EveDestiny’s blog

I wrote a poem several years ago with this title. I used my current lover at the time as a metaphor for an injectible drug. (As it turns out, she was as illicit and toxic as most abusable, injectible drugs, so good imagery choice on my part.)

Today I'm thinking about all the folks I know who are on antidepressants. There are so many people taking pills. I think my first reaction to taking medicine is to avoid it. It seems inorganic; it seems fake and even toxic in some ways. But so many people benefit. How can something so helpful be bad?

I have taken antidepressants myself, and there's no doubt there was an improvement in my mindset. I saw options where before I'd seen none. I stopped thinking about the overpass buttress I'd picked out the smash my car into and started thinking more about how I could fix the situation I was in without taking my own life. So I have direct, firsthand experience with how "Happy Pills" can indeed help create happiness, or at least banish suffocating shadows.

I guess it is just hard for me as a writer, as someone who does more writing when in angst over something than I do when I'm content and complacent, to see how chemically altering yourself can do anything but hinder the creative urge. At least for me.

The old adage is that "Happy people don't create." I have to say I agree with that view. It certainly has rung true for me. But I don't run with a large set of other creative types, so maybe I don't know what the "norm" is for creative energy. I'm willing to listen to alternative viewpoints, if anyone wants to offer one.

There are loads of things I wish I'd discovered when I was younger, like in high school. When exposure to something amazing might have changed the course of my life. Rilke is one of those things.

I was introduced to Rilke's work originally in college, but it wasn't until an ex-girlfriend used some of his poetry with her photographs that that he really blossomed in my mind. I suppose because when I was younger I could only appreciate poetry on a surface or technical level, and too many poems never rang true with me. They were flowery or overwrought or too hard to grasp the imagery.

Rilke has never been like that for me. His writing is like something my own soul occasionally sighs (when it's feeling especially brilliant or tender, I suppose).

I'm sharing Rilke with a friend who'd never heard of him (horrors!), and as I've gone back through his works to select favourite poems to share, I've rediscovered my passion for this poet all over again.

Rilke wrote long prose and poems, and in a collection of 10 letters he exchanged with a young protege, a lovely book was born, Letters to a Young Poet. I include a short selection below, on love. His use of language, of image, of self-reflection ... it's what I love best about his work. My favourite snippet is where he talks of an individual "ripening." What a lovely concept.

~~~~~

"Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate-?); it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself in another's sake."

Who comes out of you when you drink? What face do you show -- is it real, or a fiction of alcohol fumes?

I have been taking a poll lately among my friends, since there isn't much in the way of popular opinion on this on the web: does drinking put you in touch with your true self? I see folks who drink and become sullen, or angry. The happy drinkers. The slutty drinkers. Sometimes the sad drinkers.

I should qualify this and say I'm not talking about drinking to obliteration or bar-brawling, or the abuse of any substance, including alcohol.

I'm talking about the 1-3 drink situation in the company of one or more others, not drinking alone. Where social barriers are lowered. Where conversation moves more freely but not to catastrophically blunt, where laughter is more readily accessible, where hidden truth often moves into the open.

I should add that I do know all the denigration that surrounds drinking, and rightly so: it's easily abused, it is addictive for many people, it is hard to gauge how much is too much, it's impossible to drink much and do certain things safely (namely, drive).

However. I would also argue that it can frequently be a tool of disclosure, both of others and of the self. I know that my own inner voice becomes my outer voice a lot more quickly when I've had a drink or two, and I'm all for anything that improves authentic communication.

~~~~~

So that readers do not think I'm being irresponsible with this post, I include some links to reputable, medical-based information about alcohol and some of the dangers it can present when not used in moderation:

http://men.webmd.com/features/whats-your-drinking-personality

http://www.alcoholscreening.org/

http://drinkingproblem.com/testing.shtml

Oh.My.Gosh.

How I swooned over Indiana Jones as a teenager. I must have seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark" a dozen times or more in 1981. I was 14 years old, and he was amazing. Harrison Ford was one of those Men I Was Gonna Marry. As was William Shatner as James Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise.

A repeating theme in these male role models that stoked my romantic fires was leadership. These were strong, focused humans who brought an impressive skill set to bear on the problems they faced. They were intelligent. They were charismatic. They were funny. They were intense. And it didn't hurt that they were nice to look at. (I have to say Harrison Ford's older, more grizzled adventurer appealed in a deeper and more lasting way than Shatner's perfectly coiffed, histrionic and slick young jock, Kirk.)

As an aside, because of this plausibility as an older, seasoned, sexy professor, I thought Harrison Ford would have been a better choice for the lead in "The DaVinci Code."

"The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" opens on May 22nd. I hope I am in line to see it.

Trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/indianajonesandthekingdomofthecrystalskull/large_t1.html

How do you define friendship? I demand a lot from my friends, as much as I do my lovers, and I have been called a "hard woman" more than once. Not in the high maintenance sense, but in the The Bar is Set High sense. Maybe it's just a big challenge to be friends in my world!

Here's are the qualities I require in my friends:

1. Communicative: I have dozens of friends around the globe. They remain my friends because we communicate. It may not be as often as we'd truly like, but we make the effort to keep up with each other's lives as often as possible. And the effort to communicate is like every other aspect of a relationship -- TWO-WAY.
2. Honest: There is one big No-No in my world and that is lying. That is the single easiest way to get kicked to the friendship curb with me. Trust me enough to tell me the truth. I am an adult; I can handle it, and I will not punish you for telling me that truth. I WILL punish you for lying to me.
3. Respect: Respect is earned not given like a gift. Friends must offer freely their input and perspective. If I can't get clarity on a mindset either because an opinion is never offered and defended, or because it's so vapid and shallow that it's more fashion critique than insight, then there won't be any respect. This is also a requirement around behaviour -- there's only so much Sad Sack Syndrome I can conscience. Be mature. Be worth respecting. I'll give you enough rope to hang yourself, and if you haven't hung yourself by then, I will do it for you.
4. Support: I don't ask for help unless I really need it. I mean, really need it. I'm the type of pride-stuffed freak who'll drive herself to the emergency room after I've cut off a finger, so if I ask for help, the person I've trusted enough to ask had better be willing and/or able to provide.
5. Loyalty: Trust is a key component of loyalty. In fact, in my mind they are practically the same thing, except loyalty is trust in action. Loyalty is not only refusing to sleep with my GF/BF but also TELLING ME that some exchange of bodily fluids almost occurred. 
6. Proaction: Akin to my comment in (1) about a relationship being two-way ... I know I am better than most my friends about staying connected. I am an 8 in the Enneagram, which means I am usually taking charge of most situations anyway, whether I really want to or not. I expect friends to make an effort to do more than react to me Take some initiative.
7. Reliable: If you say you are going to do something, do it. Don't flake out. If you flake out, have a really good reason that isn't fabrication. (Because lying is bad -- see (2).)
8. Flexible: This can be read as "tolerant, open-minded, laid back, able to laugh." It is NOT rigid, traditional, uptight or prudish. If you are a pill, we cannot be friends.

I'm sure I'll add to this at some point. But these are the ones that are standing out in my head tonight.

"Brushes with mortality" are so trite. That whole "life passing before your eyes" thing. You hear about it all the time, stories of people who "should have died." People who saw something as they almost slipped away in the darkness (or light for those that believe such things), and they come back with a renewed sense of what is important. The touch of death renews and clarifies their joy in the touch of life.

It seems hackneyed and saccharine, until it happens on a personal level, either to you or someone you know well. And last night, someone I know, someone in my family (although the law would not recognize that famly tie) was shot in her home. Someone tried to kill her with a shotgun. Her eight year old daughter was at home at the time. Luckily for the intended victim but not-so-luckily for this young girl, the daughter heard it, she saw it, she called 9-1-1, and then she hid until help arrived.

I've written before about denial. About how it's a place of fear, and it should not be a lifestyle choice. But it's totally woven into my life, into every human life, because I think it's the foundation upon which every coping mechanism we ever learn is based. Think about it: how many times have you been walking at night, and thought maybe you were being followed, and instead of verifying this suggestion, you keep walking. You ignore the threat. You deny it exists. Or as a teenager, did you ever heedlessly risk your own life, because you were in denial about just how truly destructible (not indestructible) you were? Or do you live your life now, expecting that when you retire you'll take that trip you long for, or you'll move on to a relationship that might actually make you happy, or do you wait to resolve a conflict with someone you still care about but are just afraid to reach out to?

Denial, denial, denial, we are riddled with the cancer of denial. Can we get a cure for THAT?

Certainly I am in denial about how much longer my own life may last. I'm healthy, I'm alert, I'm training myself to be strong and competent in defending myself, but I am in denial about how I can be felled at any time by a car I didn't see as I cross the road, or the aneurism I might have been born with that will stop my breath and heart at some unexpected moment, or the crazy person in my life that I denied was crazy enough to shoot me in my own living room because I dared love someone else.

So today, while I watch an unexpectedly blue sky that isn't covered in rain clouds, while I feel the breeze kiss me tenderly on the cheek where tears of shock and sorrow are drying ... I deny denial the right to run my life. I want to "carpe diem" the hell out of whatever life has been dealt me in my deck of cards. For this moment, this frozen moment, I am aware. I am awake. I am fearlessly focused on the oh-so-transient and ephemeral NOW.

Who knows what today holds?

This is the gist of one of my most favourite movie quotes of all time. It's from the first MATRIX movie, and it's from a soliloquy by Agent Smith.

"I'd like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realised that humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we... are the cure."  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TboJUxTIaC4)

I don't agree with the last bit about machines being the cure, but the overall wholly negative mindset of this commentary appeals to my bitter realism. And I'm not the only one with this mindset. Google "mankind virus" and plenty of like-minded fodder appears. Proof of this parallel can be found beyond environmental concerns, to how we indiscriminately reproduce. How we hubristically treat other species, how we callously tread on each other.

But. I recently discovered that I'm (shockingly, even disgustingly) a pretty big fan of humanity. Or rather, I approve of the urges that make us tortured animals who reason. (Animals don't reason; presumably only humans do.) I just can't help but celebrate the things that make us human, that make us tragic, that make us unique. Wrap up some unsanitized humanity in the struggle to be better than the sum of our parts, and I'm riveted.

Certainly human urges can be nefarious and violent. Previous musings speak to my personal experience with those sharp, lethal expressions. Those baser urges are not appealing. It's the primal but seasoned urges that flash and flicker in my consciousness; the stuff that tortures us but also makes us stronger (to loosely paraphrase Nietzsche.) Any one of us can speak to why we struggle to be more than our natures: faith, previous experience, observations of other failed attempts to fight against the darkness inside. It doesn't matter to me WHY we fight it; it only matters that we embrace the reality of our flawed, difficult nature and fight to improve upon it.

The song "She Will Be Loved" has a lyric: "It's compromise that moves us along." I can't think of a more succinct and positive definition of the oh-so-human condition. I don't see my dogs compromising. I don't see birds or bees compromising. I see HUMANS compromising. And that is so, so, so beautiful to me. It takes such strength and compassion and positive intention to (truly) compromise. It takes such ... humanity ... to compromise.

This is a fundamental shift for me. Previously I've been mortified to be a member of this species. I have hated myself just for being human. Now, I suspect I'm standing at the edge of a chasm in my thinking, right at the edge looking down into something so deep I cannot hear the rock I drop into it hit bottom. It seems thrilling and dangerous and profoundly disturbing to stand here. To be human and long to be more than the sum of my parts.

But I'm ready to own this. If mankind is a virus? Then I'm a virus lover.

You can always tell when you turn a corner in your head. When you start to see something more clearly, or when you figure out the root cause of a problem.  Often this is a very gratifying moment for me - I feel I've won something, I feel I've gained ground or triumphed over something hard to beat. Those moments make me feel strong and competent.

But sometimes I feel sorry, and sad, like something or someone has died. I have counseled friends about this feeling of grief; it's the death of expectations. And sometimes those are the hardest things to part with, because we tie up so much of ourselves and our futures in what we expect to happen. On the job, with our friends, in our love lives, in our dreams about tomorrow.

Failed expectations too closely affect my vision, too. It's akin to thinking you see something, then looking back and realizing nothing of the sort is there. You saw smoke and flames? Rub the eyest, look again, and it's not even fog. It's just complete mental fabrication. That kind of scenario makes me think I'm cracking up my tiny degrees. Did I imagine that feeling? Did I manufacture that moment? Was I defrauding myself? If so, why?

Nothing makes me question my own sanity and judgment quite like the crash and burn of deeply-held expectations. And I question my sanity and judgment so much of the time anyway. A good dose of failed expectation is like icing on the bitter cake of cracking up.

~~~~~

"So it goes" is a catchphrase from the amazing book, Slaugherhouse Five. Read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five

FoolJester

There are lots of good idioms involving "fools"  (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/playing+the+fool). I always liked such phrases, because they reminded me of royal history and courtiers and jesters, something that's long fascinated me. It seems it must have been so luxurious yet simple to have lived when people could be paid to entertain in court. Unlike today's "entertainers," who are higher paid than the folks they entertain.

I wonder if it was liberating to be a Fool back then. Maybe then it was: a safe place to stay, good food to eat, the only real threat being losing favour with your employer for tired jokes or unfunny antics. You could be creative and silly, and maybe silliness fed into creativity. How could that have been bad?

This reminds me of a great quote: "There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." -- Cynthia Heimel(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Heimel)

I have taken foolish leaps before. OH, so many foolish leaps. I thought as I aged I'd regret them less; I thought I'd really start to embrace Cynthia's mindset, which is so refreshing and pure. Certainly there have been rare occasions where Playing the Idiot really made things better: lightened a mood, made someone else more comfortable with their own situation, opened a door to a deeper relationship.

But I'm not there yet; I still regret foolish leaps, foolish LAPSES in judgment. For me, I still spend the vast majority of my Playing the Fool time feeling like exactly that -- the Fool. Not creative. Not positive. Just stupid and clueless.

So in my world, being a Fool is not fun. Or funny. Although I am by no means the only fool. I know TONS of other fools, too. People who are just so clueless they seem to have mentally checked out. They don't see obvious things, or they don't act in their own best interests. They are just ... occupying space. And that's not funny. That's kind of sad.

There's also the even more demoralizing situation, of being Played the Fool BY a Fool. That takes the cake in bottom-rung terms. 

No more Playing the Fool for me.  Breaching that "thin line between brilliant creativity and the most gigantic idiot" is just too much of a gap for me. I have to be an Adult. I have Responsibilities to meet. Bills to pay. Obligations to fulfill. Being brilliantly creative is for people who don't have relationships to tend, rent to pay, people to impress.

And, it occurred to me today: I recall that I don't suffer fools easily ... so what does it mean if I believe myself to be a fool? That is just an unwinnable situation, isn't it?

X_Men_-_Rogue

Lately, I identify too much with Rogue from X-MEN, especially as she is personified in the movies. She is a tragic figure, given what her mutancy brings: involuntarily, she absorbs energy from others (strength, memories, even life), and in the case of other mutants and those with super powers, she temporarily takes on their powers, too. This is always potentially fatal contact for anyone Rogue touches; thus, she views her powers as a curse.

People who are not familiar with the comics miss out on a further complication to Rogue. She was driven insane for a time by absorbing Carol Danver's (Ms. Marvel's) powers, a mutant who had special cognitive abilities. The comic does a great job of depicting a woman driven mad by the lingering presence of duality with such a strong person's consciousness.)

Rogue resonates with me on so many levels. She is frequently overwhelmed by her loneliness, bitterness, envy, and despair. She is permanently distanced from others by what everyone else views as special powers but she views as a curse. She is haunted by someone within herself who is not herself. She is toxic, even lethal, to those who get too close to her. She is willing to give up the special powers in order to just be "like everyone else."

I suppose in some ways I view my insights into others as a special power. I hate it. It prevents me from seeing reality most times, so I become enmeshed in what "could be" or "might be" and rarely "what is." And too often anger is my weapon of choice, so much so that it fuels too much of my daily movement: getting out of bed. Making my committments. Doing what I'm supposed to do every day so I can get up and do it over again the next day. 

I was reminded recently that anger is rarely a stand-alone emotion; it usually masks something else. Apparently, in my case it's sadness. Where that ocean of sadness comes from, what has caused such a huge hurt in me to fuel decades of anger ... I don't know. I just know I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of seeing things that aren't there.

I'm tired of being Rogue in my world.