Tag: writing

Naked Suicide

Recently, the number of visitors to my blog increased incredibly.  Why? The piece on the Newtown tragedy perhaps? It wouldn’t be my Department of Motor Vehicle post…who from Columbia, Romania or Turkey would be interested in that?

No. The hits from countries around the globe were actually looking for a tattooed woman in (and out of) sexy underwear. Not me, silly. My flesh has no ink and I assure you, my lingerie is not even remotely titillating.

The search term that brought this wild number of visitors my way was ‘tierney suicide’.  At first I thought a famous Tierney (can you think of any besides the long-dead, Gene?) must have committed suicide.  Nope. Tierney is the name or moniker of a young woman who is part of the SuicideGirls. (here is Wikipedia‘s description if you’d rather not click on the link.) “SuicideGirls is the nationwide art sleaze phenomenon.”  according to the Los Angeles Times. I doubt many of these accidental visitors stuck around for long on my modest blog.

It may be generational, but the idea of posting naked photos of even the younger, cuter me across the world-wide-web, makes me squirm. In college I sometimes paid my rent modeling for life drawing classes in the art department so it’s not that I am really that much of a prude – just a bit of one. Besides, times are different – scarier, more exploitative. But I try not to judge. Hey, to some extent, I too ‘get naked’ on my blog.  The kind of writing that interests me, requires I reveal more than most people are inclined to do.

No, it’s not the nudity that disturbs me – it’s what they call themselves: “SuicideGirls”.  I get they want to sound edgy, alternative, cutting edge, but it is a weird association.  There are over 30,000 suicides a year in the United States and for those of us left behind, the word suicide does not evoke sexy. And if  suicide searches are bringing the voyeurs to my blog, the survivors in looking for some understanding and solace, must also be stumbling onto the naked-girl site. Hmm.

Avoiding the words or images that trigger traumatic memory is impossible. For the first year or so, the moment I found my husband seemed branded behind my eyelids. Time has help fade this picture but flashbacks are unpredictable. A new title faced-out in the history section of the bookstore I work in, features an image of a noose. I can’t tell you the title because that’s all I saw. A pit opened in my gut and now I know to avoid walking past that shelf. Even those seemingly benign ‘hangman’ games remind me. I’ve learned to swallow and move on.

I choose to still look into and explore my dark, sad place – but prefer to do so on my own terms, on my time. That kind of control is not always possible. I cannot hide book jackets or edit scenes of movies or television shows. Nor can I protest the name of this girly site.

After the horrible shooting in Newtown, a town only 30 minutes away from here, many customers in the bookstore complained about the piles of gun collector books long gathering dust in our remainders section. Rightly so, the company I work for doesn’t censor – but nor is it insensitive. We took the books off display.  It was a simple thing to do in this raw time.

Survivors learn to live with randomly provoked memories. We must: reminders are everywhere. What some see as amusement, sport or even ‘art’ — can painfully elicit our memories of tragedy, of violence and can be hard to swallow. I guess that’s why I’m not thrilled by all the passing traffic — it’s just that they took a wrong turn.

Wishing

I became obsessed with wishing at a very early age. My bedtime ritual included peering through the screened window out over neighboring Bronx buildings into the smoggy city sky and wishing on the first star I saw that night. Now I suspect I was sending out my yearnings to either Venus or Mars.

The first time my mother retrieved a fallen eyelash from my cheek and presented it to me on her finger with instructions to make a wish, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. A few weeks later, alarmed she said, “What happened to all your eyelashes?” I never had luxurious lashes again.

In trying to recall what exactly I was wishing for, I draw a blank.  Perhaps they were lofty hopes like for world peace – inspired by the anti-Vietnam war marches my parents brought me to. Or maybe for the long-desired dog.  Now I fantasize about winning the lottery, dream about getting my book published, aspire to staying healthy and hope for my daughter’s life to be charmed.

I confess, I still believe in magic. Or something. I guess, at the risk of sounding new-agey, I believe in putting ‘it’ out there — ‘it’ being a range of things. I confess to making a random wish, but mostly, I take action even though the odds are against me. For instance, I buy a lottery ticket almost every week. I’m not so delusional that I actually think I will win — but I might. But only if I buy a ticket, right?  And during those delicious days of possibility, I love the fantasy my ticket inspires.

I also continue to believe I will get my book published even though the state of the industry is abysmal. I still send out queries to agents and continue to feel excitement in the waiting –  and just file the rejections and start all over again. The possibility is only there as long as I keep trying, keep putting myself out there. For the rest, I eat healthy and exercise and my daughter is charming thus, must be charmed.

And I’m not pulling out another precious eyelash.

Worldly Distractions (and my new i-phone)

The cup of tea on the table behind me grows cold, the ceiling needs painting, my finger throbs from yesterday’s accidental slicing, there is too much pressure on my right ankle sitting cross-legged like this, my stomach is grumbling – is there yogurt left? A glimpse of my (short) meditation session this morning. And exactly why I feel the need to ‘sit’: to train myself, establish a discipline, reel my mind in from tasks and toys around me with the hope I can find my way to the quiet place within. That place where creativity and serenity can be found.

And yet – yesterday I traded in my sturdy text-and-talk-only-telephone for a (free) i-phone (‘4’ in case you are wondering). My thinking is that this amazing gadget might be just the tool to keep me in my morning ‘writerly’ mode throughout the day. Any time inspiration strikes, I can whip out my phone and blog, take photos, make notes. That’s the idea. Ha.

The thing is, my most disciplined and focused writing has been done on an ancient laptop with no internet capability. No distractions. Dark mornings, when I turned on my computer, I immediately began writing. I did not check emails, Facebook, the news headlines, the gossip, my blog-stats, other blogs… you get the idea.

Endless cyber offerings lure me away from the quiet place where creative juices brew, devouring my time, numbing my brain – and yet, resisting is so difficult. And now, with my cool new 21st century phone, these enticements are available to me anywhere, anytime… What have I done?

To Sit, To Breathe

Look what I found at a tag sale yesterday:

I’ve been thinking about meditation recently so this little zabuton is the perfect inspiration to get my ass positioned for a ‘sit’.  Reasons to do so are plentiful: relieves stress, inspires creativity and general well being.

Meditation is one of those things that I’m never sure I’m doing right. (Kind of how I often feel about writing…) Rationally, I know that this is nonsense-thinking, but still I doubt myself and I think I should really learn how do to this from a teacher. And then I remember Taniguchi-san.

In Kyoto in the 1980s, I met a Buddhist monk on a bus and we became friends. I initiated a conversation with the kind looking elderly man beside me (he was not in his robes so I had no idea he was a monk) because I was intrigued by the book he was looking at of these amazing little stone sculptures.

While in Kyoto, I fancied myself a sculptor and was so excited by these expressive, wacky looking little figures all lined up in endless rows that I said, “Summimasen, doko deska?” while pointing to his book.  Turns out, these nembustu were at a temple in Arashiyama not so far away. He introduced himself  as a monk who lived at a another beautiful temple and offered to take me to this place. Of course, I gleefully accepted his generous invitation.

A week later I met Taniguchi-san at his temple, Myoshinji .

We mounted bicycles and I pedaled furiously behind this 70+ year old gem, marveling for the millionth time at the wonderfulness of Kyoto. I’d been living there for over 3 years and had recently decided to move on.  Before I left, my new friend Taniguchi-san gave me a crash-course in meditating.

I met him on a beautiful spring day at Miyoshinji temple again and this time, I followed him inside to his quarters past simple gardens, silent but for the crunch of gravel beneath our feet, bees as we passed the cherry blossoms, buzzing in what seemed a chant. In a simple tatami mat room, Taniguchi-san talked about breath and paying attention.  Mind you, my Japanese was not great and he spoke only a smattering of English.  I searched my journals this morning to see if I’d made notes and found nothing. But I do have this:

As a parting gift, Taniguchi-san gave me this lovely stone – explaining I might, with eyes just ever-so-slightly open, focus on this rock. He knew I’d been inspired to come to Japan because of the rock gardens. For over 20 years this precious piece has graced my bureau.  I blew the dust off  setting off ripples of recollection as if this old stone had been tossed into the depths of my mind.  A cushion, a rock, a lesson remembered.  A return to breath.

An Inspiring Book

Sometimes a book just gets under your skin. This is one of those books for me.  Behind the Beautiful Forevers is almost like a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction. Of course these are real people and a real world that Katherine Boo writes about – but she doesn’t report, she immerses us in the lives of the people of this slum. Her book reads like a novel. Boo’s own voice is unheard, she remains unseen, no mere reportage here.  It is only in the afterward that she humbly describes how she went about writing this compelling book. I am inspired by just how many different ways there are to tell a story.  Boo is certainly a master.

 

Paying Attention for What’s Next

What next? I’ve been batting this question around quite a bit, especially inspired by seasonal changes. Back-to-school activity, Monarchs frenetically flying around in migration prep, evening and morning temperature drops, these shifts into autumn prompt my own search for another gear.

‘What next?’ has recently been a question I particularly ponder about my writing. I’m ready to let go and get my memoir out into the world. While there are certainly still rewrites ahead on that, the question is, what to write about? I needed to write about my husband, our time in Bosnia, my daughter’s premature birth in Italy, struggling with his addiction, navigating Molly and myself out of the shadow of his suicide. The compulsion to tell that story got me up on the coldest of mornings, 7 days a week.

And the discipline stuck. For the past few years I religiously rose before dawn, before setting off to my day-job, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote. Now, it’s time to move on. I need to find a new story-itch and I think if I pay attention to the clamoring voices inside of me, I will. Perhaps that’s one of my best insights from years of living with insanity. Paying attention leads me to a feeling of serenity. Focused, present in a thoughtful way – that’s the state I aspire to be in as much as possible.

Writing helps me get there, especially if I do so with the expectation/hope of being read. So in a kind of letting-go exercise, I’m setting myself the challenge to come to this space each day rather than revisit old pages. If even briefly, to write — as a kind of meditation, or perchance to find my next story. It’s a start.

A Closet of Journals

Stashed in my closet is a plastic bin overflowing with journals of scribbled emotions, recordings of events, travel notes. From adolescence up until a few years ago, I compulsively filled notebooks with thoughts, thrills, anxieties and dreams. It was as if by recording it, I might save my life.

College journal.

Early journals have the curvy writing of teenage angst, annoyance with my parents, first love, terrible heartbreak. College – more adventures in love, discovering and floundering on my own. Studying was eclipsed by my desire to travel the world, so for a few months at eighteen, I traveled alone through Europe, a lined notebook (now missing) my constant  companion.  The next batch of beat-up spirals are scrawls of years in Kentucky where I enjoyed the friendship and support of the community of fellow Studio 70 artists. Kyoto is next – bicycling through the narrow streets, hours sitting in gardens – dream-like musings. Returning to New York, I filled books with my life in the city, job at the United Nations.  Pages brim with romantic thrills followed by heartbreak. Then, the war in Croatia and Bosnia – meeting and marrying N, having Molly.  The joys of being a mother, the pain and confusion of living with addiction. All of it jotted into these books.

From today I will try to write every day as a way of taking time for myself, of touching/listening to something from within, as a way of organizing my time in a way that some ‘work’ is possible. I would love to write – to have the life of a writer. For this I think I need not only discipline and stories to tell but an ability to listen and to tell, of the inner life. So from today I will take at least half an hour every morning, if not more, to keep this little journal. I can do this now as Molly sleeps…  a way of not just getting swallowed by the daily chores of my life.

I wrote this when Molly was 4 months old. The rumbling of desire to write a book –  I imagined a love story about  meeting and marrying N in Sarajevo during the war, giving birth to Molly prematurely in Italy. I thought I had the elements for a good story — little did I know of  the drama yet to unfold.

I no longer keep a journal. No time? No inclination? Because I blog instead? Perhaps a little of each. I think the answer is in the closet — that bin of books. I will probably just burn them one day. Braver now and less inclined to keep secrets, I am ready to move beyond the closet – and write with the hope of being read.

How to Take a Vacation (Hint: Check the Guilt)

It’s been years since I’ve taken a vacation. I mean a vacation when you go somewhere with the intention of having no intention but to lay-about, eat and sleep – maybe a beach is involved. I seem to have lost the knack.

This is the last of 5 days off in a row — and other than a doctor visit, I had nothing planned. A de facto vacation, right? I spent my days mostly doing what I always think I want to do when I’m longing for time off: reading, napping in the middle of the day, and… I don’t remember what else…

That’s what is disconcerting. I feel a little bit like I wasted my time off, that I should have accomplished something. Written something brilliant or finished painting the house, cleaned out the garage, that sort of thing. I can blame the weather a little. The first day was oven-hot so I hunkered down inside with air-conditioning and made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning before picking up a book. I read and then, fell asleep sprawled on the couch. Thursday and Friday were rainy and cold. Perfect excuse to read and nap. I did splurge on a facial and went to the first physical I’ve had in years. (perfect, thank you very much)

Yesterday, the clouds parted, the temperature dropped and a spectacular day gave me no excuses. I did mow the lawn. Then lethargy hit again and I napped between reading the New York Times (the joys of home delivery – you get a head start on Sunday’s paper.) It was too cool to kayak. Anyway, we didn’t. Maybe today.

Sounds like an ideal vacation, doesn’t it? So why this gnawing guilt that I didn’t get anything done? Piles of papers I should have sorted, weeds still entrenched, dust-bunnies multiplying like live ones. I’ve barely written a word, no visits with friends, no yoga classes or gourmet meals. Tomorrow, I am back to work – to carving the things I want to do from the things I must do out of the time that remains after 40 plus hours at my job.

Tucked in my wallet is a lottery ticket – to feed my fantasy that were I to win, I’d figure out what to do with all that time to myself. Or at least, how to take a guilt-free vacation. At a very distant beach.

 

About Grief

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking  in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog. Here it is:

A story not so different than my own
June 27, 2012

My husband died when he was 48.

Photo by Leslie Datsis

The lurking question with a death so young is: How? Was he ill? An accident? We can’t help but rubberneck. Rebelling against the urge to bow to the stigma of shame associated with addiction and suicide, I usually spill my story pretty quickly. I tell them exactly what happened. “I’m so sorry,” is the usual wincing reaction. But often, there is recognition and relief because they have a story not so different from my own.

My daughter was 8 years old when it happened. She felt sure all of her classmate’s lived normal, happy lives. I assured her nobody gets to escape sadness, and brought her to The Den for Grieving Kids in Greenwich. There she gathered with other children who had lost their parents and I joined the surviving spouses. We found comfort in baring our raw hearts. Our own particulars seemed terrible to my daughter and I, but we learned those left behind always have painful and complicated feelings. Over the years of going to The Den, we received and, I like to think also gave, solace to our groups. As lonely as we sometimes felt, it helped knowing we were not alone.

Indeed, memoirs of grief outnumber even celebrity reveal-alls on bookstore shelves. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking came out a year after my husband’s death. I recognized her language of grief, the trance-like telling of numbness and eventually, the glimmer of feeling again. I still read memoirs of loss compulsively, as if I might find an answer to the myriad of lingering questions I will always bear like a ragged scar. My life is full of joy but not a day passes without at least a passing shadow of memory.

But books like Didion’s or Nina Sankovitch’s elegantly written, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, remind me that the survivor’s intimate knowledge of mortality is not an awful thing. I know to breathe deeply the air I share for some finite time with my loved ones. To pay attention, to cherish moments and do my best to never be blithe about leave-taking, even for sleep.

Too Much Sun

Finally – rain! After more than a week of perfect sunny days, today the sky is heavy with the promise of more precipitation. Last night’s showers have left the air sweetly smelling of earth. I planted seeds for an array of garden greens the other day.  The soil was so sandy, I covered each patch lightly with mulch lest the whole lot get blown away. Verging on drought around here, we desperately need this rain.  And I am glad to be forced indoors to take care of neglected tasks.

Today ends a blissful vacation week, mostly spent running my daughter around to look at colleges. I’ve lost track of the days and abandoned my usual schedule. But when I stayed up too late some nights, I just crawled back to bed for an extra hour in the morning if I needed more snooze. I puttered, read, wrote, drove and drove and drove, and wandered around college campuses in all their spring glory. Each day was mine to plan according to needs and desires of me and mine.

I’m melancholy about going back to work – as much as I like my job. And I fantasize about what it would be like not working. That is, not working because I have enough money. (The scenario of losing my job and being unemployed and broke is, of course, not the fantasy.) I fuel this dream by occasionally buying lottery tickets. But perhaps the sweetness would fade, grow dry and dusty like too many sunny days… do you think?

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