Sad Thing

I felt like crap today, but it was beautiful outside and I wanted to get out, so I walked over to Shoppers for a few things and then took Lucy around the park. I walked slowly and looked around at the burning blue sky - the leaves left on the trees, mostly copper and yellow but some still red - were eye-wateringly brilliant in the sun. Lucy was having a wonderful time crashing into leaves and following smells.

As we got halfway around the park, I became aware of what I thought was a conversation between two teen-aged girls that was loud and sounded a little angry. I kept walking, and the conversation started to follow me, and when I looked back it was actually only one girl. I thought she might be talking on her phone, but I couldn't be sure, and I kept thinking I heard the word DOG repeated and it was all a little weird. It was bright mid-day, but I was slightly nervous walking along the trees and sped up a little bit to get back onto the street by the houses.

As I was almost there, Lucy stopped to sniff something, and I felt like I was being stupid, so I didn't tug her along. Just as we turned the corner onto the street, the girl passed us. She was definitely talking to herself because there was music playing on her phone. She stopped and turned to face us and said, in a perfectly normal tone, "can I please see your dog?" So of course I said sure, and she bent down and petted Lucy and asked what breed she was, then started walking again, a little unsteadily.

I stopped a couple driveways up for Lucy to meet two other dogs that were with a man in front of a house. As I got up to leave, suddenly the girl was back. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was kind of lost. I asked where she was trying to go, and she said to her boyfriend, well not her boyfriend but he meant a lot to her - and it soon became apparent that she was either on something or mentally ill, and then she got it in her head that her boyfriend was in the man's garage, or with a man with a stroller.

I asked if I could call someone for her, but then realized I didn't have my phone. I asked her to come home with me so I could drive her home, but she didn't want to. She kept insisting that she wasn't on drugs, and I said that was fine, she just seemed confused and I wanted to help. I didn't know what to do, short of dragging her up the street to my house, which seemed inadvisable.

I brought Lucy home, grabbed my phone and went back to look for her but she was gone. The curious thing is that Lucy, who always wants to see people but then is often skittish when they try to pet her, went right to her, as if she knew she wasn't dangerous, just lost and hurt.

Now it's dark out, and I'm in my warm house, grateful that the worst health problem my own daughter has right now is a sore throat. And I wish I'd done more.

Therefore I Am. Or Might Be. It's Hard to Say.

Reading Paul Kalanithi's memoir got me thinking - ha ha, brain surgery, thinking, i kill me - a lot again, as you do every now and then and then have to stop because it makes your head hurt, about the whole question of what makes a person, and the whole intractable problem of metaphysics - trying to come at the issues of being in the world from outside the world, where you can never be -  and the mind and the soul and how trying to use the brain to think about the brain is very, very difficult, especially when your brain is forty-something and has raised two kids and weathered a lot of tequila shots.

Have you seen those medical shows where someone comes into the hospital with something sharp stuck in their brain, and when it gets removed they're ostensibly fine, but their personality has changed, like they're nice when they used to be cranky, or cranky when they used to be nice? Is that not really, really freaky? Something could happen to one tiny part of your brain and suddenly you'd be practically the same person except now you'd like olives, or think hunting sounds fun, or believe that Michael Bolton is a sound musical choice? I find this terrifying.

You know the research that shows that the memory you have of an event is actually a memory of the last memory you had of the event? And if one detail changes once, then it's in the next memory, and then more details can get changed, until you think you're remembering your aunt's wedding when you've actually completely rebuilt a memory of watching your father build a dog house? Or something?

I read this really cool book called Betraying Spinoza. I say this only because I remember I read the book and Spinoza has something to do with philosophy, not because I remember anything about the book enough to converse intelligently about, Jesus what do you want, it was six fucking years ago. Actually I do remember that while I was reading it I realized how far back the whole anti-Semitism thing went, how stupid it seemed even then, and how depressing it was to realize how deep and ineradicable the roots seemed - much like when I read I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage and realized the same thing about women. Let's just get off this subject before I go out and dick-punch the first white male I see, which is more than likely to be my husband and that really wouldn't be cool - he's a good egg, he can't help it if his collective race and gender has its collective head up its collective butt.

Isn't it just really weird to think that who you are, your thoughts, your opinions, your political leanings, what you think about religious faith, your favourite colours, your favourite foods, whether you can speak other languages well - it all comes down to a bunch of neurons and electrochemical signals zipping around in the squishy gray matter in your head? It becomes more understandable why religious people came up with the soul - some glowy thing in the general vicinity of your heart and breast is a more palatable representation of selfhood than mushy colourless stuff between your ears.

I always have an indefensible knee-jerk reaction against philosophy - that it's silly to spend all of one's time in rarefied discussion of intangible issues like whether what we perceive is really real, or whether free will exists; spinning endless ostensibly logical frameworks for things that, in the end, can never really be proven or known for sure. If you step into traffic, does it really matter whether you'll never know for sure if the car that hit you is only a Platonic shadow? You're still going to have a grill mark on your ass. It makes sense, though, of course it does, that people want to understand the nature of reality. It's just that the study of philosophy seems often to result in one taking oneself quite terribly seriously, and that's just not my thing.

It all makes me think that maybe I should try reading some Kant and Aristotle (again), and at the same time makes me want to hide under the bed with cashews and zombie stories.

It's Friday - Have Some Funny Stuff

I was reminded of this while talking to Hannah (Hi Hannah!) about... something. I read it again and it made me laugh out loud again, so if you haven't seen it, you're welcome. ("We are just honking each other whilst saying "honk" for, like, ten minutes. I want a video of this played at our wedding.")

It's doubly funny because she used the word "whilst". Also, this reminding thing reminded me of another thing, which is that at my cousin's wedding the best man was introducing the groomsmen and for one he said "now Mike, here.... he's a pimp." And my other cousin sighed, "it's a good thing Grandma and Grandpa are dead."

This came across my Facebook again today and it always makes me giggle out loud too. "Fuck, fuck, the dog sees me."

Oh, and then there's this, which is insanely cool, and the kind of thing that I always think would make a great Christmas present for someone, and then I try to think who, and it's not quite right for anyone on my regular list, so I either don't buy one or I end up buying it for someone I normally wouldn't buy a Christmas present for at all, so actually, get away from me stupid cool thing, you're just going to make me spend more money and probably create a slightly awkward social situation.

And with this lame attempt at a post, I am now going to go smother my stupid dog who keeps barking at all the things that freak her out, like air and light. One week down! Not really, because it started on Tuesday, and it's Friday, not Sunday, but whatever! We can DO THIS. Or maybe not, but we'll give it a shot.

First Steps

Yesterday afternoon I was mucking out the basement storage closet, a profoundly dreary and dispiriting task, when I realized it was an achingly beautiful fall day outside and I should go for a walk with Lucy and get back to the shit-shoveling when it was dark out.

When I first started walking Lucy, I would get annoyed with her for needing to stop and pee or poop or sniff stuff, thereby interrupting my brisk, even walking pace. Then I started to use those moments to look around and notice things - the colour of the sky, clouds or stars, trees and flowers, things I don't really notice in detail when charging ahead trying to get my heart rate up and my steps in. It was nice.

Today I was noticing that my shins were hurting if I tried to keep up my usual pace. Maybe I need new shoes. Maybe I'm tired and my gait is off. Whatever, it was vexing, and I actually found myself thinking "oh no! I won't be able to walk!" Because when I'm too lazy or depressed to make it to the gym, I use walking Lucy as my main form of exercise.

Then I examined that thought and found it abominably stupid. I won't be able to walk? Oh wait, yes I can walk. I maybe can't walk for Canada in the Olympics. I can't break any land-speed records. Can I walk down the street, around the block, to the park and back, looking around, moving my body, breathing in air that isn't actually only meant for people who wear spandex and can run a four-minute mile? Well yes, I can. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache walks his German shepherd Henri down the snowy streets of Three Pines, does he take his pulse regularly and think about whether this walk is making his butt look better? I think not.

I came across Depression-Busting Exercise Tips for People Too Depressed to Exercise a while ago on Facebook (at least I think I did - I know I came across something that really rang true with me, but I stupidly didn't save it and when I went looking for it just now I found this, which I think is what I meant, but honestly I'm not entirely sure) and thought it was brilliant, but obviously I haven't really taken it to heart. I think I need to stick it on the drawer where I keep my sports bras. Or on the front door. Or possibly on my forehead.

"Knowing what will help you isn't close to half the battle. It's a tenth of the battle at best."

"If you’re just doing it because you think that you should, though, or if it becomes just another way to punish yourself, that doesn’t work." 

"The perfect exercise is anything that you will actually consider doing. The perfect body is a breathing one."

"Listen to your body."

Reading it over now, I'm sure it's the thing I was thinking of, and I really want to give the writer a hug. Also, now I have Jane Siberry's The Walking and Constantly running through my head.

Every now and then things become clear.

Wordless Wednesday: My Niece's Pumpkin

No word yet on whether they got egged. 

Scary Stuff

Me every year trying to decide on a costume for our friends' Halloween party: "I hate dressing up. I'll just try to find something that won't be too hot."

Me every year when I put on the costume for the party: "I look like a stripper."

Eve most years when I put on the costume for the party: "Nah, you're fine, let's just go."

Eve last Saturday when I put on the costume for the party: "Nah, y.... wellllll..... oh, it's fine, let's just go."

I borrowed a Dark Alice cosplay costume. I just tried it on to make sure it fit. When I put it on for the party, I realized it was basically a slutty French Maid costume with a picture of the Cheshire Cat on the apron. Thank goodness for body-positive, non-slut-shaming daughters.

At least it wasn't too hot.

Miss Clavel doing her best to bring me to Jesus

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For years, Matt would let the kids draw the design they wanted for their pumpkin and then he'd carve it. When they got a little older, they'd clean out and carve their own. Now Angus has no interest, but Matt usually helps Eve clean them out and then she carves at least one.

This year Matt and Angus were away at a baseball showcase until late the night before Halloween, so Eve carved both pumpkins (we always get an Ernie and a Bert, for some reason), but I felt like I should help her clean them out. I really hate touching raw pumpkin.

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My iron is low again. Every now and then when that happens, I start to experience a moderately severe form of pica wherein anything powdery or dusty suddenly seems appetizing. This happened when I was pregnant with Eve and our basement was being finished, and I had to limit my time downstairs because the drywall dust was suddenly extremely appealing. I had less access to Google back then and thought I was just losing my mind in a pregnancy-related kind of way - it was only afterward that I learned that it was indicative of severe anemia. Apparently there are people who eat a handful or two of baby powder a day on the regular, which makes me feel simultaneously less alone and just bewildered about the state of humanity. I recently read a short story about a pregnant woman experiencing pica which is tied up with her deteriorating relationship with her partner. It ends with her eating a mixed handful of gardening soil and powdered dish detergent which, I'm not going to lie, sounded like a totally palatable combination. I'm taking supplements. And trying really hard to keep my Lush dry shampoo directed solely at my hair.

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I blogged three times in September and once in October, and it's NaBloPoMo. Gulp.

Brains and Eyes and Hearts

Depression has its teeth pretty deep into my brain stem at the moment. I feel bizarrely lonely, which is stupid since I'm surrounded, physically and virtually, by wonderful people who love me. I feel ashamed that I'm wasting the beautiful fall days in sadness. I feel like I've accomplished nothing of note, and rushed heedlessly through my kids' childhood, and basically wasted my life. I know this is not rational or true. I know this will pass. I had a really good summer. It's okay.

I've been reading a bunch of stuff and finding it either acutely painful or strangely comforting - sometimes both at the same time.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is the memoir of a neurosurgeon who finds out he has advanced lung cancer at 36 just as he's about to finish his residency and start an illustrious career. I'm always a bit hesitant to read books like this, because you feel like a total dick if you can't give them a rave review, you know? When I was working at a little bookstore in Toronto, a book came in that a guy with locked-in syndrome wrote by blinking through the alphabet so someone else could transcribe every word. When my coworker asked what I thought of it, I said "It's definitely the best blink-written book I've read this year".

This book was quite remarkable. I feel like Kalanithi himself was quite remarkable, even allowing for some fudging which, come on, if you're writing an autobiography at 36 before you die of cancer, you're allowed. He was talented and engaged in both literature and science and could have chosen from a range of careers, and he had a massive, questing curiosity about where meaning and life and experience reside. He doesn't come across as martyr-like about his diagnosis, but he handles it as graciously as possible. At one point, while he and his wife are trying to decide if they should have a baby, she asks him if he doesn't think saying good-bye to his child will make dying more painful, and he says "Wouldn't it be great if it did?", because he felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. This struck me deeply, as did his assertion that Darwin and Nietzsche agree on one thing - that the defining characteristic of a living organism is striving.  

So, yeah. Here I was, huddled in my reading chair, feeling like I'd been given a great gift by a dead man. I was stuck, pinned down, barely functional, but it was okay - I was striving to keep breathing. and happiness isn't always the point of life. Anyone who walks through this world never feeling the least bit fucked-up maybe just isn't paying attention, right?

On a lighter note, we read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides for book club. Having read his book Middlesex a few years ago, a dense, rich, subtle novel that dug deep into the complexities of family relationships and gender roles, this felt strangely flaky and shallow - I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but it seemed strange that it came after Middlesex rather than before. Someone at book club ventured a guess that he had started it much earlier and then dug it out and finished it (in a somewhat desultory manner), which seemed extremely plausible.

At one point, Madeleine, a college English major devastated by a break-up, reads and becomes obsessed with Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. It seems not only beautiful and insightful to her, but gives her a sign that she's not alone. That's as it should be - I read and become obsessed with books, and blogs, on the same principles all the time. Then it says, "It had to do with Leonard. With how she felt about him and how she couldn’t tell anyone. With how much she liked him and how little she knew about him. With how desperately she wanted to see him and how hard it was to do so.” And then I was making fun of her for her angsty early-twenties philosophizing about a BOY.

And then I gave myself a mental slap for being a disaffected forty-something cynical shithead. Break-ups are HARD. Love is hard. Just because that's not my particular source of pain right now doesn't mean it's not a valid one for anyone else.

Then there was this: "“A Lover’s Discourse was the perfect cure for lovesickness. It was a repair manual for the heart, its one tool the brain. If you used your head, if you became aware of how love was culturally constructed and began to see your symptoms as purely mental, if you recognized that being ‘in love’ was only an idea, then you could liberate yourself from its tyranny. Madeleine knew all that. The problem was, it didn’t work”. 

That works for depression too, doesn't it? You can use your head, and understand that this is all a brain chemical thing, and, well, your symptoms ARE largely mental. Does this help to liberate 

yourself from its tyranny? Like fuck it does.

Finally, Madeleine's childhood room is wallpapered with scenes from the book Madeline, including the quote "They smiled at the good/ And frowned at the bad/ And sometimes they were very sad." And, well, damned if Ludwig Bemelmans hasn't summed it all up - life, the universe and everything - right there, yes?

Kalanithi refers often to the Samuel Beckett quote "I can't go on, I'll go on" in his book. I feel like a rusty pair of scissors trying to cut through a phone book right now. I feel like I've lost my way, especially here, where everything used to flow so easily. It feels like the world would be losing nothing of real value if I stopped. But people are writing books with their fucking eyelids, and the organism has to keep striving. So I'll go on.