writing (Page 7)

There are thoughts and ideas I have that only come out if I look away from the computer as I type. I put my face down on my knee (my knee is bent up, with my foot on my chair. I rest my face on my knee using my pursed lips as a cushion). I wonder if my fingers are in the right place on the keyboard. I listen to the very fast rattling tap tap tappidy tap of my fingers. I look up occasionally to see if I spelled words like “occasionally” correctly (I hadn’t). My fingers keep moving. I’m not even sure what I’m typing because the thoughts are moving through my fingers almost before I know what I’ve thought.
…
I looked up at the screen and I typed and typed and wrote a thoughtful piece here, maybe 1k words, about the restrictions that come when I consider my readers’ responses on many different levels. It was a good piece. It was interesting. It addressed some timely and thoughtful issues.
It was bullshit, though. It was me trying to stay away from the face-squashed-into-my-knee kind of writing I wanted to do. I’m not letting myself do it. I’m not letting myself because I’m not able to.
The word paintings I want to share aren’t here. I can’t afford to let them out.
I’m not sure this blog is the right space for the writing I need to do.
Everything I type isn’t what I want to be need to be writing. As much as I can write and write and write I still really mostly truly deeply have no words.

Seems there hasn’t been a way, yet, for me to strike a balance with my online life, my personal life, and my needs (and unique logistical limitations) as a single parent. Many of you know I have tried without success to just cut out all online socializing. This leads to an exaggerated loneliness in my otherwise simple but rich life.
What I’ve been looking for is a community like I had back in the 90s with misc.writing and alt.music.soulcoughing. Playful fun, writing challenges, intellectual stimulation, limited commitment or investment, and total control over when and where I interacted at all. It’s possible that google+ may turn out to be a decent replacement where Facebook, tumblr, blogging alone, or twitter all haven’t been just right. For now, though, even that space isn’t working.
So many times in the last year I’ve made these grand statements, exploding off the scene with sincere commitment. I “twittercided” a few times (cancelled my account entirely). I announced my departures from here, from tumblr, from everywhere, in an attempt to hold myself accountable. While the shame of changing my mind in front of all of you won’t stop me from changing my mind, it might cause hesitation that wouldn’t be there if I just slunk off quietly on my own.
Many people advocate for making changes just by making them instead of talking about them. The fact is, talking about changes is part of how I make them. It’s been steps forward and more steps back.
I’ve just come through a major physical move (May), work changes (complicated but settling down), personal life stresses (custody sharing, no matter how amicable, is difficult) and I haven’t felt grounded. On Thursdays, most weeks, my former husband starts his time with the girls. This has become a time I need more support than usual. I’ve been depending with success on these online communities to help with that stress and hurt. I’m anxious about giving up that source of support.
In the end, my sense of self is my touchstone. Knowing myself and being true to myself is how I get through any difficulty. Lately, I haven’t known who I am, or, rather, what my needs are based on my authentic and true self. That has been the most troubling of all of this. I know everything will be okay. It always has been and it always will. But not knowing in the deepest sense what is right for me based on my strong sense of who I am is something I need to fix.
So, I’m giving this “grand gesture” another try. I’m going to see about not going online for socializing for a while. If I add much more space and metaphorical air into my daily life, I hope to return to my center. Once I really get back to Me, I suspect I’ll be back to socializing online because it works so well for me.
This is a picture of me that I took just before writing this. I took a posed shot and then caught myself in my typical stance as I’m looking at the computer (head in hand). I thought that would be a decent closing image.

Not Home Depot or Lowe’s. No. Hardware stores. Everything is packed in so tightly there’s no free shelf space anywhere. Lots and lots and lots of little bins of things. Price tag stickers from pricing guns from twenty years ago. Nails, screws, bolts. Hardware.
I love being in the aisles at a real hardware store. It’s like being in a library in a lot of ways for me. Walking slowly up and down the aisle, considering just how that particular thing might be used, getting ideas for things, losing myself (interesting typo, I wrote “my self”) in my thoughts.
How do they keep it so tidy? This is a train of thought I always visit and never enjoy. When I worked in retail I was horrible at keeping the store looking good. I’m not a tidy person by nature. So the idea of keeping all of those thousands of pieces in such an orderly state stresses me out. Oh, and “inventory.” Yikes. What a nightmare. I would always be the worst person to have doing the inventory jobs because I just didn’t care how many there were. “Yeah, that’s about right,” and I’d put the number on the paper.
Mostly I don’t get distracted by what it takes to get it this way. Mostly I love to linger. Today I found myself a bit flogged by anxiety feeling someone might come at me at any moment to ask if I needed help. I don’t mind that. It’s a retail establishment, after all. But I have found hardware store staff tend to be a little agressive with the “LET ME HELP YOU” stuff. Today I was all prepared to say, “I know this is weird, but I just like looking around.” I realized that was the simplest solution. The tinge of anxiety made my visit a little less meditative, but it was still good. No one bothered me anyway, after all.
Up and down the aisle, the smells of oil and metal and dust. So many tiny things forming larger shapes, so many versions of one kind of tool.
When I left my apartment I thought, “I need to get some screws that won’t fall out of the wall and a wrenchy thing.”

When I came home to my apartment I had some screws that won’t fall out of the wall. Or, rather, the next ones I put in won’t fall out of the wall when I re-do hanging the shelf. The first two will because I was super impatient and ended up practically hammering them in so they’re not at all secure. And, I got a wrenchy thing that’ll be just right for putting on the good shower head. I even stumbled on the pipe tape that I will need later tonight and regretted not getting and would have had to decide if I wait until tomorrow or just see if the remnants of old tape were enough.
Hardware stores, art supply stores, libraries, used book stores. I think of all the indoor spaces these are closest to being a form of church for me. Even thinking about it, just lingering in the spaces, going slowly, considering, letting my thoughts and feelings simmer and start to reach a slow boil… My juices flow inside me and start wanting to come out and I have to let them out somehow and here I am now, trying.

My mother was totally sure it didn’t happen that way. I was totally sure it did. Months ago we had a conversation about how we were supposed to bag, in sealed bags, any trash we put down the trash chute. They live on the 9th floor. It was one of those situations where I could tell she didn’t remember it the way I did and there was no point in arguing it. In the past, maybe being “right” would have mattered. Or, more likely, since I gave credence to other people’s realities more than I felt confident in my own I would have had to fight it out until I knew the truth. Instead, this time (and most times in the last year or two), I said, “Okay,” and walked away. Sometimes this bugs the crap out of her and she needs to discuss it until we’ve sorted out what really happened. Thankfully this time she let it drop.
When something causes me to question my sense of reality these days a few things happen. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve gone temporarily insane. How can I not know the truth? It’s like a jolt of electricity. It stuns. Other times I just think, huh, they see it differently but that’s not how I see it. Then I feel even more comfortable with my own truth. In any case, if my sense of reality is called into question, different responses live in me concurrently.
Last night, into this morning, I got more sleep than I have in months. Certainly in the last 8.5 years there have only been a handful of nights I’ve slept so deeply and for so long. (I’ve been either pregnant or nursing a child for all that time and have very little opportunity for uninterrupted sleep.) This means I dreamed and remembered my dreams. I woke up with a scenario that started in a dream and continued on with the story as I drove home from Boston today.
Setting aside the person’s motivations (though an examination of possible motivations could be fascinating), I imagined someone put together an elaborate hoax and it went like this…

I frequently work out of coffee shops. I carry my laptop with me, of course, and I carry it in this striped case. It’s a bag I got at Target on clearance 5+ years ago. It’s filthy and beat up, but it’s sturdy and simple. Handy.
In my story, the hoax maker has a duplicate bag. Not just the same bag from Target, but a bag that’s been doctored to look exactly like my bag. The same scuff marks, the same stains, the same stretching of the outer pocket.
I’ll be sitting working at a coffee shop and my bag will be under the table up against the wall, or on the chair next to me at the table. Wherever it is, it doesn’t really matter. When I pack up to leave, I start putting my laptop in the bag and see there’s a magazine in there that’s clearly not mine. Architectural Digest or NASCAR, something like that. I realize it also doesn’t have the USB cord I carry in it for my iPod. It’s not my bag. I’m puzzled. I look around and see my bag is right there. Under the table, on the chair, maybe even on top of the table but it had been hidden by my computer, or I see it nearby but at a different table. What the heck? There are two identical bags here, what is going on? I pick up the bag that I now think must be my own and, yes, there is the USB cord. I pack up my stuff and leave the other bag there. It’s really weird. This was weird. What the heck happened? I didn’t see anyone… how was there a bag just like my own? what are the odds? the odds are too… no… this is nuts… it’s insane… what just happened?
The same situation repeats again and again. I come to almost expect the bag I pick up when I get ready to go home won’t be my own bag but will be a mystery version of my bag.
This is too insane to actually be happening, right? Someone’s obviously fucking with me. Why the heck would they do that? I grow increasingly paranoid. I try to catch the bag switcher in the act. I try to look for clues in the fake bag for who might be doing this. I begin obsessing over this weird, weird experience and lose sight of many important things in my life. I’m maybe even a little scared. What kind of person would play this kind of trick?
But then… here’s the part that ties it with my conversation with my mother. I know I work in coffee shops and I have this computer bag. I know that someone’s fucking with me and replacing the bag. It just is. I’m not crazy. They’re being freaky, but my reality is certain. I go to the coffee shop. Somehow the bag gets switched no matter how careful I am to keep an eye on it (I suppose, logistically, maybe it doesn’t happen every time…). It just is. I know what’s happening. I don’t know why and I’m flooded with questions, but I stop worrying about my own sanity. I know it’s happening even if it seems and sounds totally crazy. It might even become a sort of calming meditative experience. Ah, yes, here is this insane thing… this is not my bag and I don’t know how or why it’s here… I do know that is my bag. Nearly soothing, really.
When I said to my mother, “Okay” and walked away from her rather than engaging her in a discussion of what we talked about months ago, I had a tiny flash of anxiety. It quickly moved into a peaceful state, though, where I just knew what I remembered. If she didn’t remember it that way, that was no big deal. And, at the same time—and this is key—I knew I could be wrong. Maybe my memory of it was tweaked or I’d mixed a few conversations together. That’s totally possible. The fact was, I didn’t care. I knew what I thought had happened and her believing it happened another way wasn’t going to rattle me. Even if she had come after me about it which she frequently does, it would have been a moot point for me. I was where I was with my experience of it. She could see it however she wanted to or needed to and that didn’t affect me or my experience of it.
If I’m working out of a coffee shop and I go to pack up and find my bag isn’t actually my bag (it has a Wall Street Journal in it), nothing anyone says would convince me I’m wrong just because it’s an insane and absurd thing to have happen.
Most relevant to my thoughts about these issues lately is that notion that I can hold various possibilities in my mind, or my gut, at the same time. If I’m not sure I’m right about something, but I’m almost totally positive I’m right, I can hold on to that as reality. I don’t have to rush out and try and prove I’m right or have someone else prove I’m wrong. I know perfectly well that at any moment I could find out I’m wrong, but at this moment, I know what I know to be true is true.

As someone who used to love getting stoned, visiting alternate realities, all that druggy stuff, I thought it might be fun to see if I could share a sensorial experience of what full-blown Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is like from the inside out. Tonight I realized it’s quite a bit like an acid trip. And, since not many people I know these days have tripped, I can’t just compare it and stop there. So, here we go… and, of course, this is just my own personal experience. Every woman has her own experience unique to her. Some of you don’t have the downsides and just enjoy the upsides, I know. Some of you only know your period is coming because you look at the calendar. Well, not me. I’ve found in my later years that I look at a calendar because I start feeling and behaving in particular ways. Then I say, oh, hey, there we go. That explains it!

Much of the experience mimics plain old clinical depression. There’s a darkness all around. There’s a cone or tunnel of light so I can see in front of me. All the periphery, ever crowding in, is blurry and hazy. I’m constantly feeling like I need to get my hair up in a scrunchy because it feels like my vision is being crowded out by fuzz. My hair up never solves it, but begins the process of containment. Containment is the only way I make it through these long days.

What most people don’t realize is the beast of PMS is also a gift. Like writers who drank themselves to death or the van Gogh’s of the world killing themselves after living with mental illness, my PMS brings with her gobs and gobs of creativity. Manic, maybe. Roller coaster, definitely. Productive, sometimes. Destructive, frequently.

In The Red Tent—a book I found only so-so but one that stayed with me in a deeper way than most I’ve ever read—Diamant paints a picture of women bonding together during their periods. The idea is rich and lovely. I think, however, women would do better finding space for themselves before their periods start. At least I would, and do.

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I’m aware that I’m in the throws of PMS, I can ride the tough times and the people around me aren’t subjected to quite as much irrationality. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned about my own PMS, though, is that while I may act and say and do things impulsive, irrationally, violently, there is always some truth to my behavior. Everything is magnified. This brings me back to the physical experience.

Bright lights shine fiercely on single words in emails. Voices scream loudly when someone whispers. What should be simple confuses me, what should be comfortable distresses me. I feel alive and energized and heavy and immobile.

Today at lunch I was aware of how deeply into my hormonal surges I’d gone. Rather than try to continue on as normal, I said to my family, “I’m in a mood where anything you say or do will seem wrong. Let’s not subject any of us to that.” So, I didn’t say yes when Baby1 asked if she could feed Baby2 the sweet potatoes when we were out at the restaurant. I didn’t suggest Coparent and I discuss anything of great substance (unlike last night when I went to him weeping about Big Things and The Future). I gave myself over to the waves.

There’s a deep feeling of wanting to hurt myself. Not in any kind of scary serious actually harmful way. Just things like the compulsion to eat junk food. There’s something gross about it that feels right. Like a big fuck you to the world, to myself, to my body. I don’t care what you say, oh knowers of healthiness, I’m going to plump up, build up my fat stores, get ready to bear these children unless I… oh, thank god. I got my period. And that urge for garbage food disappears. Actually, I stop wanting to eat as if I’ve got a tapeworm about 4-6 hours before I get my period. How’s that for a nice little “TMI” tidbit? It’s true though. Totally predictable. It’s how I know to get a tampon in. Suddenly no food or only relatively healthy food looks good.

My body feels thicker. Not in a fat kind of way, but as if all my skin has more nerve endings. As if every sensation goes deeper into my skin. Everything smells more both in my perception outside myself and what I’m emitting. This is part of why I compare it to an acid trip. It’s as if something else has taken over and everything is heightened.

I’m consumed with waves of desperation. Desperation to organize spaces tops the list. I tear apart cabinets or drawers of clutter. I move furniture. I write blog posts and meme in the extreme. Everything needs to be done now. Unfortunately, I’m still me, and I’m not very skilled in finishing projects. Our house is left with pockets of newly tidied spaces and the rest looks like a hurricane came through.

It’s a shame, really, I’m not able to take a break from the rest of the world for these days and focus on art. The things I make during this time tend to be some of my more powerful work. There is a richness to this time, as well as an insanity. Warmth and heat and excruciatingly annoying bitchiness. I laugh more, cry a lot, and find myself unable to get words out as if I haven’t slept properly. Which, let’s face it, I probably haven’t. Slept. That’s not an effect of PMS, though, that’s simply part of having a 9 month old who thinks it’s great fun to wake up at 5am.

Just like any time of stress, I’m learning more with each cycle that I need to take it easy. Expect less of myself, be more gentle with myself, and give my loved ones fair warning.

I teach Baby1 that the chemicals in my body are all getting excited thinking they might get to make a baby. That they go up and down and all around and that’s why I seem extra energetic or impatient or sad. I don’t want her afraid of PMS or hormones, so I don’t make a big deal of it. But I also want her to know the truth. The chemicals in our body impact how we see the world and how we behave in it. When I’m seeing things through my PMS dark foggy glasses, it’s not like other times of the month. I explain to her that she might want to go in the other room because I’m about to throw the pots and pans across the kitchen and I don’t want to get mad at her when she hasn’t done anything to deserve it. Pretty amazing how much rationality I can muster when my sweet child is involved. Bet the adults in my life which I had similar consideration for their feelings, too.

Looking at the wrappers of the 3 Musketeers and the Skor bar on the desk here, feeling the burning in my stomach from the “queso” and chips, I’m full of gas, bloating, and laughter. The ups and downs are actually kind of fun when I realize the roller coaster is temporary. I try not to make too many serious decisions, but I pay very close attention to what ever it is that bugs the crap out of me. When this all clears up, I’ll sort through it and almost without exception, I will have learned some important things. People joke about PMS all the time. I’d like to see more people recognize its value. In our culture, women’s anger is generally discouraged. I think PMS and the very real (though often exaggerated) emotions that can come with it give me an outlet to find the truth. And chocolate.