As I've eluded to, sometimes books relate to my life in strange ways that seem beyond coincidence. I had already told my psychiatrist about the latest book I've been reading, Infinite Jest. This is a 1000 page monster that I've been trying to tackle. I've wanted to read it for a long time, that being said, I knew nothing about the book before I started, except that it is supposed to be one of the best satires in recent history. So far, the main character is dealing with mental illness, there are many characters dealing with addictions, many with pot, there is a character with Crohn's disease, the list goes on, here's one quote I marked from a couple weeks back:
"But then I quit (smoking pot). And a couple of weeks after I've smoked a lot and finally stopped and quit and gone back to really living, after a couple weeks this feeling starts creeping in, just creeping in a little at the edges at first, like first thing in the morning when I get up, or waiting for the T to go home, after work, for supper. And I try to deny it, the feeling, ignore it, because I fear it more than anything.
"And then but no matter what I do it gets worse and worse, it's there more and more, this filter drops down, and the feeling makes the fear of the feeling way worse, and after a couple weeks it's there all the time, this feeling, and I'm totally inside it, I'm in it and everything has to pass through it to get in, and I don't want to smoke, and I don't want to work, or go out, or read, or watch TP, or go out, or stay in, or either do anything or not do anything, I don't want anything except for the feeling to go away. But it doesn't. Part of the feeling is being like willing to do anything to make it go away. Understand that. Anything. Do you understand? It's not wanting to hurt myself, it's wanting to not hurt."
I can certainly sympathize with this, I've never tried to hurt myself but I have definitely put myself in harm's way unintentionally, while I was trying to make the feelings go away.
The real coincidence was today though. Today in therapy I did a lot of talking about my mom's death and the doctor seemed concerned that I am largely unable to display emotion about it, I talked a lot about it in my last post, maybe read that before you read these quotes, in order to really appreciate just how applicable they are.
Let me preface it with saying I don't feel this way about my doctor, but, well I'm sure you'll be able to see how it connects. In this scene, Hal, the main character is talking to his brother about his sessions with a grief therapist after his father's death:
"What could I do? I was panic-stricken. This guy was a nightmare. His face just hung there over his desk like a hypertensive moon, never turning away...He was my worst nightmare. Talk about self-consciousness and fear. Here was a top-rank authority figure and I was failing to supply what he wanted. He made it manifestly clear I wasn't delivering the goods. I'd never failed to deliver the goods before.
"And here but here was this authority figure with top credentials in frames over every square cm. of his walls who sat there and refused even to define what the goods here would be.
"I began to despair. I began to foresee somehow getting left back in grief-therapy, never delivering the goods and it never ending...I wasn't going to get to go with the contingent to Indianapolis unless I could figure out some last-ditch way to deliver the emotional goods to this guy. I was totally desperate, a wreck."
Okay, now this got even weirder. I actually hadn't read this last part I am about to quote to you. I wrote the other day about helping my cousin with a writing assignment about a book of poems by Walt Whitman, he just walked in the door and I asked him what the book of poems was, it was Leaves of Grass. Here's the rest of the quote...
"Lyle turned out to be the key. He was down there reading Leaves of Grass. He was going through a Whitman period, part of grieving for Himself (what they call Hal's father)...Lyle's key insight was I was approaching the issue from the wrong side. I'd gone to the library and acted like a student of grief. What I needed to chew through was the section for grief-professionals themselves. I needed to prepare from the grief-pro's own perspective...
so he does and goes back in with this
"What I did, I went in there and presented with anger at the grief-therapist. I accused the grief-therapist of actually inhibiting my attempt to process my grief, by refusing to validate my absence of feelings. I told him I'd told him the truth already. I used foul language and slang. I said I didn't give a damn if he was an abundantly credentialed authority figure or not. I called him a shithead. I asked him what the cock-shitting fuck he wanted me to feel toxically guilty for not feeling anything. Notice I was subtly inserting certain loaded professional-grief-therapy terms like validate, process as a transitive verb, and toxic guilt. These were library derived.
"The grief-therapist encouraged me to go with my paroxysmic feelings, to name and honor my rage. He got more and more pleased and excited as I angrily told him I flat-out refused to feel iota-one of guilt of any kind...
"I absolved myself with seven minutes left in the session right there in full approving view of my grief-therapist. He was ecstatic. By the end I swear his side of the desk was half a meter off the floor, at my grief-therapist-textbook breakdown into genuine affect and trauma and textbook earsplitting grief, then absolution."
Then his brother replies, "But you got through it. You really did grieve, and you can tell me what it was like so, so I can say something generic but convincing about loss and grief for Helen for Moment." (a magazine he is being interviewed by)
Pretty humorous, most of the good parts of this book are ironic in the way that scene is. I relate to the feeling of having to deliver the goods and not pulling through, the challenge for me will be to stop thinking about it in these terms and just feel real feelings in the moment. Not easy for me, in any setting let alone a clinical one.
Well, you got to see how literature follows me live, in action.
I wrote a poem about death today. Turns out a friend of mine had her grandpa pass away today, I didn't know this when I wrote the poem:
A Strange Fate
It's a curious storm
as death is born,
washing down the street,
clearing away
the leaves astray,
repeat, repeat, repeat.
It's a wonderful cry
when death does fly,
ringing out it's tune.
Humming notes
that whirl and float,
broke from it's cocoon.
It's a maddening time,
as death does chime,
ringing at the noon.
As shadows leave,
a cruel reprieve:
the bell will toll for you.
It's the easiest wind
as death blows in,
swirling down the hall.
Loose papers fly,
you wave goodbye,
as never there at all.
11/16/11
Well, maybe it is time to read me some Leaves of Grass.
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