OMG....AAAAAAAAAnnnnnd we're back

..and though we had a blast, I'm glad to be back at work. I'm feeling energized about work again, and I missed the structure. It's good to go on vacation and play things by ear, yes, and I agree that my life is sometimes a little *too* structured (at least, according to the Captain), so going on vacation and doing things when we want to do them is good, but...I also need structure. I do a poor job at creating structure for myself, so work is a good thing - not only does it provide me with structure, it also pays me. :) So: mental well-being + money = GOOD THING.

And I promise to post a proper account of our trip. I haven't uploaded all of our pictures yet, and you really need pictures to appreciate the trip. In any case, highlights: the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in DC; heckling the Towson 4th of July Parade, and admiring the multiple bagpipe groups in the parade; fireworks over the Harbor; petting goats at the Maryland Zoo @ Baltimore; the Jones Fall Farmers Market & eating some of the best spring rolls EVAR; the Post Secret religion installation at the American Visionary Arts Museum, but more so the All Faiths Beautiful exhibit (which, technically, the Post Secret thing was part of, but in my mind they're two installations); Nadia's homemade pesto-pasta dinner; spending loads of time with Nadia, needless to say; and stopping in Natural Bridge, VA, to see...the Natural Bridge. :)

But I've had my fill of the Road for a while, needless to say. This little body can't do what it could before, whether because of age or fibro. I was not so tired or pained as I thought I would be over the course of the B'more trip, and I was pleasantly surprised by that. Seems like my body was saving up, though, for when we got home. I haven't slept well lately, and it's mostly because of the pain. I took a hot bath last night, which helped a little, but this morning, the body demanded Lortab, which I took. It's helped, but that's two Lortabs in two weeks, so I must be careful.

AND: trouble amongst the friends. :( One couple has already dealt with their problem, which is good - Tara being sad and unhappy is unconscionable. But the other couple...well, their problem is more serious. Not that Tara's wasn't - but there are more far-reaching ramifications for L & T. L has become dissatisfied with life and doesn't feel like herself anymore and wants space; her husband, T, is scared of losing her, and is unsure what to do. The words separation have entered their discussions. I am not opposed to divorce, but I do share my friend's Tony sensibility: too many young couples (L & T have only been married 2 years) bail when the going gets rough. Things are "perfect," then...things aren't so "perfect," they get scared, they figure they must have made a mistake getting married, and break up. The reality of the situation? Healthy couples go through rough patches; it's okay. The Captain and I went through a rough patch in our second year of marriage. But we toughed it out, and it helped us grow as a couple, and as individuals.

I think part of L & T's problem is that L isn't sure what she wants, or what's really rattling around in her head, i.e., she doesn't feel like herself anymore, she's bored with her life, but she's unsure of how to deal with those feelings, and is feeling ashamed (this part I don't know for sure, but Tony agrees with me) because she has those feelings. T told L that he and I had been talking, and that seems to have opened a door for more communication. Tony recommended that they seek couples counseling, and I agree - this situation is better dealt with by a professional. I'm emotionally invested in these people, they are my friends, so I can't be as unbiased and objective as a counselor would be, and that objectivity and lack of bias will go much farther in helping them understand their situation and working through it. I am not going to judge my friends; none of us are perfect. But people are always afraid that they will be judged, and sometimes they don't get help when they should, because they are ashamed, or afraid.

But we'll see. Things will work out, one way or the other. L & T are good people, smart people, and I am confident that they will handle this situation like adults. I know they're both suffering, yes, and I am sorry; but they both know we're here for them, and that's the best thing I know to do - be available.

Anyway: what's on your plate today?

*dark laugh in the back of my mind*

I'm pretty certain my mind has a rich inner life of which I am partially unaware. Sometimes swatches and snatches of that secret life wash up on the shore of my consciousness, and I marvel at the flotsam and jetsam: ragged ballgowns; half-burned manuscripts; empty wine bottles; fully-formed, self-sustaining creatures of mythology; self-aware manifestations of the fractured pieces of the Self; shining, gem-studded swords; indestructible laptops and iPods with limitless memory; portfolios of architectural design, of fashion designs, of interior design; love tokens; and letters conceived but never realized. And so much more - a Mardi Gras haul of fantasy, reality, and what-ifs.

Left to my own devices, I might would self-destruct, trying to bring these treasures fully into the world. I would probably destroy the life I'm living, too, given that certain aspects of my morality would go by the wayside, and the ferocity of my desire would inevitably repel those I love best. I often feel as though I am hair's breath away from doing that - losing control, tearing down that tight inner discipline, and doing something I've dreamed of doing, but couldn't honestly imagine doing: becoming a hedonist. Not to the degree of the Marquis de Sade, but certainly more than sufficiently to be truthfully called a hedonist. There's an epicurean tendency in me, to be sure, but my traditional Western spiritual values - and my intellectualism and ability to rationalize the potentially harmful side effects of epicureanism and hedonism - are stronger than that tendency. Which is sometimes disappointing.

*shakes head* It's hard to reconcile all aspects of the Self, all the impulses of the conscious mind and unconscious mind, the desires of the heart and the desires of the flesh.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like, what my life would be like, though, were I to divest myself of those things which keep in check the ferocity of my will and my desires....temptation is certainly insidious, sensual, sexy...and dangerous....

...and I still hear that dark laughter in the back of my mind, that dark voice that asks, "What if?"

...two white horses in a line...

...two white horses in a line...

It's easy to lose perspective. Losing perspective is a dangerous thing - it's sometimes a motivating factor in suicide. Losing perspective is a catalyst to disorganized change; it opens a door to behaving in a ways we wouldn't usually act.

...some may say this might be your last farewell ride...

I've lost perspective. Not, it's not made me suicidal. Just...lethargic. Unappetized, if that makes sense. More restless than ever. Isolationist. Depressed. Disassociative, in the sense I feel disconnected from everything. The other night a friend of mine, who was recently very ill, asked me if I became an atheist when I was sick. He said he did a little, in a way - intellectually he didn't, of course, or in the sense of faith - but that for a while he didn't feel he believed in anything but the illness. He was sort of joking but not. I told him, truthfully, in a way I did, too, but only in the sense that the world shrinks to whatever room I'm confined to, and if something can't fit in that room, or isn't in that room, then it ceases to exist to me while I'm sick. People, concepts, distance, everything disappears.

I'm not sick now, as far as I know. But I was over the weekend. High fever, pain, severe fatigue, terrible nausea, loss of appetite, abdominal issues - like a stomach virus but not. This morning: still no appetite, but that might be the migraine talking. Same for the nausea. Fatigue - par for the course.

I sound fatalistic this morning, in the common usage of the world, rather than the religious. And I am sorry for that. I don't need comforting; this is the kind of misery that goes beyond hugs and binge drinking - it's a kind of crisis of the body and the mind: a failure to reconcile, or even try to reconcile. Most often they do, but sometimes they don't. This is the dark night of the soul; I know the morning is coming, but it seems so...alien, so irrelevant to the current state of things....I don't smell the morning roses...I can't. They aren't compatible with the current worldview, with the engaged filters.

I can work through this, and I will - I am. Letting it run its course. There's no reason to be sorry; no reason to regret. No reason to worry. Stand back, watch the wheels of the soul as they turn: it's a cycle, a tide, a season.

Where is your soul this morning?

...swollen angels point and laugh...

...so the world shrinks drop by drop,
as the wine goes to your head...

It's like that, when I'm sick. The world shrinks to the exact size of my apartment. I can't conceive of a space outside of the apartment, away from the couch. It's as though the people in my life - all of those people not connected to me by those holy lines of blood - don't exist. I try to imagine them, and I fail - their images expressed as stylized versions of their names in my mind. Even the Captain seems far away.

It's a strange feeling. When I get sick, I lose more than my appetite, more than sleep, more than days of wellness - I lose my taste for other things. For books. For music. For video games. For much of anything. Today's the first day I've really *listened* to music. And I have to do that to focus, to exclude the sounds of my coworkers, to override the regular hoopla that passes my window every hour during the school day.

I've had two major nosebleeds today. My comfort? I like the sight of my own bright blood on white porcelain. Isn't that awfully emo and goth? *laugh* Maybe it is. It's pretty, what can I say? I'm no cutter, not into self-mutilation. Definitely not into pain. It's just...picturesque.

I'm so tired...I hate being sick. I was sick for three months - December (bronchitis), January (the flu), and February (sinus infection from hell). I was WELL in March, and I anticipated being well until the fall. I did not anticipate being sick in April. :( It's 'cause the co-worker who sits behind me got sick, and I got it from her. I have a hard time resisting colds and other respiratory infections. *sigh* I have the world's worst immune system, seriously. I always have. The Captain insists that it's been worse since the time we suspect that I developed fibromyalgia. Which makes sense - fibro is an auto-immune disorder. It only follows, to my mind, that my immune system would fail in other ways. If it's dumb enough to attack me, of course it would be dumb when it came to actually *doing* its *job*, you know?

Anyway. No point going on and on about it. I'm sick, bottom line. I'm tired, bottom line. I want to go home, but I can't, since I came in late, and I'm trying to make up time. ...time... This morning, the fine blue sky and the undeniable green leaves twisted their tongues in my ear - and I heard them, felt the warm, clear honey, but I couldn't do anything about them...work waited. Work, work that I've had to avoid for my own good. Work that I wish I could continue avoiding. Heh. *shakes head* There's work waiting at home. No doubt, the good Captain dropped his end of the bargain again. Fact of life. Like me being sick all the time. Fact of life.

I am not some delicate magnolia, I swear. It's just the world conspiring to make me as such. It's not in my will to be such. It's in my will to be lithe and healthy and golden. To be fierce and night and nocturnal and hungry and burning, not with fever, but with that little Promethean light. That little spark of cosmic sentience.

...you cast a shadow 'round my room...

I feel...crazed. Fevered. I probably am fevered...it's a shame, really, to be this bright, and it's a malfunction. Bright eyes means madness, rather than mania. I used to worship the former; I am in service to the latter. I'd give a great deal to be master of both.

...you put a chill across my face...like the air of December...I swear I remember it that way...

There's work I'm putting off, because I don't want to do it. I'm sleepy and sluggish, fevered and unfocused. I want to put my head down and sleep...drift...there's a khaki-painted room somewhere, with a faded caramel couches, hot cups of lemon & honey with herbs, hot cups of broth with herbs, the soft hands of the Captain, the soft voice of the Seidman Robin (the shaman I know)....I am little more than a memory, or the fever that snags my eyes, carries them away. I'll be writing in my delirium later, no doubt, and proud of the incoherence that sings out of my blood, an incoherence I often equate - mistake - make for wisdom.

When I wake up again, I'll be imagining yellow fields and green swamps and blue skies.

...sometimes it rages....rock a little...even when it's calm....

I've never had use for people who were not genuine, or people who were so self-absorbed that they failed to see how much they hurt the people around them, especially the people that love(ed) them. And now - oh, now, this morning, on the bright tide of mania-cum-spirit, I am righteously angry, and mentally flailing. Were I able this day to drive to Baltimore and beat the absolute HELL out of my best friend's ex-boyfriend, I would. I was this angry when he dumped her - on their four-month anniversary, downtown, on the curb. The AUDACITY of the man to drop her like that, to tell her that all the I love you's were wrong, were lies, and then to seek comfort from her...it is enough to drive me straight to him with a whiffle bat and a grim determination.

He told her, great spirit that she is, that he could envision a life with her, marrying her, owning a home together, maybe children; she believed him. Never should a person say such things to another if they do not mean it. Maybe he meant it when he said it, but if there had been any doubt in his mind AT ALL - either because of his own issues, or concern for her - he should NEVER have said those things at all. They became LIES when he left, and they became the foundation on which her misery has been made.

And now? NOW? After he told her he could not find it in himself to marry again, it could not happen, her dream was over: that BASTARD has gotten married. MARRIED. The man who had decided at their end that marriage was no longer for him, has gotten MARRIED. And had I known, I would have called his bride and told her the misery he had grafted the tree of my friend's soul. I would have told her the lies, told her the locks, told her all that I could tell her to make her INTIMATE of the WRONG in her future husband's heart. Oh, I would have told her how he had made the moon gleam on the snow for the saint that is my friend, and how the sun itself smiled on their meeting. How the blood in her veins was fire in a way it had not long been. How the words remained when he did not, and he abandoned her on a corner in downtown Baltimore, in the shadow of the buildings, no comfort given, though comfort requested. Oh, I would not spare a detail, not spare a tear, not spare one moment's vicious victory over the bride's misconception of her so-called beloved.

*sigh* But I cannot now, it is impossible. And I cannot bring myself to wish misery on that poor bride; enough may come from the hands of her new husband. And I cannot wound him for fear of wounding my beloved friend, who once loved him. What I want now is to go to my friend, is to comfort her, to hold her hands and warm them with my own love, with the love that does not falter, does not lie, the love of sisters not-blood. The love that asks for nothing but love.

Where you are, there you are, my coal-maned sister:
come to the South, where we will warm you,
let you bask in the shade, not the shadows,
where the world will not tilt, you will not tumble off,
where the nights will be sweet without the sinister tongue
of a liar, of a man to whom nothing is owed.
In a bed of green, in a room of light,
we will comfort you, we will laugh with you,
and dredge the nightmares out; we will roam,
we will sing, we will weave a circle
'round that heart of yours,
oh glowing coal of heaven,
and bind the wounds with tea and cake,
smiles and friends, and green green grass,
and the wind on your face, and the sun in your eyes,
and you can trust that the words are wisdom,
that they are real and reliable,
and the promises made are carved
in the stone of the bones of the earth,
and in our own bones, to hold us to
our promises and our pacts.
Oh, come to us, blessed woman-child,
to the open arms of blood not-blood,
and heal where you are guaranteed love eternal.

A Plea for Understanding

As many of you know, I have fibromyalgia. Many doctors consider fibro to be an auto-immune disorder: basically, my body attacks itself. As many of you also know, I have the immune system of a bottle of glue. I seem to have very little resistance to infection, and since I was diagnosed with asthma, I’ve had more problems, especially as far as respiratory issues go. Many of you also know that I have chronic sinusitis and that, from time to time, it flares up into an actual full-blown sinus infection.

In December I came down with bronchitis; in January I had the flu. Now in February I have a very nasty sinus infection that is causing me a lot of problems. I am penicillin-allergic, so there are a limited number of meds I can be on when I get sick. This time I’m on Cipro, but it doesn’t seem to be doing as much for me as it could. I have had a headache for the last three days which I can do very little for; until last night, I couldn’t stand up for more than five minutes at a time without being violently sick. Apparently I have a lot of fluid in my ears because I’m having vertigo. I periodically have really bad nausea (like this morning). I keep wearing out insanely easy. I’m exhausted all the time. And I’m just not getting well fast enough this time around.

So, what does all this mean? Well, between talking with my doctor, my parents, and the Captain, we’ve decided it means that I am not taking care of myself as well as we thought, and that we’re not managing the fibro as well as we thought. Consequently, there are greater ramifications for activities than we originally thought: travel is harder on me than previously thought; I need greater time to recuperate from late-night activities; my recovery time after illnesses is longer than previously thought; when I am sick, the effects of fibro are twice as bad; and I simply can’t do as much as we thought I could do in general.

What I am asking is that y’all be patient with me. I am going to have to say “no” to activities more than I want to; I am not going to be able to plan parties and get-togethers like I used to. I am not going to be able to go out as much as I would like, or hang out with peeps as much as I would like. I am not going to be able to travel as often as I want. I can’t do these things because the repercussions are getting worse and worse. Every time I get sick, my symptoms are more exaggerated and it takes longer to recuperate.

It’s not that I don’t want to see you guys; I do. I miss you guys a lot. I miss seeing my family and friends. I miss spending time with you guys and having fun. But I just don’t have it in me like I used to, to do things the way I used to. I don’t have the tokens, I don’t have the strength, and I don’t have the wherewithal to explain this whenever I have to say no; it makes me sad that it’s come to this. But this body, this one body I have, as Sally Field says on the Boniva commercial, doesn’t work right, and I have to care for it the best way I know how.

Does this mean don’t invite me to things? No. Does this mean I’ll say no to every invitation I receive? No. Does this mean I’ll never throw another party? No. Does this mean I’ll never travel again? No. It just means I have to be *very* careful, and I’m asking for you guys to understand and be patient with me. Please keep inviting me to stuff, so I at least *feel* normal. Please trust that, from time to time, I’ll plan stuff – I just have to be very careful. And remember, I am always with you guys in spirit. And I want to be there for my family and my friends – but in order to do that, I have to be very restrictive and careful. And I am sorry.

If you can’t cope with this fact, now is your chance to walk away. I bear no ill will, honestly – I know this situation can be hard to understand and more difficult to deal with. If you can’t deal with it, here’s your easy out. But if you can cope, and you do want to stick around, well – thanks. It means more than you know. *hugs*

Behind the gates and the granite...

...of the Planet of New Orleans...New Orleans...with other life upon it...and everything that's shaking in between...if you should ever land upon it...you better know what's on it...on the Planet of New Orleans...

God knows, I am intimately acquainted with the Planet of New Orleans, its ragged sidewalks and shiny gutters, the gnarled trees and priceless courtyards. I am a child of the sacred city, pure and simple - it don't really matter that I was born and raised in Jackson, it really don't. Within a year of my birth, my parents were already taking me down there. This year I attended my 27th Mardi Gras (for those of you keepin' score, I'll be 29 this month). I tell people I was raised between Jackson and New Orleans, that's how much I love New Orleans.

Those who know me best know that New Orleans is Home; no matter where I live, where I go, New Orleans is Home. I spent a month in Russia in 1996 - the farthest I'd ever been from home and Home; the distance meant nothing. I still craved NO with a ferocity that denies explanation. Her destruction at the hands of Katrina and the levee breaks was my own destruction; I cried for days and days after it happened, as much for the city herself as for her people.

Lawks, I'll be 29 this month, and over the years, things about me have changed, no doubt. The lovable parts haven't changed (otherwise, I wouldn't still be friends with peeps I've known for years), but other things have. One of the things that hasn't changed and never will change is the love I have for the Crescent City. That is my goal, my Grail, and the prize on which I keep my eyes: moving there, making my life there.

I just spent 5 glorious days in the Big Easy, for Mardi Gras. We attended many parades: Endymion (still sacred to me); Thoth (new to me) and Bacchus (best damn parade I've EVER attended); and Proteus (saddest parade I've ever attended, and I went down to Mardi Gras following Katrina). I didn't make it to Morpheus (to which I've never been) or Orpheus (still sacred to me), but I had a blast every which way, so I ain't complaining. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that I had to come back here and start living this life again, rather than that life down there. That life down there: that's the life I ought to be living, and I know it. The Captain knows it. Those who know me best know it. We all know it - but it can only happen like this, for now, in small bursts, when no one can make a demand on my time.

I am surprisingly buoyant this morning, and I didn't expect that: I expected to wake up feeling depressed and deprived, but no dice. I feel all the generosity and freedom, all the contentment and honesty that NO engenders in me. I still feel it. Maybe it's because I left the city under my own speed, by my own will, with an understanding that I never really leave her. I saw that skyline once more before I left. I did not look back to see it, and so perhaps it wasn't like leaving, and that made it seem easier.

Whatever else might be said of me, you can say I have never hidden my love of the Captain, and I have never hidden my love of the City Beneath the Sea. My loyalties are few, to be sure, but they are fierce, and this morning, that ferocity, those loves, they keep me up and going. And I am grateful for all the love and strength they give me. If you have never known the love of a city, I am sorry for you, for you have missed something sacred and singular in life.