To Call Us Pigs Would Insult The Animal

Some days I come home from my walk with a bouquet of what is blooming in the woods and fields and a heart grateful for the purples, the yellows, the greens. I put the things in vases and set them where I will see them fifty times a day and smile every time.

Some days I come home with bags of candy wrappers, styrofoam plates and cups, glass bottles and aluminum cans. My hands reek of stale beer on those days and my heart is full of disgust. I wash my hands and think, My God. Aren't things bad enough? Why do we humans have to fuck up everything, leaving our hateful mark on every path we take? Are we so incredibly arrogant that we think we have the right to despoil any piece of woods, any place at all?

Some days I have no hope.
Some days I can not smile.

Our Black Holes of Despair

We are all born starving for air, hungry and hurt and looking for the nipple. That is the truth. And we breathe that first breath and take that first sip and set in motion a chain of events that never ends until we've breathed and sipped our last.

I've been thinking about this hunger lately and how it relates to that vast sense of emptiness that can open up inside us sometimes. I believe it's that sense of emptiness that drives us to do most of what we do on this earth, in this life. It is for me, anyway.

Some days the emptiness is just a small tickle and one that I can easily manage with a yogurt, say, or a nice walk and a good laugh with a friend.

Some days, though, there seems to be a black hole of darkness inside of me so huge that I can easily imagine falling inside of that which is inside of me, which of course can only be done metaphorically unless perhaps there is a real explanation in string theory, which I don't begin to understand but which seems to explain a lot of weird and magical stuff.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. It would be interesting if we all had a meter we wore on our chests that indicated how big the hole within us was at that particular moment. Sort of like a mood ring, only for existential despair. I think we'd be surprised to see just how empty a lot of people whom we may think of as normal and relatively well-adjusted really feel.

There's an awful lot of emptiness-filling attempts going on all around us all the time. We eat too much, we drink, we do drugs, we have sex, we look to God, we buy things, we paint and sculpt and write and get married and have babies and do all sorts of things we believe will fullfill us and all of that works for a little while and sometimes for a long time, but I don't think anything really works all the time. And don't tell me God does, either. If Mother Theresa could feel an emptiness where her God should have been for a great many years of her life, then damn! I know it won't work for me.

All I know is that if I hang on during the hard, crazy-feeling times, the emptiness seems to get less and there is more light and less darkness in my heart. That's one lesson I've learned from aging- that although when this melancholy is upon me I feel that it always has been and always will be, it hasn't and it won't.

I'll wake up one morning (and probably soon) and for no apparent reason, I'll feel okay about things. Maybe not ecstatic, but certainly okay.

And until then, I just have to accept the fact that I will not fall into anything unless I let myself. I remember a thing that Stephen Gaskin, the Big Daddy of the Farm Commune said once, which is that insanity was just his back yard and he'd wandered around there a few times but mostly he chose not to.

I always liked that. I feel like I've sat on my porch many a time and looked out at what might be a really scary place but I've always known that exploring that particular part of my yard isn't something I need to do.

Not yet, anyway. And I doubt I will because as vast and deep as my own personal emptiness feels sometimes, I know it's nothing but a thimble-full compared to some people's who can't help but jump into that back yard of their Jungle of Despair. I'll never get a gun and mow down people at a mall and I'll never take too many pills and hope for death, either.

It ain't that bad.

I'll just struggle along like most of us do and I'll probably never figure it out, but I do take comfort in the fact that there are great mysteries of life and that's all there is to it.
That's sort of slim comfort, but it'll do for now. It'll do.

And again, I've used a painting by Karen Davidson here and it's called Distressed Woman and I love it. I know just how that woman feels and isn't that what art is all about? Looking at something that someone else did and recognizing our own selves in it?
I think so.
Karen- you're an artist. Send me more pictures, please.

Dealing With Despair By Using Happy Thoughts

When I wake up in the morning there is a period of time when I'm in despair. This is just the way it is. Doesn't matter how beautiful the day, how sweet the life, my brain will be telling me that I'm a worthless, talentless being who has no business taking up space on the planet.
This is not a good thing and is best suffered in solitude. My husband knows by now to leave me alone until my brain does its daily adjustment and I come out of the deep well of sadness and self-loathing that I'm inevitably in upon awakening.
Bad chemicals. That's what I blame. Purely and simply, just bad chemicals and since I know what's going on, I can almost ignore the bad thoughts, although I do check my forehead in the mirror as I wash my face to made sure there's not a big, bright L engraved on it, because I certainly feel as if one had been placed there in my sleep.
I wonder how many other people go through this every day.
Right now quite a few of the bad thoughts and self-loathing have to do with Christmas. As in, I haven't even really started getting ready. My sweet yoga teacher is giving us weekly tips on how to de-stress during this holiday season when we're so busy and doing so much for others. Since I've not yet become busy and am certainly not doing anything for others, I feel incredibly guilty as we breathe and stretch and clear our minds. Of course, the day I can entirely clear my mind of guilt is the day Satan and Hitler are pelting each other with snowballs, but that's another story.
Anyway, I was thinking it would be a nice thing, a positive and possibly therapeutic thing for me if folks who stop by here would leave a little comment about the best Christmas present they ever got.
(Okay. I am totally stealing all the ideas but it's my blog and my idea and I do really want to know.)
I'll start off.
The best Christmas present I ever received was a used typewriter. I suppose this was back in the early sixties and the typewriter was one of those big, black heavy things that could crush a dwarf. I think it was an Underwood and my mother, who gave me this typewriter, had paid to have the machine (and it was most definitely a machine) refurbished and cleaned and it had one of those snazzy two-color tapes in it so that I could type in either red or black, which was pretty high-tech for those days. She also bought me a typing manual and I spent every spare moment I had for the next few months teaching myself to type with it.
fffffff, I would type.
Then hhhhhhh. My little fingers could barely depress those charm-like keys but I was diligent and did each lesson in its turn and you know what? I did eventually learn to type although I'm still a little shaky with the numbers. I guess I got burnt out by the time I reached that part of the book.
I don't know why my mother got me a typewriter and I don't know why I was so enchanted with it, but she did and I was and that was the beginning of something I'm still not over. These days I love my MacBook with all my heart. Maybe even as much as I loved that big, oily, iron writing machine, but the surprise of getting that typewriter was something I'll never forget. It was as if some magical force had urged my mother into buying me something I didn't know I wanted with all my heart.
Now. What's your story?
Give it to me, come on, I want it. I need it. This could be the very thing that brings a bit of Christmas cheer to this grinchy green old heart of mine.
I'm begging you. Tell me what made you happy. And when I wake up in the mornings, I'll think about those things instead of checking my forehead for the Loser Brand and we'll all be better off.
One note- if your story sounds something like But the best Christmas present I ever got was the feeling I had after we gave all our money and food to the homeless man who lived under the bridge, it's not going to make me feel any better.
But if that's your story, tell it if you must.
Thanks! And oh yeah, Merry....
You know.