Sorry sorry sorry, Let’s try that again! Here is the proper link to the Dr Manny Show, which ought to be correct “in perpetuity”!

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4056071/the-many-faces-of-mental-illness/?playlist_id=86899

I have decided to donate my completely lifesize sculptures, Dr John Jumoke, with his prescription pad reading : Rx Art, Poetry, Music,

and the little girl, Trudy, his patient, to any hospital or clinic or doctor’s office that has room for them and can display them. If you are such an office or organization etc and would like to discuss the ins and outs of this, please contact me via http://artid.com/turtleworks.

Okay, so I was sort of wrong about Roy. He was disappointed about the hugging and kissing business, yes, but the real reason I had not heard from him was because he was holed up in his rooms, sick as a dog. That had not occurred to me (as usual); it had not even crossed my mind that there might have been other circumstances preventing him from immediately responding to my notes. No, in a trice I jumped to the worst conclusion of all, that he was, in a sense, “dumping me” — though we were hardly an “item” having had but two conversations face to face (still, why was he kissing me then?) — and all because I wasn’t giving him what he wanted…

Anyhow, I do feel better having told him my feelings, and having asserted my right to say no to hugging me, because now he knows that I do not want even that much physical contact, whether or not he had meant it to go any further. I talked to Lee about it as well at the very end of a troubled visit yesterday and he shared with me a little about “most men,” which was (something I didn’t know) that they tend to express their feelings physically, and that they also take rejection of offered embraces personally. So he suggested that Roy might have taken my refusal to hug him as a personal rejection. He suggested too that I write him a short note explaining that it was nothing about Roy himself at all, and telling him how much I enjoyed his conversation and so forth. Maybe I could feel things out and see if there wasn’t more there than I thought…It was, I think, good advice, even if, as it turned out, Roy was sick rather than rejecting me.

By the way, Thank you, Karen Sorensen, for your comment on yesterday’s post. And my congratulations on your lovely website and incredible artwork. I commend and recommend to anyone who sees this note that you check out Karen’s site which is listed in my blogroll.

THE RAPE OF THE HUG

How

do you say no to an honest hug

from a good man who likes you and wants

perhaps to love you? Does he

completely understand

how you have spent your life in institutions

and only entered the adult world at age 53?

You still have so much to learn

about being a person outside of a hospital…

Does he – does anyone? – know how dangerous

even loving human contact is

how all contact is rape

even the gentle hugs you have

been tutored to give relatives and friends.

You only withstand them and hand them over

but you do not like them.

Though you know no harm is intended

if done, when he prolongs the hug, stands closer

and turns his head towards yours

you sense the threat

of a kiss you can’t for fear of hurting his feelings

though you feel no feeling

of wanting it

refuse.

Roy (not his real name, though there is no chance of his seeing this) and I communicated  almost exclusively by means of notes passed under one another’s doors for a long while. Oh, we would pass in the foyer or in the elevator and occasionally exchange greetings or ask how the other was doing, but we never had much in the way of conversation. I was always going somewhere or coming home from seeing Joe or Cy and was much too tired to want to talk. Also it was awkward to have a conversation in such a public place, what with the bored biddies in this place being so nosey and overly interested in what we might say to one another, however harmless.

You have to understand that this building has 250 units for the elderly and disabled, but it is in essence a community, and though some people like me keep to themselves, we nonetheless cannot help but recognize many of the downstairs regulars who sit in the lobby or in the community rooms and watch comers and goers and gossip about nothing all day long. Or gossip and spread rumors and hateful talk. There is a “circle of friends” that I hear is rather in-bred and exclusive with which I have nothing to do, being uninterested. But I know that others feel left out of it, and are in fact excluded. The Circle holds dinners downstairs and each member pays $5 a month for dues but they charge non-members $20 if they want to join them for any one dinner. I cannot imagine why anyone would, but there you have it.

Anyway, to get back to the tale (and I am telling it, mind you, because I am trying to get my mind off much more serious matters, of which I cannot speak at the moment…) Roy had not put any notes under my door for a few months when suddenly one appeared a  couple of weeks ago. I had been feeling extremely troubled, and still am, so the note was welcome, as Roy has a philosophy of life that is very salutary and calming. Even if I cannot share it, that is, even if I find myself unable to trust it or believe that for instance this earth and this life is merely a school where we learn what we need to learn before we shed it and go on to what we need to learn next, even if I cannot believe that, I still like to hear him talk about it (in his notes). I responded and told him honestly how I felt, and what was going on that Lee, my doctor was concerned about as well. Roy responded by appearing at my door with a set of CDs — no, he couldn’t stay but he wanted me to listen to them, he thought they might be helpful — from the Dalai Lama discussing how science, specifically quantum physics and religion, especially TIbetan Buddhism complement one another.

No, perhaps memory doesn’t serve. Perhaps that was the time he did come in, did stay and we talked for about an hour before he had to leave. It was a very enjoyable conversation and I told him so. I told him specifically that he was not at all like Jacques, who came frequently to lecture me and pontificate about Thomas Merton and force his own poetry on me and never let me get a word in edgewise and if I did, gave it no thought or response. Our conversation, I said to Roy, had been an actual sharing, a con-versation in the real sense, not a monologue, and I appreciated that.

When he left he asked me to accompany him to the door, I said, sure, and got up, but felt a slight frisson, suspecting why he had asked. Indeed, I was correct, for at the door he turned and opened his arms for a hug. Not knowing how to refuse, and feeling unable to, I let him hug me, and tried to respond, though it was difficult and he sensed that, saying, “It can’t be that bad…” with a laugh. But he held on a long time, much too long for my comfort. Not that I was comfortable in the first place.

Then he said goodbye with a smile and blew me a kiss and left.

Well, that was that. He continued to sent me notes and one asked me to lend him my book of poetry. I left one in a paper bag at his door, telling him he could keep it. He hung the paper bag back on my door with a note that contained only a big smilie and an exclamation point.

I listened to one CD of the five he had lent me. It was difficult to pay attention, but I eventually managed to do so, washing dishes. Then one evening Roy knocked on my door (he has only a state-issued cell phone with very limited minutes on it) and I let him in. Again we had an enjoyable conversation and again when he left…well, the poem tells that tale.

But this time, well, I had to tell him how I felt. I knew that it would do me and him no good if I simply went along with this and pretended. I could not do it again, and just continue to feel raped. Things would eventually progress to a point where I could not tolerate even pretending…So I sent Roy a note explaining that while he had read both my books and thought therefore that he knew me well, I knew much less about him, and that he needed to go much slower.  I did not enjoy hugging, not yet, and I was not experienced and did not know the ways of the world. I also said that I was used to rejection and would not fall apart if he never came back. I expected rejection from everyone so it would be nothing new. If he rejected me, well, that would also tell me something about him I should know now, before we got too close. I put the note under his door, and waited to see if a small yellow piece of paper, or even several, came back.

Well, I waited all the next day, and the next and the next. But no note came. Yesterday I returned the CDs in the same handled paper bag, and no note came. So I guess I know what Roy was all about, don’t I? It upsets me, as I liked him and thought he was deeper than someone just trying to get into my — well, you know the expression. I hate to think that that was all he was interested in, but maybe that is what motivates all men, after all. I do not know, truly, I do not. I have not had enough experience to know.

It is not that it had to be a platonic erelationship, I was willing to learn about relationships that were more than that, only that it and I needed time to grow. He ought to have known that, having read DIVIDED MINDS. But apparently like the men who forced sex on me in my younger years, he thought that he was different or better or — something. Well, he isn’t, wasn’t, and I learned my lesson, again.

One day I am up, or part of the day at any rate, and the next day I am down, or the next part of it. I can be cheerful in one moment and crying the next, and it takes little to bring on the tears, but equally little to cheer me up when I am in the mood to be cheered. I feel like a windmill, turning whichever way the winds of my moods blow, and not like the old creaky Dutch ones, but the shiny winged new ones that turn on a dime, shifting as quickly.

Usually what brings on the tears are thoughts of death, but do the thoughts precede the crying and sadness or the sadness precede the blackened thoughts? A good question.  Would I be thinking about the imminent end of the world and my role in it, and thinking of it so often and so desperately were I not already sad? Or does merely the thought of it, and the constant reference to global warming naturally stirs thoughts of it in me,  make me sad? One thing I know is that once I think and am sad, in whatever order those two occur, I start crying, desperately, torrentially, if not sobbing then the tears pouring down my cheeks in silence…

A wise friend suggested I try an exercise in distancing myself from the sadness, by taking a large waterglass and trying to catch my tears when I cry so hard. She says the suffering in the world all comes from a sense of loss, from not understanding that the nature of the world is impermanence, is all things changing…She says that all time is simultaneous, that there is no past or future, except what we choose to focus on. She tells me a lot of things that are difficult to understand.

Right now I am sitting in my living room/bedroom with all the furniture emptied and  crowded into the center around my recliner and TV because the painters are coming to paint on Wednesday and the only person who could help me move things had to come on Saturday. So now I have to live this way for the next few days, with nothing to do but use the computer or watch television, because most of my books, which I cannot read anyway, are packed away in the studio. That is now so full that I couldn’t paint or make jewelry or do art of any sort even if I wanted to. And in any event, I have been physically ill for several days so little appeals to me but lying rather listless in my big chair and stroking my cat! 8D

What a life, what a life…But I lie here thinking about the planet and I think about how I desperately need to find some hope, for myself, for the world, for my thinking about the world and my role in it, in its ending…and I wonder: am I sad or am I depressed? Is there a difference? Is it substantial? And does it matter? It matters that the world is ending, if it is. But is it? I believe it is. But many people, who I think are in  denial and in the dark, think that is nonsense. It matters a great deal if the world is ending, especially if it is my fault. It matters a great deal to me! But most people tell me that it is not my fault, and so far none have said that it is… Most venture only to say that the world will go on, with or without us, and perhaps it is okay if it’s without us…In any event, nobody — well, perhaps one alone of all my friends — seems as desperate and as hopeless as I about the situation, and we are both so hopeless we cannot help each another, only drown in one another’s tears.

Oh how we cling to what is, by that other friend’s definition, impermanent, ever-changing. As Heraclitus said, the world is “an ever-igniting fire, by measures being kindled and by measures going out.”

But is it depression or sadness? I have not felt truly well since I got out of M Hospital in the fall. Oh, I have felt better, and I have felt worse, but I have not felt consistently good, no. And I cannot shake this persistency of ready tears. My psychiatrist did not understand this until the day the tears fell in his office, along with my confession of how hopeless I felt about the world and its imminent demise, how guilty I felt about it. I was surprised at the alacrity with which he pushed an antidepressant on me, since I had not cried so before in his presence, not that I can recall. I thought he might have wanted to discern more of a long-standing pattern….But he scarcely gave me a chance to object. Just “suggested it” then reminded me that our time was up for the week, and he would see me “next week, same day, same time” same channel etc. I was to call him if any problems arose or I needed anything at all in the meantime. But i still had the new prescription to take too, and my visiting nurse would most likely want me to take it as directed. Since I was mostly an obedient patient, and since I wanted to feel better as well, I took it, having no particular objections to that medication. But has it done any good? Oh, I didn’t cry as much for the next few days, and we all thought, Oh, my what a wonderful drug, it has worked so very quickly!

But of course, no drug works that fast. If anything at all, it was a placebo effect. But likely as not, it was simply that other matters intervened and  the end of the world was put on hold as I dealt with matters closer to the facts of everyday life than teleology. Not that the “end of humanity” needs to be the equivalent to the “end of times” but to me if felt that way. Anyhow, I suspect that to those who deal with matters of “teleology,”  the end of times  and the end of humanity may mean much the same thing too, probably. (Who would care about teleo- anything were humans no longer around to think about such things?)

A month later, though, (and the dosage remains minimal, which may or may not be related to this) I still cry torrential tears at thoughts of death, dissolution and the devastation of the planet. I still feel overwhelming sadess upon hearing of anyone’s death, and mere advertising skits can make me tearful if emotional enough in the wrong way…Embarrassing as that is to admit. On the other hand, though, I can still write, I can still paint, and I can still make jewelry and cook and go over to visit Joe and  on and on. I may not always feel like it, but I do it, and that is what is important. And when I do art and write and  cook and so on, I make myself feel better, at least temporarily. So those are antidepressants in and of themselves, yet I could not do them at all, I think, without a certain level of energy above depression.

But as I started this, I go up and I go down, down, down. And maybe that is key, that I am not always depressed, just that I am easily dragged into the slough of despond by thoughts of bleak and utter despair, and whence those come, I do not know. Maybe from reality, cold and hard as a concrete floor, or maybe from imagining the worst. But no one  knows what will happen. The worst is only one of an infinite number of possibilities…

FRIDAY NIGHT VIGIL

Shivering, we struggle to keep our candles’ thin
flames alive as we gather, nineteen of us together
in the darkness of an approaching storm,
hoping the small flakes will not turn to ice
beneath our tires on the drive home.
But an icy wind keeps snuffing out each flicker
so we just stand, our signs alone aloft to passing traffic,
standing for the stand we take: for the changing world,
for a last chance at change. We stand for photos,
taken from across the streaming street –
and we smile into the night and show our signs.
One car beeps, a driver gives the V-sign in support,
but most drive on without a word or sign
that they have heard or seen a thing, or even recognized
we’re standing here for anything but hopeless causes.
My hands, frozen, release their glass and candle with a crash,
sending shatters glinting across the sidewalk. Someone
with safer gloves, stoops to sweep the shards away…
How lovely is the world today, even dying.
Though it’s all we have (and lord knows, it’s more
than we can handle) we stand here in this freezing dark
against the darkness and light one candle.

That is about all of the true story of the vigil, and about all that happened…We stood there and the traffic passed, and photos were taken and my frozen fingers dropped the glass holding my candle oh so greenly..Period. It was not without feeling or meaning for the individuals who stood there even though it felt utterly useless to me, and I was only there because a dear friend suggested it as an antidote to hopelessness. As she sees it, the only way to defeat despair is to take action, which is, I suppose, to paraphrase Hamlet’s soliloquy.  Now Hamlet goes on to talk about  death, and eventually to abjure suicide. But taking action did not help me much. Or if it did, the very loss of the glass in my hand, that crash to the sidewalk in the freezing dark, seemed to me the last straw, though none could tell it then. Indeed I  would never dream of showing it. But to me it was emblematic of the hopelessness of the endeavor, how it was all coming crashing down upon our heads, the great environmental movement, and nothing, nothing! would be saved on our grand sweet planet but sulfur-eating bacteria, black smokers, and undersea tubeworms. Nothing to be done now but to move inland and try to survive the cataclysm.

Except of course that not even that could be done, because nowhere is one safe, not really.  Tell me, where would you run to when tornados of category 5 tear up the heartland and when they do not, floods of epic proportion alternate with devastatng dust-bowl droughts?  When inland migration would put such a stress on cropland that famine results, and the slow, agonizing death that comes from it. The southwest? Where there is little water and temperatures already  soar past 115° in summer and sometimes higher? What happens when they hit 130°F? Would you  try the California west coast, with its record breaking wildfires and its ditto mudslides? And what exactly happens to rock that has been too quickly  affected by acidification  — does it really remain stable? What about in a region affected by vulcanism like the Northwest? Do we know for certain that  human forces do not change volcanic activity and purely geologic forces on and in the earth? Do not be so certain…But the east coast, surely you would not escape there, what with its sinking coastlines and/or rising sea levels from Florida to Maine…I do not mean to be a doom-monger, but I am indeed despairing, because I see a future of  chaos in the streets and madness and  fear on the faces of people wild to save themselves or at least their children and knowing in their hearts that they can do nothing…

STOP. Why am I going on like this…I do not wish to scare people who believe in hope and optimism. I do not wish to infect everyone else with MY despair. That is not my desire or intent. If I am hopeless, why make others feel it too? There is no point, even if I am right in my knowledge and/or my predictions. I cannot change anything, so why force  anyone to feel as bad as I already do? Perhaps Hamlet was right to suggest that “to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them” is not necessarily a bad course. It may be nobler than giving up, even if the action is useless in the end.

Do you know that I have scarcely followed the doings at Copenhagen, except cursorily, because I pretty much know that whatever happens it will be too little, too late…and that no matter what, the agreements reached will never, never! even approach the deep cuts in emissions needed to reduce present CO2 levels to the 350 parts per million that we need to regain sustainability on the planet. No, what I’ve heard is that the best of agreements settle for reaching and maintaining 550 ppm. let whatever happens to us at that level, happen.

God forbid we should radically alter the flow of the world’s economic thinking and activity, or even just the purposes towards which entrenched capitalism directs its self-interest! God forbid that Americans NOT be urged to buy buy buy “new carbon” in order to re-set a gobal capitalism and ever surging standard of living. God forbid that Americans should be told that their diamond standards — of living, of buying, of — well, everything, should actually be reduced…that they cannot in fact buy everything shiny and new, that used items are good items and trading between those that want to throw away goods and those that need them is a terrific idea, and much better than flying new carbon, and expending huge amounts of hydrocarbons in the process, from halfway around the world; that lawns are a terrible thing and vegetable gardens are beautiful, even postage stamp size or on the roof. There is so much we could do, if we are hopeful, if we are optimistic, if we believe that doing something is worthwhile and that we can in fact save the world.

Let’s try, let’s do something now. Maybe it is too late. Maybe it is useless. But we cannot sit around doing nothing, can we? That way lies madness and despair. We all die. It’s a given. Why not live now, knowing that something — even if it is only  the proverbial drop in the leaky bucket — can be accomplished, and  knowing that as long as we breathe there is always hope.

Dum spiro spero.

This is Pam W. in the spring of 2009. I am standing in front of the Inn on the Broad St Green in Old Wethersfield.

This is the famous and faithful old green recliner (Command Central) in which I do everything but Artwork and Jewelry making..I even sleep here at night.

In April 2007 I interviewed my best friend Joe for StoryCorps. This is the photo they shot of Joe, Me and Karen in front of the StoryCorps Airstream which houses the mobile soundbooth and recording studio. During the interview, which was aired on WNPR the following Friday morning, I had also to translate for Joe, who was losing his voice to ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. By then Karen and I were the only two who could still understand him.

My official author picture, in color rather than the B & W version on the book flap. I do not like it as much as the one being used for publicity, which has been cropped from my photo in front of the inn.

My cat Eemie, about whom this poem has been written:

TOOTH AND CLAW

With silk sufficiency the cat,

that pedigreed aristocrat,

stalks her prey, the Rattus rat

amid the sun-dazed blades of green

where grackles feed on haute cuisine,

of kibble that was meant for Eem,

my scrappy feline, who’d prefer

the tang of rodent blood and fur

while June bugs rasp and locusts chirr.

With one sure leap of grand design,

she hooks his nape and snaps his spine

‘mid cabbage rose and columbine

then daintily she sniffs the gore

and drops her tribute at my door

as if I’m her conspirator.