You can tell the academic in me is on home turf when I start talking about structure and function, about la lengue and la parole, about emic and etic. ( Note: This is a most semiotic post.)
I have been writing posts non-stop this month. These past week has seen a lull in my posting. So I failed at Na Blo Posting Mo. There needs to be Na Blo Wri Mo. Writing is distinct from posting. The thing versus its label. Maps and territory. Process and praxis. I have written some personally significant pieces over the last couple of weeks, but they require rumination and reworking before posting them or works derived from them. Some things are just too raw to share. They are elemental pieces. These need to be crafted into examples of the thing rather than the being the actual thing. But it has to be real. A real example. I think I am finding my way into being able to write about my life without bleeding ink all over the page. I think personal writing is about allowing others to connect with enough of your experience that they can emote their own stuff all over your stuff without having to own it completely. That, too, is about the thing, versus of the set that contains all the possible permutations of those things, versus an example of one of those items in the set that is not the raw, essential thing itself.
At one point I also had some concern about creating ill-will, or embarrassment, within my family should my personal writings be discovered by them. I do not have to worry about that any longer. My natal family is no more. All but two of us are gone and the other person besides me cannot assimilate new information. I attended the funeral that no one thinks about attending until the experience unfolds. The the body in the casket had belonged to the last person I knew well, who knew me well, as child. The solitary, isolated childhood, being the youngest of five with a huge space of 9 years between four and five, and being born to parents in their forties, as well as being in a family with a genetic predisposition to cancer that was apparently triggered by many of the agro-chemicals that were used on the farm before awareness of the carcinogenic nature of them eventually became known; these all contributed to my experience of what is not talked about prior to the event. A cultural taboo.
My eldest brother who lives does so with an impaired memory. Traditional old folks senility at age 75. He knows who I am, and I cherish that recognition, but his being the eldest of the five kids with me being the youngest means the 18 years between us created a family relationship more akin to that of a niece with her uncle than a little sister and brother.
My parents and all the siblings I remember living in our home when I was small are gone. I knew this feeling a few years ago when severe dementia took hold of the youngest of my brothers. Great care at the VA hospital, next to the military cemetery where his body now lies, allowed my brother to recover a bit and regain some of his mental functioning. But that initial experience of knowing that all the shared memories of youthful home and family were hit me hard back then. I grieved. But then there was a reprieve, and some of my brother returned. So when he actually passed away this month, I had already had time to accept his inevitable outcome. But I had not realized how alone I would feel, how strange it would be when I was only person from my natal family left to attend a memorial service for another member.
Sometimes I feel like I am twenty years older than my peers. Being sandwiched between generations was years and years ago for me. Now I am watching my sibling pass on. A nephew has already passed on. Most of my friends are not in this stage of life. Many still have vital active parents. I think this is exacerbated by my husband not understanding the impact of this phase on me. He was an only child. His father passed away when he was 16. His mom died when he was 30. He cannot quite grasp this family connection thing. Even dysfunctional families are family. Looking back on what should be with you is just weird. The anthropologist in me would say that I am emerging from a liminal phase.
I think I am coming to terms with this new state of being. I have written a great deal about it. I am just starting to post about it. I may pre-date some posts so they are in a sequence that makes sense.
And that is okay. My writing friends will understand if I cannot complete this Nablopomo. There will be other opportunities.
Roger Lee Hill, August 4, 1948 – November 8, 2014
I just got back from the All Souls Procession. I checked messages on the Trolley on the way to the plaza at San Augustine Mercado. I hadn’t checked them since this morning. I got a text from my nephew saying his dad had died last night.
Rest in Peace my Brother. Mom, Dad, Dave, Max, and now you are gone. It is getting a bit lonely here. Only Jim and I left.
I sent my love to you among the flames when they burned the prayers at the alter tonight after the procession.
Assessing the Mess
Time escalates at an alarming rate as I pass through life. I am already planning on responding to Nablopomo comments and such during lunch tomorrow so I can have the evening to clean the house before I have laser eye surgery on Tuesday.
I don’t know how I used to do the 8-5, raise a kid, help the hubby at his work, take care of the house, be a girl scout leader and remember to buy milk. Oh that is right, I had a breakdown, duh. Seriously, how did I once juggle everything?
My house is a pit. My washer is broken and I have purchased a new one but I can’t figure out when I can get delivery and a plumber and me all at home at the same time. I’m not sure if it is the stress or the dirt but I’ve started itching.
Seriously, I broke out in hives about a week ago” all over my body,” as Jonathan Winters used to say, and I still itch a bit. I think it was from the detergent the laundry used because we sent out all our clothes, since the washer is broken. But the hives could have been because of stress and anticipation of the surgery on my freaking EYES that I will have this coming Tuesday. Anyway, I have never had hives previously, but I had hundreds and hundreds of not so little lumps and made up for all those years without them I lived on Benadryl for much of the last week.
For those of you who follow along with my wacka wacka life I was diagnosed with narrow angle glaucoma right after my brother recovered from being in hospice. Just read my posts from September if you want to ride along on that roller coaster. But anyway… I was totally taken by surprise when I went in to get an eye exam and a couple new pairs of glasses after I found out I didn’t have to save for a bereavement flight and the really nice doctor of optometry said I needed to see an opthalmologist asap. I did, and I have very little drainage from inside my eyeballs, and if my pupils dilate too much apparently pressure could build up really quickly, damage my optic nerve, and my eyeballs could explode. Actually I made up that last part. But, anyway. there is a more than insignificant chance that I could experience sudden high eyeball pressure and lose some of my sight.
Writer. Sight. Hmmm. So I’m letting them drill teeny weeny holes in my irises with lasers on Tuesday. I was disheartened when I found out I have the type of glaucoma that medicinal marijuana doesn’t really help. I don’t smoke, but you know I came so close to actually being eligible for a legit prescription.
Just so I don’t give myself time to freak out about any of this… I’m doing NaBloPoMo. This is day three of posting every frigging day this month.
Oh, and just in case you are wondering. I voted early since my surgery is on Tuesday. I’m still trying to figure out how to do the often part of the “vote early and often” phrase that I grew up with in northern Indiana (near Chicago, the home of the saying.)
So how is your November stacking up?
The Veil Thinned and I Traveled Along Its Folds
The morning after Halloween I awoke from a night of dreams that bordered on the stark disquiet that is nightmare. I felt as though my spirit journeyed along the thinning veil between the worlds that separates the here and now from possible futures and pasts lived by all who came before us.
I started on this journey in a an apparently symbolic borrowed home of my two grand-twins, girls aged almost 4, but who slipped between baby, toddler and child status in the first part of the dream that was at a vacation home of their parents. My husband was knocked down by cattle who had pushed into a ramshackle, un-renovated part of the home. We spent a very long time attempting to get the cattle out of our house and taken away.
Animal rights activists were trying to get us to not turn them back to their owners. Livestock was everywhere, climbing stairs, and asking for attention and kindness as though they were companion animals. They were mindlessly, unknowingly trampling people and possessions in their attempts to masquerade as pets.
We, who had blossomed into a small community, had to protect our kids and grandkids. But we watched in horror as the room we were in changed to a train car traveling along an elevated rail over cattle cars destined for the slaughterhouse being loaded with the cattle we had evicted. I spoke to someone in the car saying that the area south of Amarillo was nothing but fields of death, slaughterhouses.
The next several scenes all took place in the freight car. More and more people including activists who had symbolic street theater gags in their mouths along with anonymous others crowded the car until there was a press of people standing. The car doors would open but there was no way out. At the doors was a press of more people being shoved into the cars. Guards took boxes and planks and squeezed us back until we were stacked on each other, knowing the people below were smothering. At one stop the people who were to enter the car were concentration camp internees, it was at this point that all individuality was lost and no one knew anyone else. Even the relationships that I cherished at the house, before the train, were dissolved into nothingness with neither memory, recognition, or concern.
At times guards entered and walked over the tops of us with packs of dogs trained to sniff out the remnants of the street theater protest props such as pink fabric gags or specific individuals for whom they were still searching.
I woke before any destination was reached, although one of the last stops I remember was the train station of a city known for producing beautiful hand blown glassware. and boxes of this beautiful product filled every in of the platform.
I had thought that my dreams from where Halloween Night bumped into All Souls Day and Dia de los Muertos might bring visits with departed family and friends, but instead I found metaphor and allegory.
Obviously, at least I think it is obvious, I am concerned about the future of the world and the un-sustainability of our consumption practices. I hear the activists and scientists telling us what will come to be, but I am on that train car along with everyone else and out future could be as bad as the Holocaust was to those in concentration camps. But the ray of hope I see in the dream is that we haven’t arrived, and that wonders like the City of Dresden, represented by the glassware, still exist.
There is still time. But we have to get off the tracks we are on and begin sustainable living right now.
After writing this post to record my dream I found out that yesterday, the day I awoke from the dream, was International Vegan Day. The coincidence, synchronicity, message from the ancestors, call it what you will, was quite powerful and I am now convinced that it signaled a need for turning away from meat-eating in order to keep us from sending ourselves into the mass extinction occurring on earth at this moment.
November Is For NaBloPoMo
It’s Alphabet Soup. It’s Acronym Stew. No, it is NaMoPoMo!
I’m celebrating making it through another October, often a very difficult month for me, by joining in this annual blog writing challenge by writing and posting on this blog every day in November. No. It doesn’t make sense to me either. And yes, this time of year is the beginning of Holiday Stress for most folks, me included. But, I’m joining this annual writing challenge with the funny name anyway. Why? Read on for a list of motivations behind my decision.
Why I Do NaBloPoMo
- Cohorts can support members by providing community. In this case – a writing community – and writers often tend toward the hermit communication model so anything that encourages community is good for those of us who would gladly move into a cave, as long as it had wifi.
- The best way to write more, is to write more. Duh! I know from experience that after completing a month of NaBloPoMo, posting several times a week becomes far easier. I’ve successfully navigated this challenge and improved my writing quality and quantity each time.
- I find that I always start many more posts than I finish. I save these starts as drafts and they serve as starters for posts during busy or dry spells for months after the challenge.
- This time of year is great for writing about some of my favorite topics that help to provide a bit of balance to the immense pressure to over-consume, over-spend, and generally run oneself ragged at this time of year.
- I also need the once a year reminder this challenge provides that posts do not have to be overly long or overly complicated.
So you can find out more about this challenge that actually goes on each month, although November is the original month for the challenge, by clicking on this post’s graphic near the top of the page.
A is for April and an Abject Attitude
I have not been able to figure out what is going on with me lately. I cannot write, or concentrate, or work. I start wonderful pieces of writing and then lose interest and decide to take a nap.
I got off track after successfully getting on track a few weeks ago when I deviated from being an infrastructure inducing dynamo to do taxes. Then I worked on some non-writing projects and got sidetracked. In the middle of March I began to have a gut ache, pain, and felt like my digestive system had stopped dead in its tracks. After three days of fairly intense pain I went to the doctor at Hubby’s insistence and then had to go for an MRI with contrast as well as have a full blood workup.
I was scared shitless for a bit as one brother died at age 55, younger than I am. A second brother died at age 59. I try to be in touch with my body and usually on top of what is going on with it. This blind-sided me.
I have been told that I have diverticulitis even though I had a colonoscopy a few years ago, after turning 50 just like the health guidelines suggest to do, and everything looked good. No need of a followup for 10 years. Damn. So I was given the classic treatment of Cipro and an another antibiotic that kills anaerobic bacteria.
The other thing they found was that my fatty liver that they told me had gotten better has not. My liver is enlarged. And over the course of being on the antibiotics a dull occasional pain in my mid-right back has gotten progressively worse.
So I’m seeing the doctor again.
I do not likemedical appointments. My mother exhibited behavior that had all the hallmarks of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Until I was 14 I played along with her and pretended to be ill. Actually being ill makes me depressed. I always think, deep down inside, that I am faking or exaggerating when I am ill, because of this early history.
Right now, I feel terrible, I am depressed, and am spending a lot of time blaming myself for becoming ill. But I am forcing myself to write again, every day, this month to get back in the saddleso to speak.
I am doing the A to Z Challenge for April and NaBloPoMo. I will conquer this abject attitude/health.