another pillar of salt

"I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery"

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:38:00 +0000

the year started out so miserably that I thought it best to keep my resolution unambitious. I hadn't really cleaned my desk off since I got it last spring and with comps coming up in April, I figured I should at least be able to get to all my notes.

before:

after:

and that's pretty much my plan for the year. just to let things be what they are. not to fly too high. to want less. to be happy with what I have.

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 04:24:00 +0000

there are times when I tremble at the darkness that hides inside me. there's a monster lurking in the depths of my mind and I forget she's there. I think I am a sweet and good person and that I am doing my best to deal with all this endless pain and be brave but I wonder how much fear and bitterness and resentment and hatred I am just repressing.

it only comes out after about 6 drinks, this demon. when I'm tired and hungry and way too drunk. all the bile I build up in the course of a year comes pouring out and I wake up horribly sad and ashamed and can't remember what I said to ruin everything.

I've told so many people I loved that I hated them while in the grips of this madness.
there's a reason I don't usually drink that much. it's not a matter of control, it's that I can't predict what will rouse this bleak hateful thing from where it's been sleeping. once it was because Dumbledore died. once it was because Matt looked at Stacy Like That. last time, I wish I could say. I was having such a wonderful night and then the hole in my head starts and I woke up with everything in pieces.

this is not how I am.

boy, those wings are made of wax

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:14:00 +0000

lately I feel less like Sisyphus and more like Icarus. careening around up in the sky, way too high up than could possibly be good in the end.

I went to my doctor and got on pain pills after spending Thanksgiving with gritted teeth. nothing real serious, just Tylenol with codeine. still, it takes the edge off, and it sure was a sharp edge. I'm hoping this new set of Chinese herbs I'm on will make an improvement in the next couple months. I can't stay on opiates forever. I'm already anxious as hell about how messy it'll be when I decide to go off them. I had a bit of trouble getting another set of refills before I went to Memphis for the holiday, and just a day on half doses had me ready to fall apart.

I'm sitting in bed in my old room. looking out the window at the same puddle of yellow under the same streetlight as all those other Saturday nights, alone, bored, miserable. I could be with my favorite cousins and aunt at my grandfathers' house, but I just don't feel well enough to keep my composure, despite the drugs.

The first three weeks of the month were brilliant. literally, filled with an almost blinding light just coming out of everything and glinting in every puddle and shop window and blazing out from chinks in the clouds. I had a lovely birthday, the best I've ever had. I threw a party and people came. half a bar, taken over by people who like me. I made it through finals, passed everything, even Anatomy. Hell, I made a damn hundred on my Herbs final. I celebrated the solstice with the people I love the most. then I was riding high, grinning the whole way to the train, even the whole plane ride. too high, I guess, cos the second we landed I crashed like hell.

I'll be out of here soon, back to my cozy apartment and my rumbly cat and my familar things. back to bountiful, if dry and clanky, heat, back to not having to be carted around in my dad's oversized SUV, back to my bike and my friends... a week left before class starts, a week to spend Xmas money in thrift shops and on hair product and to spend time reading gratuitous fiction at the coffee shop...

I'm still working out what my New Year's resolution will be this year, if I have one at all. I think maybe last year it was just "to be happy." I think this year it might be "to want less." or "to believe in happy endings."

Until then, it's all about happy middles.

it's a ritual sacrifice, with pie

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:10:00 +0000

last week was one of the darkest and most painful in memory. I am glad that I made such a serious effort to make more friends this summer or I am not sure I would have made it through. I'm still having a hard time being around people for too long with the amount of pain I am in, but it helps not to be alone, too.

this week we are having an orphan Thanksgiving and I'm so excited I can barely sit still. I was playing D&D for the first time last Friday with my neighbors and we were talking about how Thanksgiving and Christmas make the first part of winter bearable. then it's January, and the Super Bowl just doesn't do it for us, and we are miserable. so sometime next year, when it's dark and minus 3 out, I'll go over to the gaymers' and make pie and roast a beast and we'll offer up a libation to the Winter gods and hope that spring comes early.

here's hoping.

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:54:00 +0000

Heart 9, the terminal point on the Heart meridian is located just off the inside bottom corner of the pinky fingernail. it is classified as a jing-well point, and so clears heat, which can manifest as anxiety, racing thoughts, heart palpitations, or mania. because it is a Wood point, it nourishes the Fire of the Heart- when the Heart is low on fire, it can become deficient in qi. since the Heart stores the spirit, if it is deficient in qi, the spirit will grow restless because it's uncomfortable- like being too tired to sleep.

sticking a needle into Heart 9 is pretty painful, but it's a pretty fast way to clear the heart-pounding, breath-taking anxiety of a dark-too-early-wolves-are-coming-out November evening. it sure beats heating a knife on the stove til it glows and taking off a few layers of skin with it.

a friend from Back Home came in town a few days ago and we met up at the coffee shop for awhile. he's the exec chef at a lodge out in Big Sky, Montana and he's spending his off-season vacation cooking at a couple different places here. I'm a little jealous, honestly. I miss cooking, the bustle, the "stillness that underlay the din," the feeling of for once in my life being graceful as I pirouetted and sidestepped from salamander to deep-fryer to grill to my station and then over to the reach-in and around to plate a dessert a salad a special app ready to go on table 12 ok let's fire fire fire... still, my life is quieter now and I'm trying to be content with what I have.

comparing notes on friends from our high school, I realize that I am one of the only kids I know who went through Second Chance and is actually over being crazy. I was caught on that hook for years. it's hard to shake that label when you get it over and over from doctors and parents and friends. it's hard not to become what people expect you to be. I know I moved here to start over, 4 years ago, but it took me until last fall to really let go of that part of my identity. I mean, I'm plenty weird. I'm eccentric as hell, but I'm not afraid of myself anymore.

when the pain gets intense at the end of the day and I am alone I still look forward to this life being over, but I have so much more I want to do. I want to fix people with needles and herbs. I want to move someplace warm and raise goats. I want to learn to make love stay. I want to believe that the joy will outweigh the pain.

Today I listened to the new Lady Gaga song about 50 times. it seems to help.

so does remembering summer.

but am I?

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:45:00 +0000

I had a lovely summer. I learned to be happy, I pushed my limits, I made new friends. I was more than just my sickness; I was someone you'd want to be around. People started asking me for advice: how do I quit smoking, what vitamins should I take, how should I change my diet, can you cure my cold.

we're well into autumn, with just over a month left before the shortest day of the year. as the light begins to decline the respites from pain grow few and far between. I'm trying to come up with better coping mechanisms for Incipient Winter Doom. I got a light therapy box, a shit-ton of vitamin D, and I've been ingesting a ridiculous amount of anti-anxiety/depression/pain herbs, both Chinese and European.

I have a tendency to let myself slip too far down into the Black Dog hole. I have a tendency to let the physical anxiety from consistent high pain levels create mental obsessions over things that are out of my control. I confuse a desire to hurt less with a death wish. I forget how much better things are when it's warm outside.

Pain is a time warp. It's long-term memory damage. It's being forever stuck in the present. If I were more than just a lazy Buddhist, I'd be ok with it. instead I think maybe there's such a thing as too much mindfulness. sometimes I hurt so much that it gets hard to breathe.

Pain is an endless rick-rolling and I can't Force Quit.

Until April or May, then, the best I can do is turn on my light-box, take my vitamins, drink my potions, hope that Corydalis yanhusuo doesn't tolerate too rapidly, and try to fill my life with as many distractions as possible.

Until April or May, I'll dig my toes into the clay and keep pushing this heavy, heavy rock uphill.

(and keep watching House.)

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

Poem for Monday, May 25, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:49:00 +0000

O Everything Goes Black

by Katie Ford

A pattern on the back of my eyelid coils like a fingerprint, I made
a mistake, it is not my own. The blood up between my eyes, I can’t see,
I sit between people, between pillars of the cathedral between
which the immaculate spreads her blue wing-sleeves into as much sky
as there is. Small blue lights edge the church and the eyeless Christ hangs,
his sockets darkening into shaded tombs. Darkness coiling,
my eyes coiling, a wind with sand in it scrolling up and down
a body, hiding that body until it could be anyone, and is.
Even whom I do not live with I live with now. Don’t say I don’t
speak to you: I speak to you.

nights like these, sad songs don't help

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:16:00 +0000

The last times I really remember being completely happy are when we lived in Menlo Park. I've had plenty of good times since then, but there's always an undercurrent of darkness. I've always been just barely keeping my head above water. there's times when I hit a warm spot, and I get a chance to float, but I'm exhausted.

We left when I was 9, and I have no way of saying whether I would still have gotten so low had we stayed, but I am inclined to blame the suburban South for the seeds of my problems, if not for their roots.

Sure, this past few years' state of perpetual exhaustion has put out a lot of my angry heart-fire, but
it's left me terribly and bitterly alone. I try to make peace with it, but I sure do miss the camaraderie of going out to a show with a roomful of kids I knew and getting hammered together, pressed up tight against the stage, getting sloshed with beer, singing along at the top of our lungs, feeling every word.

I miss wanting to live.

progress, not perfection. yeah, right.

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:32:00 +0000

School is significantly harder this term, and the only class I can really force myself to study for is Herbology. I've got the advantage of having taken pretty much every herb there is, and of having looked them all up when I got them. Still, I am proud of the A I have so far.

my Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine class seems insultingly easy to me, but that might be, again, because I have spent so much time researching my own symptoms. This is one of those ironic circumstances where it's actually been beneficial for me to have been sick for so long.

I'm struggling hard in Acupuncture Points and in Anatomy. it's draining enough just to be physically present in these classes, and it's rare for me to feel up to studying in my free time. I tend to want to engage in activities that pull my mind away from my body, like 30 Rock marathons or cuddling with my sweetheart.

being in a relationship with someone who is emotionally stable and physically healthy is much more difficult than I would have thought. I am constantly battling with feelings of low self-worth and even paranoia. I am terrified of the prospect of his leaving in the fall for graduate school. I think I rely on him far too much for comfort, but I am in so much pain and he makes me feel so happy, when I'm not battling with my own mind. there's just so little that makes me feel ok. even then, being around him is acutely painful sometimes. I worry that he will lose interest in me because of my physical limitations. I resent him sometimes for never really having been alone, for having had things so easy. I envy his health. I fear that if he does leave in the fall, I won't be strong enough to handle it. I find myself thinking that it will be easy for him, that I'm just another girl in a long string of girls, easily replaced.

I'll be relieved when it's May and he hears back from the school's he's applied to. I'm steeling myself for him to leave, but until I actually know, this limbo is killing me.

I want to believe that the universe has sent me everything that is in my life right now for a reason, but I can't. I just look back at the constant up and down of my life and then I look forward and all I see is more pain. there's no horizon, just an endless sea of churning waves, and I am so tired of treading water.

Poem for Monday, February 16, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:32:00 +0000

The Years

by Gary Snyder

The years seem to tumble
faster and faster
I work harder
the boys get larger
planting apple and cherry.

In summer barefoot,
in winter rubber boots.

Little boys bodies
soft bellies, tiny nipples,
dirty hands

New grass coming
through oakleaf and pine needle
we'll plant a few more trees
and watch the night sky turn.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:40:00 +0000

lately I seem to be barely keeping my head above water. my body is steadily falling apart. one health problem after another. I'm losing faith that it will ever be better.

I don't want to say I'm suicidal. let's just say I'm getting tired of living like this. school is so interesting, I have so many kind and loving friends, and I have the most wonderful boyfriend I could imagine. it's all tainted by the incessant pain. I look in the mirror and don't understand why I even have any skin left. I feel like I've been flayed.

I don't know how I go on.

Poem for Monday, January 26, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:25:00 +0000

It is Born

by Pablo Neruda

Here I came to the edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, January 12, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:45:00 +0000

At the Corner

by Charles Simic

The fat sisters
Kept a candy store
Dim and narrow
With dusty jars
Of jaw-breaking candy.

We stayed thin, stayed
Glum, chewing gum
While staring at the floor,
The shoes of many strangers
Rushing in and out,

Making the papers outside
Flutter audibly
Under the lead weights,
Their headlines
Screaming in and out of view.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, January 5, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:50:00 +0000

from "Elegy for Elvis"

by Richard Blessing

Dr. Nichopoulous was saying, Come on, Presley,
breathe for me, but you were happy. You'd played
your last request. Snow settled around you
like a thousand paternity suits. Ice
filled the island trees. You had gone farther
than a gossip magazine. You planned to name
your shadow for the first American to say,
I never heard of him.

Presley, you always breathed for me,
rock-bellied, up from Tupelo, a place
pastoral enough for elegy. Now one of us
is dead. Tender as Whitman's lilac sprig,
I leave these plastic flowers in the snow.
What perishes is only really real.
I twist the dial and you are everywhere.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, 12/22/08

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:48:00 +0000

Homecoming

by Dan Gerber

You return home
to find your house no longer there.
The trees have grown back
and the toe of a boot you received for Christmas
protrudes through the loam of your floor.
The door you locked in the morning
is the space between twilight
and the serialized stars,
and your wife and children,
their wings extended,
circle the treetops
and sing indifferently of what you were.

roast beast

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:33:00 +0000

preheat oven to 325.

wash two baking apples (I used Honeycrisp), core, and slice into half dollar sized pieces. mince 4-5 shallots or one small purple onion. mince or press one large clove garlic. combine in bowl with 1 tb dijon mustard, 2 tsp balsamic or cider vinegar, 1 tb each dried rosemary and dried sage, and 3 tb olive oil or bacon fat. add lots of fresh ground black pepper and a pinch or so of salt.

rinse and pat dry the pork loin. pull off a large sheet of foil and lay it shiny side up in a large baking dish, then place the meat on top. sprinkle with salt and pepper.
use a very sharp knife to cut slits in the meat about an inch apart, a few inches deep. stuff the apple mixture into these slits and then pack the rest around the meat. pull the foil over and fold the ends so it stays sealed.

roast covered for about 90 minutes, then open up the foil and roast another hour or until the meat is at 165 degrees with a meat thermometer. I left it in too long, about 3 hours, but it didn't get too dry.

for gravy:
pour off all the juices and apple pieces into a saucepan and boil until it is reduced to about 2 cups. in a small bowl add a few spoonfuls of the juices to 2 tb cornstarch and blend til it is smooth. pour into the saucepan, add a few spoonfuls of bacon fat or butter, and boil until it thickens.

exceptionally dorky post

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:10:00 +0000

I've been Back Home at my parents' house since Saturday, after a night of pre-travel insomnia and grueling flight with my cat. Since then, I've mostly been living the same way I do Up North; I read, drink tea, watch tv via the internet and my laptop's magic ability to connect to a telemovision. and I read.

So far:

I'm feeling pretty ambivalent towards OSC. it's not that I didn't enjoy the book, it's more the same thing I felt on reading the fourth and fifth books in Asimov's Foundation "trilogy." The novelty just gets more and more dilute. hard to explain, exactly. plus, dude is a Mormon and I get way too caught up trying to suss out his evil LDS anti-gay agenda.

this, however, was effing brilliant. ever since high school, when I read the Name of the Rose, I've been partial to any novel that takes place in a medieval monastery. or hell, anything remotely related to that millenium. for the first 5 or so pages, I just figured I was reading a historical-type novel about medieval monks that takes place in a in a parallel universe. except then I realized that in this particular universe, they've had rocket ships for 3000 years. there was some sort of self-inflicted technological mass destruction and since then, all the philosophers and physicists and tech wonk geniuses have been shunted into a monasteries called "Concents." like concentrations camps, I guess. the plot and backstory just get more and more mindbogglingly convoluted and brilliant til at the end you've got alien ships from parallel universes, time traveling, and of course, a rather adorable love story.

I know Christopher Paolini is a prodigy who wrote the first novel in this series at the age of 15, but I can't stand his style. he's just completely unoriginal. there's very little in his novels that can't be traced to Tolkien or Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks or other, less talented authors (anyone who writes a series with a TM in the series title, for example, like those godawful Dragonlance books. might as well just play D&D, FFS.).

and yet I keep reading. they aren't awful, just rather ponderously written and entirely too predictable. I imagine that if I were between the ages or 8 and 11 or so, I'd find them every bit as enthralling as I did Brian Jacque's books about intrepid warrior mice and *gasp* medieval-type monasteries run by good-hearted woodland creatures.

So, three books in 4 days. next up, post-apocalyptic teens with magical powers join forces with elves to flee evil into another dimension...

good times.

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:53:00 +0000

it might storm ice tonight and I actually want it to so I can just hang out with my parents tomorrow. I find that pretty telling. it's hard to resent anyone who has put so much effort into making things better for me. sure, they are still bigoted evangelical bible-thumpers, but they are also sweet, goofy cat-lovers who donate blood and volunteer to tutor inner city kids.

the older I get, the less things are black and white.

Poem for Monday, December 15, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:10:00 +0000

Housewarming

by Thomas R. Smith

In my dream I was the first to arrive
at the old home from church. Wind
and night had forced through the cracks.
I pushed inside, turned on lamps,
lit a fire in the stove. Frozen oak
logs stung my fingers; it was good
pain, my hands reddening on the icy
broom-handle as I swept away snow.
On Christmas Eve, I prepared a warm
place for my mother and father, sister
and brothers, grandparents, all my relatives,
none dead, none missing, none angry
with another, all coming through the woods.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

still, pretty good year

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:38:00 +0000

last year.

today.

same outfit.
different person entirely.

Poem for Monday, December 1, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:04:00 +0000

Snow: II

by C. K. Williams

It's very cold, Catherine is bundled in a coat, a poncho on top of
that, high boots, gloves,
a scarf around her neck, and she's sauntering up the middle of the
snowed-in street,
eating, of all things, an apple, the blazing redness of which shocks
against the world of white.
No traffic yet, the crisp crisp of her footsteps keeps reaching me
until she turns the corner.
I write it down years later, and the picture still holds perfectly,
precise, unwanting,
and so too does the sense of being suddenly bereft as she passes
abruptly from my sight,
the quick wash of desolation, the release again into the memory of
affection, and then affection,
as the first trucks blundered past, chains pounding, the first
delighted children rushed out with sleds.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

for religion I tend to check "other" and write in "newtonian"

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:08:00 +0000

In two weeks I'll be 29.

I remember scoffing when my undergrad adviser told me life didn't even begin to make sense til you turn 30. now I totally get what he meant.

karma is nothing more than Newton's 3rd law.

there doesn't have to be some great moral or spiritual breakthrough where I have a marvelous epiphany and then everything stops hurting and baby Jesus soars off with my heavy burdens.

just like there isn't a miracle cure for my fibro. there's x amount of things I can do that all contribute in a small way, but on the whole I am accepting that my life is going to be grueling for whatever's left of it and the important thing is for me to feel like I matter.

28 has gone by really fast. I went home for xmas, to Columbus for New Year's, got off some meds, watched Rosie die, got off some more meds, had surgery, started school. somewhere in there I learned a whole hell of a lot about what love really is.

I learned that I can't push myself all the way to my limits because my brakes aren't good enough to stop me right there at the end of my energy... I have to cut myself off BEFORE I am exhausted. physically or emotionally.

I'm learning to recognize how dangerous my "little sister syndrome" is- my need to be as tough and strong as everyone around me, even when they are healthy, strong neurotypicals. it's ridiculous. I'm frakking tough as hell. I don't need to prove anything.

I'm realizing that I have an aversion to studying for anatomy because I associate muscles and tendons with surgery- more pain. I am not entirely sure how to break this conditioning.

most of all, I am finally able to enjoy solitude again. I had way too much of it for a time, but now it's precious.

still.

it would be so nice

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:10:00 +0000

I think I've gotten closer to finding the right balance of supplement but gods what an obscene amount of pills.

600 mg 5 htp at bedtime for serotonin.
100 mg theanine 2x a day for dopamine/GABA. (just got this today and I'm pretty optimistic. seems to help with the pain and brain fog.)
100 mg coQ10 in the am to help form ATP.
6000 mg fish oil divided into am/pm doses for insomnia, depression, dry skin, memory, etc etc etc.
2.5 mg Marinol (thc) 2x a day for pain and appetite.

plus a mineral supplement that is 4 horse-pills, plus Emergen-Cs, plus liquid chlorophyll.

hopefully this will help keep me functioning, as long as my dad is willing to pay for it all. shit ain't cheap.

Mutron Angel (Ft. Whild Peach) - Outkast

Poem for Monday, November 17, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:14:00 +0000

It is That Dream

by Olav H. Hauge

It's that dream we carry with us
That something wonderful will happen,
That it has to happen,
That time will open,
That the heart will open,
That doors will open,
That the mountains will open,
That wells will leap up,
That the dream will open,
That one morning we'll slip in
To a harbor that we've never known.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

time spent in the shadow of the thing too big to see, rising.

noreply@blogger.com (pillar of salt) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:21:00 +0000

'm a big fan of David Foster Wallace, have been since I was 19 and read Infinite Jest in my dorm room bunkbed with a flashlight. I was really sad to hear how miserable he was the last year of his life. none of the meds worked for him, even the one he had been on for years. having been through a major clinical depression and now living with unending pain, I can only empathize with him.

I hope that if my illness ever gets to where nothing works to alleviate my pain and it's unbearable, the people who love me will let me go.

this is worth reading if you have read anything he wrote.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace#