stupid

I did something stupid. Last night, very tired but feeling agitated, I tried to sleep but could not, although I took 200 mg of my trazodone, more than my normal dosage. So after two hours of frustration, I gave in and took a valium. But that was too much, and I have felt in a fog all day. And now, the thing that I always forget about valium is coming back to haunt me. Valium stays in the system for a long time and makes me feel more depressed. And so here I sit, at six-fifteen, feeling bleak and tired, wishing I could make time disappear, wishing that I would float away.

chimney

chimney
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

From my bedroom window

tuna

tuna
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

My Tuna. He spends all his time on the bed sleeping, or going to the table to eat, or going into the kitchen for water. He is fifteen-and-a-half years old. He is one of the sweetest cats I have ever known.

challenge

I wrote a long and anguished post yesterday afternoon. I posted it. An hour later, I read it again, and I deleted it. This is a kind of self-censorship. While what I wrote was true, very true, I felt embarassed for myself when I read it objectively. And so I edit what I've written, or delete it entirely. Despite my attempts to be totally honest, what I write here is filtered through a detached sensibility coupled with self-consciousness. The challenge is to turn off the self-consciousness and have the courage to leave my thoughts expressed at any given time as a reflection of what I was thinking THEN, not NOW. But I suppose we all have some cowardice, or fear of how our words might hurt others, or fear of being discovered as something we do not want to be.

reading

Elizabeth Bishop: THE COMPLETE POEMS
Ryu Murakami: ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE
Baas and Jacob: THE BUDDHA MIND IN CONTEMPORARY ART
The Yale Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein: THREE LIVES
JT LeRoy: HAROLD'S END
Susan Sontag: ILLNESS AS METAPHOR
Susan Sontag: AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS
Dwight A. McBride: WHY I HATE ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH-ESSAYS ON RACE AND SEXUALITY

harassed

Today I am harassed by the old familiar yet threatening thoughts, deeply disturbing and enervating. I feel exhausted and I am struggling. Last night I could not sleep and awoke so early and all day I vacillate between feeling "normal" and then suddenly I am gripped by thoughts of harming myself so alarming that I have to just stop what I am doing and try to breathe deeply and shut my eyes and stand still until the feeling passes. Tonight I am having dinner guests and I am just hoping that I will be able to be a gracious host. Yoshi will cook, sparing me that, although I wish now that I were going to because it would give me something to do. Maybe I will play the piano, if my guests don't mind. It might help. I hate feeling like this and I wish so badly that it would just stop. The past is coming back to me in waves, waves that I don't wish to see or hear or feel ever again. I want oblivion. The sand as sea...the deep swallowing ocean...and this is my hand. It looks almost dead, no? Though the skin would be more of a blue color...

social phobia

I suffer from social phobia. This prevents me from doing things I should do, and even that I want to do, and I am sure it is harmful to my career. For example, the other night I was invited to a party for my friend and neighbor Elizabeth Gaffney's new novel, METROPOLIS, which has gotten some excellent reviews. Elizabeth and I went to college together, though she is a few years behind me, and we have many mutual acquaintances and friends who undoubtedly were going to be there. I was sent an invitation weeks ago, and upon receiving it I RSVP'd with enthusiasm. But as the party grew near, I realized I was not going to go. I couldn't face the thought of negotiating my way through a cocktail party. Elizabeth was an editor at the PARIS REVIEW and has gone to Yaddo and MacDowell numerous times (as I have) and it would have been a good networking opportunity. Yet I was frozen, unable to go despite my desire to do it. While my social phobia is better than it once was (thanks to modern medicine) it still is crippling. Obviously this is an odd affliction for a musician, one who performs before audiences large and small. But on a stage I am not afraid. But don't ask me to go mill about in the audience afterwards. I am ok with one-on-one or small groups, but a large event is more than I can handle.

I have been reading an article in a recent NEW YORKER about the late writer E.B. White, written by his stepson, Roger Angell. White suffered from such acute social phobia that he avoided even family weddings, birthday parties and such. I am glad to read of others who have this problem. It makes me feel understood.

flaws

I tend to always fear the worst.
I have social phobia.
I am overly critical.
I am impatient.
I am a hypochondriac, although this has improved in recent years.
I have an addictive personality.
I am unfocused.
I feel slighted too easily.
I am thin-skinned.
I am not funny.
I do things that are bad for me, even though I know I shouldn't.
I spend money I don't have.
I often prefer the company of animals to people.
I am terrified of loneliness.

(There are many more)

Please, Pleas (for Surangama)

Please be careful of your head.
Please take your medication. Please don't take chances with it.
Please call your doctor if you can.
Please know that I am thinking of you.

blindness

Last evening at dinner one of my brother's friends, and a potential business partner of my father's, remarked that I looked like my father (it is true). She then said that my brother must look like my mother. I said that he did, and added that my sister (who lives in Pennsylvania and was not at dinner) looks even more like my mother. "In fact," I added, "there have been times, seeing her, when I actually did a double-take, she looks so much like my mom. "I don't see it at all," my father said.

answer

I am tired of that question. I think the answer is this: what I consider "sad" is just "normal." So if I am not sad, I am just not in my normal mood.

question

And why, why, why do I feel so terribly sad today?

love

I have been in love five times.
One of them: my love was torn apart.
One of them: I was too scared to say it.
One of them: my love left me.
One of them: my love was left to struggle like a fish out of water.
One of them...

march 4, long ago in another city

"Every so often a day arrives when everything comes crashing down, walls close in, it becomes a struggle to keep up and moving. This was one. My energy gone, my patience nil, my heart cold. C. cries in the kitchen, chopping carrots too noisily and recklessly, while I, cold and feigning indifference, sit at my drafting table, copying my piece with mechanical precision.

I hate myself when I behave in such a way. It is not something I wish to do, yet I cannot stop it."

for Thierry

"Time present and time past
are present perhaps in time future,
and time future contained in time past."

(T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" from FOUR QUARTETS)

words

For me it is the absence of words that can hurt me more than words themselves.

posting

I just wrote a long post, and hit some key inadvertantly on my keyboard, and the post disappeared.