral Letters could be finished quickly but I’m reading it on my phone and I have never been good at comprehending from a screen. I did finish The Book of Tea by Kakuzō Okakura which I highly recommend. I hope to have moved on to two new books by this time next month.
Watching Succession, a drama following the dysfunctional Roy family as they scheme and fight to take control of the family empire, and The Deuce, which chronicles the rise of the porn industry in New York, on HBO every Sunday. I finished Robin Thede’s Black Lady Sketch Show, a comedy show starring all my favorite ladies (also on HBO), and The Mind, Explained on Netflix which turned out to be a wonderful companion to Robert M. Sapolsky’s book Behave. Grey’s Anatomy is back for one last season and I’m far too emotionally invested not to watch. In between, I’ve been catching up on AMC’s Preacher in which the hardcore criminal turned preacher Jesse Custer gains super mind control powers and sets out with his badass girlfriend Tulip and their vampire side-kick Cassidy in the search for God.
Learning about Modern & Contemporary American Poetry and International Women’s Health and Human Rights, still. I’m making it through “ModPo” easily and I’ll continue to plug away a little every day until I finish but Women’s Health and Human Rights will take a little more focus and willpower. I have to actually work and write to finish this one and after 3 or 4 tries now I have not been able to get past week 2. But I have still been watching the videos and doing the reading. This time around I have just one job, complete the assignments, one per week, for the next 10 weeks. That is it.
Feeling hopeful, more hopeful than I usually do this time of year. I’m hopeful that all the despair and tension I normally feel is not my fault, nor inevitable, nor unchangeable. I’m embarking on a new health regimen this month, one that couples medication and self-care into a multi-pronged approach to physical and mental health. With my doctor’s blessing I’ve been able to come off of one of my medications entirely and the other’s dose is being lowered by half and as my medications come down, I’m instructed to eat more fresh foods, exercising more, meditate, get a little sun every day, and take calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, peppermint oil, and zinc supplements. I’m still working on incorporating all of this into a new lifestyle but I’m already feeling so much more normal than I have in years.
Anticipating my favorite holiday, Halloween! I’m not a fan of the cooler weather to come but I do love the spookiness of the season. I love horror movies, haunted houses, costumes, and Halloween parties. I love this “springtime of death” I guess. I love celebrating what disturbs and terrifies us both individually and collectively. Fear is a major part of what it means to be a human and I love that we have made a holiday out of it. I don’t have my costume picked out just yet but I do have my party plans made. I’ll spend the month watching my favorite horror movies and I’m going to share some of my favorite spooky art here too. I may take a break from my current reads and pick up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or anything by Stephen King. I wonder if there is horror poetry out there somewhere?
Reflecting on how we each become who we are. I’ve been reading and watching a lot about the brain, about emotion and behavior, and surprisingly, about childhood development and I’ve been expanding my understanding of how each of us comes to be an individual, a personality, a person with wants, needs, likes, dislikes, dreams, history, opinions, and so much more. I’m interested in knowing everything I can about why we come to do the things we do and how we can do differently if we want to. I’m coming to understand that it’s so much more than the genes you are born with or whether your mom hugged you enough. It’s the food you eat, the adversity your mother experienced in her childhood, what country you were born in, your gender, birth order, economic status and every other part of human existence you can imagine going back to the dawn of our species. It’s fascinating and, somehow, comforting.
Fearing where this country is headed politically. The House is moving against the President and exploring the possibility of impeachment. On principle, I wholly agree but I worry that many on the left are not operating from principle but from a very human feeling of competition, revenge, and vindictiveness to match the displays of competition, revenge, and vindictiveness from the other side. I’m afraid of the next election cycle too. I’m afraid of the deepening divide. I’m afraid of losing, and of winning, but I’m also excited. I am very human too you know. The drama of it all, for some, is all politics is, for all of us it matters somewhat, and this is terrifying.
Hating living with a chronic illness. I am feeling well and hopeful, for now, but that is the problem, for now. I know that I will never not have this illness and I know that no matter how well my treatment is working today in a year, hell, even tomorrow, it could fail and I could end up as bad or worse off than I was at diagnosis. My doctor warns me that worrying about tomorrow or a year from now will do nothing but stress me out and encourage the outcome I am trying to avoid, but it’s hard not to hold the possibility in your mind all the time. When I’m not worrying about it I’m just angry about it. I’m angry my life has had to change and I’m angry that there is no cure. I’m angry about all the pills I have to take, the doctor’s appointments I have to make, and the blood tests. It makes you hate your own body sometimes.
Loving married life, still. I love the little things like changing her status to “wife” on my emergency contact card at work and the big all-encompassing feelings of “oneness” and safety too. I love being a wife. I love the responsibility of it. I love being part of something bigger than just me. I love compromise and communication and getting to know each other anew every day. I love making and maintaining a home. I love being a family. Of course, all of this was true before the wedding but having it be so explicit and legal means it’s more concrete, more real. We are part of the norm and expectation and the community of other married couples and though it isn’t all easy or rainbows and sunshine, I love it.
Needing life to get a little easier for a change. I’ve never asked for much from life and I know I have gotten more than most, more than I probably deserve too, but it’s still hard. Maybe what I need isn’t so much for my life to get easier, but for the lives of those around me to get a little easier. Half my worry at least, and most days so much more, is for the problems of others. Much of my self-loathing and suffering comes from how little I feel I can do to ease the suffering of others. I feel useless. I feel inadequate. I feel powerless and small. I feel their pain and mine too and I desperately need it to get a little easier.
Hoping that this fall, and afterward this winter, will be a typical Colorado fall and winter. Climate change is happening now and here in Colorado September is one month where it can really be felt. I read a statistic the other day that of the 30 calendar days in the month, 15 of them have record highs that have been set since 2010. We saw the first 100-degree day in September even and one of the hottest Septembers in recorded history this year. I know it will only get worse and I suspect that this fall and coming winter will be anything but average too but I hope, I hope, I hope we will, for better or worse, return to what is familiar.
So, yeah, all in all, September was a damn good month. My wife and I had so much fun and got to spend so much time together. Summer stuck around, and we were allowed to ease into fall. At the same time, September was a pretty hard month too. We experienced some of the worst stress we have in a very long time. We had to make tough choices, and the worst isn’t over yet. Still, I feel happy and proud. I never gave up. I found joy where I could and I took care of myself. I did all I could do.
But what about you? Did September bring blessings or heartache? Does it feel like fall where you are? What are you going to be for Halloween? Are you for or against impeachment, and why? Has the existential dread of climate change got you down?
Let me know in the comments.
“I can love October in September. September doesn’t care.”
— Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year
The inspiration for these posts comes from Andrea at Create.Share.Love
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere but in bed right now.
It’s the last day of September and though the sun is shining and the weather is still very warm, I’m feeling pretty gloomy. I think knowing a change is coming—clouds and cooler temperatures and a whole new month tomorrow—is bringing out the pensive introvert in me. Conversations are tiring and connecting is pointless. I’d rather work alone than in groups right now.
At least the work day is easy. I have some energy, and I’m getting lots of small things done in place of the big things that got cancelled. It’s a blessing to have a job that is as undemanding as mine. There are chaotic days too, but they are fewer and further between than the calm ones.
Lisa Marie Blair 