Dear Yoga,

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

nothing like breath to make you feel not-drowning.


love,

Day

Maybe morning should be my blogging time; it seems to be when I'm feeling suitably melodramatic.

Today for the first time I wonder if it might have been a mistake to buy the house. Like me, it wants for so much fixing. We are both high maintenance, leaky, cracked, jerry-rigged but still beautiful, needy if we're being honest with ourselves, and I wonder if there's really room in this life for the both of us; there don't seem to be enough resources to sustain us.

For the first time I remember, I've started craving sunshine so much I can't enjoy rain. I miss the overwhelming, careless plant growth that happens everywhere back east. I'm hungry for blues and browns and greens, for ultramarine and scarlet, for distilled malachite and skies so bright you can barely see. I'm hungry for wet heat that slams into you like a wall when you walk out of the air conditioning at the airport, wide lazy rivers that are barely cool at all, and the lush, dense forest that asserts itself when water is no object--where nothing chokes out life but other life.

This is better, probably--it's a different kind of sadness than what I'm used to. The old things are still present, but this is here also--carrot, tantalizing, painful but drawing me from my rut. I hope.

Confession: what I have been thinking about is fashion. Part of this taking-care-of-myself nonsense. How very women's magazine.

History? Armchair fashionista, all longing and anger and doom.

I started without a chance, no money, sacks of old hand-me-downs many times picked over, two blocks from the public library. I can tell you about the Dior dress. I can tell you about thread count, and rayon viscosity, and the de-constructed genius of Chanel. I can identify silk and cashmere from their synthetic counterparts by touch, from walking down the aisles of value village and examining every piece, from stealing into banana republic for moments at a time only to fondle and gape.

I wear enormous men's wool hiking socks under four year old sauconys, layers of plain threadbare t-shirts, black thrift-store jeans, sometimes hats.

I resent my passion, because this is what's expected of me, as a woman. I resent it because it at first was fueled so entirely by expectations of others which I would ABSOLUTELY NEVER be able to meet. But--there are things you need. Clothes to wear, for example; to sleep in and hike in, to work or work out or go grocery shopping.

I resent it also because it is most commonly followed with such vapid, brainless persistence. There's nothing say with clothes if your entire world is clothes, nothing but self-referential circles to chew off your tail in. It is social appropriateness; it could be art.

I definitely don't have this clothing and gender stuff figured out. It helps that my closest guy friend is an artist and dresses well--equality, or at least a taste--what would the world be like if everyone would dress well? Prettier, for sure. More expressive. Aesthetic preferences say something about your soul.

I've been coming together about it in pieces. Slowly.

This is the day when you're tired

and wonder in fragments about old patterns, and how they can change

This is the day when you have only two-plus-a-million major things to get done.

In CASA training they taught us everything you experience changes the structure of your brain. Neurochemical pathways are a bit like trails in the woods; the more they get used, the easier they are to use. That's why abused kids often have overdeveloped fight or flight responses, which get invoked for all sorts of situations that don't actually require them.

I'm working on teaching my brain not to be in crisis.

She was answering the wrong question, of course--the question I actually asked. She talked about doing lots of things (not just school), not letting yourself be owned by a world that's poisonous to you. She teaches for only a month straight; adored as she is some places, she still has no stomach for the establishment.

I did not expect that every question would be like mine, but they were--almost all of them. How do I deal with it when people commodify my sexuality? How do I teach my son not to be a part of this ugliness? How have you done it? How do we hang on to our truth and ourselves in such a messy world? This is what we were really asking. We have read your work. There's no hiding how clearly you see, so share with us--help us--save us. Help us untangle all these things; help us know we're not alone.

And she feels invaded by it, I think, by all our asking and our wanting--but also, loved.


She signed my feminist theory--Day!! in sweet sisterhood --love, bell hooks.

I am glad.

I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but--Let's pretend there are two parts to Day. There's hyper-critical (in the good way of critical), academic, intellectual me, who is smart, often a jerk (though often on accident), and to some people intimidating. Then there's the soft nougatie center: melodramatic, playful, silly, self-important, exceptionally empathetic, passionate, sad, and in many ways childlike--in short, unapologetically emotional as all hell.

Introspective thought of the Day: Both personas make people uncomfortable. The thing that sometimes makes people comfortable is to put on diplomatic-face, which is EXHAUSTING--and feels more like a hard earned skill than an authentic presentation of myself. Except, I do authentically want to make people comfortable. Sometimes. In some ways. I think.

No sir, I am Not prickly. I don't know why you people say those things about me. Humph.

An exception: Day in a crisis--who is simply badass. Maybe I'm just more comfortable around people who are uncomfortable?



Lately, childlike emotional Day seems to have been putting in more appearances. Oh crying in public. . . you knew I wouldn't abandon you.

surely there's got to be some sort of middle ground?

drive and happiness

The problem might be: I associate my drive to change the world for the better with the poor condition of my own life. Not in all ways, of course--I would be fine with having a blockbuster academic career filled out with various sorts of social activism--as long as I wasn't happy.

I value my drive to change the world for the better. There's something terrible about the norm of acceptance; accept the genocides, the lies, the general unpardonable suffering of other human beings. Accept because they aren't here, and potential solutions are complicated. It's true that there's no social pressure to say these things are alright, but to be normal is to do nothing, or to do only what is comfortable--and, to condemn the norm is called unreasonable.

It doesn't seem like it would be possible to be happy without cutting yourself off from the incredible amount of pain that goes on in the world. It seems like you'd have to stop seeing all those people, who constantly hurt, as people. I'm afraid of being the norm; I feel that when I put resources into things that make me happy, they could be going to something better. I feel that when I'm happy I'm complacent. I feel that when I'm happy I'll start being part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

So, blogging balance.

My favorite part is that by telling everyone, I don't have to tell anyone. There's no sitting in awkward silence. There's less of that feeling that I'm trying to knock down a brick wall with every sentence. There's no wondering whose day I've ruined, or which friend thinks I'm trying to use them as a therapist. It's emotionally reckless, but it's also pretty clearly marked, and so far I think no one reads at gunpoint. The writing every day feels good, and the openness also.

There are things I worry about. What not to say? I feel strongly that depression and anxiety, the commonplace messedupnesses, need a louder place. It isn't that they're good--it's that they're so hard to talk about. What are you supposed to do if sad and scared are the larger part of your life? How do you deal with the days when you have nothing to say to anyone because you feel you can't be happy enough for them--like they deserve something better? Even people who want to be supportive don't know how to deal with it. Maybe if we talked about it more often they would.

There's a line to walk. Wallowing is bad. I have no idea how to split the difference between self pity and a healthy, honest recognition of your circumstances--between raising awareness, getting healthy social feedback, and pointless exhibitionism. All good things to learn.

lost

"Honestly, it turned my stomach when you mentioned that you'd thought about blowing things up," he said, turning towards me in the darkness of the car.

"It should." My answer was easy and fast. "If it doesn't turn your stomach, then you've lost something. . . something that's important to have."


I thought about the girl, abused, intentionally isolated, eleven years old and peeling away her own skin under quality professional care.


I have lost something.

Today I came home hungry and tired and sad. I ate food, tried to take a nap, and discovered I was still cold, hungry, sad. At least I'm getting better at keeping track.

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of getting my own social needs met. . . like, what exactly are my social needs? And in an ideal world, the things I'd want from friends are about this:

-Real conversations with people who actually want to talk to me, and can talk about both social/emotional things and cool other stuff (literature, music, philosophy, politics, electronics, economics, etc.). I think on average I'd want this to total at least a few hours a day, but I'm happy for much more if it's intellectually productive. I'd like these to be people who I talk to often enough that we sort of know what's going on in each other's lives. I'd like them to be able to deal with me being depressed or otherwise crazy (when I am) and willing to act as support network for this. Hopefully the need would be very rare.

-Good feedback on the stuff that we talk about, social, emotional, and otherwise.

-Depression support is: sometimes shoulder to cry on, sometimes normal conversation even though I am upset, sometimes someone to help be a problem solver, sometimes listening ear, and always a safety net. Also--when I say safety net, I mean, I want there to be people who would know and care if I were getting close to falling off a cliff, even the sort of cliff that wouldn't leave me physically injured.

-Good company for quiet things, sometimes, maybe twice a week or a bit more; probably cooking, eating, doing housework, or watching each other do hand-work of some kind while talking or reading--maybe followed by a movie on the couch. This particular thing is nice because it can sometimes save a lot of time for the person being visited. I like visiting people like this, but I would like it to sometimes be reciprocal.

-At least two or three good hugs a day, from people who actually want to hug me, and not from children. Diversity in timing and huggers is preferable. (I love child hugs, but they are different, and I've extremely affectionate nieflings.)

-People to go out with occasionally and do fun, expensive (in my budget) things--like eat out, go to concerts, etc. This one I don't have trouble finding, though honestly, I also sort of enjoy going places alone.

-Introductions to new interesting people with some sort of reasonable frequency. For this, I'll need at least one or two friends who are way more social than I am.

-Other assorted social goodness: crazy midnight adventures, backpacking trips, swing dancing, back massages, making music and other things together, showing up to each other's important events, road trips, and whatever else seems like a good idea at the time.


There are several encouraging things about this, especially to notice that they are basically all things I can do reasonably well in return, even if I am less entertaining and socially appropriate.

Also; I sometimes get the feeling of adequate conversation from some philosophy classes. Awesomeness.

Some of the people who have hurt me worst are very hard to get mad at. You say anything to them about what they've done wrong, and they collapse inward into violent paroxysms of guilt.

This is difficult. It feels like they can't or won't face the consequences of their actions. . . but I still have to. Some part of me really wants to hurt them, but yelling at them to try and make them understand would be like kicking a puppy; monstrous, horrifying, and not at all useful. In the slightest. To anyone.

I think anger is useful. It seems there are two good responses to it. If anger is telling you about something that ought to be changed, change it if you can. That's what anger is for, to fuel battles, to keep you awake and strong and make you remember what you fight for.

If it is impossible to change--there is only to mourn what you've lost.

Purity

is one of the most common measures of morality; it's about cultivating virtue and keeping out the things that don't belong. Among liberals and leftists it is often manifested through food. Veganism is not for everybody--only for the virtuous, those who care about ethics, those who are willing to sacrifice. Eating local, organic, produce and excluding whatever is ethically dubious will make you skinny and healthy and. . . virtuous. Right?

Maybe. If one is concerned with animal welfare and the environment, having a lifestyle that supports that is a spectrum, not a step, and it isn't just food. As humans in the first world, virtually everything we do has a detrimental environmental impact. How does your veggie burger hold up against your refusal to take the bus? The clothes you bought new at Wal-mart? Your soap from the dollar store? Do you know what oilfield your 100% vegan fleece came from? Is it really better, just because the bodies of the dead are rotting in the Niger delta instead of marinating in tariyaki sauce?

I don't mean to belittle the efforts of really dedicated environmentalist vegans. They have my admiration and support. I also don't mean to imply at all that any effort which doesn't cover everything isn't worthwhile. I even believe in being vocal about your ethical choices, and I want people to hold each other (socially) to a high ethical standard with regards to environmentalism.

My beef with this comes in when people think it's ok to try to invoke other people's sense of purity. Moral reasoning, I'm fine with. If you want to stop me from eating meat because of justice--because by eating it I'm doing harm to people and creatures who deserve no violence from me--I am absolutely fine with that. However, I'd rather have vegetarianism forced on me by violence than have people appropriate my understanding of virtue to get me to adopt it on my own.

When we disagree about what priorities are appropriate for the wider society to accept, that effects me but it is not an attack on my identity. When it comes to individual choices, there is only person one who should be allowed to decide what belongs in me--in my body, in my ethics--and what does not. This person is me. If I adopt an ethical standard based on selfish and inconsistent hedonism, as an individual you can think less of me, and as a citizen you can help enact laws that curb my outward behavior--and that's all.

I feel very strongly that trouble comes when outsiders try to arbitrate an individual's sense of purity. Religious readers might disagree with this, but I see this as a major problem in religious practice. When the emotional and ethical development process have not taken place for a teenager to reject pornography of their own accord, based on their own moral foundation, others will often attempt to impose this conclusion socially. The result is a massive cycle of guilt and shame. I don't know if it works or not, but guilt is an ugly motivator--and when allowed to fester and spiral into something huge, it does terrible damage to the person experiencing it.

The thing to be avoided is manipulation--projecting your values over someone else's, or usurping their values so that they will act in support of your preferences.

Besides its modern incarnation, there's a very long spiritual tradition of using food to establish or symbolize moral superiority, using purity. My first bout with severely disordered eating was triggered--after many other things had been set in place--by a sacrament meeting devoted to how fasting can make you pure. You don't stop eating because of things you think; you do it because of things you feel. You do it because you want to feel pure and you don't feel like you deserve to live. When you associate purity with restricting food, you can get a double dose of self-destructive relief from one tragic course of action.

When others try to appropriate my sense of purity for their cause, I get defensive quickly. The idea that veganism isn't for everybody--only for the virtuous--pushes all the wrong buttons. I like to see myself as virtuous. I like to feel myself as pure. I enjoyed exercising for seven hours a day on a 1200 calorie, mostly-vegetable diet, and it makes me angry that people who were supposed to be my friends encouraged me to do so.

I think in dealing with these questions it's terribly important to get in touch with your own sense of virtue, your own sense of purity, your own moral reasoning--and to get in touch with your own judgmental side. Saying "I think you are in the wrong" makes it much clearer whose values are whose than saying "you could be pure if you were like me."



Someday, when there are less triggers associated with it, I'd like to become vegan with the exception of
a) foods I've raised myself humanely, and
b) significant cultural and culinary experiences.

I want to eat at the French Laundry, learn to make a spectacular saag paneer, and taste peeking duck when I'm in China. These moments will not come often, and I choose not to miss them.

My values lead me to think a lot about the ways my time and money impact other people and creatures, but they also lead me to assert my own claim to a rich and full existence. I am willing to take a stand for the things I care about. I am willing to make sacrifices, and I care passionately about changing the world for the better. I am not, and do not plan to be, vegetarian or vegan. This is what I believe about the purity and virtue of the way I eat.

Today was even more useless than yesterday, so this evening I decided it was time to be cheerful already. I took a hot shower, made some chamomile tea, and attempted to bake a sweet potato and some oatmeal cookies. I turned the thermostat up to a scandalous 72 degrees, turned on all the lights, and put on the Schubert cd I have out from the library. I curled up in a ball by my favorite heat vent. I called my sister repeatedly till she got home, and then we talked for over an hour.

It worked out pretty well.

It's lead me to thinking about all the predictable things that have a big impact on my ability to deal with depression. Here are the ones I thought of, in a pretty good approximate order of impact:

Hunger
Pain
Cold
Lack of exercise
Lack of social contact
Lack of quiet moments
Lack of light
Lack of being outside
Lack of dancing
Lack of music

And of course, there are the episodic things that can make it flare up and be harder to control:

Physical trauma
Negative social contact
Difficult internal goings-on, like some new insight about myself that sucks


One thing that I haven't sorted out--ironically, for a Marxist--is what to think of the profound impact material goods can have on psychological functioning. I read once that, after the point of having enough that you aren't worried about subsistence, happiness doesn't correlate to absolute material wealth at all--only to relative material wealth in the society you're in. I wish I remember where I read that, since I have no idea if it's true.

So many things are made so much easier by a little bit of money. . . it almost makes it look like money could really solve things like depression--but it can't. Material resources offer the possibility that material problems can be solved--but there are attendant challenges. Sometimes the psychological problems that arise with wealth are as serious as the physical ones they've replaced.

One IAF thing I really like is the iron rule: Never do for others what they can do for themselves. Following this rule creates localized autonomy, a sense of accomplishment, and actual accomplishments--things that can really help with a problem like depression. I think that's key to the material resources issue, with depression especially; they can only help insofar as people are also given a real opportunity to do what they can for themselves.

I am tired.

I walked nine miles today. It's good to know I'm not lazy; I love exercise too much to accept that of myself. Whatever I'm avoiding when I put off work, it's not exertion.

Lately my treadmill keeps saving me. Sometime early in the day, I'll start having that caving-in feeling--like I've collapsed in on myself, and whatever remains at the center is emanating darkness. It's a bad mood to get stuck in, worse because once it properly sets, you feel guilty even talking to people--don't want to burden people, or contaminate them. My instincts are all pretty self-destructive at that point. I want to drip sweat in my sixty-degree living room, muse or propaghandi blaring at full volume, push my body till it breaks.

It never works that way, though; melodrama folds to reality. At first there's a sense of action, that at least I'm doing something about those desires--then a sense of accomplishment as the miles tally higher, I push my body harder--and finally, exhaustion takes the edge off of everything and I begin to lay plans for my day. There are papers to write, boys to kiss, classics to read and recipes to make. Maybe there's a revolution to fight. I have a garden to plan. There is today, and there is tomorrow.



Sometimes I wonder if I should leave Utah, or even just Utah county. I'm happier here than I've ever been--I pretty much assume places are places and people are people--but maybe somewhere else really could be different. Better. . . better for me, more likely to find people who could be good friends for a psycho like myself. It's quite possible that this was all about my abrasiveness, but I did somehow manage to loose all of my Mormon friends when I became communist. I'm really glad my family stuck around through it till they were able to see where I was coming from.

From an empirical standpoint, this state has some of the highest rates in the country for suicide, depression, rape, plastic surgery, and jello consumption. It makes me sad--I want to think better of Utahns.