Happy New Year

wall with cracks

vingt regards sur l'enfant...

I have been studying this picture since my sister gave it to me on Monday. To me there is a sadness in my eyes. I was five years old. During that time I spent most of my time drawing. I drew birds. All kinds of birds. I had a copy of Audubon's BIRDS OF AMERICA and I copied the pictures out of it, using colored pencils which my mother bought me. One of the greatest birthday gifts I ever received was a set of pencils in what seemed to me like every color imaginable. I drew birds doing human things. Lining up at the synagogue (where did that come from?). Talking to one another.

In this depressed state--I sit here looking at the picture and writing in an attempt to break out of it--I look at myself almost four decades ago and wonder if I wanted to fly out of myself even then. I remember being despondent so much of the time. I was terrified that my parents would abandon me. I remember a constant gray sky, although that can't be accurate.

Today when walking back from swimming I thought to myself that maybe the only possible way for me to survive these depressions is to leave myself behind, like a bird that can fly thousands of miles high in the sky. Leave myself behind, because almost all the time now I find basic existence so torturous that if I think about it too long I cry.

I vowed that I would not complain any longer in this blog, and I meant it at the time. But since I also vowed, when I began this blog, that I would not hide from the truth, then today I have no other option but to write what I am writing now. I am looking out the window at a clear blue sky. It is beautiful; I recognize that. But it brings me no relief. I feel like there is little more that I or anyone can do to help me improve. Bleak, isn't it?

cycles

This rapid cycling is going to drive me nuts. My mood is so erratic, although the one predictable thing is that either I am feeling utterly depressed to the point of coma, or I am excessively exuberant and my mind is racing with hypomania (I think verging on full-blown mania). This may be because I forgot to take my medication on Monday and part of Tuesday. Or maybe all of Tuesday. I need to stabilize myself.

painting

This is one of the few paintings of mine that I am really happy with.



field music: nocturne --detail (oil and acrylic on linen 24x24)

crowds

I was walking to Union Square along 14th Street, a little freaked out by how crowded it was. I get used to the calm of my neighborhood, and since Manhattan is at its most crowded this time of year, and I don't like crowds, it is difficult. And Union Square is one of the most crowded places of all because of the shops and restaurants that cater to the twenty-something crowd. I was meeting R for coffee and to discuss depression and work (he is a writer). And then I looked up--I was listening to a message on my voice mail--and who do I see but B walking along. I smiled, motioned to him that I was still listening to the phone--and then hung up and we chatted very briefly; he was headed from the gym, going back to work. He was smiling a lot. He looked good. I like his longer hair. It made me smile, seeing B. I like to see people I know in Manhattan since it always seems such a novelty. And B seemed so happy, in a good mood. And that made my mood better too.

Brokeback Mountain

I saw "Brokeback Mountain" yesterday. It was, in many ways, a deeply touching film; the camera work was beautiful, the story one of universal human failing. But I was not blown away, and this is why. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall had no real chemistry. Maybe because they are both straight, they simply could not fully realize their characters. Ledger's character, because he was more fully realized in the screenplay, became more believable as the story progressed. I thought Gyllenhall--who resembles a not-so-bright frat boy--was just one-dimensional. The women, the wives of both men, were excellent. What is creating such a sensation? The subject matter, of course, is titillating, and for the first time we see two "gay" characters as men, with their awkward machismo, rather than the prancing nellies one is used to seeing on television and movies. That is something commendable, I think. But I believe the hyperbolic response to this movie is inspired by the kind of sentimentalism that seems to just touch its edges. It could have been far more mawkish. So I give it three stars.

toothless

Here I am in kindergarten. Note the teeth. Or lack thereof.

first grade

I had to wear the patch over my left eye to strengthen my right eye. The experiment was not a success.

trials

I am sitting here writing this with Patsy purring in my lap. Yesterday I went into Manhattan to do some errands. When I got on the train to come back to Brooklyn I had an allergy attack of epic proportions. I must have sneezed twenty times in a row, and then it was as if a faucet had been turned on in my head. My eyes, my nose and my throat itched. I was blind-sided.

When I got home I took two sudafed. Then I noticed Patsy licking at her belly. I took a look and saw that the sutures from her surgery looked quite irritated. Closer inspection showed that at least one of the sutures was infected; I won't go into the details but it was quite nasty. I called the vet and hoped someone would answer, as it was past their regular office hours. Luckily Dr N picked up, and I told her about Patsy. She told me to bring her in right away. So I did. Dr N removed the stitches--they are the kind that are supposed to dissolve, but they sure weren't dissolving quickly enough--and gave Patsy an injection of an antibiotic. Then she gave me liquid antibiotic to give her at home, twice a day. It is like animal hospital here. But already the infection looks gone and she is not licking that spot anymore.

Unfortunately my allergies did not abate quite so fast. I went to my brother's to exchange gifts in the evening and I was just a mess. So I took another sudafed, and then, as so often happens, I felt like I was so high I could barely walk. I took a cab home. I don't really remember much, but I fell asleep with a candle burning. When I woke at 5 am I wondered why it was light in my room. I could have burned my apartment, the whole building down. I was so freaked out. I am stupid beyond belief sometimes.

My brother gave me a beautiful Misono handmade chef's knife. Japanese knives are really the best. I am quite a serious cook, and while I have good knives already, this one is the gem of my arsenal. Just looking at it you see how beautifully it is made, and I was cutting up a lemon for tea and just barely had to touch the fruit andt the blade just went right through, effortlessly.

traveling to PA

home

With Mabel in tow I drove to PA to go to my sister's. I passed this strange inflated thing on my way:



We had our holiday celebration. Some old friends came by. It was a whirlwind and I felt overwhelmed. I headed back to NYC after dinner. It was a nice day. But my mood was disassociated. I felt as if I were watching myself from a distance.

caged

In ILLNESS AS METAPHOR the late Susan Sontag wrote of the cancer victim who must face the (often unspoken) cultural belief that it is a failure of strength,some personal weakness of will, that causes the disease, thus imbuing the victim with a sense of shame. The victim is a loser. A wholesome temperament, an ability to handle the stresses of life, a greater feeling of hope: such a person would not be stricken with cancer. And, in the odd chance that such a person become ill, the strength of character defeats the disease. A tumor is something alien that attacks the body from without by invading from within. Yet it is the body itself that breeds this alien, as cancer cells are mutations of normal ones.

Depression is viewed by many as a failing of the will. How can something that exists inside the psyche, rather than organically within some organ or bodily system, be a real disease? When I am depressed I should just be able to get over it. Failure to do so shows weakness in my character, a willingness to fold, to be hopeless, to not try to smile and face the day.

But I know that as long as I can remember my consciousness is grey like the clouds that thicken the sky today. I can enjoy things, I do laugh, I can be quite funny myself, but those are moments, gifts that are made more vivid because of the backdrop from which they emerge. I remember as a small boy when afternoons would just seem like an endless stretch of nothingness, with nothing good, no joy or eagerness in my heart. Just a kind of blank dullness. I would want to be left alone. Things have not changed so much. So I know it is not my fault. This is how I was made.

new/old

This has not been my best day. I enjoyed a peaceful morning listening to Bach, but as time went by I felt more agitated. Going outside to walk Mabel I did not want to see anyone, and luckily the streets were quiet, so many people away or inside doing Christmas morning. Later I took some help and went to sleep. The phone rang at some point and it was B calling, which cheered me up and then I got up. I wrapped gifts. Tomorrow I will go to PA to see family. The funny thing is that today I baked chocolate-chip cookies as if I were having a party. Some party. Party of one. I ate so many I feel a little ill now.

* * * * *

One reason I like to take photographs like this is that a thing divorced from its context becomes something new; this nail in a piece of old deck-wood from the Vermont house is, in this photograph, unknowable as such. Here it is part of a composition, the roundness of the nail contrasting with the straight boards; the parallel lines of the boards are offset by the loosely parallel tracery of the woodgrain. And the color: bleached and aged, it resembles galvanized steel rather than what it was originally.



Since I am ignoring the fact that it is a holiday--with no celebration on my calendar--I will not say the requisite brief phrase.

N.B. -- I was invited to a friend's family party but in the last few days I felt increasingly uncomfortable at the thought of going. Why? Because I would be the only non-family member there and I don't want to feel like an orphan or somebody's charity project; everyone else would be couples, the married siblings of my friend and their various kids, his parents. I would be like a third wheel, and since I am not romantically attached to my friend, I would feel all the more estranged. How silly of me, you might say. Silly or not, these powerful feelings made me look forward to today with such anxiety that I had no choice but to decline the invitation. This in itself caused me a great deal of turmoil--guilt and fear of hurting my friend's feelings-- but it was the right thing to do. I feel calmer, if not calm, now.

List Item No. _____

One of the worst things about me is that it takes very little to make me think badly of myself. As though I am a glance away from eternal punishment. Where the hell does this come from? It seems Jungian, maybe? I am not well-educated in the various psychoanalytical theories, although I do know something about Freud and just took the COMPLETE WRITINGS OF SIGMUND FREUD off of my shelf and onto my reading pile. Let's see if I can focus long enough to read some of it.

Speaking of reading, can anyone recommend something for me to read? I would prefer fiction, but am open to all suggestions. It just has to be intelligently written.

dark

Recently an acquaintance commented that though he liked my paintings, he found them dark. But I don't really see it that way. These flowers... There is an undercurrent of sadness in all my work. Even objectively I can see it. How could I expect anything else? But I express sadness in beauty. That is how I am trying to fix things.

happy anniversary

December twenty-fourth minstrels to mean even.

(G. Stein, A BIRTHDAY BOOK)

winter sun

This is the eve of the one-year anniversary of my blog. A lot has happened. Much has changed for me, but still things are largely the same, inside my head that is. Circumstances have shifted; my place with respect to those around me is different now. But the same themes, the same preoccupations vex me still.

I used to keep a journal, writing extensively each day. I still keep a journal, but the entries are more spotty. This blog has become the journal of my days. I worry about the ephemeral nature of it all; so easily erased, not tangible like the many bound volumes that line my shelves, going back to my earliest college days. I kept no record before that; there was nothing, in my mind, that I wanted to remember.



In reading back through last year's entries, I found this poem I had written. I am going to reprint it here, because it means even more to me now than at the time I completed it. Please bear with me. I apologize for excess self-indulgence.

hymn

Here I sit,
crossed by gashes of light, watching
pictures skitter and disappear; each
lasts only a moment.

On the other side,
legs split, a victory symbol, pink-tipped,
waits with claws splayed--
an outline--suggesting

eternity of loss. The current, strong and
altered only by the touch of
time passed, breeds: a germ colony,
next a penful of toxic ink.

I feel a splash now, warm gusts.
the roar slackens in a few fast
ticks. So then, will I touch your chest, and imagine this?

This morning there will be no fear;
no fear nor regret.

(2 January 2005)

eye

I look in the mirror. My left lower eyelid is doing a mad dance. I think it might be from stress and fatigue. I have not been sleeping well, and I am fighting to keep from sinking. I am going from moment to moment. So if I string a bunch of decent moments together, I could end up having a decent day. Be in the moment. Forget what just happened and don't think about what might happen ahead of time.