Art – FibroM.E.-Awesome

Miami, Migraines, Diners, Doctors

Published on March 1, 2018March 1, 2018 by Mary Gelpi5 Comments

I am sitting at a booth in one of those themed diners in a shopping center, adjacent to the clinic where I saw the specialist on Monday and had what looked like hundreds of vials of blood taken today for more testing. I figure I should eat even though I’ve no appetite. I never trust a menu this long, so I play it safe and order the soup and salad, which is neither good or bad. I guess that’s what you’re really asking for, a meal to quickly forget.

mp,550x550,gloss,ffffff,t-3.3u2.jpg The music is too loud in here and I find myself strangely annoyed with the gimmicky decor. License plate style plaques fill every inch of wall space boasting phrases like “Stressed is Dessert spelled backwards!” and “Soup of the Day: Whiskey.” I stop. I just close my eyes a minute. Adjust. The problem is not the restaurant. It’s me and this body I have to animate—it doesn’t fit in the world in comfortable or easy ways. It’s like dropping a wild tiger in suburbia, except maybe the opposite. It’s like trying to build suburbia in the middle of a jungle, then complaining the tigers are noisy and sometimes scare the kids. No one else seems bothered by the music.

mp,550x550,gloss,ffffff,t-2.3u2.jpg — “Hey, you don’t belong here.”
“I might say the same thing about you.”

I don’t want to be this young and think like a curmudgeon. Better to let go. It’s because it’s 11:30 and I’m on day 9 of a migraine cycle and I’m wearing real pants. I had to get blood drawn and I don’t normally exist before noon. Mornings are just constantly, reliably painful and tough.

Everyone has days where life feels so tired, so repetitive, that you want to hit snooze and wake up under some alternate sky where there is no weight to carry. No gravity, no effort required to move. Where everyone looks each other in the eyes. We listen. We don’t say the words “Sorry” followed by the word “but…” or “if”. Our hearts resonate with each other, and our heavy bodies have shed like snake skin, like the useless, heavy weight they’d become. There is a lightness in every capacity.

Tolle says this alternate side of the sky I am referring to is possible here on this side. And I believe he is right. But it takes so much practice and learning and presence. Presence. How easy it is to walk into a cheap diner and complain about decor. ap,550x550,12x16,1,transparent,t.u2.png That kind of observation lacks creativity. Not to mention, it’s very counterproductive to complain about these things when you’re already feeling down. So I’ll tell you what I like about this costumed diner. All four booths in my vicinity are filled with at least parties of two people eating, and all of them are talking to one another. None of them have their phones out. A phenomenon! Particularly this couple across from me.

They are in their 60’s, and somehow it seems obvious they’ve known each other a long time. I could be wrong of course. They could be divorcees who met on ourtime.com and newly in love. But it’s not the sense I get. In my mind they’re in their Act III of their marriage with grandchildren they have pictures of on their phones to their friends at Bridge. I like that they haven’t run out of things to say or lost some kind of delight in the simple pleasure of each others laugh. They seem to laugh a lot, casually, throughout their light hearted conversation and this feels so good to watch. I always used to fear I’d marry a man and eventually he’d lose interest in me and I’d find his stories boring and then we’d be at a restaurant eating one day with nothing to say to one another. As though there was nothing new to discover about the other, or that we’d lose curiosity in the way each of us experienced the world.

But I know that only happens when we’ve decided we know a person completely and with total certainty. And if we’ve decided that, the issue is not the other person.”The human mind mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for truth…but it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. Reality is a unified whole. Thinking fragments it into pieces.” Tolle says a lot about the “thinking” mind, and that it’s very useful in our world. But it’s also “very limiting when it takes over your life completely. It’s only a small aspect of the consciousness you are.”

Sometimes I seek the daily, thoughtless things about a person with such aggressive interest I think I might be dumb. Their calendars, notebooks, what they keep in their cars. One of my favorite hobbies is to take apart a guys wallet, piece by piece. All the useless receipts he saves. The frequent customer cards. An old crumbly picture, maybe. Movie stubs. Concert stubs. Their license—are they smiling in the picture or does it look like a mug shot? What made the cut for making it into the billfold and what didn’t. All tiny stamps of a person and his non-sequitor, paper trail of places he’s been. You can have the same fun or more going through a woman’s’ purse. Many clues in there. But these are little traces so few people see. Instead we go to dinner and say “Uh huh and what do you do? Oh interesting, tell me more about your boss. What a jerk!” I think first dates should be silent a exchange of wallet for wallet, or purse for purse, or wallet for purse, whatever. You get the picture.

My last boyfriends wallet, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, was a basic brown leather wallet that seemed to old for him and contained some concert stubs, because he was a music guy and not a whole lot else because he had a straightforward way of being in the world. A wallet was a thing to hold money and his license. But maybe more memorable was the night we went to dinner and left Monty and his dog Gracie home. When we returned, his wallet that he’d left on the coffee table had been chewed. His license, a credit card, social security card, and a one dollar bill perfectly torn in half littered the living room floor. We both loyally defended our own, claiming that “100%, my dog would never do that.” I thought it was kind of funny—a mystery we’d never know the answer to. Maybe it was Monty (it wasn’t), telling me Run! This thing isn’t gonna work! Mayday! Owell. Fun while it lasted. I still have the half chewed dollar.

I could say that the two buzzing gnats flying around my side salad are concerning, but you can basically always reduce these impulses to complain or feel disturbed by something or “talk to the manager” to nothing, because when you start to break them down, they just don’t mean all that much. We forget that so much of our devoted focus, particularly when it’s negative, is essentially meaningless. I am one person, and I chose to eat at a diner where children under the age of 12 eat for free between noon and 3. There may as well be a sign that says FREE BUGS. This isn’t the RITZ. The meal costs $10 and the waitress is nice. If you’re always making noise about your tiny discontent, you just become a human gnat. We should ask ourselves what our questions or actions or statements are intended to do for five minutes before we go running to every manager. It’s so often just a thoughtless impulse. Gnats! We could just as easily forget about it and move on with the day.

I take an Uber home, and I find myself alone in the back of Ubers quite often. ‘Often’ is a relative term. I’m appreciating that the driver isn’t trying to engage in conversation. “It’s hot out!” “Yes, it is hot out! Also, I have a doggy!” I’ll tip him more for that.

Miami is a picturesque place, and I like the sidewalk traffic. Watching the world through the window feels so much better than TV–and no commercials. Bonus! I see a couple kiss while they wait at the crosswalk. Then they smile and she says something that makes them laugh. I love seeing people kiss. Creepy? Maybe. I just like that kissing exists in general. There’s traffic, which is another easy thing to complain about. Tolle says complaining is one of the ego’s favorite hobbies. (Also being right.) But I’m in a quiet car. All I have to do is sit here, one of a few things where I’m actually quite skilled. Many beautiful things pass us by at a stop and go pace. I try to imprint the sights on my brain to take home with me.

I try presence. Just being aware of all my senses. I am grateful to be out in the world at all, when so often I am indoors. I try to remember how lucky I am that I was able to come here. What a gift it is to see a doctor who understands, who listens and looks you in the eye, who can help me find answers. (Thank you Dr. Klimas!) That I have my brother and his beautiful family to stay with and help care for me. That it’s time together we wouldn’t have had were I well. Yes, I have a body that feels like a decomposing pumpkin at times. And I actually feel I may look like a decomposing pumpkin at times. (See video below) But so many moments to be grateful for. So many gifts. Count them. Keep counting. They add up faster the more awake you are.

Keep fighting. Last year was hard. I believe somewhere in my depths, this one will be better, no matter the directional trend my health takes. I know we’re getting close. I tip the Uber driver and leave feedback. “Thank you for the quiet.”

Health, Happiness, Counting

All awesome artwork by Eugenia Loli

*Bonus*: I’m on Day 9 of my migraine cycle! Here is a clip of yesterday morning. It was kind funny in that tragically comical way.

Looking Up

Published on December 15, 2017December 16, 2017 by Mary Gelpi2 Comments

If you’ve ever looked at that iconic photograph of earth sent back from space by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, chances are you may have felt very small. The things you do can seem insultingly unimportant, useless, or a total waste of energy—the effort, our pain, the whole point becoming lost in the incomprehensible hugeness of it all. In one snapshot is a glimpse of our existence within the context of an entire planet: billions of people.

1280px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17

There we are, floating, in orbit, rotating at some figure I could never pretend to compute or understand. A sphere of blue and green, dusted with blurs of white clouds we learned the names of in fourth grade. Cumulonimbus. Stratus. But it expands even further. A planet, within a galaxy, within a solar system, within a boundless universe for which we can only account for a relatively small portion. Why am I worried about the U2 album that came pre-programmed on my iPhone? I didn’t ask for that album Bono, I didn’t ask! But you look at our planet like that, and sometimes it helps spot spilled milk when we’re unable to discern it ourselves.

Snapshots just like this are every where in all types of forms– landscapes like the ocean, trees hundreds of years old, music that hits us somewhere deep or a night sky full of stars. They stir inside us some sacred moment demanding our attention. Attention beyond the five senses. These are the stirrings of Consciousness, I think. Or becoming aware of it. That divine desert in our depths, dormant and shy, but reliable like a sleeping dog, waiting on us to wake up and snap our fingers, let him lead the way. Always that calm sits in the background of our thoughts—that sturdy part that never leaves. The gap between breaths, but we forget. Last week I sensed it watching the wind rustle the leaves of the bamboo in our yard for I don’t know how long. I don’t get out a lot.

I know this is Consciousness I’m confronting, because a stillness envelops me, time melts like a clock in a Dahli painting, and the typical limits and boundaries fade. A noise that usually dominates the atmosphere diminishes to silence. I haven’t arrived or gotten anything, I’ve simply met the present moment and there the forms, my thoughts and the sounds seem to run out of ink. A space is required for Consciousness to awaken, but it’s usually drowned out by the incessant noise of our lives. Opinions and drama and auto-pilot tasks and Snapchat. Trump. Chatter. Twitter!

We are bombarded by distraction, no doubt, and there will never be a shortage to keep us looking the other way. Because consciousness doesn’t operate according to the limits of space or time, we are glimpsing eternity in that instance. A non-quantity! It’s no wonder we can’t hold the reality of this perspective in the forefront of our minds for very long. It almost operates on a separate plain. Size without a producable sum total– time beyond a unit of measurement: this is not how we learned to understand the world. It’s like trying to remember what words looked like before we learned to read. Then going out in the world and being told not to interpret the thousands of messages we’re assaulted by. Even Monty knows this is basically impossible. It will take some time to unlearn the default.

So we can only live in that space for so long before it vanishes out from under us, like a dream that dissipates as we slowly awake. The sky then fades back to a ceiling, a black ceiling with white dots. The ocean returns to an aquatic location where we swim and fish and take family pictures at sunset. And why not? Sunset by the ocean is the perfect backdrop for photos.

This Consciousness is hard to reconcile with the world we live in though, because it veritably negates the way we’ve been taught to perceive the world for centuries. At the same time it also perfectly encapsulates Tolle’s explanation of our life here, which he emphasizes is not according to time, but to being awake in the now–the closest thing to time that actually exists. The Eternal Moment, he calls it, which works out in every scenario where you try and deconstruct it. I’ve tried. Still, when you’re down here in the dirt, when you’re in pain, it seems far too simple a way for things to operate.

So when the window opens, we can expect it to be small, but we should hold on as long as we can. I know that’s where a much more permanent and truthful dimension in us lies, it just hardly gets time out of the box. So I try not to be afraid of the quiet, of being alone, of having nothing “to do”. In these uncommon, custom moments, forces larger than us might be at work, awakening something that the whole world, not just us, is in great need of.

Most nights, I walk home from my parents house with Monty. They lock the door behind me and sometimes my mom yells Watch for snakes! Marc flips the switch and the Christmas lights in our trees illuminate a path to my house, a whole 15 steps away. Monty bolts off feigning a hunt of a squirrel or raccoon or some other Southern vermin. Midway between our houses is a small wooden path over the ditch that connects their yard to my driveway. Every time I reach that bridge, I stop, almost reflexively. I look up. Every time.

Sometimes I’m holding a laundry basket full of clean laundry with my head pointed upward at the sky and mouth agape like an idiot. I often don’t even remember making the decision to stop or look up, I just find myself with my head directed that way. For whatever reason I think, I’ll remember this when I’m older. I see these constellations of stars and whatever shape the moon takes and if I’m lucky, rarely, a shooting star. I remember then too: the sky is not a ceiling. The sky is not a ceiling. Then I try to reconcile that truth without my mind exploding, and consider that what I’m looking at goes on. Then I try to humbly just appreciate the beauty of this magnanimous thing and think think how I have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m looking at.

I just know I’m mesmerized by what I see and some part of me is drawn to look there, every night. I wonder a hundred things. A part of me thinks maybe it’s the soul making a nod toward its source. The same way we’re drawn to look out at the ocean or up at trees the height of sky scrapers. Maybe it’s just a bunch of burning gas with no intrinsic meaning and this is a crap romanticists idea of the cosmos. But that notion feels too simple when held up to the backdrop of the universe’s complexity. Just like staring out at the ocean. These stars, this water: all here before us. All to go on after we’re gone.

I think when we capture these hiccups in time, it’s not meant meant to make us feel small or meaningless; That none of this matters. But I do think it helps us remember that our time here is temporary. We don’t exist on earth forever, which the human being practically takes as an insult. How dare there comes a point when I die! So we don’t talk about it, fine. We don’t have to talk about it. But we have to deflect the thought that just because we live in a boundless world with a kazillion people that we’re somehow replaceable and we don’t play a very needed and unique part in the production. It takes a trust that’s very hard to reach for, let alone find. I don’t know what the answer is, but I can assume one is that we’re not meant to torture ourselves over not knowing it. Maybe living with the mystery while trusting our path is answer enough, for now.

I’ve been writing about this for a while because one, my brain has run the speed of sap. And two, I’ve been sick every day this week and stuck in a half conscious state in bed. The last 4 months haven’t been much better besides an occasional ‘OK’ day. I realize compared to some of my sick counterparts, thats nothing. But still, it’s hard. It’s like you’re tethered to the world, and you slowly start to drift outward, losing your connection to people, your passions, a reason that makes sense. The further away you float, the more convinced you become that cutting the chord would be no big deal. That couldn’t be further from the truth, and I don’t say that flippantly. I say it as a testament to the power of the mind and our thoughts. They can actually make us believe we don’t matter, which is a dangerously powerful indictment that can be incredibly hard to fight off. I’ve been there, and I’ve had people help dig me out of the hole. I’ve been lucky, and I know that.

During trying times like this when my body feels like it fails me repeatedly, I’ve lost my belief that there is worth in a life spent sick this way. But that stillness, that other plain that awakens under night skies or oceans that you can’t see the edge of, it is so much more powerful if we only give it space to grow. Even just recalling that I’ve felt it before can help me remember that these periods in the dark will be “burned up by the light of consciousness” (Tolle), as they have before. I am still learning. Part of that lesson is to accept the mystery of pain, to even yell at the sky about it if that’s what has to happen, but to keep going, nonetheless. Even if you don’t trust where you are, keep going. At least allow yourself the relief of eventually finding a place you do trust. Like Churchill said, If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Life is working in pieces, one day at a time, like always. It doesn’t have to make sense in order for us to be happy. I wish it would– I feel violently curious for answers sometimes, knowing good and well that no answer will bring back the things I’ve lost. But here we are, who we are, with the hand we’ve been dealt. It matters now how we play our hand in the game. With carefulness, attention, and reverence that you’ve got a hand at the table at all. Be still, make space. And look up once in a while.

I’m talking to myself again. It doesn’t matter. I still I believe there are answers everywhere. We don’t have to know them to awaken the space where they might be easier to find.

Health, Happiness, Looking Up

Brain Not Work So Good

Published on July 6, 2016July 8, 2016 by Mary Gelpi5 Comments

I feel this modern artwork both describes what it feels like in my brain recently and also represents the clustershit that my writing has been. At least spaghetti brain can look pretty. The writing is a mess.

I say the as if it’s someone else’s. My writing. Me. I’m doing that thing where I start out simple, on course, paving a promising path toward something that makes me think but that I can also wrap up and understand in the end. There’s never a lull for words or ideas. They pour out–I have a lot of time to think them up. When I’m not writing them in my notebook or typing them on my phone I’m usually just thinking of nice sentences in my head. I’m mind-writing. Just watching sentences fall into place mentally, perfectly, and I actually feel relief when these sentences are formed. The kind of relief you feel when you get in your car the first time after you’ve cleaned it, and it was dirty for a long time before. It happened on the way home from the pharmacy yesterday. Sadly, I remember the relief more than the sentences or ideas. I tell myself I’ll remember this later, but I hardly ever do. On rare and momentous occasions, if I just sit down and start to work it will pop out like a wine cork. Ah! There it is. But I hesitate to think how much has gone un written because I wasn’t near a pen or a computer, or that I actually was but just didn’t put the effort into getting it down. Owell. That’s kind of a self-important thought. And, I guess we have to assume the work we never made, lost now somewhere between sleep and consciousness, was probably crap.

The words pour out not because I’m FULL of words and ideas, but because I have no requirements. Few expectations, no deadlines. No assigned topics. And no financial incentive. It’s just a hobby that I treat like a job. Except that I’d be fired by now and there’s no 401K. Maybe I have too much freedom, so the meandering and circling is just too easy to do. I struggle because it starts off clean, on track with a promising topic and flows naturally in one direction. Then somehow it turns into the literary version of a flying cockroach, darting around clumsily in different directions and you don’t know where it’s gonna land next and you know when it gets killed it will make a crunchy sound. Sorry scratch the last part. I don’t know what it is. I like the words and concepts emerging,they’re just not always in order. Or they’re crap.

sketch-spot-1-time-out-kids — Me Writing Crap

I know this will sound incredulous to some, but when I’m in a crash my brain starts to stutter and cloud way more than usual. In the past I’ve mostly been able to avoid the cognitive effects at least when it came to my writing. But I’ve been working on this post since Thursday. I know I know, easy to blame shortcomings on the illness. But the only reason I feel it is effecting me this time is because that reading stutter returned on Friday too, having to reread sentences over and over, and then just not remembering an entire page and having to start over. Luckily I rested mostly on the couch while Monty quivered near me at the sound of America’s birth, and two friends brought me food! It was nice. Yesterday I was more clear headed reading wise, and able to finish my latest read, The Invention of Wings, which was really great. There’s a lot of good little nuggets in there. And I was surprised and inspired to learn in the authors note, the two main characters were real–born into money and a large plantation in South Carolina around 1830. They would eventually became devout abolitionists and publicly denounce slavery and fight for its end, sharing the cruelty they’d witnessed with their families own slaves publicly, and the world didn’t quite know what to do with them. I enjoy characters like that. It was enthralling and I recommend it. I need a book club.I just feel like I’d never show up after the first meeting. Anyway my mom says she’ll read it so that’s cool.

Where were we? My writing going in circles, right. I wrote for three hours on Thursday and three hours on Friday and collapsed like a whale on to my couch after both “sessions” and sortof spent the weekend that way. Yesterday when I revisited the words, I realized I’d written over 4,000 of them, and some made sense and others were in the wrong places and would just require a re-organization of things. But I don’t think my brain can handle it right now. I’m leaning towards spaghetti brain. Noooo. Here, I’ll find another pretty picture.

parsonspaintingsmall — Nice, no? That Jaime Rovenstein is really good at creating non-crap. Check out more on her website.

Also, I think this is why agents exist. Why good writers have agents. Proofreading! There’s a word I haven’t heard since college. Maybe that’s what this blog is, one long proof-reading session and one day it will turn into something else that actually pays dollars and cents and I can get an agent or whatever. Or maybe I just need a small person to stand beside me and ring a bell when I’ve written and rambled more than 10 minutes. Now I’m doing that thing where I write about writing. So dumb. I should just write and post. I’m too cautious. I just want it right and I know when it’s not. DING, the bell rings.

I’m going to condense and summarize the absurd amount of words resting on a white page behind this screen. Because I Believe in Brevity!! That sounds like something..a campaign slogan? Specificity is important too. I accomplished neither, so I’m just going to sum it all up. OK. It starts with this sentence.

“I think the time for a typewriter has come.”

nyt-the-upshot-lisk-1050pxe589afe69cac-1 — How fun is this dudes art? Check him out.

Simple enough right? Then it drops off the edge. I find myself wondering if technology is aiding or prohibiting these things–writing, art, creativity and whatnot. Which somehow brings up the woes of scanning Facebook in the middle of the afternoon, and what those photos are actually capturing. I ask what it is about these photos that leaves me and others sad and yearning as we keep scrolling. (Authenticity, I think is the answer) Then I compare Facebook photos with those JC Penny photos a lot of us took in the 90’s, (dudes, the hair) and explore physical momentos verses digital ones. Is my generation more or less authentic than the last one? Next I defend Millenials after continual insistence and wagging of the finger I encounter that says Millenials are all lazy, don’t know the value of hard work, we were given too much, have no accountability, and don’t appreciate what we have. This article is a great example which went viral a while ago and a few people posted it on Facebook like “Oh my God, so true.” Uhh, agree to disagree I guess. I agree that your point is false. Then, I deliver a personal conviction that it may not look like it, but I think as humans we actually are progressing, despite a lot of people my parents age saying the world is going to hell in a handbasket. I wonder if their parents said that too. And their parents parents. The fact is we’re still living among the good and evil that has always existed, which leads me to an exploration of that provocatively awesome question David Foster Wallace asked, which is, If we have all the things our parents never had and more, why aren’t we happy?

Let that simmer.

Then I wonder if is this a theme that has repeated itself throughout every generation. Always thinking the next one would surely have it easier. Each one working hard so the generations after them might have what they never had, and do things they never did, and avoid the hardships that they had to endure. Maybe it’s hard to see that the world is still what it is, and human beings are still who they are, imperfect, after you’ve worked so hard to make it better. Especially if you worked your whole life to do it.

Maybe our notion of happy is off. Or maybe it’s not about happiness. It’s moving forward.

Then the neighbors fireworks got really loud and Monty was quivering below the desk and the writing turned weirdly patriotic. Fast forward from notions of happy and the formulas that work or don’t work, and also the American Dream. Achieving what we’ve historically called the American Dream does not mean achieving happiness. It means achievement. The happiness part is on us. The Dream is living in a country where we’re free to pursue that happiness pretty much any way we want. And I know it’s cheesy, but when you compare this country and our opportunities and freedoms compared to so many other places, we are danged lucky to be born into this one, with autonomy, opportunity and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome! Kidding. I think I have a very good life. I think a lot of people have very good lives and don’t even see it. Anyway this is the part of America that I’ll always be grateful for and humbled by, knowing the generations before me and the blood and sweat and tears that went into creating it, and I guess our job is to make their work and sacrifices worth it. I’m trying! I can’t say whether we’re a happier generation, I don’t know. But I think maybe the more important question is, Are we a more conscious generation? And to that I say, yes.

Now lets go blow stuff up.

Health, Happiness, Happy 6th of July

This Is Still a Life

Published on December 21, 2015December 22, 2015 by Mary Gelpi5 Comments

Oh hi world, I didn’t see you there. I haven’t seen you in weeks in fact! I’ve been in involuntary hibernation since Thanksgiving. Pardon me, I was knocked out.

This crash has been intense and I’ve been writing my way through like always, trying to understand it better. But this time I tried much harder to accept and approach it without the need to fix or change it. Without “fighting back.” I want to be clear that I’m not writing to answer the question of Why me? I’m not in that stage anymore. So I’ve tried to create a surrendered space to talk about it, where it’s regarded as part of the plan, where there’s no sense of unfairness or despair about it. It’s simply a fleeting, physical state that I’m meant to endure and examine closely among probably many other physical states I might encounter in my lifetime. I’ve tried to adjust my whole response to it, which has been more of a lack of response, or reaction, and more objective observation. Life between stimulus and response. Being sick and being OK with it, not attaching the personal, the story, the woe-is-me. I applied this approach to both my writing and my perception of the illness in real time, which has been interesting and challenging and often extremely helpful.

But I’ve sort of been a tortured artist with the writing–I keep editing and condensing and re-writing. I feel the angst that it’s never quite right, that there’s a concept just on the edge of being conveyed, like a mathematical equation I’m on the verge of solving. So I’ve once again ended up with 7000 words scattered across 3 notebooks, my iPhone, my computer, and one business card. Most of it has been exploring the same topic at different depths, and while some of it is good, I realized it’s just not meant for this space right now. Not to mention, my brain feels inside out lately–I’m a little fuzzy cognitively and I can’t gauge it. I’m either buzzing or stunted. But I’ve continued trying to make my words achieve what I feel inside and what I want to convey, staying very conscious about my intentions, which are that I don’t just want to write about being sick and my experiences simply because they’re true and they happened. I don’t want to start and stop at pain. I’m well aware of the danger in that. So I’ve been tinkering with these concepts, some of them seemingly contradictory: diving in deep into the experience where I can feel it completely, while also regarding it from a distance where I can see it inside of a larger context–which keeps the illness right-sized. I can recognize it as a part, and not a whole. I’ve gotten pretty close to finishing it, I think. But it’s been arduous and probably redundant and my mind is still spinning, even as I write this now.

Anyway, I’m going to start from scratch today and try to relax about the outcome. A good friend said not to worry about lengthiness, just to keep writing and trust that if people don’t want to read it, they won’t. That’s so true, duh. Thank you friend, I’m just going to write some broad things out, and whether good or bad, hopefully open up some space in mind for some fun topics, like my exploration of Hallmark and Lifetime Made-For-TV Holiday movies, and also a note about my 12-foot real Christmas tree that refuses to drink water. But it lives on!! Tiny miracles.

My health was already on pretty shaky ground leading up to the Holiday. Thanksgiving Day was great, ate good food and had some fun reunions with old friends, but it was long and cumbersome. I could feel myself subtly hitting physical limits along the way, but I pushed on anyway. (I include the socializing that happens as part of the exertional strain, even though it’s enjoyable, it always costs me something physically the next day.) It was a Holiday after all, and I could sleep it off tomorrow, I thought. Unfortunately, I was flattened–handed over fully to the illness overnight while I slept. I woke up to the dreary and unfamiliar light of 3:30 pm pouring into my room on Friday. It disoriented me further as I felt an overwhelming weakness blanketing every part of my body, down to my fingertips. I laid there an hour before making a move, and once I did I felt keenly the severity of my condition. Moving was not easy and wouldn’t be for a while. I knew this wouldn’t be something that I could sleep off in a day or two. Shit.

Since then, I’ve been on a roller coaster of physical states, mostly at the mercy of this crash, and life here at the farm has been chaos. For a few weeks I’ve been enduring a symptom I find the hardest to cope with–bone crushing weakness. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, this one challenges me way more than the others. It leaves me the most powerless. There’s nothing to do for this symptom. When it has you, it has you. Its’ demands come in this perverted form of requiring that you do nothing–which is basically the reverse of our instinct in response to a ‘problem.’ It requires that you lay still, it means you’ll need a lot of extra help for things you’d normally do yourself and never think twice about. It means playing the waiting game and not knowing how long you’ll play it, without allowing impatience or succumbing to anger or despair while living through the thick of it. (Those reactions only makes me weaker.) There aren’t pills for weakness like this, not exercise regimens or quick fix solutions. There’s a lot of being stationary, quiet, often remaining in one place or one room for a solid chunk of time. Sometimes it’s a messy room, and you have to let that go. You have to let the dishes go. Truthfully, the whole thing is a crap ton of letting go. You have to achieve cleanliness mentally, because there ain’t no way you can vacuum right now. It means putting off the long list of things you’d thought you’d do, and finding ways to achieve a surrendered state of mind despite the external world around you appearing to unravel at nearly every seam. It touches everything, seeps into every corner, means nearly anything that isn’t necessary in the moment must be put on hold or go in the ‘burn pile’. You have to find a way to remember that despite all the can’ts and don’ts and no’s, somehow you still have everything you need in the moment you think to ask.

The only times I get overwhelmed is when I try to conceive everything at once, or I think of the future, as proximal as the one five minutes away. And the root of this is fear mostly, fear of ways the illness will hinder the things I have to do. Yet the future always comes and I always survive it, the essential is always achieved one way or the other. The non-essentials fade and soon you hardly notice they’re gone. When I stay extremely mindful of right now, tending to exactly and only the task right in front of me, I truly feel fine. I feel positive and at ease instead of buried, powerless. I think, all I have to do is drink this glass of water. I don’t even have to consider what will come after. It will come and go despite my concern. That’s where my navigation of this crash has felt like a small miracle. Maybe for the first time, my spirit has succeeded and carried me through the really difficult times. I’ve often been able to observe what’s happening to me at a distance, without becoming crushed by what I see. Or angry at how I feel. I feel really crappy, really weak, and so I find a good reason to be really weak today. They exist! They just require an adjusted perspective. In this way I’ve had the crash more than it has had me, and that has made a huge difference.

To whom or what do I owe this miraculous capability? Well for one thing, my mom. I should mention it’s not just my spirit that’s carried me, because it’s my mom who has physically carried me. She has tended to my needs when I’ve been incapable. Not to mention that she has a prayer chain halfway around the world dedicated my wellbeing. Just knowing so many people have dedicated even a moment toward healing intentions and thoughts for me is both humbling and energizing. It makes me feel hopeful, and that hope gives way to optimism, grace, surrender..they’re all there, and this situation constantly brings to light the choice I have in how I’m going to receive my circumstances. Whether or not I will accept and recognize all the treasures that lie beneath the hard stuff on the surface.

I believe there are always incredible gifts waiting at the heart of our struggles–and this time I was able to find them at clutch times. They don’t come from me, but somewhere else more eternal. I suppose the gifts materialize when we open ourselves enough to receive them– to the vulnerability that comes with accepting help in the first place. Our silly human egos could easily interpret the reality as I’m not enough. I should be able to do this alone. Blah blah blah. But to simply acknowledge the truth that yeah, I could really use some help right now if I’m able to emerge through this in one piece, the disappointment of need or felt inadequacy melts and grows into a ginormous humbling gratitude in acknowledging that I have help at all. What a reassuring reminder to know that I don’t have to do this alone. So why would I? I have help! It’s sortof like staying in a miserable marriage for 20 years all so you can say with pride that you’ve been married for 20 years. It may momentarily impress people, but you’re the one who has to share a life and go to bed every night with a person you may not even love or like! Sometimes we go after things because we like the sound of them, or the image they create. But the real meat of life is on the inside, in the everydayness of how we live. Not a 20 year anniversary, but how you love and treat someone through the mundane parts of life together. Talking about dentist appointments or discussing an article in the newspaper–how did you speak to one another? Not that you beat or survived illness, but how you treated it day to day and through the challenging times, how you treated those around you, and what you made out of your experience. Make it count? Or just get through it so it you could quickly forget and attach to something else. I don’t know. I’m rambling again.

The realization of some of these things makes me smile and cry at the same time. I am so encouraged and fulfilled by all the love and help I’ve received, and it’s come in so many different forms, all of them special. I’ve had incredibly healing and inspiring conversations with people I’m very close to, and each one of those talks builds me up higher than before. What a hushed relief surrender is–and a gateway emotion at that. It opens the door to a surge of mindfulness that illuminates grace, friendship, love, thankfulness, all the good in my life that I’m blinded to when I’m distracted fighting something I most likely can’t control.

It’s difficult to articulate, but sometimes I zoom out from my life, like a camera zooming out into space with earth at the center, becoming smaller and smaller. When I do, lately I see a small figurine of myself living inside the palm of two big porcelain hands cupped together, like that of a statue. I see that I’m being held, and in the image, I feel watched over and protected, both from a far off place and a space deep inside. What an amazing treasure it is, to reach out your hands in a time of real need, and to have someone/something grasp them on the other end. For the most part, it’s my moms hands which have reached back. It’s she who provides. Her help, love, and attentiveness is immeasurable. As equally as my spirit, she has done the labor of care that being sick this way requires. And it’s not an easy job, though she’d never let you know that.

No doubt this has been painful and overwhelming for her. She has said that seeing her child in pain is far worse than having it herself. I’m very aware of this, and it’s even more reason that I feel the need to voice out loud what has been burning true through all of this– That it’s all OK. I am OK. I’ve felt strangely at peace through the tough stuff, and I know it’s on account of her and other loved ones in my life who’ve given so much of themselves just to try and lighten the burden. I am continuously strengthened by these acts. I want to assure her, because I feel it in my weak little bones, that this is all leading up to somewhere great. I’m certain that I am just where I am supposed to be. I don’t feel like any of this is random or cruel, but that it’s the work I am meant to do right now, and I accept it with fullness and eagerness. I know there is greater reason and payoff that we can’t see yet. But knowing it’s there waiting helps to greet all these “stresses” with an assured openness. Getting there requires work, but it’s work that I’m capable of; important work that doesn’t require a physically fit body in order to happen. It will be beyond worthwhile, if we can only get through this moment. Then the next one and the next one.

And the good news is we can! I can, I have. And I will continue to. Her enormous and powerful love has helped put my inner self on a plain where I am capable of moving forward and growing from this. For that I owe her…well, everything. But I know the only payment she would want is the certainty that I’m not only OK, but that I’m happy and that I haven’t forgotten the novelty of what it is to be alive. And if you’re reading mom, I haven’t. I experienced incredible moments, inspirtations, and laughter, often alone with Monty in my messy living room! This is it right now, and I’ve found immense joy in it anyway. Like you said, This is a life, too.

I know this doesn’t solve the many problems we have right now. There are so many other things that haven’t gotten the attention they need, important tasks that had to go un-done, financial burdens that we have to figure out. And most of this is on account of this all-encompassing illness that touches everyone around me, especially her. But I do feel that soon things will change for the better, that we’ll get help where we need it, we’ll complete everything that’s gone undone. I know one day we will smile with relief at the memory of trying, chaotic times like these, where everything was falling apart. And yet I know these are what will become the foundation for some amazing things to come. When they do, incredible things are going to start happening. I can feel it!

For now though, a breath. A glass of water. Rest. Feed the dog. Rest. Send a text. Pills. A breath. Rest. Small tiny moments. One foot in front of the other. I feel really weak today and I can’t do a lot physically, so I’m going to find a good reason to be weak today. Writing, reading, listening compassionately to someone. Photographing my dog because I love him so much I smile just watching him sleep. So many amazing things require so little of us physically. Navigating each moment with quiet consciousness, I know not that everything will be OK, but that it is OK now. And I revel at the momentary freedom in that. I’m grateful just to glimpse such a powerful truth. Today is heavy and rainy outside, there are dishes in my sink and I’m too weak to do them. But I’m listening to Christmas music, I’m admiring my ridiculously huge Christmas tree and the soft nostalgic light it casts on my living room. And I’m reassuring Monty who is staying unnaturally close to me (following me into the bathroom and squeezing between the toilet and the wall) because it’s thundering outside and for him this equals imminent threat of death. This is my life today, and many days, and I’m living anyway! I’m enjoying it. I like the rain. I like quiet days. I also like singing obnoxiously loud to Mariah Carry Christmas songs. Monty and I, we’re fine over here. A sick life, but still a life. Regardless of physical outcomes, All will be well. But even better, all is well now.

Thank you, all of you, who have kept my spirit so alive! What all of you have contributed in your own small ways matter immensely to me. I feel extremely connected to the world and am humbled by the love I’ve received. I’m excited for the ways I plan to pay it forward.

Health, Happiness, and This Life, Too.

I Have a Time Machine

Published on September 18, 2015September 19, 2015 by Mary Gelpi2 Comments

Here’s a poem I really like. It’s by Brenda Shaughness.

I Have a Time Machine

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future
at a rate of one second per second,

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant
committees and even to me.

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next
moment and to the next.

Thing is, I can’t turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—
well, not zipping—And if I try

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,
I’ll fall into space, unconscious,

then desiccated! And I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of that.
So I stay inside.

There’s a window, though. It shows the past.
It’s like a television or fish tank

but it’s never live, it’s always over. The fish swim
in backward circles.

Sometimes it’s like a rearview mirror, another chance
to see what I’m leaving behind,

and sometimes like blackout, all that time
wasted sleeping.

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting
to be found charming.

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down
so I can smoke.

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me
because the explosion

of some dark star all the way back struck hard
at mother’s mother’s mother.

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.
I thought I’d find myself

an old woman by now, travelling so light in time.
But I haven’t gotten far at all.

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like;
the past is so horribly fast.

Pretty great no? It’s funny how some poems feel like they were written just for us, as if the author knew exactly where we’d find it and what it would do to us, hitting us in the gut in a coffee shop! Or heart. Our insides somewhere. I love this part of poetry. How fast it is. How in just a minute or two you can cosmically connect with a total stranger, dead or alive, and feel more seen or heard than you have by actual people. That’s powerful stuff!

I’ve recently been reading Anne Sexton–her history and her poems–and both are intense and curious and heartbreaking, but deeply resonant and I’m eager to read more. I plan to order someones cheap, used copy off of Amazon, and hopefully I’ll find parts that are underlined or circled with little notes in the margin. This is one of my favorite perks of reading (used) tangible books as opposed to electronic, kindle types; the human mark on the pages. They’re like little visceral clues of other life, but exceptionally personal. More confidential than say, finding someones grocery list, although there are treasures to find in that too. Maybe I am just an alien from another planet seeking signs of life and getting way too caught up in casual life leftovers. But somehow I feel less alone when I see a persons scribbles to the side of a page. Their unique handwriting next to that flat text against the page– It heightens the effects of the words. It brings the whole thing to life. It always makes me think that someone else sat alone somewhere, reading these same words and they were compelled enough to write themselves. Maybe it was there way of writing back, hoping someone somewhere along the way would read what they wrote and feel something. I don’t know, but there’s just something…nice, about that. Anyway, I think I will start with The Awful Rowing Towards God. Or maybe Live or Die and go from there. Did you know that Anne Sexton had two sisters, and one was named Elizabeth Jane, and the other one was named Blanche Dingley? BLANCHE DINGLEY?! I wonder if Elizabeth Jane gave Dingley shit about that.

Health, Happiness, and Poetry. Pure Poetry.

Haikus From A Crash

Published on July 30, 2015July 31, 2015 by Mary Gelpi4 Comments

Spent Saturday night
Forgetting. Acting my age.
I’m young, I can dance.

For four nights, five days,
Never left my best friends bed.
(Hospitality.)

This tin-can music
On hold with the pharmacist
Tries to get me down.

Robot voice thanks me,
Your call is importan–Click.
Avoid urge to die.

Doc: Where is the pain?
Head, Muscles, Joints, Skin. Constant.
Doc: Are you depressed?

Congratulations!
Didn’t go to med school but,
I’m my own doctor.

The universe yawns-
Striving for life I don’t have,
I’ve become Facebook.

I cried when the maid
Killed the spider in my room.
Alone, things get weird.

Can’t forget him now–
Broke up just in time to find
Ringworm on my thigh.

A measure of will:
No one needs you anymore
Do you feel alive?

Monty at my side
Asks for nothing the whole day
Meet visceral love.

Tail wags in his sleep,
Watch his belly rise and fall
Love, you make me weep.

If Haiku rules were
Seven-Five-Seven instead,
Would I still be sick?

Bzzz. Thud. Bzzz thud bzzzz
Angry bee against the door
None of us get out.

Sad signing the forms
Which say I’m incapable.
BUT IM SEXY YALL!!!

Day 6, I’m alive.
Under water asking if
Dancing was worth it.

I should know better,
But I remember dancing,
Don’t remember price.

Health, Happiness, and Haikus.

*Shout out to Newman for haiku inspirations and continued decency in a perverted world.*

A Thousand Reasons Not To

Published on September 24, 2014September 26, 2014 by Mary Gelpi7 Comments

This summer I enrolled in a creative non-fiction class at Loyola in New Orleans. The class was a workshop style and the 12 of us made for quite the diverse group. We varied considerably in age, sex, race and background. Together we could have easily graced the cover of a brochure for a city’s Parks Department or a Volunteer program of some sort. But we all wanted the same thing– to write, and for two months that’s what we did. Our teacher was a classic local New Orleanian who was an active writer in the city and taught in the MFA program. He always wore short sleeved Hawaiin shirts and had a pleasantly laid back approach to teaching. After the first class nerves and politeness wore off, we submerged into a chemistry all our own.

Here's a few of us in an elevator selfie I made us take. — Here’s a few of us crammed in an elevator selfie I made us take. It was late.

We spent the summer writing and reading and critiquing each others work. I knew there was a lot to learn in our short time together, but I loved more how enjoyable and interesting our sessions were. We all shared this passion, but it was more our willingness to show up every week, to put things out there we weren’t always comfortable with, and to give and receive critcism with honesty and humility. Because of our many differences, we had very engaged discussions, and it was so refreshing to hear the voices and opinions of people who were so different than me. It sounds cheesy, but having that diversity made such a difference. When I reflect on my college classes it strikes me how homogenous they were. I was mostly surrounded by people who looked the same as me and were after the same things. This was different. Better, I think. I remember after the first class feeling so grateful that I signed up and went for it. I noticed it advertised on a coffee shop wall. So often I feel an interest for an “extracurricular” like that and tell myself one day, but I never follow through. I was glad I did this time.

The truth is that “One Day” is always “Today” right? That’s probably a bumper sticker somewhere, I hope. But there really isn’t any other day than this one, which is why one day hardly ever comes. It’s already here!

At the end of our last day of class, someone asked our teacher if he had any final advice for us before we all parted ways. He thought for a moment and then gave a subdued, thoughtful response. “Everyone is always asking, ‘When can I call myself a writer?’ or ‘What makes someone a writer or not?’ It seems so obvious, but the simple truth is that a writer is anyone who actually just sits down and takes the time to write. Who works away at his desk and grinds it out, again and again and again. It really is about just making yourself write, day after day, which is very hard to do.” I remember thinking how simple but powerful an answer that was. So many people in the community, including me, ask that question, and so few people actually commit to the time and vulnerability and work it takes to create meaningful and honest writing. I think sometimes the idea of things is more appealing than the reality, which is always far less romantic.

I’ve been reflecting on his answer more recently as I’ve committed myself to a writing project that constantly challenges me. It boggles my mind that each morning when I sit down at the computer, I feel the same fear that I felt yesterday. I feel an uncertainty that’s totally unnerving. It makes me see and think of a thousand other things to do, besides writing my inside out. I see dust and think that I should dust. I realize a cluttered desk is no place to write so I clean that out first. I see paper and think I’ll make a list of other things to do, then cross each one off, then sit down and get to work. I check my email just to make sure there aren’t other things I could or should be doing. God forbid I enter the world of Facebook or Twitter or the black hole of the webosphere, never to be seen again. It’s crazy how much time I spend doing other things, with a fantasy in mind that once they’re complete, then I can write. It’s all a facade. It’s another One Day. There’s no perfect place to write, no ideal time, and no shortage of other things to do instead. I thought that once I did this long enough, I’d just wake up and start typing until nighttime and then do it again the next day. That I would overcome the fear once and for all. Not so.

Every day I feel a resistance to do the thing I love and deeply believe in. It’s strange and challenging and completely frustrating. It sounds like such a psychological cliche, but apparently this is a common defense mechanism that most people confront. If you don’t actually try and put stuff out there, you don’t run the risk of failure. Or rejection. In effect it’s just safer not to try. So we become skilled at finding ways not to. But it’s also boring and cowardly to give into it so I try and fight it all the time. Sometimes the fear wins and I don’t try that day. I alphabetize my medicine cabinet instead.

The flip side is, when I go too long without writing I feel like that kink in a hose running on high pressure. I get irritable and uneasy, like I’m going to POP at any moment. I can almost feel my insides stirring and expanding and the answer is always to let them out through words. It reminds me of something Marc Nepo wrote: “Talent is energy waiting to be released through an honest involvement in life.” True dat. The time before I write and the act of sitting down to write can be unpleasant and is usually really hard. But the feeling after I’ve written tells me that it’s what I’m supposed to do. I always feel better once I’ve done it, and sometimes if I’ve done it well, other people feel better too.

Whenever I watch really successful people on TV or listen to them speak, it always occurs to me that they got to where they are because at some point in their lives, they decided to try. And they too faced risk. But that’s always how big things begin. I used to think successful people were that way because fate had it in store for them. I thought they were chosen, as though success picked its people like teams in PE class. Now I realize truly successful people are all very different, but are triumphant in their aspirations because they’re true to their gifts and trust themselves enough to put it out there. They risk failure, but they get a chance at changing things, or going big, or living out their dreams. And how many of us are living out our dreams?! Even if they failed, they’d at least have tried, and there is success and respect in that alone. Some of my best stories and biggest revelations came from me failing first. Did you know I auditioned at Julliard? No, because I failed. But it’s also how I learned I wanted to write instead of act. Plus it makes a for a funny story now.

Our writing teacher told the class he had written two novels but so far no publishers had signed on to them yet. I was really impressed hearing that. I think actually having sat down and written a complete novel, start to finish, is a huge accomplishment. It takes such dedication and time and work, and he had written two. Even if they never get published, having two completed novels under your belt is awesome. Especially because writing is such a lonely thing– no one is really encouraging you or congratulating you until the work is finished. And you always run the risk that at the end of your hard work, it won’t be well received. I guess that’s the vulnerable part we all face any time we embark on an endeavor. But I don’t always think it’s about the finished product anyway. It’s more that we’ve dedicated ourselves completely to something, worked hard at it and saw it through to its end.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But by all means, try something.
-FDR

Health, Happiness, and Try Try Try Again.

Time and Space Jam.

Published on May 12, 2014May 18, 2014 by Mary Gelpi3 Comments

Look at me, up at 6 am again. I’ll stop pointing this out soon as I realize this is how most of the world does it and it’s not a very special anecdote. It’s just that after two years of intense night life where my room light is on and the world is dark, I’m only used to seeing sunsets at the tail end of a bender, not at the beginning of a day. Truly I like them both, but there’s something a little less lonely about being awake during the day time, fitting into the pulse of conventional circadian rhythms. I’m awake because my burning legs woke me up. When my eyes opened there remained the haze of a dream where I understood time not linearly but in every direction; not just forward and backward but up and down, and naturally my brain almost exploded. As I looked through my junk drawer of pills, I tried to recall it perfectly, which of course I could not do. I could only remember it in some internal way, not with my mind but with something else. Some other part of our bodies that makes sense out of things. Of course trying to remember a dream where time isn’t linear in a cosmos where time is understood linearly is a contradiction. I can only vaguely remember that I glimpsed its possibility. But there’s something comforting about even the memory, because if it was possible in a dream, how could it not be possible? All of time is conceptual, so I’m feeling assured by the unfamiliar but certain memory of it. It reminded me of something I read in Tolle’s The Power of Now: “The inner equivalent of time is presence, awareness of the eternal Now.” That phrase The eternal now is exactly how I perceived time in the dream. It makes sense that the eternal now would flow in every direction.

I know that as the day proceeds, my mom will be right and the dream will fade like cotton candy. But in my room where it’s still dark from early morning, I feel it, and something about it makes me glimpse more possibility. I wish I could revisit it. As if it were an actual place I toured. But Inception is just a movie and Leonardo DiCaprio is just a man. What? Anyway before the crumbling of conventional time dream, I was watching otters swim in a very wide, muddy river. And we all know what THAT means. I’ll have to have a dream sesh with my mom later. Totes.

Beyond time/space dreams, I’ve been listening to a lot of Lorde lately. Like a lot. Like all Lorde all the time. I shared my obsession with the Pure Heroine album with a friend and now he binge listens to a lot of Lorde too. And sometimes we call each other and try to have some normal conversation like we haven’t been listening to Lorde for hours and watching videos of her and reading about her on Wikipedia. “Hey what’s up?” “Nothing whats up?” “Nothing.” “You’re listening to Lorde again aren’t you?” “Only for the last 6 hours, you?” Only all night last night, but anyway.” It’s addicting. It’s really hard to believe she’s seventeen and that when she produced this album she had just only turned 16. My friend says he feels pervy sometimes because she’s so young. But her voice sounds so incredibly loaded with experience; like she’s been through some shit that extends far beyond high school. Maybe this is what sets apart true artists, or what we call prodigies. They’ve got this ability to tap into time and experience in a different way. They can access the past, the vastness, the depth of all our existence. It seems to have little to do with time or age. Maybe they’re mining into that slow breathing, collective consciousness underneath all humanity. I imagine it’s how Mozart was composing sophisticated music by age 5 and Beethoven was orchestrating his most famous work after he went deaf. They were tapping into something deep and alive that isn’t usually accessible by most. Maybe it’s not so much that they were proactively seeking this “dimension” or energy, but rather that they were allowing it to move through them. Anyone who’s found themselves practicing their passion in a pure form can attest to feeling a powerful energy moving through and guiding their hand. Maybe that’s what Flannery O’Connor meant when she said “I write to discover what I know.” The best part of it all is that their finished products give the rest of us vision into that intangible force, which is maybe the best part, the real appeal of art in the first place. It’s a connection among separateness.

It bothers me that I do this, but I’ll probably continue to listen to this album until the sound of it makes me sick, because that’s what I do. Listen over and over and over until I can hardly stomach it. Because that’s my approach to finding music I like and it’s stupid but I don’t feel I can help it. Go me. Anyway since I’ve broached time and space and all that, I’ll share a passage from The Power of Now that I have underlined and that gives me some peace when I read it. It reminds me of the dream among other things, and mostly I just like it a lot. Here goes.

Go out on a clear night and look up at the sky. The thousands of stars you can see with the naked eye are no more than an infini-tesimal fraction of what is there. Over 100 billion galaxies can already be detected with the most powerful telescopes, each galaxy an “island universe” with billions of stars. Yet what is even more awe-inspiring is the infinity of space itself, the depth and stillness that allows all of that magnificence to be. ..What appears to us as space in our universe perceived through the mind and the senses is the Unmanifested itself, externalized. ..The greatest miracle is this: that stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be, is not just out there in space–it is also within you. When you are utterly and totally present, you encounter it as the still inner space of no-mind. Within you, it is vast in-depth, not in extension. Spacial extension is ultimately a misperception of infinite depth–an attribute of the one transcendental reality.

What you perceive externally as space and time are ultimately illusory, but they contain a core of truth. There are the two essential attribute of God, infinity and eternity, perceived as if they had an external existence outside you. ..You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are.

Letting that one marinate.

Health, Happiness, Space.

The “M5” Globular Star Cluster of 100,00 stars, about 25,000 light years away

Jumping Off.

Published on May 4, 2014May 5, 2014 by Mary Gelpi3 Comments

I’m never up at this hour. But at roughly 6:40 am as I drove across Lake Ponchartrain, one of only a few lonely cars on the 24 mile bridge, it struck me just how sacred the early mornings are. Of course over water, there are no distinct markers of distance traveled besides mile markers on land, but somehow over uninterrupted waves there were these distinct and momentary glimpses into the context of my life where all the working pieces fit together. The sense, however fleeting, had me second guessing my entire history as a bona-fide night person. Maybe there’s something to these early morning hours where people are drifting into the routine of their day or into the hangover of their night, and in the middle is me, not exactly doing either, but finding my place still–stumbling on a whole in lieu of constant and incompatible parts.

Yesterday I attended JazzFest and I remember walking around in no known direction, attempting to find a group of my friends, which is almost a miracle if achieved in such a clusterfuck of a public arena, and this thought kept trying to get a hold of me. “What am I doing? I have no business being here.” Over and over that thought, with every wrong turn and mistaken identity. What a sad thought! I couldn’t pinpoint the origin of it, but it probably had roots in my mostly confined and solitary past over a few years. And now sticking my head out, landing clumsily in the middle of the public world that not only didn’t stop while I was “out sick”, it also didn’t slow down at all either. And that continued, irreverent, incessant flow of time in one direction only all of the sudden felt very real and a little unnerving too. But I walked on. It’d be a lie to say I felt any confidence at all then, taking in every type of person of every age and origin.And even though none of them looked truly happy to me, none of them had a life that I felt cheated by not having, I was still odd man out. I started to wonder if I had real friends at all that I’d find. Maybe I had imagined them up in a fantasy of my mind, and I’d walk tirelessly never bumping into them because there was no them to bump into. But I walked on. I pretended some of those thoughts didn’t exist. Maybe more, I just didn’t take them very seriously. I’d feel the sun burning my shoulders and I’d affirm that more likely than not I’d find my friends, I’d engage in young adult behavior, and feel a little better about my place in reality.

After 45 minutes of circles and flags and strangers, I watched a really drunk boy hoisted up by his friends, being dragged with his lifeless converse trailing under him leaving shallow lines in the dirt, the unfamiliar sights were piling up, and even I started to feel like a stranger there. But then– something familiar. Emily’s ponytail. Someone. People. Friends. They existed, and I was not yet proven insane. In that moment those thoughts I had didn’t carry any weight at all. Whether I found my friends or not had nothing to do with belonging in all honesty. Separateness is just a construct of ego and I know that, but it can stab you anyway. I knew that afternoon I could’ve really used some friends. And there they were and there I was. I belonged. I knew those thoughts were shit. Time to keep on living. Time to have fun now. Time to participate in the onward direction of time, and attach to some other thought that experience will most likely prove wrong.

Maybe I should’ve mentioned it earlier, but I’ve never really been a live music person. Which makes me feel incredibly lame mostly. Just like I’m also not really into The Lord of the Rings. True “outsider” feelings emerge in me when this is brought up in public, and I feel like there’s some joke I’m just not getting. What is there to say about it? To each his own. Anyway, at every live music event I’ve attended, I find myself gazing off lost in observational mode of the people enjoying the music, instead of intrinsically enjoying the music myself. I can’t help it. There’s always some woman on the borderline of being “too old to be there” on some drug that’s a little too young for her to be doing, and I can’t help but watch her, dance carelessly, body parts hanging out, not giving a shit about what etiquette she’s breaking. Then I at once sympathize for her but also want to be her, because she is losing herself in something enjoyable, and she’s alone, and I’m the creeper at the concert not dancing but staring wide-eyed and blinking very slowly. I dated one of those music junkie type of guys for two years. He had an impressive collection of bands that you never heard of on his ipod and was always discovering music years before it became popular. (I on the other hand got my music from Apple Product commercials) He flew all over the country to catch his favorite bands at different venues. Sometimes with friends and sometimes alone and it was this small gap between us because this passion he fell off his seat for was somewhere that I just didn’t fit. And this schism in us always interested me, because at concerts we’d share a joint and then even more I’d separate from the setting and lose myself in the detach-and-detect humanity mode. He was good about keeping me down to earth and assuring me that dancing like an idiot was fine and encouraged, and that no, that guy next to me was not about to die from sensory overload regardless of what his face and body movements suggested. But there was always some wall with me at those shindigs. I could never really figure it out. Ultimately the relationship ended, and I wondered how much, if any, this disconnect had to do with it. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe a whole lot.

It’s funny how discovering clarity leaves with you so much to know still. My goal this year has been to find clarity of any kind, certainty of any measure. Because both of these things lack hugely in my personal life and it wares on me daily. It’d be nice to make a decision and know it to be right, or know anything at all for that matter and trust it to be true. But even with this goal in the forefront of my consciousness, it has still been incredibly hard, and so far, I’m yet to find either. I’m guessing the more things I pursue where the end is uncertain and there are no guarantees will help me to eventually get there, or in the general ball park. On the bridge this morning, the unceasing rhythm of a road bump every 1.5 seconds, I glimpsed certainty. I glimpsed knowing something at all, and it felt very good. But I don’t know if it’s possible to exist in this dimension full-time. At least half of life seems to rely on not knowing but jumping off anyway. Maybe love, happiness, success, peace..are all the outcomes of great risk and great faith. All anyone can do is make their best bet and go for it. Maybe once we let go of knowing anything for sure, the way I walked in endless circles yesterday, the way those waves went in no direction this morning, is how we find the happy end, whether we knew we would or could or not.

Health, Happiness, Walking On, Jumping Off.

Tired Writer Fighter.

Published on July 11, 2013July 21, 2013 by Mary Gelpi9 Comments

It’s raining. And whenever it rains it feels easier to write. So I’m forcing myself to sit down, because lately, the words haven’t come as easy. I have this recurring nightmare type of thing, although it doesn’t come at night–it’s more a dull anxiety beyond the curtain in my brain- that one day I’ll wake up, and have nothing left to say. Nothing left to write. None of my ideas will be new. Whatever creative juices that used to run through me will have all run dry and I’ll be sitting there, blank pages in front of me, and have nothing. left. to say. Luckily, that day is not today. I have some stuff to say I guess.

The funny thing about my little recurring nightmare, is that ironically, the only way to avoid it is to keep on writing. The longer I go without doing it, the harder it becomes. Sometimes I cringe at what I’ve written, and I’ve deleted entire pages of text that just didn’t seem to “do it” for me. But this is my art form and I care about it. It isn’t really a hobby I do on the side anymore. It is my principal work for now and once you’ve come to care this much about what you do, you really have to nurture it or it will fade. Like a marriage of sorts, or any relationship at that. The interesting part of it is that continuing to produce only gives way to more creativity and newer ideas. Not the other way around. It’s not some finite jar you reach the bottom of. My nightmare is possible I suppose, but more likely from me having abandoned the work, not from literally running out of ideas. If the universe is infinite than it’s true, our ideas can’t run dry.

I have to remind myself pretty regularly that whether the words come easy or hard, to just keep going. If you give in, well then what kind of a writer are you? I think beyond your final product, being an artist is in the way you live and in how much you give of yourself. Not just when inspiration comes but also when it doesn’t. There is debate in the literary world on whether or not writers block actually exists. I can say that without a doubt, there are times when it’s easy and times when it’s alarmingly difficult, but I think the point is that you just keep plugging away. It was Picasso who said that inspiration exists, but it has to find you working first. You can reject entire pages later if you need to, and there’s no harm in discerning good work from bad work even if a great majority of it is bad. It’s nothing you can hurry or fake or force. You just have to keep working humbly and the right words always find their way out. Think of Michelangelo sculpting his masterpieces like David. He said it was his job to carve away the excess, chip away at everything that wasn’t David until David emerged.

I know that the worst I can do now is let a gift pass me by. In stillness I know that being capable of writing is not something I own but something that was given to me. And I feel that by not putting it to use is letting someone down somewhere. I fight lethargy. I fight distraction. I fight excuses. It’s been a while since I’ve really sat down and put my words to use. And I have to remind myself everyday that very easily I can let all this slip by me. It takes commitment and participation on my end and sometimes I actually have to talk to myself out loud and force myself to move things through me. I do this because it’s not about me. It’s about something bigger and longer-lasting than me. And I don’t know what that is yet. But I know I have to keep at it. And I guess on this rainy Thursday, I am being reminded in more ways than one to keep going. Keep writing. And someday the pieces of it all will begin to make sense. Carl Jung said the details of his life would only make sense in the context of the centuries. Maybe that’s the ticket.

Health, Happiness, Work.

Art!!!!!!!

Published on March 5, 2013March 6, 2013 by Mary Gelpi5 Comments

Since my genuine exposure to the “old times” has been either black and white photos or black and white film, these color photographs that have emerged of life in the 30’s and 40’s have found their way into every corner of the intweb and are a real gem. Every time I look at them I feel like I am glimpsing a reality that I’ve never truly felt connected with. The olden days have been described to me by my grandparents and in magazine articles and I’ve laughed at the way actors speak in old movies and their gay, wordy advertisements– but for some reason it’s just always seemed like a story. It never quite felt personal. I know it was real, because my grandpa used to tell me war stories and I’ve sat through history class since 3rd grade, never truly appreciating that there really was life before me. So it’s funny to me that something as simple as color could bring something so distant to life for me, but these really do that. It’s like looking at thousands of paintings of Jesus and then being handed a headshot.

A Man Named Jack and His Family, October 1940

Basically, the disconnect between then and now was broken, and I dove right in. The prints were taken on Kodachrome by the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information throughout the 30’s and 40’s respectively. They were then released by the Library of Congress in 2006 for an exhibition called Bound For Glory; America in Color. I don’t know why the element of color has upped the real factor to such a high degree, but I never get tired of looking at them. I have to remind myself constantly that they aren’t actors and they aren’t in costume.

Homesteaders Faro and Doris, Pie Town New Mexico, 1940 — Homesteaders “Faro and Doris” Pie Town, New Mexico 1940

Woman Aircraft Worker- Burbank, California 1942

Bayou Borbeau Plantation- Natchitoches, Louisiana 1940

For as long ago as the “old days” have always felt to me, something about these color prints remind me it really wasn’t that long ago. Can you imagine showing the people in these photos an iphone? Or trying to explain the premise of Facebook? (Kind of makes me feel disdain for the times we’re living in) So much has changed and yet inside, I don’t feel we’re as far apart as we think. Then again when I looked at Facebook a few minutes ago, I may have changed my mind.

I think a lot about the “records” we’re leaving behind for the generations who will come after us. Looking for clues as to what life was like in our day, for the strands of humanity that tie us all together no matter how many years have passed. Will there be Facebook 100 years? How will our grandchildren study us? It hit me a few days ago that this blog is somewhat of a record itself- a sick girls life and her dog and yada yada. It then occurred to me that if I die tomorrow..the blog would live on. It has its own shelf life now. Unless I leave someone in charge to disassemble it once I’ve gone on. But I think I’m fine with it living without me. It’s turned into a community of sorts and that’s something I hope will live…forever? But my Facebook page– Maybe somebody should kill that.

So it was cloudy and California’s version of cold today and since it was one of those days that a normal person might go to a gallery..I brought the gallery to me and started looking at art online and some of this stuff was just too good not to share. It made me wish I was an artist. But the only art I’ve made lately is this drawing of Mario Lopez from December.

Pen on Paper. $50,000 or best offer. — Pen on Paper. $50,000 “Or best offer”

Maybe I should stick to writing. Or sharing actual artists work in this case. Here’s what really stuck with me today.

So this conceptual artist Rachel Perry Welty uses everyday items in sequence or on repeat per se to construe American “middle class minertia” as she puts it. In her show “Lost in My Life” she uses the byproducts of her domestic life to make for some unusual and beautiful prints. I couldn’t get over the stunning visuals and patterns brought on by tiny objects I see all the time.

I love how she never shows her face and how the small pieces become part of her apparel. Awesome stuff! You can read more about her and her exhibition here or here. For me the most inspiring part to hear was that she didn’t even enter the world of art until she was 36, and her work and ideas emerged out of lack of materials and time as she was a full-time working mother when she began. Word.

OK and then there’s this:

How effing cool is this? Artist Doris Salcedo filled a gap between two buildings in Central Istanbul with roughly 1,550 chairs and her intent was to create a “topography of war” embedded in everyday life. Whatever you deduce from it, you can’t deny that visually it’s just spectacular and the simplicity of materials with such a complex and poignant result is surprising, not to mention its impressive scale.

You can read more about the artist here or here.

OK last and not least I discovered a poem today that I found so incredibly enjoyable that I realized poetry can be fun and good modern poetry does exist. My friend Giselle, a ceramic artist, hates poetry mostly and I understand why, and a lot of the time I hate it too. (It doesn’t stop me from writing it or reading others) But this poem today, well it just really stuck with me and reminded me how much fun an often sad art form can be. It’s a little lengthy so click here to read it. It’s called Tap Water and is written by Mathew Yaeger. Job well done dude! A few favorite lines are:

What good is it
polishing to a shine the pile of dimes on which your life
has turned. You feel blessed or you feel regrets.

and also

When a woman has entered your life and then
left it you are changed and while you may change
forward into something resembling what you once were
you most certainly do not change back.

So, I guess that’s enough art for our cloudy cold Tuesday. Monty is bored. I’ll see you next time.

Health, Happiness, Art Gallery Day

A List of Mildly Pleasing Things.

Published on January 25, 2013January 25, 2013 by Mary Gelpi12 Comments

The sound a rotary phone makes
When you hang up the receiver.

The smell of tires
And how you know before you walk in
the door of the auto shop
that the computer will be old,
and the colors will be red and black.

The sound of ice in a glass
And a something liquid gold
pouring slowly in.

When Monty’s Tail Wags While He’s Sleeping.

Riding in a cab
In New York City,
going anywhere.
The urban slideshow
through a square cracked window
slows down the fast city.
and the driver mumbling
in a quiet language an American girl
who’s pretty
will never need to know.

The way Gwyneth Paltrow smokes cigarettes in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

the-talented-mr-ripley-gwyneth-paltrow-cigarette — .

The second of stillness
When you drive under a bridge in the rain.

New showering products.

A woman tying a man’s tie.

The crinkling of a newspaper
When a man eats his breakfast
With one leg crossed over the other.

Being a woman
Wearing a dress
Smelling romantic
and the clicking of heels
on the old wooden floor
toward whoever spent the time waiting.

A fresh piece of chalk
on school chalkboards.
And the slowness and fragility
of that 90 year old librarian
Who stamps the due date in my book
with her veiny tissue hands.

That feeling you get
When you kiss someone new.
Like everything is different
Though everything’s the same.

Health, Happiness, and Tiny Little Pleasures.

Sixteen Clementines

Published on November 30, 2012December 9, 2012 by Mary Gelpi15 Comments

It is a dreary, rainy day in California today. I love it! It was this way yesterday too. I had been feeling a little home sick lately and now suddenly I have damp Louisiana weather–the in between cold, lonely drizzle outside. It’s superb. It’s so anti-California. Feels like home to me.

When I stepped out into the rain for our morning walk, I was expecting to make it quick since that what’s you do on days like this-stay indoors. But Monty seemed so happy frolicking around and it felt pretty good hanging around out there, that I just let him get wet and play in the mud and people laughed as they walked by. I’ve always let Monty get messy if he really wants to. There’s no real problem with it..dirt washes off! So we got dirty.

Health-wise I have been improving since the whole too weak to move crash, slowly but surely. My naturpath doctor received some blood work two weeks ago that confirmed I still have lyme disease, as well as two co-infections (one is Bartonella, aka as cat scratch fever..what the hay?!) and one parasite in my gut. All right!! This is good news though because they were definitive results and allowed us to move forward with a treatment plan. Since she is a naturpath she doesn’t use antibiotics to treat things, so combating the lyme this go around will be a little more complex. I could go into the details but I don’t even understand them entirely and it’s pretty boring anyway. It’s a crazy coincidence that my doctor studied a while with one of the top lyme specialists in Northern California, so we’ve got that working for us. If we can’t get it under control with her care, she’ll send me to him.

I forgot to mention that part of seeing the naturpath is going on a major detox where you avoid gluten, dairy, corn and you drink this protein shake all the time which actually tastes decent! After 6 years of convincing me to go gluten-free, my sister can now rest easy knowing I’ve made the step. For now anyway :) The diet actually isn’t so difficult to adhere to but that’s because my sister keeps the house stocked with stuff I can eat and pretty much brings me dinner every night. You may ask yourself, what do you eat? The answer is yams. I eat a lot of yams. Kidding. Well, I did eat a lot of yams in the beginning. But the point is to mostly eat fruits, vegetables, and a lot of protein. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Yesterday I ate sixteen clementines. For real. I can only eat at least four at a time. They’re just so small and addicting. I don’t know that I’ve been able to tell exactly what difference the diet is making since there are so many variables right now, but I do know it’s nice to feel good about what goes into your body. I admit I never felt great mentally after stuffing my face with fudge sickles at 2 am. Mmmm fudge sickles. That sounds so good right now.

Since I’m pretty obsessed with the Holidays and Christmas in particular, I told Amelie and Keegan that since I’m a sick kid they have to grant me a wish like the Make-A-Wish-Foundation advertises in the commercials. (On top of housing, feeding, and caring for me, of course.) My wish was for a real Christmas tree and the day after Thanksgiving, we did it! She’s a real beauty. If she had a name it would be Anastasia. We’ll hang small milk bones on the bottom so that Monty will tug at those and not the real ornaments. There’s nothing like the smell of a real Christmas tree. It’s like Winter, Happiness, Warmth and Love all wrapped up in a smell. On top of that I’ll be blaring Christmas jams and watching Elf on repeat which my brother-in-law is really excited about. What can I say, I’ve always loved Christmas.

Apart from yuletide, I’ve been watching Woody Allen movies, taking pictures of people’s windows, and writing things late night I still don’t entirely understand. I still need to watch Crimes and Misdemeanors which I hear is one of the best..but Annie Hall is so ridiculously lovable it’s been hard to forget. I loved Manhattan too but it made me nostalgic for Annie Hall. I liked Melinda and Melinda a lot and also Alice. Husbands and Wives may have been a little too neurotic, and Midnight in Paris was the best! I really loved that one, and Owen Wilson’s character. Too good. Tonight I’ll watch Play It Again, Sam and then maybe I’ll get back into reading. Somehow I kind of stopped. Anyhow, I keep taking Monty on walks around our complex and I love seeing people’s windows from the outside. The blinds are always closed but people put little decorative pieces to view from the outside, and I like seeing them. I don’t really know why. So I started photographing them. I also realize it ups my “creeper” level a few notches, but I can’t help it.

Batman? Is that you? — Batman. He lives.

Health, Happiness, Window Shopping.

We Are the Leaves

Published on November 14, 2012 by Mary Gelpi25 Comments

I’ve been hanging out with a lot of trees lately. I take Monty on walks in the hills behind our apartment. It’s where we hear the coyotes howl at night. I don’t know where they go during the day. The more I’m around the trees the more picturesque they become. Suddenly I find myself staring at one tree for a really long time. It’s just standing there, its leaves making gentle sounds, and I feel captivated like I’m watching some kind of brilliant theatre. It’s just a tree! But hang out long enough with them, and they share a little wisdom. I started photographing them on my phone because…I felt like it. And my phone is more like a camera with phone capabilities.

When I was a kid I used to think that wind was caused by trees. In fact I may have thought that up to an unforgivable age, but science was never my strong suit. But in my simple brain, since when it was windy I would hear the rustling of branches and leaves, I equated wind with tress. Finally during a dead, wintery day in Colorado, the cold blew against my face and I looked around at the dried up trees around me. There were no leaves rustling, the dried skeletal branches cracked, and it was clear that wind came from somewhere else. Currents cause wind, which in turn rustles the leaves. The real culprit was something invisible yet immensely powerful. So yesterday I sat in the sun and listened to the leaves rustle while Monty chewed a tennis ball to bits. I watched as an invisible current moved through everything and it struck me why I thought the way I did about wind as a kid. It also had me thinking about human beings and our respective passions and purposes. When you’re really excited about something, whether its writing or painting or singing or chemistry…it doesn’t really matter what…there’s something greater moving through you and guiding the art form. In fact I think that’s one way to define genius, or greatness or expertise– opening oneself enough to allow something invisible and quiet to move through you, leaving either art or authenticity in its path, and each time raising the bar. I don’t see being creative as only limited to the arts. I think there are creative ways to do math, and practice politics, and learn history. There are also creative ways to love someone, dress yourself, and give gifts. It hit me there under the sun, that we human beings are the trees. The creative and appeasing truth is the current, and individuals are just the rustling leaves making the noise.

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” -Picasso

Health, Happiness, Trees

The Importance of Catching Balls.

Published on October 27, 2012 by Mary Gelpi8 Comments

The other day I didn’t have a lot of energy (shocker) but Monty did (shocker). I was throwing the ball for him inside the living room and noting what an expert catcher he is. Like the dude jumps crazy high and catches basically every ball I throw. So I started recording him. Because I have time to do crap like that. Then it was such a beautiful day outside I said screw it, if I can throw a ball in here I can do it outside too. So I brought him outside and recorded all the different ways in which Monty catches a ball. Then I made a movie out of it and put it to some fun music because video editing is another one of those things you can do from bed, and again, I have time to do crap like that. Woo woo. So, below is the result. I guess I realize that Monty makes me happy in so many ways and even watching him jump to catch a ball makes me laugh. Now we all get to watch him. And the angels rejoiced.

Health, Happiness, Monty

*Note, you can’t currently watch this video on a mobile device like your phone because of a third-party licensing issue with youtube…Booo, I know. I’m working on it.

One Thing, Once a Day.

Published on September 11, 2012September 12, 2012 by Mary Gelpi9 Comments

I love getting late birthday presents in the mail. Wait, I love getting mail period. For one thing, I think the art of letter writing is becoming extinct, so it’s always pretty special to get something written in one of a kind hand-writing, written just for you. Dear Mary… Anyway, late birthday presents are like those blooper scenes they show during the credits of a movie you liked. Just when you thought it was over–bam! My brother Nick and his wife Estee sent me two new shirts and a skirt and a necklace with a hand-written card, the best! And my sister brought me shopping at Nordstrom. Her and Keegan have kind of adopted me as their 28-year-old child. Keegan even sent me to my room yesterday. I also unpacked my suitcase at their house two weeks ago, the first time I’ve really not lived out of my suitcase since February. All my siblings are like extra parents, each pitching in to help in their own ways and I am really thankful for that. It’s easy for me to forget that my situation could be a lot worse. They have all encouraged me to visit them, and that is a real gift. Anyway, I love shopping and I love new clothes, but it has turned into such a silly thing for me to love, mostly because I never wear normal clothes anymore. I never really go anywhere and I hardly see people besides Monty and my family. My uniform has evolved into leggings and t-shirts–every guys fantasy.

Last week and all weekend was a sick week. Like a sick day, but you know, times 7. I once wrote that I was the mayor of Migraine City, but I am upgrading myself this week to Governor because my head is super angry about something and apparently wants the world to know. Here’s your shot head, let it all out! Every day I keep telling myself I will get dressed in my new clothes and I will go somewhere and I’ll do my hair and makeup and look like someone who has her shit together. But, that has yet to happen. “Tomorrow” I tell myself. Then the song from Annie starts playing in my mind and I bet my bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun, and I will go out in it! Since I’m in Cali, there is always sun, but when you have a migraine, it feels like if you were to go outside under that bright sun you’d start melting like the witch from the Wizard of Oz. Anyway, the migraine cycle continues, but why am I talking about migraine cycles? I’m even boring myself.

When I’m in the throes of a sick week, I can start to get down. And also start to go stir crazy. So there are a few things I do and a few things I don’t do. Maybe most importantly, I do not watch TV during the day. There is just something undeniably sad about daytime television, and sunlight coming in through the blinds..maybe reflecting off the TV screen? Yuck. The only time I don’t find a sunlights’ reflection on a TV screen depressing is on the weekends when we’re watching football. Exceptions to every rule.

First, I keep a book on hand and I read. I swear it’s like I’ve discovered the joy of reading only last year..at age 27. Pretty ridiculous since I discovered the joy of writing at around age 9. I feel like I’m catching up on all the years that I began books and never finished them. I always associated reading a book with homework, something I had to do. It never felt like I had a choice in the matter. As soon as book reports became part of my schooling in 6th grade, it became my goal to see how little of the book I could read and how high a grade on the report I could get. Unfortunately, I work really well under pressure–so the night before it was due I’d skim through the book, find the important parts, and write a flowery report. I almost always received A’s on them. I was actually proud of myself for being able to complete the work this way! What an idiot. Anyway, now that I have really experienced what getting lost in a book is like, I feel like I have years of catching up to do. So that’s partly what I’m doing. Especially because it’s not sad at all to read while sunlight is coming through the window. In fact it’s the most fun to go outside and read. Monty and I had been going to the park daily, but I crashed mid-week and we haven’t been back yet. Anyway, right now I’m reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. A true story about a woman who lost her way and decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, with no experience. Truthfully, it’s a little difficult to read because she is in a lot of physical and emotional pain so far, and I like reading to carry me away from real life, so in that light it’s not been as fun to read as Gone Girl but I’m just about 1/3 in, so I’ll see how the next 50 pages go.

The second thing I do is create something. It can be anything from a four line poem to a line drawing. The goal is not to create a masterpiece work of art. The goal is to let your soul do some talking. Sometimes what you make will be crappy and sometimes you’ll surprise yourself. But the thing is, now no matter how sick or worthless I felt today or the fact that I never got dressed in real clothes, at least when someone asks me what I did today I can say “I wrote a poem,” or “I drew a picture of a stupid cat.” So now today was not a complete waste. Here are some simple rhyming poems.

*I am tired
But do not sleep
I am sad
But do not weep
I close my eyes
And count to 10
If I still feel it
I’ll do it again
Until the clouds part
And the dark clears
I’ll think of my loves
And not of my fears.

*In the corners of my mind
In the absence of a dime
I think about home
In a house that isn’t mine.

*At night I roam
through consciousness alone
Would I have chosen this
If I would have known!

*At least at the end of day
Where I never got dressed
I can say I wrote a poem
And that’s something I guess.

Normally I hate rhyming poems, and I don’t necessarily love these. But, they’re what came out. So I let them. Because that’s what my soul had to say today, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s good or bad. It’s the fear of making something good or bad that is dangerous. Once I let that fear go, I kind of free myself. The worst that can happen is you write a shitty poem or you draw a shitty picture. Certainly there are worse things! Either way, you’ve got something to look back on or laugh at or talk about, and you weren’t completely at the mercy of illness.

I drew the above drawing a few days ago. It turned out to be one of my favorites…drawn on a sick day where I never got dressed. It started with a very simple shape; a leaf. Then I repeated the pattern and this is what turned up. I had no idea what I was sitting down to draw that day, but it’s another example of letting your soul speak. Or stillness speak. I just know that when I designate time to letting things come through me, I am usually surprised. I end up creating something I never could have thought of myself. It’s strange, the way sometimes your dreams can be insanely more creative or smarter than you are in real life. I guess it’s the subconscious at work. This one is titled “I Don’t Normally Look Like This” and is for sale for $10.

Anyway, that’s been the last 7 days. Fingers crossed that tomorrow is migraine free and filled with more energy and I get to wear some happy clothes and run errands like humans do. If not, well then…it’s back to the drawing board.

Health, Happiness, One Thing a Day.

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