Hah!

Grace in Small Things

This is the Schmutzie project.

Which is a cool thing for more reasons than I can say exactly. It's not simply gratitude but also a kind of close observation of human existence.

Also, she's spreading the gratitude around. Now it's a whole big community of bitterness busting.

I often say I'm not grateful but actually I am quite grateful for many things but I simply don't want to talk about it.

I realized something, though, and this is that when I react to that positivity business I am actually sort of stuck in this past moment, when I had just gone to college in California. I was a deeply depressed person and in college in California and I swear the social pressure to be upbeat was so oppressive.

I mean, there were just so many bad things to talk about and think about. I wanted my fellow students to contemplate these two. I was a sunny dark cloud though: blonde streaks in my hair, tawny skin, big white teeth. I was often smiling. I had a funky wardrobe of strange colors. I went through funny phases where I would seek out handmade clothing at the Goodwills and so often wore odd items like flower pinafore shirts. I was a huge fan of a bubble gum called Rain-Blo.  Sometimes when studying I would chew an entire package of it all at once.

Yet, I was focussed on racism, genocide, all the kind of miseries and destruction humans wreak on each other.  Kind of like a Pippi Longstocking of Doom.

Dadgummit there were bad things in the world and I just thought we should be paying attention. Now I realize that paying attention is sort of a pointless exercise.

In any case, the glazed over eyes of some of my middle-class, hopeful classmates made me resistant to that count-your-blessings, don't bum out my world kind of thinking.

But I thought of something today to be grateful for. It's small, but it's a start: Wool. I'm very grateful for wool. For sheep's wool but also for cashmere.

Why? It keeps me warm. It has kept mankind warm for quite so time.

So wool! Yay! Yay for wool.

So Much Crazy

Is it like my role in my tiny, tiny outpost of mommyblogging or whatever the fuck it is to bring some kind of super depressing perspective to the internet?

I can't explain my choice of topics people. They just happen.

Anyway, I recently lost a beloved relation and went to the funeral. And I don't know how to put this but...revelatory does not explain it.

There were the cousins whose mother is hospitalized, perhaps forever, with schizophrenia.

And some people whose grandfather killed their grandmother and then killed himself. This was probably a kind of mercy killing. Just a bad choice of method. (The grandfather is not related to me.)

A meth addict who seems to have some kind of personality disorder. This person was once successful and smart and educated. Well, I guess they still are. Just addicted to meth! 

A few alcoholics (only one sort of recovering).

Someone with borderline personality disorder.

A few people where I don't know exactly what is wrong with them. But something is.

And all these people were related to me. By blood.  I mean, I didn't have fingers on my hands to count the personality disorders and assorted other ailments of the mind.

But I only need one finger to count the relations who seem almost entirely normal. There's one person out of all these people who seems almost entirely normal.

And, holy beezus, this is just one side of my family. And get this: I thought this was the normal side!

Or I used to think that. I now realize that both sides are tied.

I'm not including the garden variety depressives and anxious phobic-types, which is pretty much everyone.

I found out that one cousin who wasn't there is now a hoarder.

I hate to tell you this but I think there were some other people I actually blocked out at this point. They'll come to me later.

This came to mind today when I was remembering the e-coli scare with the spinach. Remember that? Well, I was remembering how I threw the spinach away and then I was so upset because I could have cooked it. What was that? Like, three years ago? 

It feels like a sign of impending madness that this still bothers me. I feel like, on some fundamental level, I can understand each and every one of these ailments. Like I'm a little mosaic of madness. A touch of alcoholic tendencies, a little bipolar thrown in, some OCD, perhaps a smidgen of whatever makes someone a hoarder.

On the other side of my family there is probably more bipolar disorder. In fact, everyone on that side might have bipolar disorder. It was a bit surprising to find that four other people in my family have OCD. I have just a touch myself.

It looks like I'm going to have to adopt after trying for a baby for more than three years and multiple miscarriages and I have only two words: THANK GOD.

I mean, if you knew my family history wouldn't you kind of think twice about reproducing?  I thought  about it way more than twice but did it anyway. I couldn't be happier for that but still.

My child is wonderful, amazing, happy, fantastic, unbelievable. I hope she stays that way.  I don't think everything is environmental, the way people sometimes assume. So much is genetic. I do want to keep her from big shocks or traumas.  I don't know what her vulnerabilities are.  I'm like this mental light bulb where if I got dropped, I'd shatter.  I did get dropped. Several times. With every ounce of my being and with my limited powers, I'm never, never going to let this happen to her. Until her brain develops. Normally I hope.

You know that medicine, psychiatry and whatever else has not helped a single one of these people a single bit?

Waste Not, Want Not

I wrote the best suicide note EVAR.

But I'm not going to commit suicide.

It wasn't tragic or anything. The thing that was great about it was it just so me. For one thing, it made something totally irrational sound almost rational. I was proud of that. Plus, I made a social policy proposal about how suicide should be handled. A kind of whole new approach to suicide society might take.

It was well-written, persuasive, clear and even original. Although perhaps I griped too much politically, as I tend to do.

It could have been more terse. There was nothing beautiful there. Grad school does that to a girl.

Anyway, I think this means I have to write a novel, something to put the suicide note in.

Yet I'm so ill-equipped for such a task.

I once wrote a little poem that I posted here--that I'm sure I can't find because typepad sucks so bad--about what it would be like to kiss Dostoevsky.

There are so many times when one really needs to be Dostoevsky. Because there's so much goddamn material and tragedy. I guess that's why I won't write a novel. Too frustrating. You know, the material is there and I just don't know what to do with it. In the wrong hands, it's just the National Enquirer. In the right hands, poetic tragedy.

Not that the world needs more novels. Or does it? Does the world need more novels?

Not Christmas Anymore

This post is just to let you know I realize it isn't Christmas anymore. Christmas is just so over. That always happens, doesn't it?

I'm just trying to make it until June.