Wednesday, January 30, 2008

One $1 Scratch Ticket

Yesterday I got into a very minor car accident as I came sailing back from Walgreen's in a 1993 Mercury Tracer. It was the very first car accident in which I've been involved that wasn't my fault. That's a nice feeling. There is no damage, except to the ego of the 2,000 year old man who hit me. As soon as he saw me with the registration and insurance information in my hand he patted my right shoulder in a familiar way and then implored me gently to see things his way. After a brief examination of the car, I did. He oversold it, though, when he said that he was late "for a class." He was either teaching it, or was one of those inspirational old fucks who never gives up on his degree. Nobody was hurt and I dislike both the police and insurance companies, so we went our separate ways.

As I purchased a $1 scratch ticket from Mass Convenience, the land of the $1.75 can of cat food, I thought about what just happened. The man who hit me was shaking more than a little, which I could tell easily when he did his friendly pat. I was anxiety free, however, which is odd given that any knock at the door (or particularly an early morning phone call) gives me a panic attack. In fact, nothing can give me a panic attack. But a car accident seemed to distract my mind, as I thought about how nervous was the fellow who hit me. I got sort of philosophical, even before I got out of the car. The only thing that would have pissed me off is if he had blamed me.

Is there anything more pathetic than buying one $1 scratch ticket? I suppose there is. Whatever it is, I probably do that, too.

It's pleasant to imagine that high pressure moments make me calm while everything else potentially has me reaching for the Xanax. Bizarro Darren. I'm going to cultivate that romantic image of me as cool under fire. It's probably not true, but if it were not for pleasant fictions I'd be in a rubber room. Instead, there's probably a disturbing pathology at work.

At this moment I'm trying to get the courage up to post part of a short story that I wrote, totally as a joke, that gently made fun of Jean-Paul Sartre's Intimacy. Sartre's story is about Lulu and her husband Henri. It's told from Lulu's point of view, as she talks her husband into sleeping naked, plays with a hole in her blanket with her big toe and considers that Henri, "Loves me but doesn't love my bowels...if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it." It's the kind of stuff I love about Sartre.

What I wrote is a short story based on that, where I take Lulu's part and an ex girlfriend of mine plays Henri. I don't think she has ever read this...I'm not sure anyone has but me. And it may not be that funny at all, especially if you haven't read Intimacy. That's my problem. But to hell with it, I'll post it just as soon as I type it in here. We were only together for a few months back in 1998, and it has very little to do with her ("Henri").

So there's something lame to look forward to, dedicated readers.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

A Poem For The Woman I Love And Some Pictures From New York

The following poem, written by John Donne, is for Linda.

Love's Spring by John Donne
I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass ;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse ;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown ;
As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awakened root do bud out now.

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring's increase.
------------------------------------------------
Also, here are some pictures taken by a friend down in New York City, during a march in Dr. Martin Luther King's honor. Pretty self-explanatory. The lad behind the green "wildcat" sign is representing both the Socialist Party and the International Workers of the World, aka IWW, aka "Wobblies." His name is Greg Pason. We've had many differences of opinion, but a comrade til the end he is, and he is a hard-worker in the struggle for social justice. The girl in the wheelchair is Alex from Providence, Rhode Island.

Can't go wrong with a Martin Luther King quote.
The ever present "Man."

(Had to throw Eli Manning in...ha!)

Pretty good irony here.




Novocaine

I just returned from my morning appointment with my dentist. We shared in a little caper together. I required an extraction, which meant that she was supposed to send me to the oral surgeon affiliated with the practice. But she said she could do it, I told her to go for it, and she did. The entire extraction, from novocaine to yank, took less than ten minutes. She was marvelous. After she started pulling, she said in her Eastern European accent, "Now cross your fingers that the tooth don't break." Apparently, that would have greatly complicated matters. But it worked out.

Happy day.

A Promise

Good morning, Chica, and thank you for the kind words. I've been errant in my blog duties for a couple of reasons. One is a crippling depression that has caused me to do a little cutting. Sleeping has been erratic. This are going very well with my lover, and I'm doing find most of the time, I have some very bad moments. How are you, Chica? You can, of course, write to me personally.

I hope you are well. I have terrible cold, so you'll have to excuse me. Tomorrow, a post!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

What's Going On In The Big Room Around Us

While attending university I met a 17 year old fellow in an introductory cellular biology course attended by about 200 people. Some were nursing majors, many were majoring in pre-med, bio anthro, or any one of the myriad different majors which required you to understand how a cell works. The young man and I met only because of our natural inclination to sit at the back of the classroom. And since this wasn't a classroom as much as a theatre with stadium seating, we both radiated to the very back row out of shyness and a desire not to be called on. That's how we met and got to know each other a bit, even though I can't now remember his name.

That's a common problem for me, sadly.

Over the semester, we talked about matters intellectual and practical, and sometimes one caught the other ogling a hot young nursing major. This embarrassed him a little, given his age, and scruples, but I told him something like, "When I stop looking, I'll know I'm dead." He liked that. Dr. Gibbons, my faculty degree advisor and friend, said that to me over lunch one day during a conversation about a particularly attractive student in his forensic osteology class.

I'm not sure where he is, either, given his retirement but I'm pretty sure he still glances at attractive women. How do I know that? He's not dead.

But I'm getting distracted, as always happens when the topic turns to women. Always.

As it turned out, my young classmate was going to pursue astronomy, and he had every intention of doing so until he got as many letters after his name as possible. UMass Boston was just the beginning; he wasn't even matriculated yet, he was still in high school, if memory serves. The point I'm making is that this was a bright kid with ambitions in academia. When I asked him why he wanted to go into astronomy, he lit up and said, "I want to know everything about what is going on out there, in the big room around us." Like so many others, he simply adored the mathematical logic of noble gases, dark matter and gravitational lenses. Like a wizard in a fantasy novel, he endeavored to know things that are a mystery to most of us. Since I can't remember his name, I'll think of him as the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I hope he found some answers, and that his first exercise in love and/or lust didn't break him. I wish that for everyone, out of empathy and compassion.

When I read this article this morning, I thought of this fellow, now around 30 years old, and had to pass it on. Enjoy.


Astronomers Describe Violent Universe

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP
15 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The deeper astronomers gaze into the cosmos, the more they find it's a bizarre and violent universe. The research findings from this week's annual meeting of U.S. astronomers range from blue orphaned baby stars to menacing "rogue" black holes that roam our galaxy, devouring any planets unlucky enough to be within their limited reach.

"It's an odd universe we live in," said Vanderbilt University astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. She presented her theory on rogue black holes at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas, earlier this week.

It should be noted that she's not worried and you shouldn't be either. The odds of one of these black holes swallowing up Earth or the sun or wreaking other havoc is somewhere around 1 in 10 quadrillion in any given year.

"This is the glory of the universe," added J. Craig Wheeler, president of the astronomy association. "What is odd and what is normal is changing."

Just five years ago, astronomers were gazing at a few thousand galaxies where stars formed in a bizarre and violent manner. Now the number is in the millions, thanks to more powerful telescopes and supercomputers to crunch the crucial numbers streaming in from space, said Wheeler, a University of Texas astronomer.

Scientists are finding that not only are they improving their understanding of the basic questions of the universe — such as how did it all start and where is it all going — they also keep stumbling upon unexpected, hard-to-explain cosmic quirks and the potential, but comfortably distant, dangers.

Much of what they keep finding plays out like a stellar version of a violent Quentin Tarantino movie. The violence surrounds and approaches Earth, even though our planet is safe and "in a pretty quiet neighborhood," said Wheeler, author of the book "Cosmic Catastrophes."

One example is an approaching gas cloud discussed at the meeting Friday. The cloud has a mass 1 million times that of the sun. It is 47 quadrillion miles away. But it's heading toward our Milky Way galaxy at 150 miles per second. And when it hits, there will be fireworks that form new stars and "really light up the neighborhood," said astronomer Jay Lockman at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia.

But don't worry. It will hit a part of the Milky Way far from Earth and the biggest collision will be 40 million years in the future.

The giant cloud has been known for more than 40 years, but only now have scientists realized how fast it's moving. So fast, Lockman said, that "we can see it sort of plowing up a wave of galactic material in front of it."

When astronomers this week unveiled a giant map of mysterious dark matter in a supercluster of galaxies, they explained that the violence of the cramped-together galaxies is so great that there is now an accepted vocabulary for various types of cosmic brutal behavior.

The gravitational force between the clashing galaxies can cause "slow strangulation," in which crucial gas is gradually removed from the victim galaxy. "Stripping" is a more violent process in which the larger galaxy rips gas from the smaller one. And then there's "harassment," which is a quick fly-by encounter, said astronomer Meghan Gray of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

Gray's presentation essentially showed the victims of galaxy-on-galaxy violence. She and her colleagues are trying to figure out the how the dirty deeds were done.

In the past few days, scientists have unveiled plenty to ooh and aah over:

_ Photos of "blue blobs" that astronomers figure are orphaned baby stars. They're called orphans because they were "born in the middle of nowhere" instead of within gas clouds, said Catholic University of America astronomer Duilia F. de Mello.

_ A strange quadruplet of four hugging stars, which may eventually help astronomers understand better how stars form.

_ A young star surrounded by dust, that may eventually become a planet. It's nicknamed "the moth," because the interaction of star and dust are shaped like one.

_ A spiral galaxy with two pairs of arms spinning in opposite directions, like a double pinwheel. It defies what astronomers believe should happen. It is akin to one of those spinning-armed flamingo lawn ornaments, said astronomer Gene Byrd of the University of Alabama.

_ The equivalent of post-menopausal stars giving unlikely birth to new planets. Most planets form soon after a sun, but astronomers found two older stars, one at least 400 million years old, with new planets.

"Intellectually and spiritually, if I can use that word with a lower case 's,' it's awe-inspiring," Wheeler said. "It's a great universe."

Friday, January 11, 2008

Strand Theatre

I received this email from myself this morning, clear evidence that I wrote it last night for this very 'blog, and then reconsidered posting it, so I just deleted it. That happens to many a prospective 'blog post. A lot of writing and very little posting. But everything I write is emailed back to me, and I reconsidered, so here it is. A nasty entry about foot picking, among other things.

A disgusting habit that has me tender-footed today. Peace.
From: "Darren W. Lyle"
To: DWLyle@comcast.net
Subject: [Darren W. Lyle, Zeitgeist Expatriate & Honored Citizen of the House of Four ...
Date: Friday, January 11, 2008 3:10:39 AM
I'm currently engaged in a repulsive habit, which is "picking" at patterns of dead skin on my feet, mostly collected around the heel and big toe. You may know of what I speak. A normal person would put moisturizer, or even just Vaseline, on the hardened heels and toughened toes. So naturally that's not what I'm doing. And it's hard to sleep tonight due to a flu-like illness, combined with the obsessive foot thing, which is also making it a grueling challenge to walk. It's now 3am and I've been at it since 1ish.

A conversation with an old friend just concluded, one about the recent American/Iranian boat show in the Strait of Hormuz. Neither one of us were on our "A" games, analysis-wise, and two things are really distracting me, besides the self-inflicted skinning of my feet. The first is a rare treat for this time of the day, the beeping sound of a truck backing up. If I weren't buck naked, I'd go outside and find out where the fuck this truck is, and then I don't know what. Probably just act annoyed in a passive-aggressive fashion until it finished it's apparently very long, backwards journey. I want whatever beeping fucking thing out there to stop beeping.

The second "distraction" is my fluffy chest hair and thinning head hair. As I looked down at my lap (including penis, of course) whilst waiting for my online friend to respond to my commentary, I detected the hair on my chest and instantly developed the opinion that it is too long. Meanwhile, methinks the hair on my head, right in the front and center, is getting too thin.

That made me think of my lovely Linda. We were out having dinner somewhere the other day and I asked her if she thought my hair was thinning. Her expression at that moment said to me, "Yes, yes it is." The hydrocodone I'm sucking down represent my attempt to forget all that, or at least make me faux content in regards to a hairy issue.

It's past three right now, and it's time to crawl back into bed and lie awake there for another hour or two.

--
Posted By Darren W. Lyle to Darren W. Lyle, Zeitgeist Expatriate & Honored Citizen of the House of Four Cats at 1/11/2008 02:31:00 AM

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Music Of Chance

If I believed in marriage, I would marry my girlfriend. As it is, I'm content to enjoy being in love and spending as much time with her as possible. Methinks that that is the best treatment I'm going to find for my illness. Being in love can easily destroy you, and I'm a rather emotional person even though I aspire to a reasonable, balanced disposition. Right now, at this very moment, my tooth is raging in my head. A premolar, on the left side, and it's been like that for three days now. I mentioned it only once to my beloved Linda, who then expressed amazement that I went two days with her and only complained once about the aching abscess. That made me feel good, to know that I'm strong regarding physical pain, given how much I talk about being crazy.

And that sort of speaks to my dilemma. I'm endlessly trying to out maneuver my mind to achieve a desired result. And because I spend so much time working with my lunacy I'm afraid that I talk about it too much. Complain, even. But I'm sincere when I say that I feel like I've been lucky in life. Life isn't easy even when it's going as well as it possibly can. I guess my point is just that I'm neurotic and frequently of a mind to engage in self-examination. Like a pathologist might examine a tumor or a painter a canvas.

And what better way to express my opinion that I'm living a life of good fortune than to say that I'm in love with a woman who loves me back. I'm still a man who is generally most comfortable alone, and she is more social than I, but that is also a good thing. My brother, my friends, and my beloved all work together to keep me from doing what is in my nature to do, but what is also self-destructive; to seek out solitude to excess. There is logic at work here, given that so much pain is connected to paranoia and anxiety. Obviously, I'm going to try and scurry away from the spark that touches off the mythical phlogiston; human contact. And I'm certain that the bulk of my life will be spent in self-imposed isolation. But Linda, and to a lesser degree others, save me from sequestration to a degree that would harm my psyche.

I'll endure the electric nerve without complaint so long as happy chance finds me in love and with good friends and family. And, of course, away from all the douchebags out there.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

The Church of Walgreen's Pharmacy

The other night I was feeling ambitious and I decided to keep a journal, if only for one night, of my thoughts and actions as I battled insomnia and a rather nasty bout of suicidal ideation and depression. That's one way of saying that I was incredibly unhappy and wanted to kill myself and couldn't sleep. So I took out an old composition book that I used in college and began writing. These are some of the thoughts I managed to smear onto the page.

The first entry was at 1:12am and the last was at 6:37am, when I detected the heavenly aroma of coffee floating in from downstairs. My father is always up early and to bed early. The smell of coffee carries with it a lot of meaning and even emotional currency, at least within this context. It means that I made it through another night, a bad night. An escape route that presents itself, away from the night and into the day. Usually for me the night is a fine place to be, but sometimes it feels as if I'm not going to make it. No music, however beautiful, moving, romantic or sad can deliver me from the guts of nights like that. Nor can any movie, book, thought, or action. I've tried. Except sleep, which comes only when I fill my gullet with pills. Thankfully, I usually have pills to provide such a deliverance. But sometimes, the pills don't work. I'm not sure how fucked up I have to be to still be awake, my mind racing and my stomach churning, after taking 6 lorazepam. It can't be good, and every word I'm writing now is the truth, so let it sit the way it is.

I've gone for late night walks before. The "heavy breathing" walks that Kurt Vonnegut talks about in Bluebeard. They're dangerous. Too many cars to step in front of, mischief to get into, and crimes to commit. It's better, I've found, to remain not only in my flat, but in my boudoir. My bedroom is neat and orderly and makes a nice cage. It also provides an amusing ironic counterpoint to the mess in my head. And the bed is nearby, like a time machine ready to deliver me into another day and away from 3 o'clock in the morning.

In order for a mind to function well, or even properly, boundaries and rules are required. Heaven sent habit and routine that act as rungs on a ladder, or more dramatically, as rappelling equipment that a mountain climber might use. Without discipline, the mind begins to look like the brain; soft, gray mush without definition.

I'm not sure where mental illness fits into this, because I'm not convinced that I'm ill, despite a team of psychiatrists that have told me how crazy I am, over many years. I believe in science and medicine, but it feels like a pleasant fiction, like religion. My cross is a brown prescription bottle, my Bible is the DSM-IV. I recognize the brash, hurtful cynicism of that point of view. And it exists more on an emotional level than an intellectual one. But it turns like a knife in my innards, exposing the viscera of my being to a harsh light where everything is exposed. People can see, as I can, every humiliating flaw. So I turn to the intellect and beg to hear a comforting word. "It's not your fault," I tell myself, "you're sick." It feels like a weak, pathetic man's lie. For me, at least, the intellect withers when exposed to the brutal power of emotion. And as you can see, emotionalism can provide a "reasoning" power all it's own. It's not as raw a I like to imagine. It makes a persuasive argument that is not flattering, to put it kindly.

I've decided that for the last 10 years or so, I've been craving the peace of acceptance. To accept the notion that I am something unchangeable, that I am defined by disease. What a blissful release that would provide. But I can't do it. I can't look at the mess that I've created, the life I've ruined, as something that just happened, like a hurricane or tumble down the stairs. The uneasiness that I endlessly feel is partially about my inability to reconcile two perpendicular thoughts. The first is that I'm a compassionate, thoughtful human being struggling with an illness that is more or less out of my control. The second is that I'm an overwrought, reckless, idiotic bumbler who is mentally as healthy as your average person, but who is weak. I want to embrace the former and shun the latter. But I can't, and that's why I can't sleep without pills. I can't stay awake without them, either.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Elegant Solution

These early days of 2008 have found me negotiating the exiguous division between apathetic nihilism and fecund endeavors of one sort or another. Robust mental health eludes me, despite my best efforts, and on many levels I've begun to accept that I'm never going to be better. A recent encounter with political activism provided an experience that whispered clearly in my ear, "You can't do this, go home."

But why couldn't I do easy volunteer work for a couple of hours? What is wrong with me? Aside from the names of my various and sundry diagnoses, what is happening in my brain is sad and complex. A feeling of loneliness envelopes me when in public, followed by a nauseating anxiety that includes dizzy spells, stomach pain and tightness, jumpiness, and suicidal thoughts. After a few minutes, I begin to develop paranoia. My psychiatrist tells me that this comes from my intellect. When a person like myself (with "crippling social phobia and avoidant tendencies") feels this kind of anxiety, the mind tries to reconcile what you are feeling with what is actually happening. Unfortunately, that means that the mind manifests a suspicious disposition. I start to see people around me as cruel, vastly superior to me, and laughing at me behind my back. Sometimes even worse, although it's rare. On those occasions I think that I'm being followed by a cop (that happened on the "T" the other day).

Needless to say, I'm tired of it. I desperately need some relief from this constant self-loathing and anxiety when in the company of others. Every once in a while I find myself feeling and acting pretty normally when in the company of others, it's very rare, though. It happens enough to make me crave more. In the abstract, I love people, but this social phobia is whithering. It also makes it impossible to be normal in any sense. There is a small group of people with whom I can and usually do feel totally comfortable; my father, brother, Linda, and a couple of others.

If only I could fashion a functioning human being out of my past, to be used in the future. In order to do that, however, I need to clear the aperture of the present so that preceding lessons from experience can be used to fit and fill the job ahead. But that is starting to look impossible. Unsteadily, I move into the future and only think of the past in such a way that it's not just useless, it's dangerous. Thoughts of attending UMass Boston, volunteering for political campaigns, working different jobs and generally feeling comfortable around people are all there. When I try to use them, however, as a guide into the future, the scheme backfires. For me, remembering the past leads to regret, embarrassment, humiliation, and a strong desire to kill myself.

If I can't use past experience to move into the future, then I'm walking blind and deaf into new territory. There's no growth because I'm stifled, petrified that my past mindset will return and I'll put my loved ones through the wringer again. Carefully, I try to glean lessons, and sometimes succeed, but usually I get sucked into a memory that puts my stomach in knots and has my mind hard at work on the question of how to off myself. Only a few months ago I began stockpiling a heart medication in the hopes that I could collect enough to overdose on. I threw them out, but it's damn near impossible to re-build a life when every set back has you trying to kill yourself.

It's a cruel affliction, but I'm lucky to have so many close friends who care about me and are eager to help. I'm alive today because of that fact. And my girlfriend Linda has sometimes seen a side of me that I would have liked to kept hidden, but even with her I've lost control a few times. And I feel totally comfortable with her, and love her deeply. The thought that I may have upset her after one of my breakdowns consumes me, and I feel as if I'm driving her away. It's madness. An agonizing circle that I cannot break. And with her I try my hardest to be a loving, supporting partner, a man whom she can lean on. That's what she deserves and that is what I strive to be.

In an effort to escape my mind I've turned to drugs; marijuana, Vicodin and others. They help me drown out the cruel inner monologue. On the plus side, I've also been reading copiously, as that provides another escape from myself. Movies and music less so, because the mind can wander a bit. So the problem I have is that I need to make peace with my mind, to stop being so nasty to myself, and to finally stop seeing suicide as an elegant solution.