May 1, 2012

Can’t Force It

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We sometimes like to talk about this nebulous thing called writer’s block. I’m struggling with non-fiction writing malaise and music writing malaise right now, which I guess you could call a block. Mostly it’s because I’ve been abnormally tired and lackadaisical these past few weeks, focusing more on trying to fix some of my health issues rather than creating the next best work of art.

I don’t think it’s bad to take a break. I’ve said it before. I talked about Mark Twain a while back. He said that he got stuck during two of his books. He went and did other stuff, and when he came back, the books wrote themselves.

Of course, there’s a line between taking a much needed pause from frenetic scribbling and complete inertia.

I can usually tell I need a break from writing and music when I try to work on a song or story and I can’t stand the sight or sound of it. Usually, I take that as a sign that I’ve reached saturation point and need to do some other stuff, like cook or shop or walk the dog or read books or focus a bit more on other non-creative stuff.

***

I spent these past few months working really hard on my writing and music–eating, sleeping, breathing my songs and stories, and then I went to Hawaii and when I came back I had to focus on some other things that had cropped up. Got sick, realized that the food allergies I’m having aren’t mild and need to be assessed better, that I’m under too much stress in my life, again–stuff that takes time to get to the bottom of. Those things, and finding a way to earn a bit more money, have taken priority in my mind, are sucking up the energy I had to focus on my art. But in addition to those things, I’m just not feeling it the past few weeks.

***

I was wondering the other day if the reason we force our art out on schedule, day after day sometimes is only because this is the way our society functions. Crank stuff out nine to five–at least part-time–or fall by the wayside.

Many of the artists, musicians and writers we admire were rewarded for their crazy work ethic. The ability to plug their creation cycles into that ebb and flow of modern society, the circular mode of produce, produce, produce with no space.

It would be interesting to look back and see how creative people we admire performed before the industrial revolution.

The writers I admire don’t make a lot of money at their art (not by choice, necessarily). They create more sometimes than they do at other times. They often take a pause, go on long walks, write letters to their loved ones…ways of coming back to themselves by not forcing the process.

It’s important not to force the process.

Sure, I could force myself right now to open up a document or pick up the guitar and start editing a song or story I’m stuck on, but my edits wouldn’t be intuitive right now. I know that if I fill up my tank by taking a pause I’ll be able to come back to my music and writing with many more ideas, and I’ll have an outpouring of inspiration. It’s happened to me most of my life this way. Can’t force it. Not me.

Which comes down to the ultimate question: why do you create art?

Do you create for reward from society? Or do you create because it’s who you are and how you process the world? It’s OK for the two to overlap. I certainly want to be recognized for my writing and music in this lifetime, on however small a scale. But if I’m motivated by money and the need to feel I’m being productive, that I have a good work ethic, I’m usually not in line with my own personal goals. I don’t do this for money. Some do. They’re called bestsellers. There are only a few of those out there. I’m not one of them, so of course, take what I say with a grain of salt (as I know you will).

What’s your creative process?

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April 30, 2012

This Pill Makes You Smaller

I’ve been living with a sense of impending doom for as long as I can remember. When did it start? Was it when I went for a check-up at age 13 and my skinny female doctor poked me in the stomach and said, “Getting a little chubby, aren’t we? Have you tried dieting?” Is this what led to coming home after middle school and scowling into a bowl of carefully counted goldfish crackers until I lost ten pounds in less than a month?

Was it growing up wearing Kmart clothes when my neighbors casually splurged on trips to the mall multiple times a year? Was it my parent’s own anxiety and depression issues they tried treating with medication, therapy, being workaholics?

I don’t think it was simply an external event, more a combo of environment, learned behavior and genetics, but I do recall that there was often a sense of dread in the air—always money or thinness. How to get it, where is it, why don’t I have it.

But deeper than that, anxiety recently has been a background hum as a result of choosing not to ever take medication again. Something called “rebound anxiety” lingers as a result of benzos, the medication I took FOR my preexisting anxiety for years. Those pills do a number on the nervous system. In Europe, they prescribe them for one week, max. The guidelines in the medical journals recommend not prescribing them longer than two weeks or so. Yet my doctors prescribed them for me for about eight years on and off.

For many people, benzo withdrawal lingers for years and years. I had what they call an extremely long protracted withdrawal–I couldn’t even feel joy for nine months after getting off those little yellow pills I relied on so much, only pain. I learned all about the little-known word gratitude as I struggled through, insomnia, nerve pain and a thrumming sensation in my body, heightened awareness of almost everything, memory loss, the ubiquitous brain fog. Like being shot with adrenalin day after day after day, but feeling exhausted at the same time.

***

“It is more difficult to withdraw people from benzodiazepines than it is from heroin. It just seems that the dependency is so ingrained and the withdrawal symptoms you get are so intolerable that people have a great deal of problem coming off. The other aspect is that with heroin, usually the withdrawal is over within a week or so. With benzodiazepines, a proportion of patients go on to long term withdrawal and they have very unpleasant symptoms for month after month, and I get letters from people saying you can go on for two years or more. Some of the tranquilliser groups can document people who still have symptoms ten years after stopping.” – Professor Malcolm H Lader, Royal Maudesley Hospital, BBC Radio 4, Face The Facts, March 16, 1999.

***

In spite of this, I stayed off the pills, got freelance work, started writing and doing music again. I wasn’t able to sleep much for almost a year. I had to do something with that time. I remember one day, waking up at 6 or 7am after four or five hours of sleep, thinking, “WTF do I do with the next eighteen hours until I can sleep again?”

These days, it’s the opposite. It’s more like, “How the hell do I work at the library, work on my music, writing, kettlebell/fitness, learning to cook with gluten issues, relationship with my husband, taking care of my allergic paw-eating dog, socializing with all of my new and long-lost friends and find time to read a book with only sixteen hours of the non-sleeping day?”

My how things change. How we adjust.

***

Anxiety isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. When I used to take anti-D’s, I didn’t care about art so much. I was numb—couldn’t cry, didn’t get too down. It was nice, for a while. Until years went by and I hadn’t progressed in the way I wanted to. As my old rehab counselor said last night when we went out to dinner to catch up, “Art and music are a coping mechanism.”

I said that they are basically the foundation of my sobriety. I know if I seek out pills, I will not do my art. As soon as I numb out the anxiety and lingering malaise, I have no desire to make music. I still write, but not as viscerally. And it turns into more journaling than productive non-fiction essay and poetry writing.

To compound matters, my food allergies (wheat, and/or gluten) trigger similar symptoms, such as fatigue, anxiety and nerve pain.

I am constantly grateful that in spite of being damaged by years of taking prescribed benzos and other health issues, I’m functional. I go work every day. I write. I read my writing in public. I work with other musicians on my songs. I do kettlebell.

The only time I have a problem with anxiety being a fact of life for me, mentally and physically, is when I decide I deserve better and that I want something other than what is.

I can’t have something other than what is. I try very hard to control things—to the point that my friends are like, “Dude, chill. Stop obsessing.” Then I back off, and everything kind of falls away. Then I go back to obsessing.

And sometimes, late at night, when I’ve got nerve pain so bad I have to sleep in a sweater to keep the air and sheets from feeling like they’re bruising my skin, I wish there was a pill to fix me. But there is no pill that will fix me long-term. They all have rebound effects after a time. I don’t want to take that risk. And the pills is likely what caused most of this damage in the first place.

***

I don’t know many people who struggle with anxiety at this level, aside from my husband, who channels it into work, and my dad. It’s something I’ve learned to live with. It’s better than it used to be after first stopping the benzos, but it’s still there and I don’t know if it will ever go away. Sometimes, after getting off of pills or drugs, people’s nervous systems don’t heal for five years or more. Sometimes, they don’t heal at all.

I could be mad that the substance abuse specialists and psychiatrists who were supposed to be helping me after I stopped drinking alcohol at age 21 prescribed me things that made me worse, but it was my choice to put the pills in my body, to trust that a pill could fix me.

It used to be that I would preach the ills of benzos and opiate replacement therapy like suboxone (which I was on for about a year and a half and had a horrible time with as well) to anyone who would listen. These days, I realize they are all tools, and as much as I think those two particular medications are poison and am scared shitless of them based on what happened to me, I don’t care if you take them. All I have is my own reality. All you have is yours. This isn’t about your pills or my pills or anyone’s pills. Take your pills, if they help you.

Mine helped for a while and then they didn’t, so I got off them. But not without taking extreme actions. My psychiatrist wanted me on them, even though they were hurting me. The suboxone made me sleep 16 hours a night, so he put me on Ritalin. The benzos stopped working so he upped the dose. I tried to taper them myself, but finally, I just went to a rehab and asked them to help me. And suffered protracted withdrawal. And now the lingering anxiety worse than the anxiety I started with, compounded by food and environmental allergies (yay).

I get sucked into these spirals of everyone else is better than me and more successful and has more money and doesn’t struggle with anxiety and body dysmorphia and money issues, and I don’t think it’s true. I think a lot of people are struggling with these things or something similar. And it’s made me who I am today, I can’t change that. I’m more sober than I’ve ever been.

Boy, do I wish I had the money to afford a fancy nutritionist and supplements and a spa therapy every weekend, but doesn’t everyone?

Like most people, I trudge along, have good days and bad.

Like fewer and fewer people these days, I don’t use pills to make modern life more bearable, but I know why people do. I’ve been there. I wanted that to be my answer. It wasn’t. Life to me is, believe it or not, more manageable without them.

“…Writers do not thrive on drugs like Klonopin and Prozac. It takes your soul; it takes your creativity; it takes your love of running home at night and getting out a typewriter or getting out your paper and pencil and writing something that you love. It takes that away. You don’t care anymore. So Street Angel was all about just not caring. And that’s horrible to me. One of the few things that I’ve never not done in my life is not care. And I didn’t care for a long time. The lows for me were probably the last years of cocaine in the 1980s, and the last four years of the Klonopin. - Stevie Nicks

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April 26, 2012

Not Invisible

This will be a short(er) post. I know I’ve been writing a lot, lot lately, a lot that only I can probably keep up with. I enjoy myself. I do.

I forgot to mention that 6 of my poems are up in the Spring issue of Analog Press: http://analogpress.net/

Apparently I am now also a contributing editor to Analog Press. I’m not sure quite what that entails yet, but will know soon! It’s a volunteer position.

***

I was sharing a picture with one of my coworkers yesterday. Previous to the picture sharing, she had been talking about how she was grumpy. She was doing art the night previous and had to stop creating before she wanted to stop, because it was time to go to bed and then go to work. “It’s like when you have a special someone in your bed and they don’t do you the favor…”

I told her I was totally going to steal that analogy for my blog, how interrupting your creative flow is like not being pleasured in bed.

She asked me if I was going to share the picture I showed her (unrelated to this side conversation) on my blog. I figured I might as well, because I was talking a lot about homelessness this week.

After I went to the training on homelessness on Tuesday, I felt more in tune with the scope of the homeless issue again. That night, I went to Safeway, in El Cerrito, and ran into a very thin old man with few teeth (he kind of looked like a very old Snoop Dogg) panhandling on the garbage can outside. I know from my own experience that the worst thing is to be ignored. I said, “I don’t have anything extra to give.” He said, “Neither do I.”

He told me that the door I was about to enter to go into the store was closed. I thanked him, grateful he had told me before I tried to walk through it.

“Have a good night,” he said. “You too,” I said.

The following day I was in San Francisco. I saw a gentleman who had set up a sign for panhandling, rife with spelling mistakes, but the setup was artistic enough to give me pause and want to capture it somehow. I asked him if he would mind me taking his picture. “If you give me a dollar…” he bargained. I said sure, then, without thinking, went and sat down by him, put my arm around his shoulder and posed for the picture my husband took as if I were posing with a friend.

The smile on his face…I was probably much more happy than him, but that made my day. I am not sure why. I guess he reminded me of me in some strange way. A creative person, but down on his luck by choice or circumstance, who knows.

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I’m not sure why I look like a giant person in this picture, but that’s OK. I’ve accepted the fact that I am not very photogenic in 80% of the pictures other people take of me. Life goes on. I asked the guy his name and he told me it was Papa Smurf. I told him it was a pleasure to meet him, and when my husband and I were done eating lunch around the corner I gave him my leftover food, but only after asking if he wanted it. “I never turn down food,” he said.

***

I was walking through San Francisco a month or so ago with a friend, and we passed a bearded, dirty old man standing in a doorway with a shopping cart loaded with tarps and cans and other paraphernalia. The only thing you could see shine through the dirt of his face were his white and blue eyeballs. I made eye contact with him and he looked scared for a second, furtive. I smiled. In return, he gave me the warmest, most genuine smile I’ve ever seen. It was like he knew I didn’t have any change, that I wasn’t a stranger to his reality.

Or something.

***

We’re all human beings. It’s easy to forget, especially when I’m walking down the Haight and I get accosted on every single block for spare change (is there such a thing?), and I realize that those dirty, foul-mouthed kids sitting on the curb, the ones I don’t want to make eye contact with or give change to because I know they’re going to buy alcohol, are me over 15 years ago. And they can’t see that I was them. When I was sitting on those curbs, the people who walked by weren’t people. Often, they were cash machines. The ones who stood out were the ones who took the time to ask me about myself–sometimes it was the street photographers who took my picture and came back to give me a copy. I would keep that photograph in my worn Alice pack and pull it out every night to look at it, thinking, “There’s me. I’m real. I exist. Someone else has seen me.” I didn’t feel invisible.

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April 26, 2012

Being a Better Person

I’ve been trying to be a better person since I got out of a street kid vagabond life in my teens. It’s always been an uphill battle. I’ve tried religion, veganism, yoga, running, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, meds, self-help books, psychiatrists: you name it. There have been things that have contributed to me feeling better temporarily, and there have been things that have helped considerably–like adopting physical exercise, a healthy diet and writing daily as keys to being happier and better able to improve other areas of my life.

I’ve mentioned being kind of neurotic before. I’m not just a little neurotic—and I’m not neurotic in a loony bin way. I’m somewhere in between. I’m obsessive about food because I’m allergic to some foods and they make me pretty damn sick when I eat them, but I’m still not sure of all of them. I’m obsessive about my weight, because the women in my family have a propensity towards being overweight and I really want to fight that gene. It’s one of my biggest battles, actually. I often think I’m overweight when I’m not.

Recently, I gained a few pounds, and I’ve become obsessed with this idea that I’m fat–especially because pictures of me aren’t turning out as well lately, due to me being more muscular as a result of lifting heavier kettlebells.

I work out with a lot of women who are very beautiful and have extremely defined musculature. It affects me–all this looking in the mirror, watching, comparing. I don’t know how to dial down the self-loathing. I’m working on it–I don’t want to live in a body I hate. I can’t change how I look, other than my size within certain limits.

Part of being an artist is self-perception. Being a better person to me, for many years, has meant that I spend a lot of time focusing on my mental and physical health and trying to improve it. I’ve struggled with working out too much in the past, and I’ve struggled with working out too little. I’ve struggled with eating too much (college brings to mind binging on chocolate chip cookies all of the time) and I’ve struggled with eating too little (I adopted a 4-6-8 diet once—400 calories one day, 600 calories the next, 800 the next and so on until I lost 30 pounds in two months).

Lately, moderation seems to be the key, except of course for the foods I am intolerant of. Many people don’t know that gluten intolerance symptoms can include anxiety, fatigue, joint and nerve pain, skin rashes and depression, too. Gluten is not something I can moderate. I get those symptoms when I eat it. So there are exceptions to the rule of moderation, and everyone is going to have their own things to adapt to.

***

I was at a networking event a few months ago, and there was this woman there who was very appealing. She wasn’t thin, but she was well-proportioned and tall, had long healthy hair and a pretty face. She exuded confidence and humility at the same time; I was drawn to her. We started talking and found we had both gone to the same college. She had been a writer before, she said, but now she is a therapist. She told me that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and sought help through therapy, and as a result, found her calling. She smiled, telling me she still writes, but is very happy doing what she’s doing. I appreciated her happiness and confidence. It’s something I am attracted to in people, when it’s real and not used as a “better than” barrier, as it is often in religion and with a lot of new age folk.

***

As much as I celebrate difference, it’s also hard being different in a fast-paced society fashioned around sitting, watching TV and eating processed foods. It’s hard to pay attention to your diet every meal when others around you aren’t. It’s hard to maintain physical fitness when it’s not important to everyone. It’s hard to dedicate time to my music and writing—often, I just want to be able to earn good money and check in and check out. I want to feel good, like most people. Often, I feel like I got a bad deal. I’m trying to change that attitude. It’s really bloody hard.

Being a better person, to me, has also meant that I must talk to people about what’s going on with me. I always thought I was psychic, that I could tell what people felt and thought by looking at them. I’ve found this isn’t necessarily true. I can see it most when I look at how people react to things as simple as my facial expressions.

There’s this picture someone took during the kettlebell certification course, where I have my hand on my hip and I’m making a sassy face and a strange gesture with my hand. I was a sassy kid—I was shy, but I had an attitude. I looked for trouble, either with boys or talking back to teachers or stockpiling candy or stealing cigarettes, what-have-you. I wanted attention, but I wasn’t conventionally pretty, so I couldn’t get it that way. I tried the other way—be tough and strong like the boys. Offer gifts to people such as contraband gum and cigarettes. Talk shit and develop an attitude as a defense mechanism.

I fall back on the attitude and the sassing without knowing it, since it’s something I started doing super young. I don’t even notice when I’m making mean faces. Often, when I’m making some weird face, it has nothing to do with what’s going on inside. I could be totally happy and be making this super stern face. Then someone reacts to it and gets mad and I’m like, “Whaaaa?”

Proof I've always had this look on my face.

It all boils down to not being aware, still, of how I look to others, or how my actions affect others. The tough shell doesn’t work for me anymore—but I can’t very well take off the tattoos and the athletic build and the “street” smarts. I can, however, be nicer. Stop worrying so much about almost everything. Slow down enough to take care of myself and hope that in doing so, I can start helping other people more.

***

I’d like to do more outreach—I’m still trying to get some hours in the juvenile hall library, and I’m thinking of getting involved with a youth homeless organization even if it’s once a month. It’s something I always have wanted to do—because I remember going to Diamond Street Youth Center when I was a runaway, and how the staff were always so kind and pretty and together, even though they said they’d been teen runaways and homeless before.

Most kids run away because their home life isn’t safe, and it’s not always because of visible physical abuse. Sometimes it’s because of mental illness in their family, neglect, emotional abuse. Sometimes it’s a combination. Not always is it something the kids can put their finger on.

***

All I know is that I wish I could see myself better, not be so harsh on how I look and the fact that I make mistakes often. Life is hard enough without adding self-criticism and insecurity to the mix. I feel often like I’m in fourth grade again—chubby outcast girl, not pretty, more of a tomboy than a girly girl, not talented enough at anything to stand out.

Sure, I’m not conventionally pretty, but who the hell cares? Why does it matter so much? When you’re somewhat pretty, you come to rely on your prettiness to get you things. When it starts to fade, you have to find other ways of getting what you need.

***

On another note, speaking of physical appearance. I still get shocked when people think I’m twenty years old. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s been happening a lot lately. “Oh, you probably weren’t even alive in the ’80s.” Excuse me? I was (granted I wasn’t even 11 until 1991). “She wouldn’t know, she’s so young.” I’ll take it–but it still trips me out. People definitely act like they’re wearing kid gloves around me sometimes, or look at me with that, “Awww,” face. I’m sure I’ll miss that someday soon.

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April 24, 2012

Sharing Gritty Life Stories (That One Person, Part 2)

Credit: Lee Nachtigal

I recently went to a training for my part-time job. It was based on working with homeless and mentally ill people, both demographics I work with. The day before the training, I wrote a blog about how I write, even though it’s hard to put myself out there, because I want to help that one person.

I expected to get a lot out of the training, but I didn’t expect to get as much out of it as I got. Some of the employees from a public library in a major city nearby were behind it, and they shared about their experiences working with the homeless population that flocks to their library.

At one point, a woman who works in the library system as outreach for the homeless went up in front of all of us library workers–most very proper, analytical people: managers, librarians, deputies. She said she was nervous and that she hadn’t really talked in public like this before.

She shared that she had worked all of her life, but had lost her business in the bad economy of 2008 and had moved to San Francisco in her car, because she knew that it was easier to be homeless there. The car had broken down, and then she had become very sick. She also struggled with substance abuse issues as a child of the ’60s. Eventually, she found help through a homeless peer who directed her to outreach services and detox. Now she works in a public role in the library offering service to those in her old shoes.

Everyone, after she talked, gave her multiple rounds of very loud applause for sharing her story in this setting.

I didn’t think I would have a chance to talk to the woman afterwards. I had stayed to chat with some coworkers after the training was over. When I walked outside of the library the woman was standing outside, alone. There were coworkers I know were there but who I hadn’t even run into after it was over; over one hundred people who had been in that training and were now nowhere to be seen, just her, out on the curb, as if she were waiting for me.

I told her thank you.

While she had shared about some of the issues modern homeless are facing, I had remembered being homeless as a teenager for a number of reasons (not that I didn’t have a physical home and parents who loved me, but my home was an emotional land mine due to a number of things going on at the time), and seeking youth outreach services.

In my early twenties, I struggled with homelessness for almost a year, living off of other people’s kindness, going from couch to couch. A rehab I went to for 60 days ejected me after my time was up, even though I didn’t have a place to live, and I was able to get into a sober living house because a friend from rehab loaned me $800, the amount it cost per month for the room I would share with five other girls.

I remembered being sent to a Tenderloin detox in 2002, after being kicked out of the sober-living home for drinking. I had been living day by day, watching my housemates eat while trying to pretend I wasn’t hungry, so no one would be aware of the fact I didn’t have money for food. One  roommate was a postal worker, and let me use her change jar sometimes for coffee and food, thank god. Then I wasn’t even in the sober living house anymore.

I finally got a call-center job (just before I got ejected from the sober living house and had no place to live) through a person I met in a self-help group. I was trying to get my act together. I was 21 years old.

Often, when I wasn’t warm and safe at the job I was very grateful to have, I went to the library in San Francisco to use the internet, waiting until I got my first paycheck (I had to wait a month) so that I could afford to give someone money for a room. The library offered me a safety net, and a place to go. Often, I would sit there and read books, because it was warm and safe.

I also remembered around 2008, when I lost my job in publishing. We were renting an apartment in Berkeley for around $900. The landlady asked us to move out so her daughter could move in, right around that time. We couldn’t afford the normal rents in Berkeley or El Cerrito or Oakland. We were worried about survival, biting our nails. We had a car payment, a motorcycle payment, student loans, and now only one income.

My Uncle approached us and asked if we would like to take care of my grandparent’s house (empty, and it had it’s own issues, like black mold) until we got back on our feet. Without his offer, I don’t know what we would have done. We spent two years in that house, worried we were one paycheck away from being homeless. There were few jobs. I applied for them all. I was on unemployment, which was half of my previous income, and my husband wasn’t getting as much business at work. I was constantly sick from the mold. It was scary.

I think many Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless. I grew up with the same weight over my head–my parents always wondering where the next check would come from. They didn’t own property. I don’t own property. Even people who own property are at risk.

I knew where she was coming from. I’ve been there, too. She spoke to me.

She had said, while she was talking, that most homeless and mentally ill people walk into the library already thinking they’ve done something wrong. They’re already on edge. They feel like they don’t belong. Many times I felt that way, like someone was going to arrest me for being me. Like I didn’t belong.

She told me, “I didn’t even feel like sharing today. I was nervous, I was afraid, I didn’t want to do it. I thought of canceling.” Then she said, “But I thought, if I can just help one person…”

I’m so glad that in spite of her fear she had the courage to share how she turned her weakness into strength and how she has used her experiences and the serendipity of being asked to work in an outreach situation to give back what was given to her.

I told her that I write non-fiction stories and read them in public, and share personal stories on my blog, and I had just written yesterday about not wanting to share sometimes, feeling embarrassed about being open and putting myself out there. Then, my friend had said those exact words, “If I can just help one person,” and I’d used that as the title of my blog post. Usually, I said, I’m the one sharing personal details that are hard to share. “Wow,” I had thought when I heard her speak, “This is what it’s like to be on the receiving end of someone stretching themselves and speaking directly from the heart, even though it’s not comfortable or convenient or guaranteed to help a single soul.”

It seems like everyone in that training, most of whom likely had not directly experienced her reality, benefited from her personal experience. And because she’s been there she is at an added advantage of being able to do her job of outreach. It’s the same reason why your addicted niece or spouse or friend won’t listen to you when you try to give them advice if you’re not an addict, but will listen to someone who was an addict and has been through it. People know when we are speaking the truth, and it resonates with them. And mostly, it helps them, too.

Life lessons like this don’t always happen, not with such blatant obviousness, but when they do, it’s a trip.

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April 21, 2012

East Bay on My Brains

Just wanted to shout out about this reading tonight for East Bay on the Brain at The Layover in Oakland. I’ve checked out the line up (yup, I’ve googled you) and it’s going to be a good one!

I’ll be reading a normal piece for me, a non-fiction tale of debauchery about dating while attempting sobriety. It’s funny. And it’s a bar. You can drink if you drink, although I won’t be drinking, but don’t think I’m judging you if you do drink. I’m not that kind of person. You drinker you.

I’m excited to be reading at this event, because hey, I grew up in the East Bay, and that used to not be a cool thing to say, specifically when I lived in San Francisco (where the hell is the East Bay?). I’m third generation East Bay on my Dad’s side, actually funny I ended up in the city he grew up in. Kind of funny. I really miss Oakland, to tell you the truth, and wish I hadn’t moved out of Temescal before it got all expensive and über hip.

Otherwise, I’ve been down with the sickness, the ill disease going around for those who flew on a plane home from Waikiki, still feel like I got the shit kicked out of me by the Grim Reaper: “I’m not quite ready for you yet, Bean, but I’m gonna give you hell for having some fun in Hawaii.”

Like the following famous poem:

Compensation

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears

–Emily Dickinson

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to what I’ve been doing all week: updating my facebook and spying on friends with my iPhone will I lay in bed and feel bad.

Stole this from Ms. Juliet. So funny.

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April 17, 2012

No Rhyme, No Reason

There is no rhyme or reason to any of these blog updates. My philosophy is that if I tap into whatever I feel like writing, I’ll find some root subconscious thing that needs to be shared with whoever stumbles upon/subscribes to this blog and voila, serendipity is at work.

I know I talked a lot about kettlebell last week. Truth is, I’m kind of burnt from my trip right now and I don’t really want to write more about kettlebell right now, only this update: I did exactly what I set out to do. I set a personal record in competition, (100 reps with the 16kg bell) made it onto the Hawaii news (where they totally misreported the rules of a kettlebell competition, saying that you can set down a bell in the middle of your ten-minute set which is not true at all) and was one of the first to get certified as a kettlebell instructor by the fabulous Orange Kettlebell Club, which consists of John Wild Buckley, Jason Dolby and Nazo.

I survived Hawaii…

I am now at home. Spent today alternately sleeping off the cold/cough I caught and proofing some writing I have going live in a little bit: a column for a music trade magazine and 6 poems for Analog Press. (And a poem was accepted in Gutter Eloquence, too. Huzzah!)

I couldn't stop thinking about music the entire trip.

One thing on my mind right now is human beings and how every one of us is so odd, and how, me being me, I tend to like to be alone, a lot, because people are hard to be around in large doses. There is not one person I don’t get tired of if I spend too much time with them. But at the same time, I need people, and sometimes they’re OK.

I think a lot of creative people are like this. We need so much space. And we tend to be really hard on ourselves to begin with, constantly doubting our own abilities, so when other people are critical of us, it’s like a double whammy.

I learned a lot about myself in Hawaii–mostly that it doesn’t matter what other people think, it’s important to stand up for yourself, and make sure you take care of your own needs (things I’m not necessarily very good at yet) and that the world isn’t necessarily going to change, that we all have to do some things we don’t like, we have to learn to deal with it and keep doing our thing for the sake of doing our thing.

Most of these lessons came through conversations with a lovely artist/kettlebeller from Colorado, who I had the benefit of spending some time with walking back and forth from the hotel to the gym. Also, I’m a music nerd, and it was nice to be able to chat with someone about sampling and orchestration and I really think she needs to make me a list of obscure bands I’ve never heard of, so I can read up on them.

I also appreciated my walks/car rides with my coach (friend) Juliet–she has these amazing insights that she throws out all nonchalantly while we’re walking and that I end up chewing on for hours afterwards. She’s just a cool person. We were talking about money and the like, and I was saying I felt guilty about coming to Hawaii when it wasn’t really the most responsible thing for me. She told me to a) stfu and enjoy the free hotel and the hefty discount on certification and b) that I’ve chosen music and writing, and it’s not lucrative, and I know this, but I’ve also chosen to be happy, because these things make me happy, so be happy. Stop looking at the glass half empty and all I don’t have. I made a concerted effort, and was partially successful, though I still managed to piss everyone off a couple of times.

It’s what happens. I look all pretty and shiny from far away, but you get to know me and well, I’ll let this poem I like explain the phenomonon:

The Poet’s Lie, by Mike Hilbig

***

Since the entire island of Hawaii is one giant bottle of soy sauce (made of wheat, and I’ve got a problem it seems, with gluten), it was tough to navigate food. Didn’t even foresee that being a problem, I thought I’d be chowing on pineapple and coconut and mango. Turns out that smoothies are harder to come by than one might think. Everything from “our credit card machine is down, cash only” to “oh, we just ran out of fruit.”

Some local told me the vog (smog from the volcanoes) was really bad this weekend, and a lot of people they knew were having allergies. My nose was alternately pouring snot and/or stuffed up, and my throat sore. But these are kind of normal issues with me, things that happen to me everywhere I go. It was just more intense being thousands of miles away from home without all my creature comforts. I was never so happy to see the signs reading Oakland in my life. Home sweet home. The food here is nowhere near as expensive as Hawaii and it tastes very good. Nothing like a little living without to make you appreciate what you have, right?

I went to the beach two times. Hiked a bit of the pillbox trail with Sarah and Ada and Danielle, two kettlebellers and a crossfit lady I got to know a little better on the trip. Stared at a blue beach on the windward side for a few minutes; took a picture of Sarah on the beach looking all peaceful.

Was happy to go back home. Even happier to be going to Seattle and Portland in May to see Kirsten and also thinking about hitting up the kettlebell competition while I’m there, to get the 106 reps for Master of Sport. I just have to make sure I do the actual freelance work I’m supposed to be doing while I’m there, don’t want to over plan and muck up my paying work.

I’m supposed to go into the studio this week, twice, and also read a piece of writing at East Bay on the Brain on Saturday night.

I’m pretty scattered, still, spent the day in bed mostly, brain fried. Trying to get back on my program. Pick up my guitar, get back into music recording mode…etc. etc.

Life moves on.

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