another pillar of salt

"I can bear anything as long as there are books"

2011-03-21T00:11:00.004-05:00

I've read thousands of books.

I think this one might have been the best.

And here I am, still alive, still in the world. It's my intention to carry on being alive in the world, well, until I die... I'll live, and read, and have friends, a karass, people to talk to. I'll grow and change and be myself. I'll belong to libraries wherever I go. Maybe eventually I'll belong to libraries on other planets. I'll speak to fairies as I see them and do magic as it comes my way and prevents harm- I'm not going to forget anything. But I won't use it to cheat or to make my life unreal or go against the pattern. Things will happen that I can't imagine. I'll change and grow into a future that will be unimaginably different from the past. I'll be alive. I'll be me. I'll be reading my book. I'll never drown my books or break my staff. I'll learn while I live. Eventually I'll come to death, and die, and I'll go on through death to new life, or heaven, or whatever unknowable thing is supposed to happen to people when they die. I'll die and rot and return my cells to life, in the pattern, whatever planet I happen to be on at the time.

That's what life is, and how I intend to live it.

Jo Walton, Among Others.

This is why I like Malort

2011-02-22T11:25:00.004-06:00

I had a Little Too Much Fun this weekend and came down with my fourth upper respiratory tract infection this winter. It started with a scratchy throat and progressed overnight to a fever that had me stumbling deliriously through the grocery store yesterday, lost in the tea aisle. The fever broke early in the morning, but I was up most of the night feeling like there were hot charcoal briquettes lodged down in my pharynx. I remember dreaming about going to clinic to get herbs for it, one of those fever dreams where the herbal formulae book was more like a potions book from the Potter-verse, full of moving text and ingredients like blue dragon eggs and moondrops. I showed up for my clinic shift but my throat was too swollen to talk and I didn't want to infect my patients, so I left them in the hands of my senior partner and made myself this potion:

From the left to right: honeysuckle flowers, forsythia seed pods, burdock fruit, leopard lily root, Chinese puffball, balloon flower root, woad (indigo) plant and root.

This formula, yin qiao ma bo san, "Honeysuckle, Forsythia, and Puffball formula," dates from 1798's wen bing tiao bian, the Systematic Differentiation of Warm Pathogen Diseases.

The ingredients are primarily antipyretic and antiviral (i.e. they clear heat toxins), with about half of them being indicated specifically for swelling and pain of the throat. Balloon flower root dries phlegm and helps prevent the infection from descending into the lungs by expanding the chest and raising the lung qi.

The herbs are decocted for 20 minutes, strained, then decocted again. The strained decoction is taken three times a day between meals.

It tastes like grass and dirt, and the puffball spores give it a gritty texture, but it should resolve the infection within a couple days.

cage

2011-01-14T22:14:00.002-06:00

I'm going to a support group for people experiencing chronic pain tomorrow.

maybe it will help.

no help for that

2010-12-14T18:59:00.003-06:00

It turns out
that the areas of the brain
activated
by intense love
are
the same areas

that drugs use to reduce pain.

Arthur Aron, Stanford University, coauthor of the love and pain study.

Love is natural
and real
but not
for such as you and I.

Steven Morrissey

chronic

2010-10-18T18:01:00.003-05:00

being in a relationship with a neurotypical is a constant battle between resentment and self-loathing. I can push myself past my limits trying to keep up with him, and then be crippled for days, or I can stay in my safe zone and feel bitter and left out. either way, I still end up sobbing myself to sleep at night, wishing I could have my body back. wondering when the statute of limitations runs out on this lucky streak.

I have to swallow so much of my bitterness; if I let even a tenth of it escape my lips I risk driving him away with my negativity. I can't let him know how much I need him. it's not just the simple logic of love=endorphins and therefore decreased pain. it's that he doesn't know what it feels like not to be loved. the misery of years and years of believing myself evil, foul, cursed, crazy. how much it hurts to think of what it would be like if he were to leave.

there are times when I can't stop crying and he holds me til I calm down and all he can say is that I should relax. I don't know how to relax when the fear that it will always be like this comes upon me.

I would never wish this on anyone but I wish he could just for one minute feel what it's like for me. living every day with this pain and weariness and the soul-crushing fear of being left out. left behind. left alone.

I wonder if I will ever really let go and trust him to stick around. I hope so.
I guess only time will tell.

amazing quadruple happiness heart and liver tea!

2010-10-07T15:43:00.002-05:00

Dear herb nerds,

Today I bought some pretty brown dried flowers labelled he huan hua at the Vinh Hoa herb shop. I mostly bought it because it looked so cool in that giant jar right in front of the cash register, and had such a lovely fragrance, but I also loved what the owner had to say about it.

"It's good for your heart. it will make you relaxed in your heart." She said the same thing about reishi (and was dead on), so I couldn't resist. After looking at it closely and reading the Bensky entry I decided it is actually ye huan hua, the cocos magnolia flower. I am very happy that it not albizzia flower, though, because OMG it smells amazing. like childhood memories.

I went home and made this amazing quadruple happiness heart and liver tea from the giant pile of herbal teas in my cabinet.

Try this:

equal parts ground reishi mushroom,
crushed magnolia cocos flower,
Chinese rose (rosa chinensis) or tea rose (r. rugosa),
peppermint or field mint.

steep in a warmed teapot with boiling hot water for 10 minutes. can be steeped several times.

while the result will be slightly different depending on which kinds of rose and mint are available, here you have a lovely comforting tea that nourishes the heart, and moves heart and liver qi and blood. It's pretty balanced in temperature, containing two neutral, one warm and one cool ingredients; It smells like waking up in a garden. It boosts the immune system and makes your breath smell nice, too!

If you can get rosa rugosa it would probably be great for distressing menstrual complaints. If you can get the super secret wine fried reishi it will be warming; same if you use spearmint. I'm sure it could be further tweaked by adding lotus stamens or lily bulbs to make it cooling but I think it's kind of perfect as it is.

Just thought I would share.

Free Wheel

2010-09-05T21:32:00.006-05:00

I am sitting in a basement playroom with three men, aged 22, 25, and 29. They are playing Contra on an old Nintendo and we are drinking homemade brown ginger beer.

I've been on vacation for a month. School starts tomorrow.

Today my boyfriend helped me tune up an old French mixte racing bike I got at a yard sale. I've been riding an old Schwinn fixed gear with fashion wheels for a couple years. I've got my current bike set up more like a European city bike as opposed to the aggressively traffic taunting track bikes that have given fixies a bad name. I mostly have stuck with riding fixed because of how much control I have at slow speeds, which is really handy for a klutz like me in the snow and rain and permanently eroding Chicago streets.

A few months ago I changed neighborhoods. My new place is on the top floor and full of light. I am so happy to be able to see nothing but sky out my windows, but the extra
mileage and extra stairs have my leg muscles feeling like old crumbly rubber
bands.

After M trimmed my new bike's bars and redid the brakes and derailleurs, I did a lap around the block. It took me a while to get used to the pedals not moving when I stopped pedalling.

Life's been too good to write about without sounding schmatlzy. It scares the crap out of me sometimes. I keep waiting for the catch. I get a little bit closer to being able to let go and relax and be happy.

Sometimes it feels so good to stop pedalling and just coast.

very long paper

2010-07-07T21:27:00.001-05:00

The Dietary Management of Endometriosis
Sue Cook, July 2010

“Therefore if people pay attention to the five flavors and mix them well, their bones will remain straight, their muscles will remain tender and young, their breath and blood will circulate freely, their pores will be fine in texture, and consequently, their breath and bones will be filled with the essence of life .” The Yellow Emperor’s Divine Classic
Endometriosis is a disorder in which endometrial tissue proliferates outside of the uterus. This tissue most commonly implants within the peritoneal cavity, binding to the surfaces of the organs. It grows and bleeds in response to hormone changes, causing inflammation and scarring. Typical symptoms include dysmenorrhea, dysuria, chronic pelvic pain, pain during intercourse, and infertility. In advanced cases where tissue has implanted outside of the abdominal cavity, there may be nosebleed, coughing of blood, and rectal bleeding. While the etiology is still unknown, the most common theory is that endometrial tissue leaves the uterus through the fallopian tubes in a retrograde form of menstruation and is transported through the body via the lymphatic system. Another theory posits that the tissue develops from peritoneal cells in a type of metaplasia.
Endometriosis is typically diagnosed by a biopsy obtained by laparoscopic surgery. Treatment ranges from NSAIDS for management of inflammation, to the prescription of birth control pills to regulate hormone levels. In extreme cases, an artificial menopause may be induced using GnRH agonists. Surgery to remove endometrial implants is also advised, although the tissue usually regenerates. In very extreme cases hysterectomy may be performed .
New research has correlated endometriosis with high levels of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), a signaling molecule involved in the regulation of immunity and inflammation. High levels of PGE2 inhibit phagocytosis by macrophages, preventing the destruction of abnormal tissue by the immune system. PGE2 also allows endometriotic cells to synthesis their own estrogen, which in turn stimulates mitosis, producing more aberrant cells. A number of genes that share common markers with tumor angiogenesis are also common to these cells .
Although dietary modification is not a common modality in the biomedical treatment of endometriosis, enriching the diet with natural PGE2 inhibitors and anti-angiogenic foods is a logical step. The Angiogenesis Foundation’s website lists a number of these foods: turmeric, broccoli, cinnamon, green tea, blueberries, pineapple, garlic, ginger, and red wine, to name a few. New research also suggests that eliminating trans-fats and increasing Omega-3 consumption can both reduce risk of developing endometriosis and ameliorate its symptoms. Omega-3 fatty acids are a vital component of prostaglandin E1, which inhibits PGE2. Bromelain, an enzyme found in pineapple, has demonstrated anti-inflammatory and tumor-fighting abilities and may also prove useful . Regular exercise and stress reduction techniques can also help, both by boosting immune response and by modulating pain through endorphin release.
Because of its non-invasive nature, Chinese medicine is becoming more and more well-known for its treatment of chronic diseases. Diagnosis is performed through methodical questioning, careful palpation of the pulse and body, and inspection of the tongue. Diseases are typically categorized according to temperature, location in the body, type of pathogenic influence, and organ system. Treatment is based on the “Four Pillars:” acupuncture, herbal therapy, diet, and exercises such as qi gong and tai ji.
According to Bob Flaws’ book Endometriosis, Infertility, & Traditional Chinese Medicine, modern Chinese medicine divides endometriosis into four main categories according to symptoms: qi stagnation and blood stasis, accumulation of cold causing blood stasis, heat congestion with blood stasis, and qi and blood vacuity with blood stasis.
Qi is an ephemeral substance that powers the body. The functions of qi are to activate, warm, defend, transform, and contain. It provides the force behind the body’s metabolism and growth, sustains the immune system, regulates the production of blood and other bodily substances, and maintains the circulatory system, both by propelling the blood through the body and by restraining the blood within the vessels. When the body’s equilibrium is disturbed, either by external causes such as contagious disease or by internal causes such as emotional turmoil, the qi can become stagnant or weak. Such a disruption inevitably results in disease.
Blood is formed by the interaction of qi and the nutrients received from food, water, and air. It has an interdependent relationship with qi. Qi is the commander of the blood, and blood is the mother of qi. Blood can become static, hot, cold, or deficient, usually in combination.
The body is seen as an equilibrium of yin and yang. If the body is thought of as an machine, yin would be the oil that cools and lubricates the moving parts while yang is the gasoline whose fiery combustion powers the movement of the engine. Qi is primarily yang, blood is primarily yin. Each balances the other and keeps it in check, as well as containing a seed other the other within itself. If the yin and yang become unbalanced, heat or cold can develop within the organs.
There are three main organs involved in gynecological disorders: the Liver, the Spleen, and the Kidneys. The Liver in Chinese medicine is the organ responsible for governing the free flow of qi within the body. It stores the blood and controls the amount of blood released into the vessels. The Spleen regulates digestive function. It transforms food and water into qi and blood and distributes them throughout the body. It is said to hold the organs in place and prevent prolapse. It also prevents the blood from leaving the vessels. The Kidneys are said to store the essential qi that serves as the substrate for all bodily functions as well as to house the ministerial fire that controls the metabolism of water throughout the body.
The first diagnosis, qi stagnation and blood stasis, represents a disruption of Liver function. The Liver is especially susceptible to stress, which causes a sort of internal “traffic jam.” When the qi can’t circulate properly, the blood also becomes sluggish. The blood can also become static from trauma causing obstruction in the vessels or from use of birth control medications, which prevent menstrual blood from being fully discharged. Static blood can in turn cause the qi to back up and become stagnant. Symptoms of stagnant qi and blood are
lower abdominal distention, lower abdominal crampy pain, premenstrual breast distention, a stuffy, tight chest… stabbing, sharp, fixed, and lancinating pain, clots in the menstrual discharge, the relief of dysmenorrhea after the passing of clots… possible palpable lumps or masses, and poking pain with intercourse.
The tongue will have a dark or dusky appearance and the pulse will be wiry or choppy. Treatment will focus on moving the qi and blood. Acupuncture protocols with this aim will select from a combination of points such as: Lv 3, Sp 6, Sp 10, LI 4, Ren 3, Ren 6, St 25, Bl 25.
The second category, cold causing blood stasis, is mainly generated by an external cause. Cold can invade the body during exposure to low temperatures, through excessive consumption of cold and raw foods. However, it can also invade when the ministerial fire of the Kidneys becomes weak, generally from severe illness, aging or prolonged overwork, as well as from a lack of Spleen yang. Symptoms include
cold, fixed pain in the lower abdomen relieved by warmth, a dark, clotty, menstrual discharge, aversion to cold… Lumps or masses may be felt on palpation of the uterus and the patient tends to be chilled.
The period may be late or excessively long and heavy. The tongue will be pale or purple with a wet coating, and the pulse will be deep and tight. If the Spleen is deficient in yang, there will be signs of digestive cold such as excessive mucus, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and vomiting. In this case the tongue coat will be thick and greasy and the pulse may be slippery. If the Kidneys are deficient in heat, there may be low back pain, sore knees, edema in the lower limbs, leukorrhea, and frequent urination. The pulse in this case may be very thin and weak. The treatment strategy is to warm the uterus, dispel cold, and move the blood. The warming functions of the Spleen and Kidney should be strengthened as needed. Acupuncture protocols will use points such as Sp 6, Sp 10, Ren 3, Ren 4, St 28, St 36, Bl 23.
Excessive heat in the body can congeal the blood into stasis. Stagnant qi caused by Liver dysfunction can cause friction, which turns into heat. Heat can also be generated by improper diet or by a lack of cooling yin in the organs. If the heat is a result of depressed Liver function, there will be symptoms like migraine headache, emotional lability, red and painful eyes, itchy vaginal discharge prior to menses, and painful urination. The pulse will be rapid and wiry and the tongue will be red with a yellow coating. If the heat is due to a lack of yin, the patient will experience night sweats, a sensation of heat in the palms, soles and chest, mallar flush, imsomnia, irritability, as well as possible dryness of the mucous membranes. The pulse will be rapid, wiry, and floating and the tongue will be reddish with a dry or very thin coat. The menses may be scant or early and there may be vaginal dryness . The pain will be hot and burning and there may be palpable heat and inflammation in the back and pelvic region. The treatment strategy is either to clear heat and move the blood or to clear heat, nourish yin, and move the blood. In the first case the acupuncture protocol will include a selection from Lv 2/3, LI 4, Sp 6, Sp 10, GB 26, GB 34, GB 41, Ren 3, Ren 6, Bl 18, Bl 19, St 29. For yin deficiency with stasis: Kd 3, Kd 6, Ht 5, Ren 4, Sp 6, Sp 10, St 36.
The last pattern, vacuity of qi and blood with stasis, is a particularly common and self-perpetuating cycle. The blood and qi becomes weak due to blood loss itself, poor diet, overwork, stress, or external disease; when there is not enough blood or qi for the qi to flow evenly through the vessels it causes a concurrent stasis of blood and qi, which in turn prevents the generation of more qi and blood. This pattern may be differentiated by whether the qi or the blood is more deficient. If the blood is more deficient, the period will be short and scanty or may stop altogether. The cramps will not be improved as the cycle progresses. The patient may have restless fatigue, insomnia, poor memory, heart palpitations, dry skin, hair and nails, and vertigo. If the qi is more deficient, there will be a dragging sensation in the uterus as the cycle progresses, profound fatigue, and pain made worse by activity. Both types may be accompanied by Spleen cold symptoms such as diarrhea, lack of appetite, abdominal pain during digestion, bloating, and feeling chilled. The treatment strategy is to strengthen qi, generate new blood, and move the static blood. Acupuncture should be accompanied by moxibustion, a modality in which the dried form of the herb mugwort is burned over acupuncture points to supplement the qi and blood. Sample points are St 36, Sp 6, Lv 3, Lv 8, Ren 4, Bl 18, Bl 20.
While Chinese herbal therapy has proven extremely useful in treating endometriosis, many patients may resist taking herbs, often for financial reasons. Dietary modification is extremely useful in these cases. It also allows the patient to recover a sense of control over their body, which can relieve the antipathy many chronic pain patients feel toward themselves.
Chinese herbal and dietary therapy are both based upon the five flavors: pungent/acrid/spicy, sour, sweet, bitter, and salty. Each flavor corresponds to one of the five elements: pungent is the flavor of metal, the element of the Lung; sour is the flavor of wood, which is the element of the Liver; bitter is the flavor of fire and the Heart; sweet is earth and the Spleen; salty is water and the Kidney. The elements follow a specific cycle in which one generates the next: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. Each element also restrains another: wood, earth, water, fire, metal. Each flavor also has an action: acrid promotes motion, sour preserves and contains, bitter drains, sweet nourishes, and salty dissolves. Herbs and foods also have a corresponding temperature, either hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold. Therefore for a condition of heat from deficient yin and blood with concurrent static blood, the herbs and foods used should be sweet to nourish yin and blood, acrid to move the blood, and a balance of cooling and neutral. When using sweet foods, it is important to include ingredients that boost the digestion, primarily those that are bitter and acrid.
Foods that are said to move the blood include adzuki beans, black beans, peaches (both the fruit and the kernel within the pit), hawthorn berries, chestnuts, chives and green onions, eggplant, chili peppers, brown sugar, cinnamon, wine, acrid spices like cumin, coriander, and turmeric, and vinegar. Foods that move stagnant qi and soothe the Liver include oranges, carrots, plums, greens, celery, and vinegar. Herbs and seasonings that move Liver qi include onions, basil, bay leaf, cardamom, cumin, rosemary mint, and lemon balm. Raw and sprouted foots can also restore function to a stagnant Liver, especially when there are heat signs present. Foods that strengthen qi, yin and blood are miso, oats, rice, grapes, raspberries, longan fruit, lychee, goji berries, peanuts, beets, broccoli, spinach, sweet potatoes and yams, molasses, seaweed, kale. Animal products such as dairy, eggs, and meat all build blood as well, but their temperature must be carefully considered. Red meat like beef and lamb are hot in nature, while duck is cool. Pork and most seafood is neutral. In cases with pronounced cold, hot and warm natured foods like garlic, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, lamb, and walnuts should be favored. Conversely, they should be avoided in cases with heat, and cooling foods such as watery fruits and vegetables, mung beans, barley, wheat, and seaweeds should be consumed. Dairy, sugar, and white flours as well as excessively bitter/spicy foods are particularly taxing to the Spleen and tend to contribute to digestive complains as well as damp conditions such as yeast infections and chronic phlegm and should be avoided.
It is often overwhelming for a patient to look at a list of foods and try to come up with something to prepare, especially if they are overworked and tired or have little background in cooking. Sample recipes such as those that follow at the end of this essay can relieve this stress as well as giving the patient a sense of responsibility for their own recovery.
In Healing with Whole Foods, Paul Pitchford recommends a number of supplements for blood deficiency: vitamins A, E, and the B complex, iron and zinc, as well as Omega 3 and 6, chlorophyll and spirulina. Dietary supplements can sometimes be more appealing to patients than herbal which need to be taken several times a day and which often require purchasing a bottle per week. In this case taking a single-herb supplement like turmeric extract should also be suggested.
It is interesting to note the overlap between the list of anti-angiogenic foods provided earlier and the list of foods that build and move blood. The Angiogenesis Foundation website also notes the anti-cancer properties of several mushrooms, namely shiitake, wood ear, and Ganoderma, which are said in Chinese medicine to boost the defensive qi, which corresponds to the immune system. Consumption of these mushrooms, either in extract or as food, may also help promote the destruction of abnormal endometrial tissue by white blood cells.
A diagnosis of endometriosis from a gynecologist can feel like a life sentence. To be forced to choose between sometimes crippling pain and hormonal treatments with unpleasant side effects, exploratory abdominal surgery followed by excision and cauterization, or even hysterectomy is the harsh reality that often faces these women. In contrast, Chinese medical modalities such as acupuncture, herbs, and dietary therapy can provide both temporary and long-term care in a gentle, self-empowering way. By using the “five flavors,” women with endometriosis can find not just relief, but actual recovery.

Sample Recipes:
Curried Sweet Potato and Lentils
ingredients:
2 T organic butter or vegan butter substitute (preferably the flax-based type)
1 large purple onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, pounded to a paste or minced
2 inch piece fresh ginger, grated or 1 tsp dried ginger powder
2 large unbroken bay leaves
1 tsp each cumin and fenugreek seeds, powdered
1 tsp turmeric root, powdered
1 large sweet potato or yam, diced
2 cups dried red lentils
water to cover
1 large ripe tomato, chopped
salt or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos to taste
directions: Heat a heavy-bottomed pot, using a pressure cooker if available over a medium flame and melt the butter. Add the onions and bay leaves, stirring frequently until the onion begins to brown, then add the garlic, ginger, and spices, stirring to prevent sticking, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the sweet potato and lentils and pour in sufficient water to cover by at least one inch. Bring to a low boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Simmer for approximately one hour until the lentils are soft. Puree if desired. If using a pressure cooker, close the lid and allow to boil until the pressure sensor goes off, then lower heat and cook for 20 minutes. top with fresh tomatoes. Makes approximately 4 2-cup servings.
Analysis:
onions, garlic, cumin, turmeric and bay are warm and acrid and move Liver qi and blood; they also prevent gas during digestion of the legumes. butter is warm and sweet and also reduces stagnant blood. ginger and fenugreek are warm and strengthen the yang of the kidneys and spleen and stop abdominal pain. lentils are sweet and neutral and strengthen the essential qi of the kidney, and are rich in iron and B vitamins. sweet potato is sweet and strengthens the qi overall, especially of the spleen, as well as the yin of the kidneys. they balance estrogen levels and are rich in vitamin A. tomatoes are sweet, sour, and cooling. they nourish yin and generate stomach fluids and purify the liver; they are rich in lycopene which is a powerful antioxidant.
this recipe would be helpful for cold-type blood stasis, i.e. for the woman who feels freezing cold all the time and has painful stabbing cramps relieved by a heating pad, and who also tends to have diarrhea during her period. it is warming and strengthening without being too drying. in cases of severe cold the tomatoes may be removed.

Roasted Duck with Blueberry Sauce and Shiitake Wild Rice
ingredients:
1 fresh duck
3 T brown sugar
1 tsp minced fresh rosemary
one pint blueberries
1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
1 shallot, minced
1 cup brown/wild rice mix
3 cups water
1 tsp turmeric powder
2 T corn starch
sea salt
directions: preheat the oven to 350. rub the duck with the brown sugar, rosemary, and a pinch of sea salt mixed together, then place in a roasting pan. bake for about 40 minutes covered with foil, then remove the foil. at this time spoon off a few tablespoons of the fat into a saucepan and cook another 20 minutes until the skin is crispy and the temperature of the meat of the thigh is 170 degrees. remove from the oven and pour off the fat into a jar. remove the duck and let it rest. scrape the brown drippings from the pan into a small saucepan.
after removing the foil from the duck and spooning the fat into a saucepan, heat the pan over a medium flame. add the shiitakes and shallot, stirring frequently until brown. add the rice and stir to coat evenly with the fat, then add the water and bring to a boil. cover, reduce to a simmer, and cook until all the water is absorbed, approximately 35-40 minutes.
while the rice is cooking, prepare the sauce: dissolve 2 T corn starch in 2 cups of water, then whisk into saucepan with the drippings, the blueberries and about 2 T of the duck fat. reserve the rest of the duck fat in a tightly lidded jar for a sad and gloomy day. let the sauce simmer until thickened. mash the blueberries against the side of the pan. salt to taste.
Serve the duck over the rice topped with the sauce. This can feed two people for several meals or a group of 4-6 once.
Analysis: duck is sweet and cool and nourishes kidney yin and essential qi. blueberries are sweet, cold, and nourish kidney yin; they are also anti-angiogenic and full of antioxidants and fight cancer. brown sugar moves and tonifies blood; it contains B vitamins. rosemary is warm and acrid and moves qi; it is also anti-angiogenic and anti-inflammatory. shiitakes are sweet and neutral and strengthen the lungs and stomach; they are anti-angiogenic and boost white blood cell counts and fight cancer. shallots are sweet, acrid, and neutral. they strengthen the qi of the lung and stomach and help to break down the fats in the meal. turmeric is warm and acrid and moves liver qi and breaks up static blood. wild rice is cool, bitter and sweet, brown rice is sweet and neutral. they strengthen qi overall and contain B vitamins to build blood and strengthen the nervous system.
this recipe is well suited for a woman with a mixture of yin/blood/qi deficiency. she would feel hot, irritable, restless and exhausted before, during, and after her period. this would be a particularly suitable meal for winter months as it is extremely nourishing. if she has difficulty digesting heavy foods, orange or tangerine zest may be added to the sauce to help break down the fats and prevent stagnant qi in the belly.

Endnotes didn't seem to work so I am cutting and pasting them. I will re-edit this post later to make sure they show up: I sure don't want to be thought to plagiarize.

Veith, Ilsa, trans. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. (109).
Beers, Mark H. et al, Eds. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Whitehouse Station, NJ: Merck & Co. Inc. 2009. (2089-92)
Wu, Meng-Hsing et al. “Prostaglandin E2: the Master of Endometriosis?” Experimental Biology and Medicine, Vol 235, number 6. 2010. (668-677. ) Retrieved from http://ebm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/235/6/668

Angiogenesis Foundation Website, online at http://angio.org/news.php
Missmer, Stacy A. et al. “A Prospective Study of Dietary Fat Consumption and Endometriosis Risk.” Human Reproduction, Vol 25, number 6. 2010. (1528-1535). Retrieved from http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/deq044
Mynott, Tracey et al. “Bromelain, from Pineapple Stems, Proteolytically Blocks Activation of Extracellular Regulated Kinase-2 in T Cells.” Journal of Immunology, vol. 163. 1999. (2568-2575). Retrieved from http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/full/163/5/2568
Flaws, Bob. Endometriosis, Infertility, & Traditional Chinese Medicine: a laywoman’s guide. Boulder: Blue Poppy Press, 1989. (28)
Wiseman, Nigel and Andrew Ellis, translators. Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine. Brookline: Paradigm Publications, 1996. (19-20)
Wiseman, 22.
Wiseman, 64-67.
Wiseman, 59-60.
Wiseman, 68-70.
All acupuncture protocols are cited from: Flaws, Bob. A Handbook of Menstrual Diseases in Chinese Medicine. Boulder: Blue Poppy Press, 1997. (543-544).
Endometriosis, 32-33.
Endometriosis, 34-35.
Endometriosis, 36-37.
see Subhuti Dharmananda’s excellent summary of recent research in China, available online at http://www.itmonline.org/journal/arts/endometriosis.htm
Wiseman, 7-14.
Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods: Asian traditions and modern nutrition. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2002. (327)
Mattson, Brendan, DAOM. "TCM Dietary Guideline Reference Table." Eastern Nutrition class lecture handout, Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, Chicago. Spring term, 2010.
Pitchford, 388.

want to be better

2010-06-12T23:02:00.002-05:00

today you would have been 21.
I was a condescending asshole for a lot of our friendship and I hope you knew what I was trying to say.
you were indomitable.
fearless.
gorgeous.
invincible.
you were and always will be my hero.

you make me want to be a better person.

the ultimate ginger

2010-06-05T18:06:00.002-05:00

The way I see it every life is a pile of good things and bad things; The good things don’t always soften the bad things but, vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.

This week's Doctor Who may have been the most touching and hopeful one I've seen. completely turned my day around.

caught in a bad romance

2010-06-05T14:49:00.002-05:00

six months after the video came out, watching Bad Romance still makes me relive all that anger I felt after Liza died. so much disbelief and rage that it sank down inside my body and turned to inflammation. every time I ride by her bike or go to Metropolis, I still feel it. how could this terrible thing happen? how could someone so brightly burning just be gone?

it's summer again and I think of all the things we couldn't fit in last year that we were saving for this year. there's the oil spill and the Gaza blockade and the Guatemalan sinkhole and more than ever it feels like the world is ending.

Soul Food for Wind-Cold Invading Lungs: Grits and Greens

2010-06-02T20:34:00.002-05:00

Here's a recipe I came up with for my Eastern Nutrition class. it's designed to treat a clear wet cough associated with the common cold. it's easy, cheap, and vegan.

Ingredients:
GREENS:
3 inch piece fresh ginger
2 bunches fresh mustard greens
1 large purple onion
5 Chinese dates (complicated version) or 1 T raw brown sugar (easy version)
either 1 cup water plus 3 dried shiitakes (complicated version) or 2 T extra virgin olive oil plus 1 cup water
tamari or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
GRITS:
1 c stone-ground yellow grits (polenta)
3 c water
1 tsp salt

PREPARATION: easy level
In a 2-4 quart saucepan with a lid, bring 3 cups water to a boil. Slowly pour in one cup of grits, stirring constantly to prevent clumps or a volcanic-type explosion. Lower heat to medium and stir for a few minutes, then turn off the flame and cover to finish cooking.
Rinse the greens thoroughly by completely submerging in a full sink of water and swishing to remove any grit. Remove from water and set in drainer.
First cut the root end off the onion, then cut in half lengthwise. Remove the skin. Trim off the top of the onion. Cut into pinky-finger thick slices.
Slice the ginger very thinly.
In a large pot that has a lid, heat the olive oil over a medium-high flame. Add the onions and stir occasionally until they begin to soften and brown slightly. Add the water and ginger and let boil for about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, tear the greens into pieces, discarding the ends of the stems.
Add the greens to the onion mixture, stir a few times, and cover. Let the greens steam for about 3 minutes, then turn off the heat and remove the lid. Season with a small amount of brown sugar and tamari. Serve over grits.
COMPLICATED PREPARATION
Prepare grits as above. Wash greens and tear into pieces, discarding stems.
In a large pan, boil the thinly sliced ginger, the dates, and the shiitakes in a quart of water until it is reduced to approximately one cup. Strain and return to the pot.
Slice the onions and add to the ginger broth. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until most of the liquid is evaporated. Add the greens to the pot , stir, and cover to steam for 3-4 minutes. Turn off the heat and season to taste with tamari. Serve over grits.

ANALYSIS (this is the breakdown according to Chinese medicine terms. ignore it, if you want.)

ginger: acrid, warm. enters LU/SP/ST. releases exterior; warms lungs and stops cough
mustard greens: acrid, warm. enters LU/LI. expels wind/cold/damp; warms lung, opens chest, stops cough.
onion: acrid, neutral. enters LU/ST. Transforms phlegm and damp.
Chinese dates: sweet, warm. enter SP/ST. tonify Spleen qi; protect middle burner from acrid ingredients; with fresh ginger, harmonize nutritive and protective qi.
shiitakes: sweet, neutral. enter SP/LU. Boost protective qi.
tamari: salty, cold. Enters SP/ST/KD. Protects middle burner. tastes good.
corn: sweet, bland, neutral. enters SP/ST. Drains damp through diuresis. Supports spleen to support the lungs.

make healthy beautiful wish!

2010-05-26T09:15:00.002-05:00

I've been shopping at Vietanamese grocery stores since I was 20, but somehow never discovered the instant cereal drink section. a girl from my Eastern Nutrition class is always eating some kind of oatmeal type packet with seaweed in it, so when I went to pick up some kuding cha for my air conditioning induced sore throat, I made sure to scour the aisle for some kind of breakfast gruel. While most of them had wheat flakes, I was able to find this lovely blend which is relatively gluten-free, if you eat oats. It contains oats, Job's tears, green mung bean, lotus seed, and oligofructose.

It's lightly sweet, bland, a little nutty. the consistency is fairly gluey with a few flakes or lumps. I made a double serving and added water to the texture of pudding, but it's probably intended to be served more as a beverage.

Coix seeds, mung beans, and lotus seeds are all used to strengthen the digestive tract as well as clear internal dampness and heat. Internal dampness and heat are a sort of mystical-sounding Chinese Medicine concept that basically breaks down to "metabolic friction." They can manifest as skin problems, muscle and joint pain, bloating, edema, urogenital dysfunction, digestive pain, diarrhea, insomnia, anxiety, even bleeding. They can be caused by stress, improper diet, lingering pathogens, weather, or congenital predisposition.

I assumed oligofructose was the same as regular fructose, i.e. fruit sugar, but it's actually a type of fiber that is about half as sweet as regular sugar. it's called a prebiotic because it is digested by intestinal bacteria. it helps with calcium absorption and may help prevent yeast overgrowth.

one packet breaks down to 143 calories, 29.6 g carbs, 6.6 g fiber, and 4.6 g protein. it also has relatively high iron, B vitamin, and calcium content for an unfortified cereal.

and finally, the package has a lovely Engrish description on the back:

Oat and Job's tear are both annual plants. Job's tear is especially renowned for it's high nutritive value as "The kind of grass family." Oat has been proven to be good for healthy by many agricultural experts and scholars in Europe and America in their researches. The combination of Oat and Job's tear is able to compliment each other and provide excellent nutrition to keep healthy."

In summary: this shit tastes good. it'll make you gorgeous, sexy, and give you superpowers. Total win.

happy fibromyalgia awareness day

2010-05-12T20:13:00.001-05:00

somedays it's hard to carry an invisible boulder.

in the days we sweat it out on the streets

2010-05-09T19:54:00.004-05:00

my body is a temple.
my body is a cage.

hope is the thing with feathers.

I can feel them inside my lungs when I'm running along the lake path. I can't take a deep breath.

I can run twice as far as I could ten years ago. I guess I got more chasing me.

I count to five. over and over. there's little room for thinking when you're choking on a broken heart and metaphysical wings.

I will be the fittest person with fibromyalgia on the planet. you will never, ever think to look at me that I have an untreatable nervous system disorder that makes me feel like someone's been borrowing my body at night to play rugby in.

at least this way I own the pain.

for the fucking win.

Love after Love

2010-05-03T21:50:00.000-05:00

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

I'm starting to feel distant again

2010-04-27T20:49:00.003-05:00

this

or this.

I'm just so fucking depressed
I just can't seem to get to get out this slump
if I could just get over this hump
but I need something to pull me out this dump

I took my bruises, took my lumps
fell down and I got right back up
but I need something to get me psyched back up...

and it never really began, but in my heart it was so real...

2010-04-22T16:55:00.004-05:00

it just kind of hit me. it's really over. there was never much there in the first place, just a lot of misplaced hope, a lot of trying real hard to cram a square peg into a round hole.

I wanted so much and I tried to make myself believe that too little was enough. but it just wasn't. my heart's been broken for a long-ass time and it's just now catching up to me.

I have spent almost every waking moment of the past 18 years longing for someone to take me out of myself. to give me someone to be. to make me belong. to make it stop hurting. maybe it's because I was raised on that "god-shaped hole" nonsense. maybe it's because my mom made me get on my knees as a little bitty girl and pray to Jesus for a husband.

I don't know how to be ok alone, despite the fact that I spent almost all my time alone. it's like, if I have someone specific to obsess about, then I won't feel so empty. If I can name and qualify this hurt it will somehow be lessened.

I have endless time. and endless pain. and nobody but me.

steel guitar makes it real

2010-04-08T16:23:00.004-05:00

The flag is gone from the roof of the Edgewater Beach Hotel.
how will I know which way the wind is blowing.

he says I love you just not how you want me to.
how the fuck am I supposed to process that.
what the fuck is that supposed to mean.

needs and wants and hurts

naked and bloody and veiny and shaking
alone and broken and unwanted in the dark.

it all boils down to this:

I wanted you
and you were a stone.

"and if it could start being alive you'd stop being alone."

everything falls apart

2010-04-06T15:29:00.003-05:00

here's the thing. every time I try to have a relationship, it's never just me and him. it's always me, him, and pain. and if he's got his own pain to deal with, well, the bed just gets too small for all four of us.

maybe one day I'll be able to see the difference between me and pain. I'll quit thinking that my brokenness makes me inferior. I'll quit making excuses for the way I am when I am ravaged by pain.

I just don't know how to do that now. days like this when I just feel flayed, when my heart and lungs are raw with grief, I don't know how to separate who I am from this rotting flesh.

When I was small a teacher gave me a collection of fairy tales. I identify very strongly with the story of Catherine and her Fate. Except no fairy godmother ever came to me and asked me to decide between happiness in my youth or happiness in old age. and I have no guarantee that the Universe will ever cease to ask so much of me.

Cascando

2010-04-06T10:31:00.001-05:00

1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

(S. Beckett, 1936)

definitely a madman with a box

2010-04-04T21:34:00.002-05:00

new season. new Doctor.

newly restored faith in things getting better.

but I'd trade the rest of my days for you tonight

2010-03-31T19:19:00.006-05:00

first sunburn of the year, slow to develop, just a little glow on my forearms and face. riding bikes by the lake with my lost friend's little sister and talking about loss and love and hurt and growing up.

my heart aches. there's so many holes punched in it that I imagine it like lace, gushing and leaking inside my chest. maybe that's why it's beating so fast. 85 bpm, unrelenting, like new love, like stage fright, like being chased down a darkened hallway in the night by the wolf from under the bed.

where is my brave face. where is the script for me to follow. what is love. can I love without trusting, or is that just addiction to oxytocin and dopamine and a very specific bioelectric field.

when I was little my mom used to make me pray for a husband. now I can't imagine anything other than living and dying alone. even when I'm with someone. when nobody's going anywhere. when they're right where I need them. I'm still alone, because there's no hope of anything other than loss and loneliness and broken shattered pieces of my lacy hole-filled heart. when did I lose faith.

who broke my heart first. my dad. jesus. the world. I remember being 13 and telling myself that there was no such thing as love. losing my virginity in a tent in the woods to a stranger, before ever even having a first kiss. because nothing is special. nothing is pure. nothing will last.

tomorrow I give in to the dark side. I lose the mission. I cease to keep the faith. I go to a psychiatrist and I get pills to quiet my heart. to put me to sleep. to make being unwanted hurt less. to keep my brave face on. to live through this.

everything sticks in my throat. pills. raisins. toast. resentment. fear. maybe I'm choking on love, on insecurity. on being unable to let go and trust. to surrender control.

I first heard this song the summer of 2003. the first time I lived alone. me and the cats and a sixpack of high life writing in livejournal, bike rides to the food coop, to decleyre, to the felix house. honeysuckle and porch swings and blue shadows on the street. sitting alone in the dark listening to lucero, loneliness like a knife embedded in my chest. surrounded by love but unable to open my arms and take it. like tantalus in hades. pushing the rock of my own stubborn lack of faith and hope and trust endlessly up this hill.

so I'll swallow my pills until summer, until the earth tilts, until things make more sense. until they are better.

but it won't be tonight.

2010-03-28T13:27:00.002-05:00

I really wish I could go back on meds, that they'd work. that the side effects wouldn't be just as miserable as my baseline state is.

weeks of unending dopesickness has left me sure that my neurochemistry is irrevocably fucked.

I've read that crippling depression and anxiety are part of "secondary withdrawals," that it's going to be another month before I feel anywhere close to normal, which is way too close to rock bottom for me anyway.

I'm losing friends because all I do is whinge. I can't stand myself either. I can't stand feeling like this and all I can do is stick needles in myself and take handfuls of valerian root and drink lemon balm tea and wait for my heart to stop pounding.

I'm at wit's end. I've been having a panic attack, unable to stop crying for 3 days straight.

strong at the broken places

2010-03-24T19:45:00.002-05:00

after two weeks off Vicodin I was stupid. I took a few pills when I had cramps too bad to walk, thinking surely it wouldn't be too bad.

instead I triggered another set of withdrawals all over again. fish-flopping limbs. racing heart. searing pain, like sunburn under my skin and on top of my muscle layer. hallucinations. nausea so deep it felt like dying. icy sweat.

I've been pushed to the very deepest darkest places this past month. I've been in more pain than I ever thought I'd be able to bear. I had to relive the whole Second Chance experience over again, being locked up and in pain and being treated like a liar. being forced to kiss ass and make nice to get out and get back to my life when inside I was seething with rage because no-one would help me.

and yet I go on. like a good little Newtonian. at some point these experiences will have their equal and opposite reaction. I will learn whatever it is I was supposed to learn from this and I will make myself its master.

and eventually this world will get tired of breaking me, and it will kill me in the end. even then they will gather after over the pieces of me that are left and say, she was so strong.

see you at the crossroads

2010-03-08T22:03:00.002-06:00

It's gonna be awhile before I can write about the past couple weeks in any sort of depth. bad reaction to Yasmin had me feeling like I'd been set on fire, my MDs decided it was narcotic withdrawal despite the fact that I was taking 60 mg a day of hydrocodone, I went to the ER, got sent to the state mental hospital, went 8 days without seeing the sky or riding my bike, got out, had Howard Brown fire me as a patient because my health problems are beyond their scope of practice, one of the nurse practitioners there somehow gave my therapist the idea that I was a narcotic addict so now she's refusing to treat me, Howard Brown refused to refill my pain meds because I won;t have a laparascopy done so now I am detoxing, I had to drop two classes, I'm weeks behind in the 3 I kept, I lost 5 pounds cos the fucking state hospital's idea of gluten-free meals are a scoop of government peanut butter and three cups of canned fruit cocktail...

hospitals trigger my ptsd like fucking hell and if it weren't for all the meds I"m on right now I think I'd be fucked out of my mind.

right now the only thing that is helping is eating bacon cherry chocolate chip pancakes 4 meals in a row.

and this beautiful amazing inspiring song, which I've got on repeat.

avalanche, veux-tu m'emporter dans ta chute?

2010-02-18T22:31:00.004-06:00

I've been buying herbs from a Chinese pharmacy in Little Saigon for a couple months now. the owner is a diminutive woman who appears to be fluent in several languages. she stocks all the major medicinals for decoctions as well as the most commonly used pills and teas and creams and liniments. We've gotten to be on a first-name basis and I've joked about getting her to sell me her shop when she wants to retire.

I've been in there about 5 times in the past week; I've been having horrible hot flashes that make me feel like my bones are boiling, sending a very uncomfortable fizzing sensation through my muscles. I get so hot that I get goosebumps, despite having no measurable fever. I'm frantic with worry and sadness, not sleeping well, nauseated, downcast, miserable. I've spent about 80 bucks in the past week on medication and herbs trying to get my body back to its normal miserable state. seriously, I can deal with just fibro, but this endometriosis and pseudo-menopausal crap are grinding me down.

Lin, the owner of the herb shop, was asking me about my health. she knows what she's selling, so she can tell from my purchases that I'm not the average 30 year old. I was trying to give her the short rundown and somehow ended up giving her the whole life story.

I don't give myself enough credit. I really don't. between the culture shock of the South's suburbs and my brother's attempts to molest me and then getting sent off to a brainwashing lockup and force-fed lithium for years, I went through more hell in my early teens than most people do in their whole life. and shit didn't even stop then. my life has been an avalanche of poor health and poor decisions made from an inability to plan for the future for most of my adult years too.

I've had a hard time being around people lately. I'm ashamed of my inability to keep my composure. I am constantly afraid that the few friends I have will turn their back on me, that they will be sickened by my neediness if I ask them to keep me company when I am sad or scared or feeling self-destructive. I have been hiding in my apartment for weeks, watching hours of downloaded tv, sticking needles in my feet and hands to keep from cutting myself. I schedule one or two social events a week and try my hardest to put on a brave face.

I am fragile. I am crumbling. but I have to believe that I am not broken past all hope of mending. as much as I want all this pain and fear and anxiety and sadness to be over, I'm not done living yet.

I just have to hang on a little while longer. and then a little more after that.

2010-02-14T21:20:00.002-06:00

I'm too unforgiving towards myself. I let my physical fragility cause emotional fragility and then get angry at myself when my circuits overload and I lose control of how I feel. I need to learn to step back.

these past few weeks, I've felt like I'm running on a giant hamster wheel, constantly tripping and falling down and skinning my knees and palms, busting my lip. I feel like a giant bruise emotionally.

I should have broken down and called my shrink. she was out of town and I didn't want to bother her, but she told me to call if if I wasn't doing well, and fuck. this past week has been one of the worst I can remember.

hindsight is 20/20, right.

cheer up, honey (I hope you can)

2010-02-10T21:54:00.004-06:00

today seemed slightly better, as if I've rounded some sort of bend, as if the light at the end of the tunnel has come microscopically closer. there was an earthquake this morning and a foot of snow on the ground. soon it will be March.

I don't think I have ever missed anyone this intensely. not and still believed that they were coming back.

please come back.

fail

2010-02-09T19:33:00.003-06:00

I gave herbs and acupuncture a year to try to fix all my mysterious lady problems; today, after having to combine vicoprofen and tylenol 3 just to get out of bed, I broke down and called my doctor for a birth control script.

I'm so hormonally overloaded it can't possibly make it worse, right?

I'm ok with my boobs growing, but I can't afford new britches, so let's hope my ass stays the same size...

consolation prize

2010-02-04T19:28:00.003-06:00

I keep telling myself, "At least you still look good," but honestly, it's not really helping. I'd rather be ugly than hurt this much.

2010-01-29T21:38:00.001-06:00

I am constantly overcome with envy.
I feel so left out.

I miss having a life.
I miss working.
I miss being busy.

2010-01-28T22:29:00.001-06:00

I feel so fucking trapped.

I want out. I want out. I want out.

I never saw so many tigers

2010-01-28T17:27:00.004-06:00

JD Salinger died today.

the ultrasound didn't show anything. I spent 5.5 hours at the hospital and eventually walked out. I got tired of being shut up in a small dirty room to panic. they could not tell me what to do next. I'm certainly not letting them cut me open to look around. they don't know what's wrong with me, why I feel this bad, and they just didn't seem to care. I'm not doing this cos I enjoy being on narcotics. heroin would involve jumping through less hoops, I am sure, and the end would come a lot faster.

I'm too tired for this: separation anxiety combined with increasing desire to avoid social contact. constant suicidal thoughts. I hate myself. I want to cut myself. I want to punch walls, to bang my head on the ground and scream. I can't stop weeping. I can't get my feet warm. loss of appetite. dysphoria even a brisk ride on a sunny day can't shake. anorgasmia.

I won't go back on meds. I am certain if I can figure out what is wrong with my uterus and narrow down a treatment strategy, this horrible emotional turmoil will resolve itself. I am just getting impatient. I cannot explain; you would not understand. this is not how I am. I'm losing my religion. I'm at the end of the rainbow and my rope. I kneel in the night before tigers that will not let me be. I never saw so many tigers.

2010-01-25T23:21:00.003-06:00

I am too old to be acting like this.

I thought I would grow out of being crazy.

Instead I'm pacing around my apartment with needles in my toes and forehead weeping like a madwoman and punching walls.

I can't live like this. I don't know what to do.

I'm waiting for the time when I can be without

2010-01-25T12:45:00.005-06:00

I can't make it through the night without pain waking me. I reach for the pills. if it's before 6, I can have one. if it's after, two. I count hours until I can take more. I ache and throb and burn. I'm taking more than the bottle says. I'm behind in class because I can't find a buffer zone between too fucked up to function and hurting too bad to sit still. my dreams are endless anxiety and abandonment and exhaustion.

the things that used to comfort me just don't anymore.

and I want you to notice when I'm not around

2010-01-20T23:06:00.005-06:00

I found a new therapist, one who does EMDR. When we were setting up the appointment, we talked briefly about what I think is wrong with me and what I want to work on.

here's the thing: maybe I was in so much emotional pain that it just spilled over and became physical pain. then again, maybe I think I deserve to suffer. maybe I think that I have to be in pain in order to be loved. maybe this physical but invisible manifestation of pain is the only way I could get my parents to admit how badly they fucked me up. maybe it's my body screaming out I don't deserve this and no-one is listening. maybe after a decade of nightmares and self-hate and cutting and burning and screaming bloody hatred and rage into the big empty space where my lost personality- the person I was before I was made sick- used to be, maybe it just built up and shorted out and left me with these endless aches.

maybe if I can stop believing that I am sick I will stop being sick. I've been told I was sick and broken since I was 13. I don't even remember what it felt like before, to feel safe and coherent and cohesive and loved and accepted.

I wish I believed in unconditional love. I wish I believed that I will be ok.

I am terrified of what is growing inside me. I am terrified of finality. I am afraid I will never be wanted again, that I will never be touched by someone who desires me. I have so internalized these years of rejection that now my body is rejecting itself.

how do I stop
how do I feel whole

Love and Monsters

2010-01-19T17:06:00.001-06:00

"you know, when you're a kid, they tell you it's all grow up, get a job, get married, have a kid and that's it... but the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. it's so much darker... and so much madder... and so much better." Elton Pope in Dr Who, new series season 2

2010-01-17T00:38:00.002-06:00

I have to believe that things will get better. that the way I see myself when I am down in it and blinded by pain is not how others see me. that anyone else would behave the same way were they in similar circumstances.

I can't live like this, constantly breaking my own heart.

2010-01-16T12:18:00.002-06:00

I don't know how to be anything other than sick. I don't know how to keep my fucking mouth shut and act like a normal person. I don't know how to stop resenting all my neurotypical friends.

I am humiliated at all times. I have no emotional control. I have no filters. I can't pretend to be ok. I can't keep my heart off my sleeve. I can't keep my feelings from being hurt by minuscule things. I don't know how not to be a greedy, grabby, clingy, emotional vampire sponge monster.

I don't think I will ever rise above this.

I don't believe in the future being better. I don't think I will ever be anything but scared and alone and in pain. no matter how many painkillers I take it still hurts. I almost overdosed last night because it hurt so bad and I just kept taking more and it is never enough to make it stop.

I wish it had been me instead of Liza.

there is no-one what will take care of you

2010-01-13T21:20:00.005-06:00

I'm not doing well. it came on pretty suddenly. cramps so severe I woke up before dawn crying, so bad that a triple dose of tylenol with codeine didn't even take the edge off. I got vicodin from my doctor, but even that is only making it tolerable.

there is something horrid and out of place in my body.

I need an MRI. I can't stop imagining this horrible evil dark sludgy teethy gnawing thing growing inside me. wishing me harm. it doesn't belong there.

then again I don't want to know how bad it is. if it's adhering to my organs too much then they would want to burn it off. I have no-one to take care of me if they cut me open. I don't want to go through the county hospital, with their endless lines and infection filled waiting rooms and below standard quality care.

I am giving Chinese herbs a few more months. after that I don't know if I will have any other option besides surgery if it keeps getting worse every month.

I am scared and I am alone and I feel disgusting and dirty and foul and broken and I don't want to be here.

proportions

2010-01-09T16:44:00.003-06:00

After taking a year of Herbology classes that focus on learning around 300 of the most frequently used herbs in the Chinese Materia Medica, I've finally started a formulas class.

Putting together a formula is like organizing the government of one of those epic historical simulation computer games. there's an emperor, who dictates the main action and purpose of the formula; below him is the minister, who supports the emperor by either having a similar function or by addressing a second, coexisting symptom. the emperor and minister generally have the highest dosage range in the formula. at lesser doses are the assistants and envoys; the assistant can reinforce the actions of its superiors, it can reduce their unwanted side effects, or occasionally it can have an opposing effect when the disease has a complicated manifestation. the envoy focuses the actions of the formulas on a specific area of the body, such as the throat or the eyes, or else "harmonizes" the formula, sort of like taking the rough edges off. licorice root seems to be the most common envoy- it's very sweet and can make a particularly nasty potion a bit easier to get down.

sometimes the roles of each herb can be unclear: it's easy to pick out the emperor when it's dosed at 60g and everything else is 15 or 6, but certain herbs might be the emperor even if their dosage is small. wild ginger, for example, is an extremely warm herb that is used for severe chills with copious thin mucus; it generally is not dosed higher than 3 grams because it is so warm and drying. in a formula with wild ginger dosed at 3 or 4 grams, it will serve as the emperor even when the other herbs outweigh it by far.

despite the overall Confucian nature of herbal hierarchies, this last fact strikes me as rather Marxist- from each according to his ability, right?

In the past few months I've developed a fairly broad and varied group of friends. some of them are like me and have a lot of free time; some of them work way too much. the few people that I think of as my closest friends all fall into this latter category. I rarely get to spend time with them, but when I do, it means a lot more to me than when I hang out with people I see every day. their presences in my life are the most important, despite the fact that I might see them for only a few hours a week, or even less. My best girlfriend from back home and I rarely get a chance to sit down and talk on the phone for hours like we used to, but she's still my best friend. I can't remember the last time I got to spend a few hours with my closest friend here, but the twenty minutes every couple days and the waving at each other from our neighboring apartments' windows mean the world to me.

if you can't see the metaphor here, well, I don't know what to tell you.

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

2010-01-03T19:38:00.003-06:00

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.

2010-01-02T22:24:00.002-06:00

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

2009-12-26T19:14:00.003-06:00

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

2009-11-23T21:10:00.002-06:00

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.

2009-11-11T21:54:00.003-06:00

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?

2009-11-09T21:45:00.002-06:00

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

2009-05-25T16:49:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-08T20:16:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-03-08T22:32:00.002-05:00

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

2009-02-16T18:32:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-08T19:40:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-26T20:25:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-12T17:45:00.001-06:00

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

2009-01-05T20:50:00.001-06:00

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

2008-12-23T08:48:00.000-06:00

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

2008-12-21T15:33:00.002-06:00

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

2008-12-17T17:10:00.004-06:00

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.

2008-12-15T20:53:00.002-06:00

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

2008-12-15T16:10:00.001-06:00

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

2008-12-07T19:38:00.001-06:00

last year.

today.

same outfit.
different person entirely.

Poem for Monday, December 1, 2008

2008-12-01T13:04:00.001-06:00

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"

2008-11-25T22:08:00.006-06:00

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

2008-11-17T22:10:00.003-06:00

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

2008-11-17T17:14:00.001-06:00

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.

2008-11-12T21:21:00.001-06:00

'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#

but the drugs don't work; they just make you worse

2008-11-11T13:12:00.003-06:00

the hardest part in dealing with this pain is knowing that there is absolutely nothing i can do to make it stop. except weep and endure.

days like this i don't think i'd turn down junk if it were made available.

Poem for Monday, November 10, 2008

2008-11-10T19:24:00.001-06:00

Who Knows What is Going On

by Juan Ramon Jimenez

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking about the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

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

2008-11-09T12:59:00.002-06:00

Tell Me Its Snowing - Glass

every year I go through a phase of denial about how badly the winter weather affects my health.

my pain levels have been around 8/10 for a week or so now and I've been having a hard time sleeping. the wind is about 25 mph most days so biking kicks my ass. I got a new cog for my back wheel so I'll be in an easier gear, and I'm hoping that will help. I have to accept that I am pretty much going to feel awful all the time no matter what and try to keep on.

I'm having a hard time getting any studying done because of my health. the pain seems to trigger the fight or flight mechanism in my brain so I have to battle a constant feeling of panic. zen meditation. I'm very intimidated by my 30 hour week schedule next semester. I'm sure I'll end up dropping something. I have to be patient with myself. accept my limits.

I know part of why I feel so shitty is from pushing myself too hard.

I feel like I am covered in 2nd degree burns from the waist down from being on my feet for a few hours yesterday. the SOFA art thingy was lovely but I ended up pretty disheartened by how exhausted and pain-stricken I was by the end of it. mermaid feet for sure.

dating seems to be working pretty well. it's hard for me to accept that someone would want to be around me when I am not feeling well. I have a hard time balancing out my sickness with the rest of me, which is in fact pretty awesome. it's been so wonderful to have company on my Bad Days, though. mostly I just have to focus on now, instead of on future endings.

I seem to have stopped thinking of myself as crazy about 2 months ago. it just ceased to be part of who I am. Now I'm just someone who is trying really really hard despite feeling like she's being burned alive.

a good friend from back home has a film at the Reeling festival and invited me to go see it. I'm excited, although a little afraid of homesickness.

a month left til my birthday.

yes, we DID!!!!!

2008-11-04T23:17:00.001-06:00

Black President - NaS

2008-11-04T08:05:00.002-06:00

4 years ago I woke up, voted, packed a bag, and checked myself into the state mental institute. The triage unit for mental health at the Med is small, cramped, and very cold, and once you enter you can't leave. I spent about 20 hours locked up with Memphis's sickest folks, watching the states turn red and feeling very lost and very broken.

Despite Obama's lead in the polls I don't have much hope that he'll actually win. The Republican war machine has its rusty claws way too deep in our country to be extricated with just an election. It's going to be rigged just like the last two.

I hope there are no riots.

Poem for Monday, October 27, 2009

2008-10-27T13:26:00.001-05:00

Waking

by Roger Sauls

I couldn't see the nuthatch
or the wren as they raked alphabets
on the dull tin of the gutter.
This early, waking is a kind of weather,
a fog, perhaps, that you meet
on the way to the mind's next landscape.
So I set out for the yard, where grackles
threw pebbles in the air for joy.

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

2008-10-26T19:47:00.002-05:00

I have been struggling (as always) with feeling extremely run-down this past week. the wind has picked up considerably (between 10-25 mph) this past week and I've been having a lot of of pain in my chest from riding without enough layers. I've skipped the Zen temple for several weeks in a row and have suffered emotionally as a result. I try to meditate at home but I'm pretty lazy. I know if I want to keep functioning and not let stress send my body into a static feedback crash I have to make time to take care of myself, whether it be a 10 minute sit, an hour walk, or a trip to the library.

today it was a trip to the amazing, ginourmous, better-than-church downtown library. got a few books, one of which I am quite excited about.

I'm about two chapters into All in My Head, writer Paula Kamen's fantastic book about her battle with chronic headaches as well as that of others. So far it's a thoroughly well-written and researched read. it's inspiring for when I ever get around to writing my fibro book.

on her site there are a decent set of links, mainly dealing with headache. there's a very, very well-done list of Dos and Don'ts for relating to someone with Chronic Fatigue that made me want to cry and pump my fist in the air and then send it to everyone I know.

For example:

DON'T suggest that my symptoms might not be so severe if I didn't dwell on them, cater to them, give them so much attention, let them run my life. In fact, that is the very philosophy that led to the collapse of my health in the first place. I maintain what vitality I do have by careful attention to even small changes in my body.

DON'T suggest new supplements or treatments unless I have asked. Like most single dykes with the disease, I have experienced a drastic and terrifying reduction of resources. And like most women living on very low fixed income, I have had to evolve a highly refined and customized process for cost-benefit analysis. It has taken me years to fine-tune my regimen of supplements and foods. Yes, I am sure I would benefit from massage, blood tests, medical care, organic food, acupuncture, and chinese herbs, but I can't afford them. Unless, of course, you want to buy them for me. Classism and ableism go hand-in-glove, and in case you don't know, health care in this country is a privilege, not a right.

really effing brilliant. I've had so many well-meaning people tell me about some miraculous supplement that cured someone they know and it's getting harder and harder not to take offence. thanks, but when my life is a choice between eating enough to keep my weight up and taking yet another supplement, I'm going with food.

I've started taking St John's wort again in addition to 5-htp, what with the winter breathing down my neck already. I've been having bad bouts of depression at more or less the same time every day, the early afternoon. it's hard not to let it suck me in. getting my blood flowing helps, as does chocolate. it certainly does feel like a dementor attack...

time to watch Lost until I'm ready for sleep.

oh and

2008-10-21T14:12:00.001-05:00

my bloodwork all came back negative. my doctor wants me to eat 3000 calories a day and if I can't gain a pound a week, come back in a month or so for more tests.

still feel pukey a LOT of the time. still having thumpy heart and tight chest. still having trouble sleeping.

but I'm not dying any time soon.

good lord willing and the creek don't rise.

ned called me "hipster bait"

2008-10-21T14:03:00.000-05:00

"if i wanted to catch a hipster guy, i would put you in a cage with some marquez and a gameboy and come back later in the day with like 12 skinny jeans boys all crammed in there."

Poem for Monday, October 20, 2008

2008-10-20T14:57:00.001-05:00

Waiting on Elvis, 1956

by Joyce Carol Oates

This place up in Charlotte called Chuck's where I

used to waitress and who came in one night

but Elvis and some of his friends before his concert

at the Arena, I was twenty-six married but still

waiting tables and we got to joking around like you

do, and he was fingering the lace edge of my slip

where it showed below my hemline and I hadn't even

seen it and I slapped at him a little saying, You

sure are the one aren't you feeling my face burn but

he was the kind of boy even meanness turned sweet in

his mouth.

Smiled at me and said, Yeah honey I guess I sure am.

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

props

2008-10-18T07:36:00.003-05:00

I forget to give myself credit.

I've been through a lot this past year and still managed to keep my self-destructive behavior in check. I was having a rough time for a couple weeks, and despite the fact that inside my mind and body was not a fun place to be, I still managed to take refuge in things that keep me safe. Meditating, biking, reading, watching Lost; I haven't gotten wasted or used someone else's body as a means to escape mine in more than half a year. which is definitely a new record for me.

I seem to have accepted the fact that my physical condition might never improve much more. it's a hard and bitter pill to swallow, and I sure do get dose after dose of it multiple times a day, but I am being brave. I am strong. I might cry a lot, but I'm nota drug addict. Every other person with chronic pain I've met was an oxycodone addict, but I want to have a life, and being on pain meds is a dead-end street. Hell, it's a Thelma and Louise style full on acceleration towards a cliff.

Lately, when my physical state becomes overwhelming, I try to tell myself "this is just one more thing you will be good at treating."

it helps.

but I sure as hell can't sleep for shit lately.

Poem for Monday, October 13, 2008

2008-10-13T16:34:00.001-05:00

If the Moon Happened Once

by Kay Ryan

If the moon happened once,

it wouldn't matter much,

would it?

One evening's ticket

punched with a

round or a crescent.

You could like it

or not like it,

as you chose.

It couldn't alter

every time it rose;

it couldn't do those

things with scarves

it does.

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

the waiting is the hardest part

2008-10-12T19:01:00.002-05:00

I've been steadily losing weight for a while now, way past what I put on drinking and taking meds, I'm down to 112, which is what I weighed in, um, 9th grade?

during my acupuncture treatment Friday my intern told me the clinic supervisor insisted that I go see a physician to get checked out. I looked at her and said "what could it be?" she shrugged and said "glands? cancer?"

so of course I've been totally freaking out for the past couple days, more than usual.

I'm fairly certain I have hyperthyroidism, because my grandmother had thyroid disease and I seem to have inherited a lot of her health problems, and because I have all the main symptoms. unexplained weight loss, nausea, hot flashes, heart palpitations, elevated pulse, joint pain, diarrhea, yeah... fun.

if that IS what I have, I'm still sticking with Chinese medicine and nutrition, because the western treatments involve burning out your thyroid permanently via injection of radioactive iodine or else taking medications that kill all your white blood cells.

I'm really, really scared. I have no fat left on my body and I feel very, very fragile. It is painful for me to sit on most furniture and my bedsprings poke me through the mattress pad so I wake up feeling bruised. I've been crying for three days. it's so scary not to know what is wrong and to feel so horrible.

and to go through this alone, without a close friend to cry on, with no-one to go to for comfort, it's almost unbearable.

all I can do is keep breathing.

I get my blood tested Wednesday.

profile

2008-10-08T09:24:00.003-05:00

I'm really good at writing personal ads and filling out online profiles. it's so easy to summarize myself in a handful of snappy lines. I ride my bike I like to cook I have various geek/literary themed tattoos I am hella wicked smart I read a lot I don't drink I don't smoke I like Battlestar Galactica.

when I write it all out I think I come across pretty well. I sound downright awesome. hell, I totally fracking rule. so why am I still so sad?

I know I am pretty and smart and funny and caring. I try to balance all this out with the feeling of worthlessness I have left over from my adolescent traumas and from dealing with my sickness.

7 months of menstrual suppression and I have morbid PMS. I'm inexplicably sad. there's not much I can do but hole up on the futon with Dr Who, then spend all the money I will get from cleaning my boys' house on chocolate.

wait it out.

Poem for Monday, October 6, 2008

2008-10-06T18:00:00.001-05:00

To a Reader

by Robert Hass

I've watched memory wound you.

I felt nothing but envy.

Having slept in wet meadows,

I was not through desiring.

Imagine January and the beach,

a bleached sky, gulls. And

look seaward: what is not there

is there, isn't it, the huge

bird of the first light

arched above first waters

beyond our touching or intention

or the reasonable shore.

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

take us apart and put us back together right

2008-10-01T19:10:00.002-05:00

This band from Champaign,Headlights, are my favorite biking music lately.
I've been listening to this song in particular a whole lot in the past few days. it seems pretty relevant to what's going on in my life right now, in a very comforting way.
Put Us Back Together - Headlights
Strange winds are blowing me down this way.
There's no prize in sight but the pain in my feet but I won't remember after tonight.
The clock turns red and the word on the street is that we are getting ready to leave.
Behind me I've forgotten to check all of the things that somehow now I don't seem to need.

Stepping over broken doors down in the street, all the chairs and tables lay on their sides.
We have to turn them over and stand them upright so we can leave them on their feet for the night.
So we can leave them on their feet for the night.

Take us apart and put us back together right, so we can leave on our feet in the night.

Poem for Monday, September 29, 2009

2008-09-29T22:00:00.001-05:00

The Everly Brothers

by Floyd Skloot

My brother thought they were freaks

of nature, voices fitting together

through some fluke of chemistry.

He said they might just as well

have been Siamese twins sharing

a heart or the Everly humpbacks.

My brother preferred Jerry

Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.

He cackled at their antics,

battering mother's baby

grand with his fists when we

were alone and duckwalking

the hallway until our downstairs

neighbors hit the ceiling

with a broom. At night he worked

on his Elvis sneer while caking

his face with Clearasil.

I can still see my brother

rave as we rode four stories

up in the quaking elevator.

He offered me one frenzied

groove of Yakety Yak at the top

of his lungs when I tried

to sing. All I wanted was

his voice joining mine in

harmony. The song did not

have to be about faith in love.

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

I can never say no to anyone but you

2008-09-24T21:51:00.006-05:00

I just finished watching Teeth with my best guy friend. We were both profoundly disturbed, but for completely different reasons. He, for the normal-male-fear-of-penis-severing, me for much uglier reasons.

I was raised in a pretty Christian household. My mom had me praying for Jesus to bring me a husband from before I was old enough to understand sex, and by the time I figured out the mechanics of it (thanks to a fascinating 4 pages in a Ken Follett novel) the world had already started to sour around me.

Somewhere around the age my brother started trying to pin me down, my best friend got raped. Everyone called her a slut and said she was lying. She started spiraling out of control and I was angry enough to go along for the ride. There was no protection, no guarantee of safety. Nothing but lies. Sex wasn't some beautiful prize, it was a power struggle, always with a winner and a loser.

We were 13.

I ran away at the end of the summer. I'd been on Prozac for a couple months, on and off, and this was back before they knew about the erratic behavior side effect. I went for a walk down to the river park and ended up camping in the woods with some older kids I'd bummed cigarettes off before. By the end of the first night I'd decided I might as well lose my virginity. It wasn't worth anything. It wasn't special. The guy was 19, and not gentle. I have no idea how he could have bought the lie that I was 15, because I looked about 12.

It was my first kiss, too.

It was like being told a secret so huge it ripped me apart from the inside.

The next day I limped to the picnic shelter restroom and washed up. Looking in the mirror I imagined myself somehow infinitesimally wiser. Powerful. Bitter.

Then, of course, I got sent off to long-term brainwashing camp, where I was forced to repeat over and over that I had had sex because I was a drug addict, in front of large groups of other inmates, as well as in front of my mother. Then I spent the rest of high school under hardcore vigilance. I spent a lot of time listening to the Cure's darkest songs, especially the Figurehead.

I will never be clean again...

My first weekend in the dorms at Rhodes, I went to a frat party with a guy, Adam White, who was friends with a girl in my dorm. We went "just as friends," since I'd just starting dating this guy Josh and was really into him. Adam got me really drunk-my second time ever- and took me back to his room and next thing I knew he was in me. I was so wasted all I could think was that Josh was going to be so hurt and that this wasn't supposed to be happening. When it was over I staggered into the shower and sat sobbing under the spray. I remember lying on the cement out in the middle of campus watching the stars reel overhead, and I remember Josh coming to get me and crying when I told him what happened. I couldn't understand why he was so sad.

I don't think I've ever not been fucked up about sex. I've had a lot of it, and some of it's been really fantastic, but most of it seems to have been the kind of wasted and sordid one-night stands you only have when you really hate yourself. I tried to convince myself that I was just empowered, that I could be liberated and deatched and in control or callous and cold-hearted, but really I just thought of myself as disgusting and used-up and corrupted.

I did a lot of things I am not proud of, especially toward the end of 2007, when my antagonism toward my body was at its hardest.

I've had this mysterious bladder pain for about 6 months now, which is also the longest period of celibacy I've had since I was 17. It's gotten to where I have actually resigned myself to never having sex again.

Part of me wonders if my subconscious and my vagina are conspiring against me.

Do I really think I deserve this? Have 8 months of therapy really not even made a dent in this mountain of guilt and shame?

Deep breath. I have two tests tomorrow, and I can't figure this out tonight.

Poem for Monday

2008-09-23T13:15:00.001-05:00

Poem for Monday, September 22, 2008

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

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

2008-09-19T18:05:00.003-05:00

I can't seem to keep weight on, and it worries me. or rather, it adds to the general anxiety I have about my health declining. I'm sick again, feverish and achy, swollen glands, exhausted. If I'm not better by next week I am going to go get tested for mono.

I got a flickr pro account and was looking at pictures from last year. compared to then I look emaciated.

I'm so fed up with being sick. I have a good day, then I overdo it and get sick again.

acceptance. acceptance. I might never get any better. I need to focus on being grateful for what health I do have. some days I have to chant to myself "at least I don't have lupus. at least this won't kill me."

I miss having a social life. I miss dating. it's been since April since I had someone cuddle me. I don't know how to talk to regular people anymore. all I seem able to talk about is fibro. being sick has consumed me and I don't know what is left.

Poem for Monday

2008-09-15T19:56:00.001-05:00

Poem for Monday, September 15, 2008

Moving Day

by Jay Meek

Our lamps sit on the lawn

as though

we lived there we roll

our rugs into documents

nothing new this is our last

house before the river we are

leaving

our lives again our radio

keeps playing Music

for

the Royal Fireworks we are

drifting downriver farther

and

farther from it where

are we going into our own

voices

saying go back go back

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

por fin escampa

2008-09-14T12:11:00.003-05:00

For the past two days I've been feeling less depressed and restless than I can remember feeling for months. I'm sure it's due to too many factors to pick just one, so I won't.

It's lovely to be able to spend time in my apartment reading and napping in bed without feeling a pressing need to Get Outside. Granted, it's pouring down rain and my bike isn't working, but the horrible urgent restlessness that has plagued me all summer has finally abated.

Bless you, Minor Bupleurum. The whole idea that emotional balance can be achieved by balancing internal organs makes a lot of sense to me, since the western/corporate medical idea of just treating the brain certainly hasn't done shit. (as a side-note, skullcap+marinol=total psychedelic za-na-nas, seeing trails, blissed out. I'm looking forward to doing more research with drug-herb interactions, since I will probably end up treating mostly chronically ill patients.)

I have a few chapters to read for my Clinical Counseling class, and some laundry to do, and meals to prepare for my 8 hour day tomorrow, so I'll have to venture out into the rain, but I'm pretty unfazed. I've been a cranky bitch for a while and it's a relief not to be so angry and frustrated and anxious, so I don't mind.

I'm finally starting to feel like me again. this goes beyond the number being unemployed and bored out of my skull did on my psyche. this is more that I am finally able to move the physical discomfort of my everyday life to the back burner, to minimize its window. yeah, I feel like shit. no, it probably won't ever go away. at least it's not so upsetting anymore.

whew

2008-09-13T18:42:00.003-05:00

I decided to drop the class I had Wednesday nights and it's like taking off a pair of sunglasses I didn't realize I was wearing indoors. it was a fairly interesting class, the philosophical and historical foundations of Chinese medicine, but as far as priorities go, the two classes I have the next day are so much more important. I just couldn't get home and get to bed on time and I was toddler-faced and attention span-less through my long 8 hours of class.

So far, after two weeks, I'm pretty excited. half of the classes I am taking now are not super challenging, just a lot of review and rote learning. I haven't taken biology since 1997 and I never took anatomy. I am glad my school really emphasizes biosciences, because I hope to do a lot of research later on in my career. I still remember what mitochondria are and all that, so I am not reallt worried.

We've discussed yin and yang characteristics in several of my classes and it's been interesting to try to identify myself. I have come to the conclusion that I have excessive yin and almost totally depleted yang, probably as a result of being forcibly medicated in my teens when I was still growing. it definitely makes sense to me, even on a nutritional level. When I am feeling really poorly, I crave certain foods, all of which are very yang- I want hot, spicy, garlicky meats and chocolate, I want sunshine, I want to be warm and active. When I am feeling well, my natural personality comes out- I'm bubbly, excitable, exuberant, impulsive. When I feel bad, I am quiet and withdrawn.

I've done a few things in the past week to try to test this hypothesis, mostly eating more meat and only listening to upbeat music (according to Tony, my tai ji teacher, rap music is yang, so I have been pretty much exclusively listening to Jay-Z and Missy Elliott). I also decided to take a break from birth control and menstrual suppression, since birth controls add yin energy and I already have way too much of that.

I'm optimistic again. I feel surprisingly ok today, especially for a nasty rainy day punctuated by uterus spasms. I got some really cute skull & crossbone galoshes and some winter gloves, so I'm one step closer to being ready to ride in the snow. if it ever stops raining I will be able to start getting my new fixie put together.

It might take me slightly longer than I anticipated to finish grad school, hopefully no more than an extra semester. I have to accept my limitations, and keeping up with an overload is just not possible if I want to do well.

After an email inquiry I sent, the assistant dean is trying to get a disability support group going at school. I hope some of the more advanced students respond. I could definitely still use lots of guidance.

Fwd: Poem for Monday

2008-09-08T18:43:00.000-05:00

The Grade-School Angels

by Rafael Alberti (trans. Mark Strand)

None of us understood the dark secrets of the blackboards

nor why the armillary sphere seemed so remote when we looked at it.

We knew only that a circumference does not have to be round

and than an eclipse of the moon confuses the flowers

and speeds up the timing of the birds.

None of us understood anything:

not even why our fingers were made of India ink

and the afternoon closed compasses only to have the dawn open books.

We knew only that a straight line, if it likes, can be curved or broken

and that the wandering stars are children who don't know arithmetic.

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

restore from saved game y/n

2008-08-29T08:58:00.003-05:00

The summer is pretty much over at this point. I feel like the past month has flown by. I've felt a lot better mentally and physically, despite brutal allergies and trouble sleeping.

Good things have just been dumped in my lap lately. My parents decided they wanted to buy me a new MacBook and some school clothes. I sent an email out to my bike club offering my old linux box to the first taker, and Alex at West Town offered to trade me a bike for it, which is fantastic. My Specialized Globe has been way too big for me for a while, and the back wheel is pretty damaged from getting doored back in May, so riding has been hell on my knees lately.

Orientation for graduate school was Wednesday. There were a few people in my class I am really looking forward to getting to know, and the classes should be quite challenging. I was flabbergasted to win a small scholarship. I know I deserved it. I've been through a hell of a lot and it is going to make me a hell of a witch. (The herb room at school is SO Hogwarts.)

I'm trying to hold on to some confidence, but I'm pretty overwhelmed. I know there are a lot of people who expect great things from me, and I am afraid of letting them down. Still, I know I am a dedicated and capable student. I know that the past few years of perceived failure were necessary to make me re-evaluate the way I related to myself and to other people. I know that I am still the same person I was 10 years ago, and also that I am completely different.

I'm not fucked-up. I'm not crazy. I might suffer from a really unpleasant set of chronic health problems, but I am still a kind and loving person who has much to offer. Other people don't pity me; they are proud of me.

I'm still terrified. Mostly afraid that it will be physically too much for me. Afraid that I won't be able to pay attention, afraid that my smarts have vanished. At this point I know it's just a matter of being patient and letting this new role take hold. I feel a lot like I did 11 years ago when I started at Rhodes. The world just got way bigger and it's a little scary.

I'm using my scholarship money to build a new fixed-gear and get it pimped out for winter. I got a new iPod and a microphone attachment so I can record my classes, since my the nerve grafts in my hand have now started to extend into my fingers and writing may become extremely unpleasant. I had a meeting with the assistant Dean to make sure that I'll be able to get up and stretch and walk around the building if my fibro makes sitting still in class for 4 hours too painful. I get acupuncture for 15 bucks, and I will be getting as much as I can, especially this first month of class.

In a lot of ways I feel like I've been given a chance to start over, but not all the way at the beginning. I get to go back to where things went wrong with total knowledge of what I need to do to win and start from there.

Level up.

Poem for Monday

2008-08-25T13:07:00.000-05:00

Poem for Monday, August 25, 2008

Birth

by Louise Erdrich

When they were wild

When they were not yet human

When they could have been anything,

I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,

And their father, too, each name a net in his hands.

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

wathcing mad max is making me thirsty

2008-08-18T12:53:00.006-05:00

I push myself too hard, testing my limits. I went on a bike camping trip this weekend with the Rat Patrol, decided to take a trailer so I could bring a chair to sit in. I'd started to get a cold the day before we left but went anyway, telling myself I needed the experience. you know, there's only two weeks left of my summer vacation, it'll be better than sitting at home on a Saturday night, you haven't been camping in 15 years, etc, etc.

I puked twice, once on the way (about 2.5 hours from the meet-up point), once after we got there and I blew up the sleeping mat. I tried really hard not to be a whiny, cranky bitch. I managed to stay up and be social for a few hours. There was some lovely veggie chili and some singing around the campfire, but being the only person not drinking, I was bored and sleepy pretty soon after dark. Went to bed at about 10, slept fitfully with earplugs in, constantly woken by the bugs and the festivity and the dampness creeping into my pillow. I was almost delirious with fatigue when I left in the morning, around 11. The trip home through the suburbs was mostly bike trails, quite beautiful, and I was totally miserable almost 3 hours later when I got home. Too much weight for me to pull, especially on a one-speed.

I'm physically incapable of taking naps, so I spent most of the day yesterday in a haze of dizzy misery until I finally fell asleep around 10.

Today I have a brutal cold and am restless, but too wobbly to really move. I'm on my third movie of the day.

I want to say the trip was worth it for the time spent with friends, but I was so self-conscious about being a wet blanket that it was hard to relax, not to mention I was too out of it to enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Having a fragile constitution seems to make loneliness more painful because I barely remember what it was like to have Big Wild Fun, so I grab any chance I can get to hang out with my friends, even if I have to duck out early. I try to be mindful of how lucky I am to have all my needs met, to be able to walk and ride a bike, to live unassisted.

I saw a urologist and had a cystoscopy done. it was the singular most unpleasant experience of my life, rather like losing my virginity. I made it through my staring at this poster.

there's nothing visibly wrong with my bladder, so at least I don't have interstitial cystitis, but the doctor (who talked to me for under 3 minutes) just gave me the name of yet another specialist to see. I'm opting not to. I will just hope the pain goes away. Resign myself to it. Never, ever, ever have sex again.

Days like this when I am totally run-down it's hard to keep learning from all this. I just want to be comforted and I don't see it happening any time soon. I just have to keep on making it through a day at a time. Until what, I don't know.

"brazilian" black bean soup

2008-08-02T13:16:00.004-05:00

I have no idea if this recipe is authentically Brazilian, but it's a modification (inasmuch as I never really use recipes and am pulling this out of my ass) of one given to me by a friend in high school.

1 small yellow onion
1-2 big fat cloves of garlic
1-2 cups carrots, in bite sized chunks
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 can black beans, undrained
1 small orange
1 cup water or vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the onion in half, then into finger-thick slices, then line those up sideways and cut them into dice-sized pieces.

Heat a small saucepan over a medium-high flame and add the oil. When the pan is hot, slide in the onions, carrots and the bay leaves.

Meanwhile, mince the garlic. You can do this with the tines of a fork, mashing it into a juicy paste.

When the onions start to turn translucent with a little bit of brown, add the garlic and cumin and stir vigorously for about a minute.

Pour in the water and the black beans. Stir and cover, reducing the heat the medium. It should simmer but not boil for about 8 minutes.

Squeeze the orange into a glass, removing the seeds but conserving some of the pulp and add to the pot. Leave the pot uncovered so some of the liquid will evaporate.

Cook until the carrots are tender but not mushy.

Add salt and pepper until it tastes right to you.

Top with chopped green onions or sour cream, if you feel like dairy.
Don't forget the Sriracha, or better yet, chipotle Tabasco.
Serve over brown rice, polenta, (yellow grits), quinoa, or with warm corn tortillas.

You can add red bell peppers, corn, lima beans, substitute sweet potatoes for carrots, throw in crumbled smoked tofu, whatever...

how strange it is to be anything at all

2008-07-30T08:50:00.002-05:00

I start my internship at Yoga Now today, and I am looking forward to spending a few hours washing their baseboards and listening to new age music. with possible top 40 r&b dance breaks. After that, I am deep cleaning my dear friends' house, which is pretty dank due more to landlord negligence than too much slobbery on their part.

There is something so purifying to spend hours cleaning, especially when you use nothing but peroxide, Citra-solv and peppermint Dr Bronner's. Peppermint's cooling scent soothes my constant summer headache and loosens my asthma-tightened lungs

It's not as effortless for me as it was back in 2002, when I first started doing green cleaning back home. I have to be especially patient because my wrist and hand are still very stiff and can't be used to do more than supporting and guiding of light weights.

My life has a pattern to it now, even if it's just as simple as wake up, go sit by the water and meditate for 25 minutes (I can't say I actually meditate for more than a few seconds at a time, but I sit in easy peace for the whole time) and then see where the day takes me from there.

There are disappointments and obstacles in every day, but I seem to have recovered a steady footing. It's as easy as taking a deep breath and knowing it's not the end of the world.

The urologist put me on an anti-spasmodic, and between that, the Marinol, and the tryptophan, I'm able to actually look forward to things again.

2008-07-28T22:36:00.002-05:00

My nurse practitioner at the queer clinic was kind enough to write me a Marinol prescription today. It's prohibitively expensive, but it leveled off the pain within an hour with minimal spaciness and I was finally able to stop crying. As far as cost, even with the fantastic discount I got through the clinic, it's comparable to the Weed Maintenance Program, without the excruciating claustrophobia and mind-on-a-hamster-wheel thinking, but I am hopeful I can find a website that sells it cheaper. it's certainly a better option than going back on Lyrica or Cymbalta. so far as I can tell the only side effect is increased appetite. I dropped down to 117 last week, what I weighed in high school, because I've had such problems with nausea and anxiety about eating, so I'm looking forward to being a little less gaunt.

I went to the temple to do work practice. Sat for a while and was delighted to be greeted mid-sit by the nun's cat, who has snuck out of living quarters. The idea of being able to bring Tachi with me if I one day choose to live in a temple or monastery setting hadn't occurred to me and now I find myself already longing to take up residence there when my lease is up. I somehow doubt my parents would approve, so I'd have to work out a way to pay for my rent, but it's a lovely daydream to have.

Even after just two days of adhering to a regular practice I feel so much more at peace. it was
such a pleasant experience to chant the Heart Sutra (as unfamiliar as it is in Korean) and then to work in the garden for an hour. I learned so much from just weeding.

it's good to have hope again, to have a place to take refuge.

2008-07-28T14:24:00.002-05:00

I spent several hours yesterday at the Zen Temple yesterday. The early service was two 25 minute sittings separated by a brief chanting of the three refuges in Korean, followed by a Dharma talk.

I was disconcerted by my complete inability to stop crying. I have been really emotionally worn out these past 24 hours, after overdoing it physically Friday and Saturday. After the service we had tea downstairs. One of the members struck up a conversation with me as we washed out our tecups, and when he noticed my distress he told me I could go sit back upstairs in the temple. I sat up there and sobbed for probably half an hour. Sometimes there is nothing else to do but sit and keep my pain company. I try not to judge it or let it overwhelm me. I sat and looked at the Buddha statue and let the pain flow through me.

I went back later in the day for the afternoon service, which is just one sitting meditation followed by the three refuges, chanting of Ma-um, and a question and answer session.

It has become very clear to be that the only way to take arms against this sea of troubles is by sitting still and doing nothing at all. My mind is over-run by monkeys and my body is falling apart. I can't go on like this.

Poem for Monday, July 28, 2008

2008-07-28T14:21:00.001-05:00

The nightingale sings

by Eqrem Basha

Who is that bird singing on a branch alone
And where is its flock
Which is the plaintive song
And which is the season

That bird has a voice adept
At singing on a solitary branch
No friends no family
It has come to earth on its own
With a flute in its beak and anguish
Which is neither a wound
Nor a song

What is that mourning so near which belongs to us
Sing to us nightingale sing

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mantra

2008-07-25T23:42:00.003-05:00

I've been singing this song to myself a lot lately.

It's taking a lot of energy and even more faith, but I am finally back in the center of my path, back to where can believe it.

I let things slip back, I neglected my heart, I forgot to gather wood for my campfire and the wolves came and surrounded me.

I am done letting the sickness win.

After some serious bike riding, and a lot of long talks with myself, my shrink, and my friends, and a couple of days of tryptophan supplements, I can finally see the path again. The shadows are lifting.

Yes, there is pain. There is weariness, loneliness, sometimes even deep sadness. But there is also joy, gratitude, and so much love. All these will arise, and all these will be swept away.

Best Critical Mass ever. Thank you, universe. I am being sent such blessings.

(this video sucks, but it's the only one I could find.)