SIMPLY WAIT

Many blogs I visit have dealt with the subject of that black and hungry dog who returns again and again with the same baleful expression.

Depression takes many forms. Sometimes it is temporary and situational. Other times it is a lifelong challenge. It can be a crushing weight that makes it difficult to get out of bed for days at a time, or a vague sense of unease or self-doubt that allows life to go on, but never with the fullness or zest that it might have. It can be helped, but rarely eradicated with medication.

Though I have not written about it here, I once experienced an episode of post-partum depression that lasted nearly a year. Thus I read with great empathy whenever I happen upon a blogger who has awakened one morning to find the black dog standing outside the gate. Where it comes from is frequently unknown; how long it will remain, or how much it will demand from us during its stay is more troubling still.

A couple of times blog friends, after writing several posts about low moods, have simply and abruptly vanished. This is the most frightening development of all because as long as we're creating poetry or photographs , journal entries, or postcards from our pain, then we're unvanquished. Even if all we can write is: I hurt.

Silence is the black dog's ultimate victory.

So here's my survey question. Of course, any answers are speculative and subjective, since there is no hard data on the subject. But often in the lone subjective voice speaking its own truth, we find the greatest wisdom.

Do you think depression is particularly prevalent among bloggers? And if so, why?


a) Absolutely not. "Bloggers" are a group as diverse as society itself, no more prone to depression or any other illness than anyone else.

b) Since creative people in general are more prone to mood disorders , it is likely that bloggers suffer more depression than average.

c) The blogs I read seem to bear this out.

d) The blogs I read seem to contradict this.

e) Depression is an epidemic not only among bloggers, but in society in general. Perhaps it is even a "sane" reaction to the stress and uncertainty of contemporary life.

f) other

This being written on Ash Wednesday, I have a confession that needs to be heard. I told a lie. A lie I once considered to be the one unforgivable sin of my life. And what was worse, I told it in Church. To a priest in a red tasseled hat.

But no lie--not even an unforgivable one, not even one told in church and to a Monsignor, springs from nowhere. They all have a history, and what’s more they have a purpose. There are lies of omission, and lies told in kindness, calculated lies, and spontaneous embellishments. In fact, there’s probably as many varieties of lies out there as there are liars. And that’s a lot.

Then there are the lies you tell because more than anything you wish they were true. I think my unforgivable lie was one of those.

As a child, I often played with my next door neighbor, Elsa. We were both only children, but our lives were vastly different. Elsa lived with a grandmother, who was considerably more well-off than most of the people in our working class neighborhood, but determined to raise her granddaughter with Depression sensibilities. Before she could play, Elsa had a long list of chores to do, followed by hours of practicing her piano. She wore the same dress--invariably something purchased at a thrift shop-- to school all week in order not to waste water or labor washing them.

I know this sounds Dickensian, but I believe her grandmother loved Elsa, and thought she was teaching the child values like discipline and fortitude. They were just the wrong values for the era. These were the child-centered years when the ME generation was just coming into its own. Chores? Unwanted music lessons? Excuse me?

I used to sit on her porch, listening as Elsa practiced the piano; I cringed when she missed a note because I knew what would follow. The grandmother who spent the afternoon on a day bed with her Chihuahuas in her lap, would reach out and crack her hand with a yardstick.

“Play it again, she’d say. “And this time, do it right.”

In our secret place in the woods, Elsa confessed what her piano teacher had told her: she’d never be any good no matter how many hours she practiced. Nor was she ever much of a student. Her ill-cut hair and Depression style dress insured her status as an outcast from the moment she entered the school building. She stole my toys when I wasn’t looking, and drew me into numerous fights in her defense, but I loved that girl beyond reason.

See, Elsa was more than a friend; she was the little sister I never had. Her straight and perfectly black hair felt like a miracle to me when I brushed it in the sun; the memory of her knobby bones fills me with love to this day. But most of all, I can still remember the wild laughter with which she greeted the day when finally released from her hours at the piano.

One day, when her grandmother hit her once too many times with the yard stick, Elsa hid in my closet, refusing to answer the old woman’s calls. At the time, I was preparing for my First Communion, and it was a Sunday school day. A particularly important Sunday school day. We were meeting in the church where Monsignor would quiz us on the tenets of the faith.

Don’t ask me how I got her to the church because I don’t remember, but somehow I smuggled Elsa inside, and hid her under the pew. She sat quietly, looking up at me in the dark space, her black hair a fringe beneath her beret. While I recited my answers in trepidation, she held my hand and nodded at every correct response. Her face never left mine.

We’d nearly finished the class when the boy beside me raised his hand. He looked pointedly at me before he spoke. From her spot on the floor, Elsa gripped my hand more tightly. In an instant, the Monsignor was standing beside the pew, calling Elsa out. Standing in the center aisle, her Depression skinniness, and the dress she’d been wearing for four days were accentuated by a slant of light that came through the stained glass window.

“What’s your name? And why are you hiding in the Church?” the Monsignor said not unkindly. He was an elderly man, arthritic, but I remember him crouching, meeting her at eye level.

But like spies and fugitives everywhere, Elsa was determined to reveal nothing. She lowered her head in eloquent muteness.

“Does anyone know this little girl?” the Monsignor asked, turning to the class.

I was silent for an instant, before I stood straight up, and in the presence of all the holy icons of the church, told my lie--loud and clear. “She’s my sister. My mother wasn’t home so I had to take her to Sunday School with me.”

It was a purely gratuitous lie. The truth--that she was a friend, and would be going home with me when my mother picked me up--would have satisfied the Monsignor just as well.

Elsa looked up from the center of that shaft of light and smiled widely--the way she did when she was released from her chores for the day. And I smiled back. For that one moment, we were no longer onlys. We each had the secret thing we’d always longed for: a sister.

I suffered mightily for the lie I told to the trusting old Monsignor. When we prepared for first penance, I rehearsed how I would confess it. But every time I tried to speak my sin out loud, it sounded more unforgivable. I imagined God’s thunder cracking the confessional booth in half when I filled it with my travesty.

Of course, as I grew older, I laughed at my child-self for her overdeveloped conscience. The story I told the Monsignor was an entertaining example of “Catholic guilt” when I was in college.

Only now when I look back and remember Elsa standing in the center aisle with her bowed head, or crouched below me, squeezing my hand in encouragement as I recited my catechism, I understand the true nature of my unforgivable lie: It wasn’t the lie I’d told to the Monsignor that mattered. It was the lie I told to Elsa.

It is perhaps a common lie. We outgrow people we say we love. We “move on.” As we grew up, I would disown the girl I’d called my sister a little more completely every year. I would pretend I didn’t know the secrets we told each other in the woods or the bump of her bony knees during a sleepover. Perhaps predictably, Elsa grew into a wild adolescent, an intractable outsider, the magnificent black hair bleached platinum, her old world name jettisoned for a new nickname and a persona to go with it. She became “Sunny”; and I became someone who pretended I didn’t know her.

The last I heard of Elsa she was a drug addict living in Florida. And yet the moment in the church remains. The moment when I told the Monsignor that she was my sister. The truth of those words continues to haunt me.

While poets argue among themselves about the relative virtues of "accessible" and "cutting edge," many people have stopped listening, stopped reading, stopped believing that most contemporary poetry makes a difference.

For me, when it comes to poetry, the only criterion that matters is this: does the poem give me something I need to have; does it tell me something I need to know; does it crook its metaphorical finger and lead me some place I've never been, but recognize instantly?

If it does those things, it doesn't much matter if it's plainspoken or abstruse. I'm following, I'm listening, I'm buying poetry books.

Mary Oliver recently selected Suzanne Frischkorn and Judith Valente for the Aldrich prize. In her introduction to the book that contains both their work, she says that what she looked for was "genuineness."

I particularly love this poem by Suzanne Frischkorn which opens the book:



A FRIEND ASKS, WHAT'S TO FORGIVE?

Forgive me, I can't name the scarlet birds
that dart through the bramble.

Forgive the marsh through the lace curtain--
veiled, remote.

Forgive the wood thrush, and the larkspur.

Forgive the incantation of crickets among burrs--
to each star and one moon.

Forgive me as I light candles for the living

And because I scrape wet stones
in search of happiness. And forgive

all the damp places, their echoes
their solitary drops of water.

Forgive the orchid, the only flower
of meditation.

And forgive the catmint,
the cosmos, and the black-eyed susans

for their tenacious grip on dry earth.

A copy of Suzanne's, Spring Tide and Judith Valente's Reinventing the Alphabet is available on Amazon, or through Suzanne's blog, Lit Windowpane.

Her anger was like 30 days of bad weather, no sun in sight. Harnessed, it would have sent any number of freight trains slashing through the night. But as it was, the only thing it drove was her. And occasionally those she supervised.

She was always the first to arrive at work. A "captain", she took her job as seriously as a wartime general. If we had to come in at five for an early breakfast, she was there by four, hunched down in the depressing employee area near the dumpster, sucking on a cigarette and a tall French vanilla from Dunkin Donuts.

"Better punch in," she'd say, consulting her watch. "We've got to get that coffee break out by six."

Hesitate for a minute, pause to check your hair as you slung your jacket on a hook, or wonder if anyone had made coffee, and you'd jumpstart her dormant anger.

"Listen, you've got a good job here. You make fucking good money. You might not care if our customers get their coffee on time, but I do."

There was no way to deal with anger like this, but to follow it from a safe distance. And hope it didn't singe you too much in the process.

In his obituary, Paul Avrich, who died this week in New York, is described as a "historian of anarchism."

Among his favorite anarchists were George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Eugene O'Neill. A book he hoped to write about O'Neill was never completed.

He left behind the 20,000 documents he collected on the subject of anarchism and later donated to the library of congress, several books, and this quote:

"Every good person deep down is an anarchist."

I've been mulling it over ever since I read it. (Being sick, lying on the couch all day is an otherwise dispiriting experience, but it does allow ample opportunity for mulling.) There's something about the simplicity of the quote that really strikes me--though I'm not quite sure I understand what he meant.

So what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Care to expound?

Did you ever play that game "hot potato" when you were small? Well, in the past week, my family has been in the throes of a similar sport--except this time the spud in question is a particularly nasty virus.

Yesterday, when I took my eye off the wandering spud for a minute, the thing landed in my lap. Plunk! I've been relegated to the couch ever since, alternately whining that it's absolutely freezing in here, and then fulminating because someone cranked the heat so high. Do these people have any idea how high our gas bill is?

It was you, Mom, my son happily reminds me. Oh yeah. So okay, I'm not the best patient.

In my normal life, I always think it would be fun to spend a day or two on the couch--catch up on my reading, maybe even take in a guiltless hour or two of TV. But I'm here to say, resting your bones amid a nest of blankets and pillows is highly overrated--especially when every bone is an aching one.

But what really amazes me about this experience is the thin and highly permeable wall that separates health and sickness. Yesterday morning, I was practicing Bodokon, running errands, making long lists of things to do, and then (as I do every day) accomplishing about half of them. I was in possession of the world and all its possibilities. By three in the afternoon, I was imprisoned in my body.

And so--as much as I'd like to be reading my favorite blogs, or responding to intriguing comments, finding the right niche in my house to work on my next novel, booking plane tickets to Prague or Portland, or lurching toward the adventures that take place mostly in my mind, I think I'm going to head back to the couch and see what's on TV.

Thanks for listening.

Probably like many of you out there, I've been searching for it for years. The perfectly verdant landscape or unsullied ocean view that will make my heart swell with inspiration, the mythical country -- or maybe just a town or a mysteriously shadowed street that offers the perfect balance of quiet and stimulation. If I could only find the right place to set up my computer, or just pull out those ancient artifacts known as pen and paper, all the words that have accumulated inside me, all the visions, the emotion, the stinging insights, would come pouring forth almost effortlessly. At least, that's how the theory goes.

To that end, I once considered moving back to the mother country, where undoubtedly the writerly impulse slipped into my genes as stealthily as my melancholic temperament or my fondness for black beer. Yes, I could go back to Ireland, the country my malnourished ancestors fled, rent a little cottage in the countryside, drink Guiness and wait for the golden river of prose to start flowing.

Then there was what my husband refers to as my "Montana phase". After reading about a writer who claimed that there was something about the big sky that set his words free, I became a woman obsessed. Not only did I read my way through every Montana novel ever written, I collected an impressive collection of travel brochures as well. Eventually, however, my local travel agent realized she was dealing with a professional daydreamer, and stopped taking my calls.

And don't think the news that a new literary community, similar to the one that nurtured Hemingway and Fitzgerald, not to mention Henry Miller and Anais Nin, was forming in Prague a few years ago passed me by. I even checked some foreign language
tapes out of the library. By day, I listened to them in the background as I struggled to write in my clearly uninspiring environment; and over dinner, I tried out a few of the exotic words I'd absorbed by osmosis on my long suffering family. After three months of "study," all I had to show for it was a huge fine at the library, and the ability to say, "Sorry, I don't speak Czech" with a very impressive accent. The day the librarian informed me that I had to either pay my fine or be shut off from my book supply, was the day the Prague phase ended.

Of course, I'm more mature now.When it comes to getting words on paper, I know that the answer to my resistance lies within myself. From experience, I've learned that the best place to write, like the best place to fall in love, or to pray, or to make a friend, is right where you are. Right now.

Been away for the weekend visiting the in-laws. It's quiet there. Quiet house. Quiet streets. Quiet towns.

In this quiet, I found myself thinking a lot about aging, and courage and life. And this is what I thought:

There are three rivers that flow through us in the course of our existence bringing beauty and strength and vibrant life: the first is hormones, the second is breath and the third, love. When the first wanes, the second two must increase. When the second also diminishes, the third must be highly developed enough to prevail.

If there is a test we all must pass or fail, it is this. Only this.

I consider myself to be a very quiet person. Shy. Introverted. Typical writer type. That's why I was surprised when a co-worker once informed me that you could hear my voice all over the hotel where we worked. Not only was I always talking--I was loud.

Hmmm. That gave me pause, but not quite long enough to actually--err, shut-up.

I'd like to say that I talk loudly because I come from a large family, and I had to speak up in order to be heard. But as an only child, I don't think that one would work. Maybe it's the writer thing. I don't get out much, and when I do, I want to talk.

But mostly I think I speak at an inflated volume when I'm feeling vehemently about something. And it seems I'm in the vehement mood quite often.

I can't tell you how many people my father and I scared away when we debated politics. As the passion rose, so did our voices until we were both screaming and purple. But what the scattered victims of our discussions didn't understand was that the hollaring had nothing to do with anger. It was just emotion--and probably a little showmanship thrown in, too. (We're talking two Leos here, for those who subscribe to astrology.) When we'd exhausted ourselves, we'd return to Mom's pot roast like nothing had occurred.

But after XX years of speaking to be HEARD, I decided to change. And as is often the case with my resolutions, the inspiration was an obituary. Edna Lewis--cook, dress designer, writer, and worker for social justice was remembered in Tuesday's New York Times in an obit I had to clip for my collection.

I loved the story of how this young talented black woman was fired after three hours from the only job she could find when she first arrived in New York City. The job was ironing, and this was a woman clearly not born to iron.

I also loved the sound of her famous recipe for shrimp and grits.
"It's just butter and shirimp, but it requires great butter and great shrimp, and a puddle of that over stoned ground grits," said John T. Edge, the director of the something called The Southern Foodways Alliance. "This pays homage to the frugal south, but it's also worthy of damask cloth." Now that's eating--though with the price of butter and shrimp, I'm not sure how frugal it is.

But it wasn't the recipe for shrimp that changed my life. It was the description of Lewis's manner:

"She just had a very quiet way of speaking and it really engaged you," chef Alice Waters remembered. "Because she was so soft-spoken, you had to listen carefully. There was a kind of intimacy you immediately had."

Well, those words struck a couple of days ago, and I've been practicing my softer tone ever since. Not sure how long it will last because I make resolutions all the time, and usually nature and years of habit quashes them within a week. But I've already learned a few things just from my experiment:

1. You really don't have to shout to be heard. I think I was afraid that if I didn't speak UP, no one would pay attention to what I had to say. Not true! They seem to be listening even more closely.

2. Speaking softly is about much more than talking. It's about courtesy, because if you speak in a low voice, you can't barge into the middle of someone else's sentence. You've got to wait. Thus, in two days, I've found myself becoming a better listener.

3.It's really hard to be curt or blustering or abrasive when speaking quietly.

4. A simple thing like adopting a quiet tone of voice effects changes far beyond itself.
Since I've started, I've felt more composed, more moderate in all things--simply calmer.

I'm telling you: there are some amazing lives recorded on the obituary pages. Some amazing lessons.