#i could have gone to something with my local jewish friends but my brain & body said no

[owlbelly]

l'shanah tovah, i'm kvetching about religious frustration i guess

i always feel so weird on HHDs. all my Jewish friends are either doing video services with various congregations all over the map, or going in person to one of the local ones & i just don't ever feel like i want to do either of those things. with big online stuff i'm just totally disconnected & usually waiting for it to be over. i'd do better at an in-person thing but i'm so allergic to institutions, i don't want to be a member of a shul. the only time i ever had something fulfilling to do was when i was involved with that local radical havurah/minyan which was SO much more my style of observance & ever since that disbanded i've been kind of like. well, big shrug.

i feel really grateful to have local Jewish stuff to do - chevra kadisha, co-organizing the Hanukkah market & Jewish zine fest pop ups, going to other people's little workshops here & there etc. - but i really don't have anything to replace what NS was...like a real collective prayer/ritual thing. i only even had like a tiny taste of it before the pandemic (there were some things that happened during but they weren't in-person gatherings) but i guess that was enough to feel kinda depressed now. idk! i think i'm also just sick of feeling like i'm too tired & unfocused to do any ritual even by myself. being Jewish & having massive executive dysfunction & fatigue is a whole fucking thing i barely ever see anyone talk about. ofc i know a lot of other disabled Jews but it feels like everyone has more patience for online services than me. also like...maybe i would enjoy having a consistent personal Shabbat observance of some kind but that has never felt possible! i made myself a nice little altar space with all my Jewish stuff on it & i do NOTHING with it because i've never been able to maintain any kind of consistent personal ritual practice, ever, so i just try to look at it sometimes & appreciate it, which i guess is better than nothing. i try to be really protective of what i do consider to be my Jewish observance, which is a lot of study & creative expression, my ethical frameworks for how i live & socialize & pursue justice - but i hate constantly feeling like i'm not a part of "actual" Jewish religious practice even though i am an authority-rejecting weirdo Jew. i guess "actual" for me is just doing ritual & prayer, especially with other people, it doesn't have to be traditional although i like there to be some element of that too.

idk we're gonna go apple picking tomorrow like we usually do for Rosh Hashanah & i do appreciate that i have that! but that's a secular observance with my non-Jewish chosen fam. i do actually wish i had a religious thing to do with other Jews & i don't like any of my options & i'm unexpectedly sad about it

#rambling thoughts #jew stuff #disability stuff #i could have gone to something with my local jewish friends but my brain & body said no #now my heart is like 'you suck though. it's high holy days and you never do anything' #whatever i'm a tired hormonal mess rn & i'll feel better tomorrow when i'm apple picking

[awake-and-strange]

This obituary by Janis Ian about Anne McCaffrey is very A Passion for Friends:

There've been so many mentions of Anne McCaffrey in the post below, I thought to post this homage I wrote for Locus Magazine when Annie died. I miss her, a lot. I kept a few of the most precious books she gave me, but last time I opened one I burst into tears... I feel fortunate to have loved someone so wonderful, to have been loved in return, and to miss her this much. From Locus Magazine: THE MASTERHARPER IS GONE "I have a shIelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens." —Anne McCaffrey I miss her fiercely, more than I have any right to miss her. I remind myself of this whenever I run into her at the library and am stricken with tears. She was not kin, was not connected to me by family ties, not even a distant cousin. Not even Jewish. I have no right to miss her this much. And once in a while, when I chide myself for my silly sentimentality, the sudden lightning that pierces my heart gives way to a duller, deeper pain. One I can live with, perhaps. Like today, waking to a terrible cold, with headache and foggy brain I reach for solace. Put on my red flannel comfort shirt, add my favorite PJ bottoms, then a pair of  fleece-lined slippers. Make my favorite tea, cover myself with an old patchwork quilt, and reach blindly for a book on my “comfort shelf.” Of course. I can’t escape her. Hours later, still miserable, I finish "All the Weyrs of Pern"  for the umpteenth time, and scold myself for the tears that fall – first, because she is gone, and second, because I never really succeeded in telling her just how much she meant to me. I’d never heard of her when I stumbled across for "The Ship Who Sang" at my local library. I wrote to her, saying that it had moved me profoundly, wondering how a prose writer could have such a clear understanding of a musician’s soul. Being one myself, I said, a musician that is, and would like to send a copy of my last record in gratitude. She responded with a laugh that she had never heard of me but oh my, her children had, and could we trade books for recordings? And so, we began. I raced through everything she sent – such generosity, so much that it took two large boxes to ship it all. She, in turn, told me that while she appreciated the beauty of my “Jesse” and the clarity of “At 17”, she was writing her current novel to the beat of my one disco hit, “Fly Too High.” I laughed aloud because it made an artist’s sense to me – dragons flew, and Anne flew with them, regardless of the beat. It was the third or fourth email that she began with the salutation “Dear Petal,”.  Petal. Me? I responded that of all the things I’d been called, no one had ever dreamed to name me “Petal”. She answered briskly that obviously, they’d never seen me bloom. From that day forward, I was her Petal, and she my Orchid. We corresponded ferociously, both all-or-nothing no-holds-barred types, Aries to the hilt. Weekly, daily, sometimes hourly. Dropped out at times when one of us was “on tour”, came back to it as we could. The time passed. Her beloved agent died. My parents passed away. She got a scathing review; I sent a few of my own. She was stuck on a chapter, I was stuck on a verse. We got unstuck, stuck again, and through it all we talked, comforting one another as only a “good hot cuppa” can. She picked me up herself in Dublin, leaning on a cane, nervous to meet in the flesh until I ran into her arms and smothered her with hugs. She drove between the hedgerows with complete abandon, a total disregard for ruts or speed limits, while I clutched the seat and wondered who’d get the bigger headline if we crashed. Annie, I decided, for she was truly a two-column, bold print kind of gal. By then, she was always “Annie” to me, or “Annie Mac”. My larger than life friend, who consorted daily with dragons and starlight, her own luster never dimming  beside them. Once, after she showed me the rock cliffs of the Guiness Estate and explained that Benden Hold looked just like that, she asked if I would write a theme for it. For the movie? I said. “Yes”, she said, “A theme. Because if Menolly came to life, it would be with your voice.” I say this not to brag, but to indicate the trust between us – such trust that when I got home, with no film in sight, I began sketching out some notes for “Lessa’s Song”. I wanted it to be haunting, the way her words haunted me. I wanted it to be sweeping, like the thrust of dragon wings. I wanted it to be everything I could bring to her, a gift for someone whose words took me out of my world and into hers. As she said herself, “That’s what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.” I hope someday to finish that melody. I hope it’s good enough for a MasterHarper to sing. I hope she regarded me worthy of the title. Because that’s what she was for so many of us – the MasterHarper, singing in prose, songs that reminded us of where we’d been, and what we could become. She came and stayed with us in Nashville, bringing a broken shoulder and trusting me to care for her. We visited Andre Norton, Annie insisting I not just drive but sit with them and listen to “a bit of gossip”. These two women—one writing at a time when pseudonyms were necessary for a woman to get published, the other cracking the New York Times bestseller list with, of all things, a science fiction book, and by a female at that!—talked of publishers, rumors, scandals old and new, while I sat as silent as an unopened book, wishing I’d thought to bring a tape recorder. At first, as her health declined, she bore it cheerfully. “I’m bionic now, Petal, complete with metal knees!” she declared. “Better than ever, and no pain.” She kept to her writing schedule, doing what she could to help her body retain its youth. Swam every day, bragged about her granddaughter’s accomplishments at school – “First prize, don’tcha know!” and commiserated over our various surgeries. We sound like a couple of old Yiddishe mamas, comparing whose surgery was worse! I laughed, and she laughed along with me. Neither of us reckoned on the psychic toll. “Old age is not for the faint of heart,” she quoted, as her energy began to leech away. How is it we artists always forget just how hard it is to write? how much work it is? How can we ignore the vast psychic drain that accompanies every act of creation? We both knew it from her Pern books, when going between enervated even the hardiest of dragon riders. But somehow, we never expected it in “real” life. It’s only when we lose that effervescence, through age, through illness, through sheer attrition, that we realize how necessary it is to our work. How fundamental to our beings. “I can’t write.” She confessed the shameful secret to me not once, but dozens of times, as if repetition would prove it a lie. At first, playing the friend, I tried to reassure her. Then don’t! Take some time off, Annie. Restore your body, and the brain will follow. Talent doesn’t just disappear, you know – it lies in wait. But she knew better. “I'm still not writing.  I think I know how Andre Norton is feeling, too, because I suspect that she's finding it very difficult to write, as the wellspring and flexibility that did us so much service is drying up in our old age. And no false flattery. AT 76 I AM old, and she's in her nineties.   It takes a lot of energy to write, as much as it takes you to keep on adding flavor to your song presentation. Sorry to blah at you but you're one of the few people who does understand the matter when an artist questions their output.” I responded in kind. "No worries talking to me about not writing... I sure as hell know the amount of energy it consumes. Every time you sit down to write, it's a performance. Only you don't have the luxury of props - no lights, sound, other actors to step behind when the inevitable fatigue hits. Heck, Annie, I'm feeling it more and more now, and you've got a quarter century on me.  I notice it mid-show; two hours used to be a piece of cake. Now I feel myself flagging at 45 minutes, and I really look forward to that 20 minute intermission, if only so I can have some water and sit for a few minutes. "Same with writing, for me. Used to be able to sit and write for 6 hours at a stretch. Now I'm good for two if I'm lucky. Part of it's my back, but most of it is - I fear - just that I'm older. It sucks." And she wrote back. “Must write. There are IRS problems. You wouldn’t believe. Mouths to feed, people depending on. Advances already spent and gone. Must write.” And so, she wrote, but for a while there was no joy in it. Still, I loved what she wrote, and told her so. I was proud of our friendship, not because she was so damned famous, but because she was so damned good. She even used my name in a book – Ladyholder Janissian in Skies of Pern – and roared with laughter when I admitted I’d been so wrapped up in the story that I hadn’t even noticed. But she knew – as artists always do – that while her ability to plot continued apace, the actual writing of it was becoming an endurance contest she couldn’t hope to win. “Turn more of it over to Todd,” I argued. Her son had a real knack for a sentence, but it was hard for Annie to let go. Of course. What artist can? “His words may not sing the way yours do – yet. He doesn’t have your lyrical grace – yet. But he will, Annie, you’ve just got to let him breathe!” I said it and said it and said it, to no avail. Then came a day when, 25 years younger and an ocean away, I finally lost patience and angrily berated her. “Damnit Annie, quit complaining and just stop! By God, you have created a mountain of work, an incredible legacy that will endure and be read by zillions of people long after both of us are gone – so quit whining about what you cannot do and start looking at what you have done. It’s time, Anne. Take this unbearable weight off your shoulders and stop!” I sent the email off and waited for her response, fearing I’d gone too far. A day. Then another. Finally, sure I’d lost a friend, I called to ask just how angry she was with me. Oh, no, not at all, she’s “in hospital.” She took a fall. She’d write soon. And she did, quoting me and saying “I knew you, of all people, would make sense.” A sweeter absolution I’ve never had. We continued our friendship, bitching about our bodies, menopause, the inevitable “drying up” of everything that comes with the feminine mystique. You cannot imagine the luxury, for me, to have a compatriot a quarter-century older. As an artist, I admired her work. But as a woman, I was relieved to have someone relentlessly honest about what was to come in my own life. We traded constantly. I sent her Lhasa de Sela, Sara Bettens. She sent stories about her animals, and the garden. One spring she changed my salutation to “Dear Crocus Petal – there are eight coming up now!” We planned  to visit Prague together in September ’01, but then came 9/11, and I chickened out. To be brutally honest, I was afraid to fly. Annie gently took me to task, then went off with someone else instead. I will regret that for the rest of my life. She went into the hospital for the last time while I was touring the UK – just a ferry boat and an ocean of commitments away. Knowing how out of touch she’d feel, how fretful she’d be, I tried to call every day. We fell into a pattern – I’d wait until I was in the van, then phone her up and tell an off color joke, a bawdy story, a bit of kindly gossip. Sometimes about people we knew in common, Harlan perhaps, or Scott Card, whose work she admired. Sometimes just a silly series of puns I’d found on line. Whatever it was, I wanted to make her laugh, because I loved to hear her laugh. She died while I was on vacation, just days after the tour’s end. I’d brought a copy of Dragonsinger with me because on vacation, I always brought a few “comfort re-reads.” I’d fallen asleep over it, waking to an email from Gigi. Please keep it quiet until I can reach everyone, she asked. My older brother Alec is still in flight, and we don’t want him seeing it in the paper before I can reach him. I called with sleep still in my eyes and heard the hum of people behind Gigi’s answering voice. It was fast, it was painless, it was everything Annie had wanted. No lingering. A “good death” for her. But not for me. It’s hard to open my computer knowing there will be no “Dear Petal.” It’s hard, after knowing such a warm and giving shelter, to go without. Sometimes I run across a sentence that sings to me, and jot it down to show her. And sometimes, when she leaps out at me from the cover of a book, I remember she is gone, and it hits me like lightning, fast and lethal and completely unexpected. It stops my breath, until I remind myself that she is gone, but I am still here. When the lightning hits, I comfort myself with this. The beauty of Anne’s writing is that she makes it all seem, not just possible, but normal. For men to go dragonback. For women to become ships. For young, unwanted girls to become MasterHarpers. For brains to pair with brawns, and sing opera under alien skies. And for an unlikely friendship to bloom, a pairing no one could have imagined, between a petal on earth, and an orchid in flight.

#a passion for friends #janis ian #anne mccaffrey #petal and orchid

[stretchjournalemerson]

Endless Island

By Matthew Pifko

I. Coffee, Whole Milk, and 2 Sugar Packets

My mom is drawing on a napkin at the diner while we wait for our food. She sketches out long, parallel lines across the fragile fabric, careful not to tear through the tissue-like surface. She is drawing me a map of Long Island - more specifically, the roads that criss and cross it. I sip coffee out of the stout, ceramic mug. I’m now seventeen, I’ve already decided I like coffee, and it’s too late to turn back. It tastes bitter and sour and it burns my tongue a little bit, but I diligently sip it anyway. I don’t really like the taste, but I do like the way it makes me feel buzzy and present (I never say that of course, because that makes me sound like a drug addict).

“So, this is Sunrise Highway,” she declares, pointing to the thin line of ink. “And that’s connected to 347, right?” I murmur into my steaming cup. “No. Sunrise Highway runs along the south shore, all the way to the end, y’know, like where Montauk is. And the Long Island Expressway runs here, over near us on the north shore, from the city out to the middle of the island. 347 is one of the roads connected to the Northern State Parkway, which is that windy and old road that was built before they had big expressways on the island.”

I nod blankly, and mutter something. Just a noise of affirmation to get her to think my mind is still on the conversation. The truth is that I couldn't care less about the long, flat strips of concrete that connect Long Island. I don’t care what they’re called. I don’t care where they go. None of this matters to me when I’m seventeen, because I’m not going to live here. In fact, pretty soon, my license will be useless to me, since I’ll be soaring on a gleaming bullet of a subway. The second I graduate from my claustrophobic little prison of a high school, I’m going far, far away. As far as I’m allowed to go. At the moment, I have compromised with Boston - a city that isn’t exactly Los Angeles, but is at least a couple hours away from New York. I tell myself there’s a good chance I’ll transfer over to LA in a year, anyway. To me, Long Island was the place to escape from, the starting line of a marathon, a ledge to leap from. This is not to say Long Island is Bumblefuck, Idaho. In fact, the Island is positively teeming with people, and there are more flooding in every day. So many people that they’re packed like sardines into this tiny strip of land clinging to the East Coast, the price tags on their houses going up and up and up until the entire place is swallowed up by the ocean. I was determined to never be one of them. Convinced that I couldn’t be one of them, even if I tried. I knew Long Island wasn’t “for” me, the same way I knew as a child that scary R-rated movies weren’t “for” me. The thing about Long Island, and more specifically, my quaint little homogenized tourist town, is that I always felt like an “other” there. In terms of postcolonial theory, “otherness” is defined as a sort of psychological divide constructed by conquerors to separate themselves from the conquered - to my understanding, this group of conquerors includes Spanish conquistadors, British imperialists, Nazis, and even those wealthy, boisterous, self congratulatory high schoolers who call quiet kids

“fags”. In other words, “otherness” is a weapon used by monsters of all shapes and sizes. As an other, I understood that, on some level, I was lesser than the conquerors. Maybe because I was queer. Maybe because I was Jewish. Maybe because I wanted to be an artist. Or maybe because I just felt like Matt Pifko didn’t belong there, like his brain chemistry was incompatible with the air he breathed in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, United States, zip code 11777.

II. Learning

Don’t worry, this isn’t a tragic backstory. In high school, I wasn’t bullied or tormented or even excluded. I had a superpower - I was selectively invisible. That is, “Queer Jew With Anxiety” wasn’t exactly stamped on my forehead. My voice was deep. My hair was straight. My nose was normal. My body wasn’t twitchy or nervous. My face was square enough. My beard grew patchy, but it grew. I was tall, tall enough that no one questioned my masculinity. I laughed a lot, and I was funny. I looked depressed, or maybe just tired, but in a relatable way. After all, what high schooler isn’t “depressed” these days?

“Your face is my mood,” my friend once said to me as I stumbled into the fluorescent white building at 7:18 am.

When you ask people what superpower they’d want, they always say “flying” or “time travel” or some ridiculous shit like that. I say invisible, because being figuratively invisible is great. To walk down the hallway and not feel eyes on you is to feel power in high school. To be invisible is to be able to blend in anywhere, to fit into any friend group, any clique, any niche. Information is power, and the less information, the less control they had over me. I was slippery. Being translucent is even more powerful in a small town like Port Jefferson, where the local mothers gossip on their Facebook forums and around dinner tables, where the same 70 kids who went to pre-k together went to high school together as well. Port Jefferson was a special small town, in that it was a literal port. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, Port Jefferson has a ferry system that constantly shuttles tourists from Bridgeport, Connecticut into our quaint little town. Stepping off this ferry, one looks down the barrel of Main Street, a bustling cardboard cutout of coffee shops, bars, and everything in between. Thus, tourist traps selling useless knick knacks would open and close every season along Main Street, a new vintage board game store replacing the new crystal shop from last year. During the summers, my parents would complain about the mobs of strangers running into traffic downtown. I never understood why it made them so mad until I got a car of my own and almost hit wandering pedestrians on multiple occasions. In Port Jefferson, you’d swear you could actually feel eyes on you. Think 1984, but Big Brother is a network of parents who were once the popular kids in Port Jefferson High School back in nineteen-seventy-whatever. And now, their offspring are the popular kids once again, like some sort of inbred dynasty. To express otherness was to be shunned out of the community. To be invisible was to live on their watch-list. Nothing scared the denizens of Port Jefferson more than invisibility - they had a fear of blindness, of not being able to peer behind the curtain.

This was their town, and they’d be damned if anything or anyone was awry in their town. To these lifelong townspeople, a town had to be possessed. A town had to be owned - and therefore it was their job to own it. To control it. To keep it the same. To keep the others out. I remember going to a stage crew party senior year, and finally stepping into the old fashioned, brick-built mansion of one of these Port Jefferson dynasties. Their son, in my grade, controlled the entire theater department, to the point where he was actually paid to manage the other kids (other kids including me and my friends on the art team). Walking around this palace, seeing the off-kilter smiles of his parents as they greeted me, I felt genuine terror. Could their gazes pierce my thin armor? How much did they know? How much did they see?

From time to time, my invisibility would scare me. I’d think about dying in some horrible car accident on the LI Expressway, my consciousness and interior life gone before I could blink, with no one ever knowing that I was gay. No one ever knowing why I was an irritable and inconsolable asshole from time to time, why I holed myself up in my room listening to Frank Ocean and The Smiths for hours. At my funeral, they’d shrug, and just figure I was a strange boy. Often, I’d think about confessing my queerness on a paper, locked in a box that they could only find after I died.

This is not to say that I had no meaningful friends in high school, or that my parents didn’t know me at all, or that I was dead inside from freshman year till the day I graduated. After all, there were smaller, safer ways of exposing my otherness, whether it was my unwavering liberal political allegiance or my undying commitment to twisted horror cinema. It’s just... when you’re an other on Long Island, in Port Jefferson, you get scared what would happen if you ever truly lost your power. Being slippery is good. It means you won’t get caught. Even when I came out to my closest friends in the sticky spring of senior year, I felt scared. I felt my invisibility fade away, my body now opaque and ugly. I was seen, and I could be caught. Nothing’s worse than feeling like you could be trapped in Port Jefferson.

III. Endless Island

When I try real hard to visualize Long Island, to visualize the idea of Long Island, I always come back to the days I spent canvassing for Suffolk County Democratic Legislator Sarah Anker, a mission that spread from the summer to election day 2017. Trump had already taken over the White House, so there was an element of hopelessness to the whole affair. There was also a little rebellious spark in that uphill battle, making our fight for office a tad exciting.

I had taken up the internship with two of my friends from high school. Together, we traced the windy roads every Saturday, using the dots on our printer paper maps to find the targets of our campaign. Each week, we would get new black and white rectangles of Long Island, the tiny roads threaded out like a spider’s web across the page, the black circles that indicated houses appearing to me like trapped flies. On the page, we could indicate whether that

resident we had spoken with supported the candidate, supported the opposing party, refused to say, didn’t speak English, wasn’t there at all, and so on. Our campaign supervisor was Tim, a tall, slim man in his early 20s. Most importantly to seventeen year old me, Tim was openly gay. Gay. Gay, like how no guy in my high school was openly gay. The very thought of Tim existing, running this little organization, sent excited chills through my body. He was here, he was an “other”, and he was living and breathing just like the rest of us.

Since the three of us Port Jefferson boys had just gotten our licenses, we would swap on and off driving, one of us spending our precious gas money at a time. I drove my beat-up 1996 Lexus that my family had purchased for 3,000. Leland drove his dad’s silver, scratched 2003 Honda minivan. Dylan rarely drove, but when he did, he drove the sleek black Volkswagen that his mom normally used. Leland, with his twitchy hands and manic laugh, was probably the worst driver out of us three (we may have gotten pulled over once or twice), but he drove the most. He liked driving. I liked it when he drove, for in these hours I could just listen to the laughter of my friends, the tinny music coming from the rusted speakers, and the hum of the air conditioning. I would stare out the big rectangular minivan window at the endless rows of box houses, their color changing from tan to grey to maroon to blue to grey to black to tan to grey. When the car stopped, we would split off in three directions, each of us knocking doors, pacing down the pavement in search of potential voters. When we walked during the stretched out summer days, it was always too humid. When we walked during the inky black autumn nights, it was always too frigid. Canvassing, in its essence, was an “other” invasion - we invaded these boring neighborhoods, these undisturbed sectors, infiltrating their tranquil suburbs with our Democrats and our queerness and our papers, our papers that we left on their doorstep whether they liked it or not. They would be forced to see our faces, to hear our voices. Often, I felt like a deep sea explorer, diving deeper into the trenches of Long Island and seeping into their private lives through the cracked roads I once resented. Knocking on these endless doors, peering into endless sets of eyes, was that fertile mix of strange, scary, and thrilling that defines the best moments of adolescence. Sometimes, staring out into the vast Boston cityscape, I miss those ugly houses a little.

But really, when I think of Long Island, I don’t think of a place. A specific, singular snapshot doesn’t come to mind. Rather, I think of driving through the suburbs in Leland’s creaky minivan, the roads blurring together, the yellow dashes mixing with the white lines, the street lights gliding into one another. Sometimes, after a party that ended too early, or after our parents had come home too soon, we would flee to the car, and just drive in circles around Long Island. Maybe stop and get some shitty fast food. Sit in the parking lot and talk a lot and then settle into a warm silence. Get back in the car. Look at the small towns pass by, peer curiously at the anonymous rows of houses. Go to the beach and creep onto the pitch black dunes. Listen to each others’ shaky breath, and the sound of wind hitting the water. And then drive some more.

Acknowledgments

Joan Didion deserves top billing here, without whom this essay would not have existed. I’d like to thank Mary Kovaleski-Byrnes for giving me the opportunity to create my first piece of writing about my queer identity. Clare Jackson, thank you for bringing this text to where it is now. I will always remember when tears fell down your face as you read my first draft in class. Eitan and Abby, thank you for the further assistance and final touches. Long Island - I don’t know what to say to you.

#culture #island #home #city #matthew pifko #stretch2019

[dcnativegal]

Compulsion & Identity

Ruminations of a Certified Alcohol & Drug Counselor--Intern

I’m sitting in one of the group therapy sessions with clients who have kept sober from a variety of substances for months or perhaps only days. They pee into a cup or suck on a saliva stick to prove their sobriety to me and their probation officers. They are biding their time and showing up and jumping through hoops that include community service, visits to Treatment Court, and paying off probation fines. Each one of them has harrowing stories. I have so much respect for them. Even when I know for sure they are flat out lying.

I’m trying to understand what it’s like, mentally, emotionally, and socially as they maneuver through their lives and all their important relationships as a sober person. We talk about it. One person admitted, I still don’t know who I am, sober.  I know I was funnier when I was high…

I’m learning all about “Substance use disorder” which is the newest term. (No longer abuse, and less use of the term ‘addiction.’) I have a stack of books with titles like “Buzzed” and “Uppers and Downers.” I remember from my early social work training that there is a stunting of brain maturation when a person starts using a substance regularly. Each of these people starting using as young teenagers. The growing human learns to navigate through life with the help of the mellowing effects of pot, the mania and energy of meth, the disinhibitions of alcohol. There are supremely stupid choices that are made under the influences.  They don’t know how to deal with frustration, with a broken heart, with the moments included under the umbrella: ‘shit happens.’

I don’t know anyone who deals with ‘shit happens’ perfectly.  Well, maybe the Dalai Lama, and the late great Maya Angelou.

My personal drugs of choice are carbs and yarn. Carbs may kill me in the end. I’ve developed pancreatitis, in large part because it’s a side effect of an injectable drug that worked well for me for a couple of years. The other part of why is, simply, gluttony. (Noun. Habitual greed or excess in eating. Ouch. Literally.) My side started hurting in December, and I self-diagnosed kidney stones, so upped the liquids. Didn’t get into see my family nurse practitioner until mid-January. NOT kidney stones but pancreatitis. What the…?  Clear liquids for me. Who knew that there are dozens of kinds of broth.  Although the pain did not disappear, it lessened, and the lipase and other lab values went down to normal when I stuck to liquids. When I eat solids again, the pain and labs worsen. So I’ve been off and on solid food for a while. Every one to two weeks, I give a couple of vials of blood and 3 hours later, my nurse scolds me. Kinda like peeing into a cup, or sucking a saliva test strip. Clean UA? Good labs? It depends on behavior.

Humbling.

A client ‘bangs’ (injects) meth. I indulge in a cookie, or three. Not equivalent, exactly. But pancreatitis is dangerous. Meth is, too.

When ‘shit happens’ to me, which includes simply a bad day, I realized some time ago that I have  a sense of entitlement, of somehow ‘deserving’ the special treat of new yarn, or a Peppermint Patty. Because…. Insert self justification here….  I can imagine that some of the same justification goes on in the mind of people who use meth or pot or beer compulsively.  “I’ve been good… It was a shitty day… Fuck you, bossy bitch, I’m going out… “  As I stand in the checkout line at Safeway, I’m like, I’m tired, just one Peppermint Patty won’t kill me…

Dark chocolate, ice cream, cookies. I’ve heard alcoholics say that if there’s alcohol in the house, it calls to them. Same for me with chocolate. Valerie hides it. At the moment, I think we are totally out. Which is good. (I found her stash. ‘Bye, ‘bye stash. I am a gluttonous theif.)  I’ve been keeping a pile of tiny chocolates in my office for my clients. I give up. They’re all gone now. I couldn’t resist them. I’ll put stress balls in the box that held the mini-snickers and Twix. The Twix were very popular. I was especially fond of the mini-Milky Ways with dark chocolate. Val discovered Russell Stover’s sugar free peppermint patties. Oh. My. God. They are now on the banned list, even though they are sugar free. Even after I start feeling sick, I can eat 10 at a sitting. Like the rat hitting the cocaine water until he dies.

I knew someone who had a compulsion to use pornography. The idea would take root and next thing, that person would be walking into a strip club. Feeling disgusted later, dirty and depressed, the urge would diminish for a while, until the next time. My basic feeling about this whole arena is: tip the sex worker very well and be respectful. But, the compulsion, if it harms relationships with real live humans outside the club, is a problem. Not to mention how porn distorts what men think women actually enjoy.

Cravings.

Chocolate or yarn doesn’t HAVE to be a problem, but for me it is. Everything in moderation, except for me with sugar or yarn. I can ignore a wine bottle. No interest in illegal drugs. But keep sugar away from me. And no more yarn… hm… until I hit the new Willows store in Christmas Valley again.  Seed planted, insert rationalization: I’m supporting an independent local business! (I think this is called ‘stinkin’ thinking’. )

What is your ‘self medication’ of choice, dear reader?

Weed, which seems to be the drug of choice for teens in Lake County is a mixed bag. Pun intended. It made me paranoid and more anxious than I already was when I used it in college. It’s legal in some states but federally illegal. The medical marijuana card is a great thing for those who need it. I’ve seen the videos with people who have Parkinson’s go from violent tremors to graceful movement. For young people, though, I’ve seen it among my kids’ friends, how all motivation seems to vanish. It is the slacker’s drug of choice. I have teenaged clients who are mandated to see me because of weed, and they pee into a cup. I want for them every ounce of motivation to get them out of poverty and do well in school, find a trade, make a better living than their parents.

Our group discussion gave me a chance to revisit my own struggles with identity, as well as my own compulsive behavior.  Perhaps there is a parallel between my deep discovery in my early 40s that I am really and truly gay and my clients’ growing familiarity with their sober selves. For me, it was 2003. My husband had given me permission to figure out whether or not I was gay, bi, whatever. He’d had a serious heart attack, and earnestly pointed out that life is short. What a gift. What insanity.  This journey led to the end of our marriage, which was a hard and painful process but also, to lives lived with authenticity. Thank goddess for therapists. The kids survived and thrived, and he has been with a lovely, gifted, hilarious and STRAIGHT woman for something like 10 years. I have been with the cowhand for nearly 6.

What made that part of my history relevant, perhaps, to the path of the newly sober, is that I had to regroup my identity. As my children’s father put it, I’d changed teams. Not only was I on a different team, that team had a culture, a lingo, a look and feel that was perceptible by something called ‘gaydar’ which I had the beginnings of but really needed to step up. I rented every classic lesbian movie I could find, and some of them were terrible, but all of them taught me something. As a feminine-appearing gay woman, I needed to learn about femmes and femme culture since I am so not a butch. I read Joan Nestle, founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the hilarious Leslea Newman who wrote, ‘Out of the Closet with Nothing to Wear’, and the classic, “Heather has two Mommies.” I watched lesbians, especially in lesbian spaces. I learned about my own body, my own range of gender expression.

I moved to the Oregon Outback to be with my sweetie full time instead of half the year, and out here, I miss gay space (like a gay bar, community center, or Pride event), other gay people, any tiny glimpse of a gender bending queer sensibility.

We all feel this way, in each of our identities. Jewish people feel more comfortable when surrounded by other Jews. Women feel relaxed when there are no men present, and vice versa. Alcoholics can avoid the stigma when they are with other alcoholics. Ranchers enjoy the company of other ranchers.

Just this past week I met, FINALLY, another gay person who lives in Lake County. This person is married, and so now I know there are FOUR GAY PEOPLE IN LAKE COUNTY.  We’ll have a tiny gay pride parade in our living room come June, with a very large rainbow flag.

For my newly sober clients, it’s an adventure to learn who they are with their families, with their wives or husbands or girlfriends or boyfriends, with their employers, at their church. To say to their children, “yes, I have messed up, and I’m getting it together. No need to be sarcastic with me. I am still your parent.” They seek out the company of others in recovery to survive. There are several twelve step meetings in the county, thank goodness.  Since all of my clients started using in their early teens, there is a lot of growing up to do, all the while they have very real and heavy adult responsibility. It’s a lot to manage, in a punitive and financially strapped environment.  

For the sober, a hot bath has to take the place of a beer, or a bowl. All of those strong emotions cannot be mediated by a substance. Frustration? Anger? Sadness? How does one deal with those without an upper or a downer?  And if I have a rough day, I do not have to buy a Peppermint Patty.

I seek to relate to them and their stories, even while I immerse myself in online courses about substance use disorder. It’s a bit narcissistic, I know, to search for my own parallel struggle to humanize theirs. But as Anne Lamott once so wisely said, I am the turd around which the world revolves.

On New Year’s Eve, I went to Soul Collage at Toni’s house in Paisley, and made a New Year’s mandala (which I shared a picture of, two posts ago.)  In the center is a primate surrounded by bananas, and around the primate were examples of embodiment, words of encouragement, and healthy foods. It was shortly into 2017 that I was diagnosed with pancreatitis. I am now FORCED by my side pain and bad labs to get my eating act together, out of the realm of gluttony. Be careful what you wish for.

I went to Soul Collage again recently, and created two cards to help me tell the story of my clients, and also my own story. They depict the journey from serious faces to happy faces, with stops at

·        Know thine enemy and maybe befriend them, (the man and the skunk, the user and the dealer, the lesbian and the Trumpette)

·        Find your people and cuddle up to them to rest (like a pile of kittens)

·        Be creative in all things, with colored pencils or your new sense of who you can be now

·        Get used to feeling your feelings including the negative ones. They will not kill you. Smoking or ‘banging’ them away is procrastination. So are Peppermint Patties.

·        Do the work. No way to short cut the work. Carry the water that needs carrying and don’t be a whiney child about it. I know it’s a bitch to be a grownup and exercise self-control when other people are allowed to be such pains in the asses!!! Remember: sometimes, I AM THAT BITCH.

·        Allow time for joy, for running free, for deeply enjoying pleasure that doesn’t carry guilt. Find that joy if it’s new to you, the guilt-free kind! (Salad? Sigh. Knitting with the yarn I already own? YES.)

·        Make a home within yourself if not in the outside world. Make that home cozy and full of love. Beautiful and familiar. Full of life and healing. (I’m ALWAYS working at this, the finding and maintenance of home…)

The journey to sobriety, to a whole and generous life, is not a straight line, more like a circle or a spiral, hopefully forward. All the same, as Proust said,

The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.         

#sobriety recovery

[renatedagmarmilada]

LONDON MET POLICE SUPERINTENDENT

Top POLICE SUPERINTENDENT London, was shown heavy porn film of JOAHNNA a friend of ANNA jun sec min of health /porn starlet/ made at BBC with director Sydney-- and told that was me /?/ mother of five 46 yrs old mature University student and artist, and it was a sex therapy using the whole country, killing throughout the country permitted by UNO -- to whom lab st barths Human Research did not give any true facts...

it is called maximising extreme therapy and is all unworkable stuff piled on and on.. ANNA jun sec Min of Health-- I always wanted to throw every offence at one person and see what they could do about it.. The horror of the british concentration camp..silent and unseen. Tory:== when the british government damages an innocent person, it is either very expensive for the government or very expensive for the person, in family's your cases , it is unfortunately terrible wipe-out expensive for you and yours.

Let's be honest - who doesn't love them!

quote-I don't have enough-- oh thank you .. emneti Syrian Thief family -Longley broke into my home again Thursday..I had a shipping order for her stuff..it was my chance to make some spare cash, at her age, what the hell does she know.. teachers and painters...

sweat smell we fed into Sheffield Somalians brains was from the lab jewesses, Margit sweats and they have their menopause-- so ... Fekete did not have one, as she took hormones. also Margit's vaginal smells as she sweats heavily. //these super rich, greedy jewish bitches can afford to have menopauses, I couldn't.. /

tv2pm-- after we have EQUALISED YOU..ah another British word for racketeering, organised theft, and remote torture of the worst kind.. by lab jews so cannot be admitted... hm

Quote --Parkwood school, Sheffield, KIRSHAN Hussein is a thief and a bad thief, /loiters outside of my home hours on end waiting for me to go out..as is his sister MIRAM Hussein... ALI off Rock street was a pretty bad thief, but this mob are much worse.. Nemeti-- Longley st is over here in Upperthorpe all the while looking to break in and thieve.. so called Syrian refugee.. with his friend Abdul and Neseria and her family and step son, in Upperthorpe .. Suleiman is a thief..and fence snitch.

Prince Charles was in the lab st barths Hum Res and on the scanner remote for treatment, that is why we rob /called reducing by lab Jews/ Fekete none stop using west indians and Syrians, who do not know anything about remote --

Guiana black woman Upperthorpe Roman catholic who sends her 20 yr old son robbing for stuff for the children as she spends all £360 weekly on herself on BRAND NEW DRESSES etc-- /saw her/ prostitutes a fair bit, well ok we all know that group all do../ pn scanner permanently---if they catch me for cheating we will just go back to Africa or somewhere else in Europe..

quote - lab st barths hum Res IMOGEN-- in the last 3 weeks, 7 men have wandered round your bedroom robbing stuff, clothes, in your wardrobes, everywhere.. robbing your front room-- all of them blacks and arabs.. living near by.. Wednesday Pakistani from Pagehall broke in and robbed /my UKRAINIAN dad's German Army Sollbuch and several other items/ BECAUSE HE HATES SLOVAKS???????????????????????? THEN GAVE SOME GYPSIES MY ITEMS? GYPSIES DON'T READ GERMAN VERY WELL AND THOUGHT IT WAS HER MAN'S...... MY DAD WAS UKRAINIAN????????????WHY??????????

Fish and Chips shop-- Upperthorpe.Sheffield. Abdul and Neseria, flats Upperthorpe.. tried to sell us your goods there, clothes, paintings etc..I WENT INTO FEKETE'S HOUSE UPPERTHORPE ON THURSDAY-- watched. these thieves are SO stupid that they do not seem to realise that if the door just opens remote, someone is watching them on a scanner and they stay on a scanner...for future use. THEY ARE TRULY STUPID gone silk jacket and sailing shirts from Spain /orig German/ white chines...

Bethany- lab st barths Hum Res. John's illeg daughter-- I sold 6 of Fekete's stolen shirts to a kitch shop, because I opened the doors of her home remote for local thieves.. I also sold 7 other items, art stuff mainly, artists blocks, paints etc

from lectures by Rabbi Rothchild and my mother's stories from home- we lived in the jewish quarter of Poszon, Milealska Uc -Paintings were to illustrate my numerous 'jewish poems' which have all been stolen along with the paintings--there are quite a few more illustrations on that topic, painted in Sheffield, London and Leipzig.

''what write it all again?'' Anna insists that all is shared out of Fekete's work repeatedly, as they sat on her for years, throughout University etc and halved her marks whilst adding sexual innuendos to everything, also all lecturers at all Unis and Colleges were on their scanner /cancers activated?/ Alyson, I have to do it for her- John Fielding board of Lab st barths Human Research, asked us to tear up these 70 paintings, as his daughter Faye used them for her MA ..and sold some of them to the jewish community.. rob some of her glasses, as she sees very badly--again

Minister Prendergast told -- as soon as Fekete dies, all work copied from her work will disappear. But the cheats will have made their names by then.. so they will be the winners.. it is all on a satellite- //flying over Niagara Falls.. Canada by helicopter -my present to myself on my 66th birthday- I don't treat myself with things, this is my sort of present.Canada is very cold in the winter by the way../

From Len Krawchuk: an article about Kupala. The title below is wrong; it should say June 24 (July 7).

Alyson- I asked them to write a sitcom.. it is just slightly different to Fekete's story there, but only slightly. The Minister of health nor the State Minister Prendegast stops us. it was illegal to keep them in our prison and mess with them day and night since 1984//photo Writers Gp

IMOGEN operative-- yes it is very painful what we do to Fekete remote.It is like a truck sitting on your leg.. We have used it on the simples and they scream in pain. ANNA said that is why we should use the population, they just grin and bear it and the doctors cannot help. We have killed about 300 people in the population now.//happer times in China a few years ago

quote 8 am It is embarrassing a foreigner who can paint and write better than we can..and teach us our language, with hardly any schools, and with such a foreign name Plashet Rd back in 1995 macrosound-quote : look at you, small but perfectly formed. No bent anythings, even with your refugee background, you haven't seen us, with your clean living. --- ANNA time and again.. this is not unusual for the Brits, usually unsaid- at school, I came top in English very quickly /mothe...

quote- we have destroyed your total arteries in your body, by pressing remote. It squashes them ./now=top inner right leg-- last weeks left leg-- Meyer pressed arms endlessly, - John Fieldings dog Mohammad pressed chest arteries for months till I fled to China, pain horrendous// It flattens the artery. I am taking part so I have no need to talk. It is a remote concentration camp. Total destruction of healthy human beings by Human Research.

From Richard Woloschuk comes this neo-pagan article about the Ukrainian vinok (floral garland), apropos for Kupala. The term "wreath" is used, but a vinok is a ...

the ladies who looked after the students were lovely..

Beijing-

Your arteries are the system within your body that continually transport the essential nutrients and oxygen that you need to survive, from your heart to the rest of your body. A massive part of staying healthy and keeping your arteries clear and clean has to do with your diet. It is very true when you are told “You are what you eat.” It is also true that what you put into your body will determine your overall health including your cardiovascular health. Adjusting your diet to...

quote--Goldsmiths-- there is some good stuff coming out of the lab.. . No it is not their work, they have stolen thousands and thousands of the small Austrian teacher's art work and from years and years of writing, creatively and from several literature degrees, from her home, taken out of the post office, and in any way they could steal it.. it is Fekete's work, not theirs. They get a job for life with St barths Human research and will be placed into managerial positions immediately for tracing Fekete's work. Not one is college educated, not even GCSE- but all have a jewish father who was a lab staff member- or an unqualified doctor at the lab. it is the biggest rip off ever known to mankind.

sketch book round the city

walking round the city with a sketch book

Peter Ponsonby illeg son of Dr Meyer Edgeware Rd London, who was not really a doctor at all, only passed one exam, copied all SHEFFIELD PAINTINGS-- took cheque for +++++ I sent to China Bank januar 2016 out of post and gave it to him. Stuart, illeg son of Irwin Harry and Blanche of Finchley, I took one off lap top file and others, all originals stolen from home..part of our training is to hack into private laptops and bank accounts, council accounts, electricity accounts etc all companies .. we cannot be stopped.. State Minister Prendergast permits it.

ANGELINA, one of the 4 Poles used to copy Fekete work, given sketch books, join us and you are well paid and lots of benefits, otherwise you will be watched for life..Declined..//Polish contingent of Leipzig Uni Students..1993/

bethnal green London, Margit, mother of John Fielding, board of St barths Hospital, brings a Fielding cousin in to the lab-- two old jewesses, to pass on all my work to.. Dora, liberal jewess, /as Lauren Fielding, nee lara goldstein--//Golders Green-takes it to use.the other jewess Reform, declines. Eleanor30, illeg daughter of John- I have 400 Fekete's sketches, paintings and writings.. Fekete's saved jews from Hitler, it is called turning it all round, instead of being grateful, we destroy her and her family.

Addis Str Upperthorpe 200 something.. black woman Guiana-- sends sons out to thieve. Roman Catholic family gets over £350 per week../I get £95./ watched by lab, mother spends it all on herself so sends 20 yr old son out to thieve for the smaller children-- he took my navy tee-shirts, navy is he school colour, so she asks him to rob all navy clothes, 2 navy sweaters, my best ones- 3 artists blocks etc He went through my freezer.. mother told him off for bringing real food, fr...

when will RF come together.. she won't it is a phase out. They are trying to beggar her, we went too far. nothing will be made good. Anna fixed Princess Di's death and a few others, so she wanted her on a prison. There was nothing wrong with her or her sons. they just messed with them. Everyone knows now what the process is it is just lies and theft to feather their own nests, the lot of them.

we hold the rights to Fekete's work.. I thought you said we had the Rights to her work Anna.. No one cares a damn as long as they get benefits.. Tristran, queen's cousin here, I didn't know they were sending in thieves to rob your work, paid for by the tax payer... they said they had rights to it and you were acting or something.. I have forgotten which lie I told him about Fekete.......

quote --shall I kitsch this, I have been drawing into Fekete's drawings, well they are all stolen from her so what does it matter, at her age, she can only exhibit and now she wont and cant, we have robbed every item of work she had.. Do Fekete's legs hurt now, I have been putting bloater on them, and pressing all arteries, twisting the muscles and burning the skin- we have been told to destroy every body part on her..part of destroying and using her work wholesale.. When we british destroy, we destroy only the innocent and weak but we destroy totally..

quote- lab we have them here, we are beginning to trace and copy them as ours to make ourselves some sort of name... illegitimate children of lab members..

one year at Leipzig Uni-- visiting Berlin too..

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