Happy Birthday, Dr. Depresso!

Famous People born on October 17th:

1920 Montgomery Clift (actor)
1938 Evel Knievel (motorcycle stunt rider)
1948 Margot Kidder (actress)
1954 C. E. Chaffin (journeyman poet and critic, family doctor)
1962 Mike Judge (cartoonist, animator, writer, actor)
1968 Ziggy Marley (singer)
1972 Eminem (rapper)

Margot is bipolar. The creator of Beevis and Butthead? Definitely up my line. Daredevil? Oh yes. Singer/poet? Yes, but never much into Reggae. Rapper? Only in so far as poetry qualifies. Clift is one of my favorite actors but was very effed up, probably a male Borderline Personality Disorder, heavy into polysubstance abuse, alcoholism, and libertine bisexuality.

It is also Black Poetry Day in the U.S., the date Einstein moved to the U.S., U.N. International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the Feast of St. Ignatius and the day on which Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.

It would be nice if I were listed and people were happy to share my birthday. Don't look for it in my lifetime. For now these lists are a bunch of meaningless "granfalloons," or unimportant coincidences, to use Vonnegut's term.

Happy birthday now to me!
Strong and smart at 53!
A face of great utility
and hands licensed for surgery.

Instead of simply googling myself on my birthday as Homer Simpson does all day, I thought I would call my information center to demonstrate how hard it is to get anything done over the phone anymore. And when you get done registering, a computer is really no faster. I contend that with human operators information was disseminated more quickly than today.

****************

Here goes:

**************

Hello?

You have reached the center for Craig Chaffin. Por Espanol por favor marque el numero dos. Please listen to the following menu:

For psychiatric history, please press or say, ‘1.’
For literary history, please press or say, ‘2.’

For vital statistics, please press or say, ‘3.’

For sexual history please press or say ‘4.’

For a biography, please press or say ‘5.’

For an exaggerated biography featuring Craig as the savior of the universe, please press or say ‘6.’To register a complaint against Craig, please press or say ‘7.’

“Five.”

What would you like to know? You can say, for instance, “The size of his Peter.”

”I’m not interested in that. I’m lucky to see it in the shower.”

I’m sorry, I did not understand your entry. You can say something like, “Where was he born?”

“How many psychedelic drugs did he consume in his youth?”

I’m sorry, I did not understand your entry. Please try again.

“Shoe size.”

Did you say, “Shoe size?”

“Yes.”

OK. Now let me connect you to that department. You may meanwhile hear, under terrible audio conditions, a Muzak version of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by the Rolling Stones.

“Thanks.”

Your conversation may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.

(The band plays “da-da-da-da-- dat dat ta da da” for three minutes.)

Hello, my name is Dale, how may I help you?

“Your phone menu directed me here. I asked for Craig’s shoe size.”

Would that be European or American?

“American.”

Let me connect you to another department.

(ring, ring, beep)

Hello, this is Jack Gilley. I’m sorry but I’m not at my desk right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

*************

For any dying to know the answer, I usually say: “Same as mouth.” But for those who must know, I wear 13 in American and 46 in European sizes, which means my feet are average for a man my size (and you know what they say about feet—which answers the first impertinent question I asked the phone menu).

On my birthdays I usually wax melancholy and look back at my life with a certain disappointed wistfulness, thinking it may never be better than it was, thinking that perhaps my life has been wasted, hoping to turn over a new leaf or accomplish something at last. But today I feel fine. Isn’t that a bitch? Because my blog is more popular when I’m struggling with grief or depression, as I’m told that my descriptions of these experiences are helpful to others. If I post poems and speak of literary matters my readership contracts.

Truthfully I don’t blog for an audience, or at least I didn’t used to. Now that a fair number of readers have attached themselves to me, I am more likely to try to please them. Every good artist must be sensitive to his audience while cognizant of the fact that an audience always changes art.

I finished my umpteenth re-write of my book of essays, T. S. Eliot: The Major Poems: An Undergraduate Primer at 12:15 AM last night, a great thing to have accomplished on my birthday. I felt satisfied and justified as I went to bed; I felt I had done my best to make Eliot understandable to this generation. Even if no academic press takes the book, I am proud of the work. Here’s an excerpt:

“‘Prufrock,’ in my view, is quite simply one of the greatest poems in the history of the language, as well as the first truly modern poem. Its appearance cannot be predicted by any antecedents in English literature. Although Eliot was a student of literary history in a number of languages, especially French (in which he published four poems in his second collection), the voice, technique and substance of “Prufrock” are undeniably something new: an original synthesis of all that had gone before while claiming vast new territories for the future. The cardinal difference between ‘Prufrock’ and previous poetry is the fact that ‘Prufrock,’ though a drama, occurs almost entirely inside the head of the narrator. What external human interaction the poem contains is comprised of only six lines.”

58,000 words of that. My greatest satisfaction was in explicating Four Quartets, which took up half the book. I have never read a lucid explication of Eliot’s masterwork (then my ignorance is vas and I would have wanted to do it myself in any event).

Birthday plans? Kathleen was going to fix me a special dinner but since I’ll be playing music with friends around 7 PM, we’ll likely skip that. Maybe she’ll bring some Dungeness crab home. They're back in season.

I planned to devote today to getting Kathleen’s new wireless voice transcriber to work, but the engineer has failed to call me back (although he has, inexplicably, been text messaging Kathleen while she is driving around trying to do her job of coaching the developmentally disabled in employment situations).

I have seven books ready for publication: three collections of poetry, a novel, a book of short stories about growing up in LA, a book with five short stories and a play, and my tome on Eliot, a collection of essays--and a theological tome as well, but it is only half re-written. To date I have published but one book, Elementary, in 1997, my first collection of poems. I need to get cracking on these other properties. I need to stop my life and promote my writing instead of taking on new projects. So I intend to do in this, my 54th year. And if after a year I meet with no success, I will certainly consider self-publishing with publishing on demand convenience. I mean, there must be someone who wants to read one of these books! Or?

My 53rd has been a terrible year, in that I lost my oldest daughter, not to mention being clinically depressed nearly the whole time. On the other hand, my youngest, Sarah, graduated from high school; I've reconciled with my estranged stepson; I constructed a website for my works despite being depressed; I was kicked out of a local creative writing class for being too critical; I have stopped and started drinking several times; and I did get a ton of writing done by sheer will, also because work is the only respite for a mind dominated by depression.

The book on Eliot is the toughest thing I’ve ever written, and it took me four years altogether to polish it to my satisfaction. I think it’s lucid now.

Oh, and there's this blog--another aid in preserving my sanity, and a source of much encouragement. I'm glad I continued it in my 18-month depression.

Freud defined mental health as the ability to love and to work. Life is sweet when you’re loved, employed and in good health. I even know 14 souls who strive to love me unconditionally. How lucky can a man be?

My hope for this year is that I learn how to successfully market my writing. Self-promotion has always been distasteful to me, why I have a backlog of seven finished books. I am ready to go on the attack, which means a hell of a lot of envelope and stamp-licking and typing e-mails into the ether. I also want to re-decorate the small space we live in so that I feel better about my environment, and follow through on a landscaping plan I have for my garden.

Happy birthday, all!


3 Kilobunnies,

Craig Erick

Enjoying My Euthymia; Poem, "Salad Burial"

No crises, no depths, no chemical aberrations to report. No doubt my readers will quickly become bored with my newfound wellness, though I am delighted with it. To --not be depressed-- is the greatest blessing I can receive in this life. Sure, I love my wife and daughters and friends. But when depressed I can feel none of that love, neither for me nor for them. I feel like an insignificant fly speck or worse, a tiny curse in the world, or so my chemicals would convince me (until whipped into shape by modern psychopharmacology).

My poem, “When I Am an Old Man” in Chimaera was a take-off on “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.” It’s worth a peek for a laugh, though I do wax a little surrealistic at the end--which reminds me of some paintings I saw yesterday, categorized as “hyperrealistic surrealism.” And damn, it fit!

Today I attended my mushroom identification course, per usual, except my memory for recalling Famoptosis cajanderi and countless other strange monikers is much improved with the depression at bay. It is amazing how much my mind improves when free from a depression, just amazing. I can think of many delightful, forgotten grudges from the past, not to mention all the new slights I look forward to.

Next week we’ll begin our field work with fungi, thank goodness, as I am so tired of the classroom experience. The rains have come so the mushrooms will follow. I can’t wait to be foraging for fungi in the forest. That line reminds me of another poem that no one has deigned to publish, a poem in a light-hearted vein. I labor to be reader friendly. I try to write for readers, not poets. But this is not a new poem. I am holding to my vow to eschew poetry.


Salad Burial

I made it on a Saturday
with romaine and green leaf lettuce,
stems crisp and firm,
fresh-boiled eggs in slices,
the rose-white flesh of radishes,
mushrooms cut kidney-style,
spinach with that suede feel
and chicken strips
grilled in garlic oil.

If it had been eaten at the party
or I hadn’t dressed it for convenience
I wouldn't be standing here, a week later
afraid to open the blue ironware pot
where Hansel and Gretel are lost
in the furry forest of the fungal underworld,
where spice of meat and greens are married
to the ghoulish sponge of Miss Havisham’s
spider-riddled wedding cake.

Holding my nose I look away
and blindly bag the mutant gallimaufry,
dropping it in the trash, but as I do
I wonder what alien stews must be
composting in my neighbors’ cans—
See how the imagination festers?


Did you like the phrase, “mutant gallimaufry?” I was proud of that.

************

So what does the immediate future look like for me if I stay euthymic?

My main goals are to wrap up all my art from the past, to record all the songs I’ve ever written, to revise or complete all the prose and poetry else toss all I've written, and to improve my website so that my music can be downloaded. I also aim to complete the workbook, A Graceful Farewell, so that in the event of my own death things will go smoothly. So many die unprepared! I don’t want my brothers fighting over my Stratocaster and my Martin guitars, for instance. As for a literary executor, it is not clear at this point whether one will be needed unless my writings obtain a higher visibility. Right now this blog is the best thing I got going, because more people read it than all my poetry buried in all those publications for the semi-elite. Strange, isn’t it? Journaling gets me more readers than composition.

Other goals? I want to paint our living room and purchase better furniture and use our space more elegantly. Our unit has two rooms, upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs holds the bedroom, TV and closets; downstairs Kathleen and I each have our own office in opposite corners from which we sometimes e-mail each other in lieu of talking. Our dual schmegg zones eat up all the available space. We can't even have guests over for dinner, having no table to speak of.

The rain is here. So is my birthday, October 17, for which Kathleen has purchased me a guided abalone dive. I can’t wait! That’s what I asked for when she asked me what I wanted. Can you imagine me just two-and-half weeks ago asking for anything at all? Nope. Neither can I. What a different when the light is turned on.

Like that old film star, the only presents I now accept are those I can eat, read, wear, listen to, or spend. No knick-knacks.

For those with budget constraints a simple genuflection to my blog photo will do. I do also kinda want a cat. (Hear that, Laurel?) We are not ready for a new dog yet.


2 Kilobunnies,

CE

Tears for Rachel; Paying for Knowledge

Today marks two weeks since I was started on the "magic bullet," Abilify. Since I flipped into euthymia Thursday, September 27, I have daily been grateful for a huge negative: NOT TO BE DEPRESSED. Those who have suffered clinical depression know whereof I speak. It brings up the old question, is the avoidance of pain superior to the enjoyment of pleasure? As a manic-depressive I say, yes indeed!

Today is the second day I've experienced a little morning anxiety and suffered some of the recurring thoughts about my future and my past, not to suggest they are of such a level as to be depressive obsessions. Still, it scares me; it's as if the ground beneath me has become a net rather than solid earth, that I see the open squares to the abyss and must tread carefully.

Sometimes I need to cry but am afraid to; this morning apparently not, as the tears have begun and I think, "poor Rachel!" My darling baby. My sweet freckled redheaded sunshine. That's what I called her as a small child, my "Sunshine." Because she could distract me from my melancholy in an instant; she was filled with so much wonder for life, her smile could illuminate my heart, he constant activity distract me; she could rescue me from the vision of the net beneath my feet. She was a tonic; she was my sunshine.

Oh, it's true as a teenager and adult she was often a huge pain in the ass, but I think what parents most remember is the unadulterated nature of a child, their essential goodness from birth--before it is spoiled by this world, by competition and the special cruelty of other children. (Children are often emotionallly brutal but at least they tend to be more honest than adults.)

So I grieve today; perhaps this was the source of my anxiety, that I still need to cry. Yes, I fear weeping may lead me back to depression, but I pray not. I'm seeing my shrink tomorrow so I can run these concerns by him.

Yesterday Kathleen scared me by asking, "You're not going to relapse, are you?" I said no, of course. But that she would pick up on a diminution of my cheerfulness is also anxiety-provoking. It wasn't like I was crying or bemoaning my state or anything.

I'm sure if warning signs continue, my doctor will bump up the Abilify. I am on the lowest dose, which, incidentally, is the most expensive--5 mg. How those drug companies know how to stick it to you! (To be fair, likely fewer are on such a small dose, why it costs more, supply and demand, etc.) Still a months supply of 5 mg.Abilify, even from Canada, is $418.

Ah Rachel. Your absence makes me weep. I know you exist, but I miss you in this world. And I wonder what effect this will have on Jacob, losing his mother at 5. But we can't take on the sadness of the world like a saddle for a pack horse. We can only adjudicate our own sorrows slowly. I don't know where people get the energy to grieve for Darfur or Burma; I have enough on my plate. Then many idealists have thrown themselves into good works because of trouble inside and at home. As has been well said, and it sounds like it should have been Shaw, "I love humanity in general but can't stand it in particular."

Today I shall return to my assault upon my revision of my tome on Four Quartets. Sometimes, in reading past prose, I get the distinct feeling I must have been smarter in the past. But I am wiser now and better able to corral my leaping thoughts into a readable order. In some further research on the Quartets, for the first time on the web I paid $14 for two-week access to "F. H. Bradley's Doctrine of Experience in T. S. Eiot's The Waste Land and Four Quartets" by Jewel Spears Brooker. Unfortunately it concentrated mainly on TWL when I bought it for 4Q, about which it had little to say, at least not much more than I knew.

Presumably there is a research library somewhere where the issue of this philology journal is available for free to an academic. But it's so much easier to just buy it; think of the transportation alone! The free access of scholarly information is not free on the Internet, a shame for any university, though they have us by the short hairs when it comes to convenience.

I have stopped crying. God bless you, Rachel, God bless you Jacob.


Kiloneutral,

Craig Erick

p.s. I have some two poems and a story out in in a new journal, sister to Shit Creek Review, called Chimeara . It's good to see some friends and acquaintances in there such as Janet Kenny, Rob Mackenzie, former nemesis Leo Yankevich, Kate Benedict, Jeffrey Calhoun, Salli Shepard and Rick Mullin.

"Ash Wednesday" and the Cost of Medications in America

"(Why should the ag/ed eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?"

I love Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" and consider it the easiest introduction to Eliot's work, as it is essentially Eliot "light" mixed with a religious sensibility. It's easy to understand. I felt like quoting the passage above since I finished revising my chapter on AW and am now into Four Quartets, which makes up half my book. It makes sense that if I spend 7,000 words on "Ash Wednesday," each of the Quartets deserves as much.

Here's a sample from the essay:

"For those who haven’t walked in Eliot’s shoes, whether raised in the faith, agnostic, atheist, or unconcerned, the difficult negotiation of a commitment to Christianity which AW belabors may seem anchorite overkill, artistic and spiritual self-flagellation. But if we think of the person behind the persona, the "politic, cautious and meticulous" Eliot of "Prufrock," and compare him to the pilgrim of AW, I am tempted to cliché ("You’ve come a long way, baby”).

In AW Eliot achieves a Christian commitment painfully, incrementally, achieving initial communication without spiritual union or the joy of deliverance. One unexpected benefit of his experience is a greater degree of acceptance of the flesh in his verse, and one presumes, his life. In AW the speaker realizes it is possible to live the spiritual life in this world despite our animal defects (not an easy admission for a perfectionistic aesthete). Looking back at "Prufrock," one might predict that Eliot would sooner have embraced monasticism than the life of the Church. The very ordinariness of his adoption of Anglicanism is the most surprising thing about his conversion. The tentative solution AW proffers is, of course, more fully treated in 4Q. "

BTW, the initial essays in Melic are no longer representative of my work and I hope soon at my website to substitute the revised versions for the earlier drafts.

My mood is holding, but I think the American public should know how much the medications that achieved that miracle cost per month at the most reasonable retailer, Costco, Each drug is priced for a month's supply.

Lamictal: $400
Abilify: $430
Prozac: $50
Wellbutrin: $200
Celebrex for two: $200
A narcotic for chronic pain: $120
Blood pressure medicine: $35

The arithmetic yields a total of $1435, mainly because three of the medications have yet to lose their exclusive patents.

After the first Rx here I order my meds from Canada for one third the price. Kathleen is working full-time just to get us insurance. Coincidentally she loves her job and likes to work! (though it's hard on her back). The insurance increases her earnings by at least 60% in terms of value.

Having her work full-time makes me the househusband/writer, cooking nightly, making her lunches, doing the dishes and wash and helping with the shopping and cleaning. I don't mind; anything for Kathleen!. In fact cooking is a good adventure. Tonight I bought a pork shoulder roast for $1/lb. and it has turned out deliciously, with the sage/pepper/olive oil/lemon/crushed garlic baste and the honey glaze.

Mmmmm... the sage is from my spice garden.

spice... the spice....

Any Dune fans out there?

I still think that David Lynch, who later disowned the movie, made a visual tour de force but he must have given up some autonomy to Dino De Laurentis in the dialogue and pacing, particularly portraying the inward thoughts of statues. In spite of this, Baron Harkonnen is one of the great characters in the history of cinema, even better than Nicholson as "The Joker" in its way.

Happy to be alive!


3 kilobunnies!

Craig


p.s. Despite the prices I am grateful to the pharmaceutical companies who took risks to create medications that saved my life--again.

Happy Alcoholic?

Is there such a thing? As for giving up poetry, I plead innocent; this is "light verse," which means it should not be taken seriously by anyone but myself.

Bi-Cycle

I drink too much. It’s sad. It’s so plebeian.
Whiskey straight and ice, though sometimes wine.
I drink until my faults—well, I don’t see ‘um.
I think that’s why most drink. “It is divine

To forgive,” so the caveat goes.
But caveats don’t comfort—they’re abstractions.
They will not numb my head down to my toes.
I’m want to lose, not gain any more traction!

The rabble-rousing voices in my head
Rarely shut off when I am being still.
A little booze, the radio goes dead;
A little booze, I step off the treadmill.

Although my doctor says my habit’s risky
Considering all the medicines I take
There are worse ways to cope than a lot of whiskey—
I mean a lot. I’ve got a thirst to slake!

Oh happy alcoholic! Or so I think.
My mind’s at ease, I’m never in denial
Until the morning and the morning’s trial
When weaving towards the bath I swear off drink.

2 Kilobunnies,

CE

Posting Problem, Medications and Rachel

The chief purpose of this post is to discover whether posting through Internet Explorer will eliminate the irritating text comment interruptions.

I was quite productive today but don't have the patience to tell you all I did. I did feel an obligation to reveal the medication cocktail that freed me from longstanding clinical depression:

Lamictal: 150 mg. BID (twice a day)
Wellbrutrin: 300 mg AM, 150 mg PM.
Prozac, 80 mg AM.
Abilify, 5 mg AM.

I think the addition of this new antipsychotic (Abilify), that affects the Dopamine 2 receptors more selectively, proved the difference in my treatment. I think it worked adjunctively to enhance all the other medications. Given the failure of two antipsychotics attuned to a more traditional dopamine receptor prior to it, I wonder whether the D2 receptor might be more important for my treatment-resistant depression (since bipolars suffer the most serious suicidal depressions, and the hardest to treat).

Norm, you there? Was I too mean to you about your poem at Alsop? I have no gauge anymore; the truth is in such short supply, and I like to speak my truth. Those who know me know that I never seek to diminish another poet, only to react honestly according to my lights.

Alright. Done with that. I need not be paranoid toward you or I am ruined as a literary correspondent entirely.

I still don't understand the dearth of comments about the spooky photographs of Rachel and I a little over a month before her demise.

I LOVE YOU RACHEL AND THINK OF YOU EVERYTIME WE DON'T RUN OUT OF FORKS BECAUSE WE TOOK YOUR KITCHEN STUFF AND HAD BEEN VERY SHORK ON FORTS. I MEAN SHORT ON FORKS. HORTS ON KORFS. WHATEVER. FORTS ON WARTS. FARTS WITH CORKS.

ENJOY YOUR FAMILY'S DRAMA WHILE YOU'RE IN THE BLEACHERS; LUCKY FOR YOU, YOU WEREN'T BORN INTO A BORING FAMILY! I BET ALL YOUR NEW FRIENDS PREFER WATCHING YOUR FAMILY'S TAPES.

Love,

Papa

3 Kilobunnies!

Spooky Photo; Men's Retreat; 2 poems

Besides noticing how Rachel seems somehow apart from me in the family photo to the left, I changed the caption so that everyone's expendable.

How horrible but how true.

But here's another picture from the last pictures I ever took with Rachel:



It makes light of my choking her, doesn't it? And that's how she died, poor dear.

Curioser and curioser.....


***********

I just finished my second Mendocino Circle of Men's retreat last weekend. If you care to compare it to my former experience, this link should deliver you to the general area where I blogged about my fear in being swallowed up by New Age nonsense a year ago at the same retreat.

Fortunately this time I was not depressed and participated fully in all the rituals and encounters. I must say it was life-changing. Rather than employ prose, though I know I swore off poetry, I'm offering two poems that describe one very important aspect of our spiritual exercises.

The theme of the retreat was a fourth Jungian archetype for the masculine personality: The King.

A key exercise over the weekend was to stare deeply in the eyes of another man. I found that extremely powerful.

I know I gave up poetry, but it is such a habit of mind to reduce experiences to shorthand that I could not prevent myself. I needed to make sense of the weekend. So here:


Close Encounter

The difficulty, I think, is with the eyes.
Hold eye contact too long, the other blinks.
Christ called this portal “the window to the soul.”
We treat it casually while contact shrinks.

It’s hard for me to follow both your eyes;
My eyes go back and forth to follow one.
If I look at your nose in compromise
You think I see both pupils but I don’t.

After the Retreat

The angels swirl in orange sparks to heaven
In gyres and gyres and all the gyres agree
The redwoods set the naked dancers free
And all is judged and all likewise forgiven.
It is the age of seconds and degrees.
Life passes faster that we can absorb.
Here! There! Then! Now! Toward
the center? Is it there? Axle of peace?
What is a man that we should even care?
A bit of clay, some spit—yet brother to Christ!
I had forgotten the scent of regal spice
Until I dared to brave my brother’s stare
And scales fell from our suspicious eyes:
We saw the King in Full without disguise.

I posted one of these poems at the Alsop Gazebo Metric Poetry thread. I haven't posted to a workshop in a coon's age, but the indefatigable Pat Jones has finally pushed me into contact again. My chief objection to most online workshops is that they don't help you to be a better poet; they are more pools of self-justifying piranhas who scrutinize, with their razor teeth, any work whose disassembly confirms that their commentary is actually important. Per usual the critics are more interested in their own voice than the voice of the poet who throws his soul on ice.

Love to everyone!

3 Kilobunnies,

Your formerly melancholic guide,

C. E Chaffin M.D. (MD) FAAFP

Free, free, free at last!!! ...?.....

It is a week since I started on the expensive $14 tablet/day that my wife insisted we buy, contrary to my best depressive judgment. I can honestly say before God and Man and the Devil that I haven't been depressed in a week. I've cried in grief, but have had no depression. It's a fucking miracle! .

As my elder brother Chris always says, "Good to have you back!!"

Good to be back!!!!!

I can't tell you how grateful I am to science, luck, my doctor, the Demiurge who gave us reason and my darling wife, who insisted on more snake oil at a scandalous price, as well as the support I've received here. Know that your encouragements were never wasted, however dark it seemed to me.

At 3 Kilobunnies,

CE


I don't know how I fucked up this underlining feature, but not being depressed, I can live with imperfection. Hoo Haw!

Only Lunatics Need Apply

My weeping spells continue most of the day.

There has long been a debate in psychology about which comes first, the affect or the thought. Obviously in the death of a loved one the thought precedes the affect. But clinically, as in my case, the affect overcomes me and afterwards I may append thoughts, but the thoughts are not valid. When sad you seek something sad in your mind to explain it. So I can fasten on Rachel’s death, or my own infinite shortcomings to fill the necessary object for the sadness. But in truth there is no object; the labels are falsely appended afterwards. I cry because I cry.

When I cry I keep hearing in my inner mind: “God helps those who help themselves.”

It’s true, you know. I’m not saying I have to make the burden worse by “trying harder,” just that I should make the effort to cope and seek help as best I can. I am doing that. In fact, the doctor started me on a new medicine yesterday, only $14 a tablet—which we can’t afford—nevertheless Kathleen insisted that we buy it now that she has a job. I would not have spent the money but she would do anything to make me well. This depression has now matched my longest depression of 1982-83, also 16 mos. and sent packing with ECT.

I’ve thought of starting a fund drive: “Dr. Chaffin needs ECT. He has no insurance and no way of getting the proper treatment. It will cost around 50 K. Please send your donation to Dr. Craig Chaffin, PO Box 2436, Ft. Bragg, CA, 95437.

Who knows? Maybe a millionaire will read this and send me the money. I promise to use it only for treatment, and if the medications start working consistently, I will naturally send the money back.

I said I was done with poetry but the other day I reverted to the familiar form to exorcise some dark feelings:


Kentucky-Fried Christ

I wear the Elephant Man’s mask
like a Jewskin lampshade.
Do you see the glow of hell through it?
Come, warm yourself,
take my gold fillings,
my bones for your Camellias

Living is for men in sunglasses
who can filter the not me from the me.
Suicide is for sissies
in little nautical suits with big bow ties.
Don’t worry about me.
If my blood has been desiccated
and ground to red pepper,
remember me on your pizza.


I am the Jesus of the broken cell phone,
the Savior of ceramic kitsch.
I’ll glue that broken cat
with the clock in its belly
back together with my spittle.
Of my healing there shall be no end.


I think that’s pretty dark. The title, incidentally, was furnished by my old friend with whom I have recently reconciled, Eric. He seems in a very good space, content with his lot in life, grateful to serve in a church where he is a deacon. It was my illness that drove him away in the first place.

Funny, for the last two nights I saw TV ads for “bipolar treatment.” Although they never came out and named a drug, you know some big pharmaceutical company is behind them. And in Emily Martin’s book, Bipolar Expeditions, she points out that the hypomanic/manic side of the illness is considered valuable in business. So bipolar disease has become fashionable nowadays, it seems, and is being greatly overdiagnosed in children.

I for one resent the lowering of the bar for diagnosis. The word “lunatic” is derived from early observations of manic-depressives, whose cycling was thought to be associated with the phases of the moon. As a true lunatic I don’t want some penny ante bipolar II or cyclothymic wannabe sharing my hard won moniker in this matter.

BTW, I should say, that although I don’t pick up the phone, I am always happy when someone calls me, as a friend did today. Though I teared up several times on the phone, my voice cracking, listening to him was a great comfort. So don’t be afraid to call me, I’m happy to hear from you. Write me if you need my phone number. My only caveat is that I already know you; I don’t want to encounter new people, I am in no position to make new friends right now, the strain of the introduction would be too much.


Thine in lunacy,

CE

Cry me a river

I wish I had better news. I wish I could say, “I’m well! I’m well! Thank God Almighty I’m well!”

But I’m not. I’m sick. I’m very sick.

Since Friday, soon after I wake up I burst into tears and sobs and they last all day until my tear ducts are just burned out by nighttime. Even yesterday, when I hiked with Kathleen along the beautiful cliffs of the coastline, I couldn’t stop the tears running down my cheeks beneath my Ray-Bans. I called my doctor but we did not connect. I don’t know how to stop crying. I don’t know what I’m crying about. It’s as if someone left the alarm clock on and it won’t shut off.

I am overcome with grief. Yes, I miss Rachel; yes, I can’t believe she’s dead. Yes, that thought makes me weep. But my grief, my physical expression of grief, triggers self-denigrating thoughts as well: How incompetent and incapable I am. What a failure I am. I couldn't get a job at McDonald's. I would never learn to flip the hamburgers properly. My back hurts always, yes, and my mind seems like a tattered kite hanging from the telephone wire, but I feel as if I deserve to be thrown out on the streets and given a shopping cart. Or perhaps I could join a freak circus. “The Saddest Man Alive,” the marquee would read. The curtain would open and there I would sit, watering the tulips.

I want to look “well” for Kathleen. But I can’t dissimulate in front of her. I tell her of my little triumphs, how I put shelves in the coat closet, how I cleaned out the entire refrigerator. During these tasks I continued to weep. Obviously I can function in this state, though it feels as if I can't.

What am I crying about? I don’t know. It’s like a record skipping. I should have had ECT a year ago, but who knows whether my daughter’s death might have sent me off the deep end again anyway? I took an antipsychotic this morning hoping it will calm me some. I called my doctor again. I try to be responsible about my illness.

Netflix sent me “The Elephant Man,” which I apparently ordered long ago. Terrific movie. I understand John Merrick, as I think most of us do. Not that I have actually suffered as a sideshow freak and been beaten by a drunken handler. It’s just the feeling of being so very different when I know I am not, just as he yells at his pursuers, “I am a human being!” And because he is befriended and loved, he receives more happiness than any of us can imagine—who can imagine being lifted from such a wretched state to become a favorite of London society, and that not because he was a freak, but because he was human despite his unfortunate appearance.

I have a friend who suffers from the same disease, neurofibromatosis or “Von Recklinghausen’s disease.” Like most cases, his is much less severe, though the fibrous tumors have necessitated multiple surgeries on his foot. I’ve never heard him complain about it.

I recently read an article in the New Yorker about those rare individuals afflicted with Lesch-Nyan syndrome. Because of one random mutation in their X chromosome, they chew their lips and fingers off and react oppositely in their emotions—that is, if they like someone they may cuss at him or punch him. If they dislike someone they may say something polite. Their hands must be covered with mitts because their fingers frighten them, as they feel suddenly compelled to bite them. Most have no lips, having long since chewed them off. Often they ask their caretakers to restrain them when they feel the self-destructive compulsions coming on. To think that one base pair askew in the DNA chain could result in such specific behaviors is frightening and raises serious questions about free will.

Kathleen tells me, “It’s not your fault. It’s your genes.”

But I don’t know any other me. Just because some genetic abnormality makes me cry for days on end doesn’t mean that that crying feels any less like me. And I don't dwell on suicide, a thought that more hounds me when depressed.

Nevertheless, if genetics is destiny, can I make myself stop crying? Can I will myself into sanity? Of course not. I can’t control it any more than an epileptic can control a seizure. This is not a failure of courage or anything else; it is not a failure at all. It is a biological sentence that differs from grief.

I don't feel sorry for myself; if I grieve, I grieve for the whole world, because I feel as if the object of my grief has become diffused and fills the universe.

If you asked me why I weep, I could only say, “For nothing. For everything.” My sadness has no limit except this body. Still, my state is not like a pure biological depression. It is something new. I have never cried this much when depressed; in that state there is too much of the bitter, metallic despair in me to do so.

I don’t feel inhuman. I feel too human, even if the capacity for sadness is only one aspect of being human.

In writing this I have temporarily stopped crying.

I feel like an emotional astronaut. I try to report the journey and it doesn’t have to make sense.


Unrateable,

CE

Second draft of "airport" novel finished....

Yesterday I finished the second draft of my “airport” novel and e-mailed it to my sister. What I want to know from her is whether an average reader would be interested in finishing the book or prefer to leave it on a bench.

My novel is no great work of art, neither is it purely plot-driven; character does come in at places, and is probably too long-winded when it appears. The book is an experiment as to whether presumed elements of popularity will overcome marginal writing. The book is baldly designed to be popular, as I made a list of things to be in the novel, with the overall idea of Michael Crichton meets Dan Brown (except for their research). Here are some of the elements I put in the book:


Four murders, three questionable because the victims were clones.
Dangerous fundamentalists.
Secretive Jesuits.
A ten-year project of the Jesuits ruined.
A manic-depressive doctor/coroner/investigator, overlarge, who doesn’t know his own strength, and adjusts his own psychiatric medications frequently throughout the book to improve his performance.
His playful but deadly Irish Wolfhound, Grendel.
His sidekick and chauffeur of vintage automobiles, (retired) detective Ray.
His mother, computer hacker extraordinaire, who still nags her fifty-year-old son.
A love triangle between the doctor, detective and the doctor’s beautiful deaf secretary.
Beautiful horses (a dog wasn’t enough for animal lovers, I thought).
Crash-bang ending where Grendel is seriously wounded, Ray is injured, and the doctor exposes the evil leadership of the sect.
All is reported back to the Vatican.

There’s an old joke about bestsellers. If people love to read about Lincoln, doctors and dogs, why not “Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog.” That’s what I’m trying to do here. Really.

Fiction is hard for me because of the donkeywork. So much connecting of the dots, the tearing out of details and connections readers don’t need, the question of how much description is necessary or merely boring? How much do people want character? Will anyone identify with the characters?

All this chatter, blecch. How about a brief excerpt from my novel? This is taken near the end of the book, when the doctor’s mood is heightened before his he invades the sect's chapel.


*********************************************************************

In the brief interlude before their advance, Gunderson could hear Isaiah’s preaching in the stillness. The man’s voice seemed painfully loud. He could hear the congregation shifting in their seats, the slide of cotton on polished oak, the squeak of small shoes on the floorboards.

His mood was already heightened by the hunt and his encounter on the ridge, pushed into the kind of manic rebound that Zyprexa often yielded short-term. Time had slowed. His mind wasn’t racing; that would be “out of phase” hypomania. Instead he was enjoying his illness, a state of hyperawareness combined with the confidence of a god and the caution of a deer. He felt as if he had eyes in the back of his head, eyes all around like the fabled seraphim of Ezekiel. He could hear the proverbial pin drop.

“OK, Ray,” he said.

As they made it to the cabin next to the chapel, Gunderson automatically categorized the three intensities of light, from faint moonlight to the harsher, Edisonian light in the lamps in the eaves. He could see every crack in every knot of pine while the grain bespoke years, each laid down for the next—moment wedded to moment, limb to limb. The third intensity of light was a limited glow near the entrance. Looking back at Grendel, Gunderson could see every wire in his coat: rust, gray, brown, every curled point, noting that each whisker fanned out from his cheeks at its own peculiar angle.

Unlike Plath’s bell jar, he felt in this moment of stalking as if the world was a bell jar and he was looking in, intent on helping those trapped inside. Glancing up at the eaves again he saw each wing beat of a pale moth and the brown dots near the bottom of each wing beneath the slightly irregular slats of the eaves themselves, already warping from a brutal summer and a thirsty winter. As Ray hugged the chapel wall to his left, Gunderson meditated upon the pattern of tarnish in the six brass hinges of the chapel doors while noting the doors did not quite hang true. Better than a level. The world was glass and he moved through it like a diamond.

***************************

I paused the action here to describe the doctor’s mental state, but such excursions may impair the book’s “pageturnability,” as the agent who recently rejected the first ten pages wrote me. What do I care? I finished the thing, however grotesque the result. Now it’s time to get feedback as to whether the book deserves a third draft or would be better donated to an abortion clinic.

Now I’ll return to working on my Eliot book, which last scrambled my brain as I re-wrote my take on “The Waste Land” for the fourth or fifth time. That is a very different form of mental exercise.


I teared up over Rachel briefly this morning, though no crying jag. I’m working, that’s the important thing.

I do not think I’m depressed but euthymic and still grieving.

I am anxious today for good reason, because Kathleen starts work full-time and I don’t know if her back condition will permit it. She is my hero to try! I will miss her every hour she’s gone; she grounds me. Sharing her with the world costs me in comfort but I wouldn’t stand in her way. Her job entails coaching the disabled to obtain and retain menial jobs and to make sure they are not disrespected in the workplace, to be their “job coach.” She loves the work and her lip-reading skills have made her deafness a non-issue; in fact, politically, it is a feather in the cap of the organization that hired her: “The disabled helping the disabled.”

At Rachel’s memorial I was reconciled to a friend I had not seen in eleven years. He’s called me once since. I think I may screw up my courage and call him back today. We were tight for 27 years before an unfortunate incident, fueled by the manic side of my illness, separated us.

If anyone is interested in publishing my novel, please write. I have no agent and expect, if others deem it worthy, I'll have to eventually self-publish, like 85% of the books in America.


Kiloneutral but still grieving,

CE

Fulfilling an Assignment

Rachel is slowly becoming a groove in my sedimentary geology. The fossil fills with calcium; the calcium is mine.

My daughter lives through me and all who loved her. She was a joy and a gift. I did not cry over her today, which means nothing except an aberration in my limbic patterns.

Meanwhile, in filling up my dance card, my creative writing teacher gave us this week's prompt: to write a non-rhyming poem of 15 lines with the words "sour, pepper and seven."

I have given up poetry but could not fail my assignment:


Beginning with the Pleiades

Like white pepper thrown against the night
there are six, not seven sisters—
and Orion’s dog looks nothing like a dog.

Not to sour on the Greeks,
but if they had not connected the dots
into standard constellations

Would our imagination benefit?
Or must the memory of a superior culture
inhibit what we envision?

Pigeon shit scattered on Churchill’s statue;
winter may hide it but for now
the present outranks the past.

The Greeks kidnapped the stars,
but what artist among us could top
a terrifying darkness woven with bright gods?


More importantly, I received a two-page single-spaced letter from a major poet yesterday about my work. To my astonishment she told me that I was on my own; that the level I had attained would likely not be helped by workshops or mentors or other aids. She also mentioned that her success had nothing to do with connections but with the faithful licking of envelopes.

Perserverance. Again and again. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Never give up. The reason to write is because you are a writer and you must.

Kathleen and I had breakfast with Pat Jones this morning (art maven for Shit Creek Review), and we reminisced about the early LitNet and characters like Don Taylor, Jaimes Alsop and the the late Ron Jones. She keeps pushing me to post at the Gazebo again. Maybe I will.

Small world, huh?


2 Kilobunnies,

CE

Musings on America's Obsession with Pro Football

For literary rejectees like myself, my brother Clay sent me this wonderful article on manuscripts Knopf has rejected over the years: No thanks, Mr. Nabokov.

*******************************************************

It’s Sunday and America’s obsession with pro football has begun. I think it fitting that our culture would prefer our brand of football over any other sport because of its technological complexity. No other team sport employs so many trainers, specialization, special teams, pads, helmets, gloves, wristbands—not to mention an awkward projectile of a ball. Then there are the team rosters that approach 50, many of whose players are paid a million a more a year, and some paid well for just one function, like a punter or a holder and long-hiker.

The most popular game in the world is soccer, called “football” everywhere but here. It can be played anywhere there is an open field and something resembling a ball. American football, by contrast, is a Rube Goldberg concoction—more bells and whistles than one could ever want or need. Baseball doesn’t compare, not even polo. Maybe mountain climbing would, except that the sport has no crowd appeal. “Piton advanced by two feet, look at that, wow!”

The Soviet MIGs were much cheaper to build than our Phantom jets. They were more maneuverable, not “technically” superior in speed or firepower. MIGs had inferior arms and guidance systems, but our jets were burdened with everything a group of engineers could come up with while locked in a room with those venerable monkeys pounding on typewriters. I’ve seen ravens easily fight off red-tailed hawks on the same principle. The most advanced is not necessarily the best.

At a time when Detroit was introducing the Edsel, with its pushbutton transmission, and T-Birds with automatic trunk openers and cruise control, a little car called a Volkswagen began to make inroads into American car sales. Not only were these imports cheaper, they were simpler; any teenager with an interest could do his own brakes and even re-build the engine. And the cars didn’t use as much gas. This was soon followed by the Japanese invasion and Detroit didn’t get it. It was simply expected that the standard rising middle class American would want the car with the most gizmos, the most futuristic styling, the ultimate in current technology.

Americans love football because it is technical, so technical that we need a million analysts to explain it to us. It’s more strategic than a war and more violent than boxing. Best of all it plays well on television. In my experience at actual games I couldn’t see what the hell was going on from the fifty-yard line. Three yards and a cloud of dust. Moreover, football is a sport of interrupted action, a sport ruled by minute calls of inches, video replays, picayune details that can decide the fate of a season. Our Puritan heritage loves rules and no sport has so many as football, I’d wager. Americans also love to argue and disagree with authorities, because, as we all know, the Declaration of Independence has morphed into a national sentiment that not only were men created equal in rights, they were created equal in ability and intelligence. Stanley Kowalski deserves to go to Harvard as much as the next guy.

I watch the Super Bowl every year just as I put out candy for Halloween, as an American tradition. The grand event is usually a disappointment, even when Justin Timberlake exposes one surgically enhanced breast of Janet Jackson in the halftime show. Last year was laughable, with the Strolling Bones going through the motions (have you ever seen musicians more bored than Keith Richards and Ron Wood?), while a sixty-year old man danced around in leather pants and thick make-up trying to preserve his sex symbol status while ultimately appearing ridiculous. What’s funnier is that the image-conscious NFL turned to the Rolling Stones for more wholesome entertainment than Janet and Justin, or perhaps their marketing division thought them advantageous as demographic baby boom fodder.

I digress. Americans are in love with technology. My middle daughter complained about my youngest daughter texting 500 messages last month on their joint account. It adds up. People stood in line overnight for I-Phones, now a bit angry that the price has fallen. But they wanted the latest technology and were quite willing to pay for it.

Think of how often in B-movies from the 50s, especially Sci-Fi movies, humanity is saved by technology, and it doesn’t stop there. There’s “Independence Day” and “The Andromeda Strain” and those two terrible movies about meteors where astronauts sacrifice themselves to avert the world’s destruction, and countless others. And I find it interesting how often, instead of a standard hero, Americans demand a technologically enhanced hero, like Batman. Is it any coincidence that all the Marvel comics are being made into movies today? Not only because of a failure of imagination in Hollywood, but because we want to believe in technology as the answer, as our ally and friend. Right now, with the greenhouse gas threat, technology is looking more like the question. But the genie’s out of the bottle and no one no one can tell a developing country like China that their rising standard of living isn’t worth the pollution it’s creating. (China has surpassed the U.S. as the greatest greenhouse gas contributor.)

I don’t even like an analog phone. I’m a bit of a Luddite. Right now we have only a dial-up Internet connection, which is painfully slow. Cell phones don’t even work where I live. My car’s a beat-up ’99 Plymouth Voyager. Though a beater, it has cruise control, a rear windshield wiper, A/C and electric windows and seat adjustment. It took me a while to learn all the options it featured after I bought it. I really did have to read the owner’s manual. I shudder to think what the dashboard of a 2007 Lincoln Town Car might look like. If only I had the money to hire a chauffeur!

Football. Emblematic of a nation obsessed with winning, the danger of violence, the endless chess board of play-calling, the specialists and the special teams, and most of all, the privilege of second-guessing the coach, general manager and owner (a joy shared throughout the world by all fans of professional sports).

Speaking of violence, did you know the average career of a pro football player is three years?

Again, why is America’s sport really football, while baseball is only its “national pastime?” Because it’s the most complicated, technological, violent competition known to man.

How many of you will watch it today? If you do, don’t be ashamed if you are an American. For any foreign readers I hope my remarks transmit some understanding of our obsession. And, given that we have more firearms in private hands than the rest of the world combined, football may assuage some of our need for violent confrontation. It’s not that Americans condone violence, more that we are accustomed to it, I fear, and football codifies it nicely, though I much prefer a good boxing match.

For those interested in my ongoing transition as a manic-depressive father in grief over the loss of his daughter, I thought it would be healthy to take break today. When I first posted about it I said I didn’t want to turn this into a “grief journal.” Besides, I hear Joan Didion did a much better job in her Year of Magical Thinking.

Don't go dyin' on me...

It’s been over a month since Rachel died. Each day I wake up, take my medicines and come downstairs. Before I can pour myself a cup of coffee I start to weep.

Sometimes I wonder if the neighbors can hear me through the open windows but they never say anything. Everyone has their own sorrow to bear. It’s awkward to try to enter another’s; much safer to ignore it. There are rare persons who have a gift for sharing sorrow, who seem able to make your grief equally their own, entering silently, seamlessly, just to be present. I think Kathleen is one of these. And so what if my neighbors hear me crying? They know of my loss.

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday. I told him about my morning anxiety, the fist in my stomach, and the tears that inevitably followed as I got up. He asked me how I’d been when Sarah was visiting; I was, of course, much better, busy taking her around, showing her the wonders of the coast, visiting thrift shops, taking her to restaurants and spoiling her in general. (I pride myself on spoiling all my daughters.) My doctor pointed out how much sadder I’d become since Sarah had left, and that if her presence could affect me so much it was not likely that I was suffering depression, since an external influence could so affect my mood.

Words failed as I tried to tell him what Sarah’s visit meant to me: “Just to watch her, to touch her." And now she’s gone back to her life in Long Beach, and it’s unlikely we’ll talk much since she is a teenager and I’m an old man. She was a great comfort to me as I hope I was to her.

For now I am in uncharted waters. It encourages me for my doctor to tell me I am more in grief than depressed. And my symptoms tend to support that. I can laugh with Kathleen at night after she returns from work. And after my morning tears I find myself able to function. I paid the bills, for instance, on Labor Day, and was not beset by my usual longstanding fears when I paid them.

******************

I’ve stopped crying now for this morning, I think. My shrink told me to “fill up my dance card,” to busy myself with whatever work was interested me. I told him how much I craved a job where I could punch the clock and put widgets and whatchamacallits together all day. The freedom I have to choose my work is frightening; I would much rather have it assigned.

Writing is my main form of work, followed by house husbandry, gardening and two college courses. It's time to take up my writing projects again.

Back when Kathleen had thought to promote me, she bought a number of books to help. Last night I paged through The Wealthy Writer, written by an Australian bloke who was willing to write anything. In doing so he made contact with the corporate world and found himself writing press releases, helping with ad campaigns and the like. He said “corporate clients paid best.” Most of his book was about business, how to establish a business of writing. He did not concern himself with what he had to write, only that he could get paid for writing. His approach didn’t appeal to me; it sounded as if he’d created a copywriting arm of an advertising agency on the cheap. I guess my fantasy of being a writer will always have me in a cabin with a typewriter, where my agent has to don snowshoes to reach me. My great genius should not be troubled by the business side of things.

My desire to make money as a writer, something new, is borne of an ambition to fulfill my Protestant work ethic and prove I can do without disability. If I could accept myself as I am, a man declared “disabled” by numerous specialists, a man who enjoys a modicum of success as a poet and essayist, I would, of course, be much happier.

Self-acceptance is easy for sociopaths—it never crosses their minds. For the neurotic it seems nearly unattainable. Even for the manic-depressive it is more than a question of neurochemistry.

What if I was loved as I am? Perish the thought! I can never be loved as I am, I must do something more to deserve it, and that, as well, will never be enough to appease my inner god, so it is all pointless. Still, when I hold Kathleen I can feel her healing love flow through me and I know she loves me just as I am (though she excepts my feet). Despite her help I have immense difficulty in imagining myself being loved as I am, which is the bedrock principle of Christianity: God loves sinners, period, just as they are, and there is nothing we can do to merit such love. I believe in this philosophy, why I call myself a Christian, but as for the inner experience of the good news, I am insensible.

When it comes to loving myself, the self-esteem movement never held any attraction for me because it had no traction. How can you love yourself unless you are loved? We need some external being to love us so that we can internalize it. This needs to come early in one's life, very early. Even then the psyche may reject it.

Though I believe my parents did their best, how could they have known that I felt unwanted, excluded, a burden to them from my earliest memories?--which resulted in my having to prove my worth over and over again in the hopes of being loved.

When it comes to such questions my friends like to remind me that my dad was an intimidating monster, that they didn’t feel welcome in my house with him around, rather intimidated; our house was the maze and Dad was the Minotaur. That was the cloud I lived under.

Do these ramblings sound like depression?

When I cry in the morning, what do I think of? I don’t think; I simply feel this emptiness open up inside me, an emptiness where Rachel isn’t, although she should be there. It’s a sadness that does not beg for her return so much as mourn the fact that she could ever leave, that she had for so long occupied such a large part of my heart. When I weep I weep not only for Rachel but for the human capacity to experience loss and for all who have suffered loss.

Marrying mortality to self-consciousness is a troublesome match. The latter gives the lie to the former because self-consciousness cannot conceive of its own end, thus has a terrible time accepting the evidence that this is indeed the case. We are mortal; the fiction of life we create, our own narrative, is written with disappearing ink; we can’t believe in our own deaths or we would abandon our narratives and follow Bartelby the Scrivener into a catatonic refusal to credit life at all.

That I weep for Rachel proves that I believe in life, but at the same time reminds me how much of a fiction I must create to live my own life. I can’t, for instance, do anything if I am constantly worrying about losing Kathleen or one of my other daughters.

In trying to sum up what I felt towards Sarah before she left, the best I could come up with was, “Don’t go dying on me.”



Thine,

CE

The Necessity of Denial and Other Things

When I find myself weeping and the object of loss fades away until my depressive mindset substitutes another reason for tears, I try to slap myself inwardly: I try to allow tears about Rachel without bleeding into tears about my extremely negative self-view. So I am lost in the middle of a dark wood at 52; what’s more important is she whom I lost.

When you lose someone very close to you it ignites other fears. The thought of losing Kathleen is or one of my other daughters is unendurable, of course. How could a man bear that? How do mothers with multiple sons lost to war cope?

One of the saintliest men I ever knew was a cardiologist, Dr. Srinatha. He lost his entire family in India in one crash (he was the only one not in the vehicle). He was the most compassionate of men, patient to a fault, willing to explain anything, and he never complained about being called to the CCU at 4 AM. His presence was always calming and his smile spiritually reassuring. I do not think his demeanor was solely a product of nature; I like to think grief helped transform him into the saintly being he became. Although grief can also bring lead to bitterness and isolation, the economy of the closed heart must eventually fail.

We need others too much. I hope I’m not leaning too hard on Kathleen. Sarah tells me to be a “poshead” and not a “neghead.” I’m in total agreement save for the wiring in my brain.

As for living with the conscious threat of a loved one’s death, it can’t be done sanely. We simply cannot operate while consciously cognizant of mortality, our own or theirs; such knowledge is existentially crippling and must be practically delimited, yes suppressed, to accomplish the smallest endeavor. Every action depends on faith, whether we trust our legs to rise out of a chair or trust gravity while pouring water in a glass.

We must live in denial to live. We cannot indulge in the Descartian (Cartesian) luxury of questioning every underlying assumption. That leads only to an obsessive unbelief in our own existence. Derealization, as the shrinkolas call it.

One thing that mixes up my grief: The writers conference. I was told point blank by two agents that my writing couldn’t earn money, that hardly any writers earned money. Writing for money had been my new goal of self-redemption, a way to get off the disability wheel that throws Protestant guilt at me like a gorilla heaving turds from a cage. And now I hear from the experts that my dream is wrongheaded.

This is no time to listen to them or analyze my chances, but the timing didn’t help. I was sad enough not to need my face rubbed in it. I don’t want to give up hope but this is no time to globalize about my future and my future goals. This is a time to take the long way home through the graveyard.

Sarah leaves tomorrow; God bless her! I may get back to the work of writing when she’s gone. I didn’t want to waste my time on it while she was here.

I’m in a public library trying not to cry. Earlier during my lunch break between the two halves of my mushroom identification class I did cry. But I cleaned up pretty good.

Last thing I want is to have someone stop me and say, “Woman, why do you weep?” Who wants to hear of your loss? Why spread the peanut butter misery of this world any thicker on the planet's crust?

My essay in Blue Fifth will soon be re-printed in the Schuylkill Review (forgive the spelling). Always nice to be wanted.

My sister wrote Kathleen that she worries about me sometimes if I don’t blog. I wish I had the energy to visit the blogs of all those generous enough to comment here.

I still don’t get the Princess Di thing, ten years after her death today. I think it was her innocence, or the innocence we projected upon her—the same kind of innocence Marilyn conveyed. The same kind of innocence Rachel looked back to. We don’t want the innocent to suffer. We want to save them.

Thine,

CE

I can't rate myself

If I were to return to writing poetry, no doubt over a matter of years one good poem might be yanked from my heart to join what pieces remain, but that realization is a long time away.

While on the subject of death, I thought I'd just post some poems on the subject. Whether they are helpful or not, I can't know; I don't know much of anything now except allowing myself to cry when I need to and doing the daily things: wash, dishes, pay the bills, garden. Most of all I just hang with Sarah, my 18-yr.-old, who is the greatest comfort a father could wish for in enduring the loss of a another daughter, although buying her return tickets made me cry. I don't want her to leave, as in never--of course, impractical.

I have been teaching her to drive and she now has her driver's permit. Tomorrow she has to learn to change a tire. Today we went over required fluids.

Here are the poems, I won't bother to say where or when they were published:


The Dead

Are we gentler with the dead
than with the living?

We lower them like glassware
into the earth
and speak well of them,
careful of their feelings.

We adorn their tombs
with photos and tulips.

Their rest is so sacred
we need a court order to disturb it.

It is easy to love the dead.
They make no demands.
They are not in competition.
They can't be more dead.



A Time to Kill

It was given us by a farmer,
found in a field.
I cupped it in my hands like snow.
Suddenly it sprang
to the hardwood floor.
Captured again, I held it close.

A splotch of blood stained my shirt.
I checked my cuticles then noticed
a toothpick of a bone
jutting from the ripped fur
and the large hind foot
(the lucky one)
hanging limp as a broken flower.



Death

The cricket's hibernation
and the dream of the seventeen-year locust
are pure, like the silence of God during prayer.

I see death as an old coot in a rocking chair
spitting tobacco while bullets fly,
knowing how westerns end.

We are eternal or eternal myth:
No one believes in their own death.



Mom's Passing

I

Two months ago she did
the Sunday crossword with a pen.
Now she cannot tease the rubber band
from my gift of roses.
Distantly she smiles.
She is in no pain.
She knows her diagnosis
as you might a brand of toothpaste,
a detail too irrelevant to ponder.

At dinner tonight she ate
her salad with a spoon.
She was not embarrassed.
For the first time I see
her face without worry.
It is not her face.

I might have noticed sooner
if she called at times other than cocktail hour
when I expected her speech to slur.
It wasn't until she wrapped the potatoes
in newspaper for baking
that we suspected.

After a brain scan and biopsy
the doctors said radiation might extend her life
by temporarily shrinking the tumor
but it wouldn't restore her mind,
so we passed. She always said
she didn't want to linger.

We chose to care for her at home.
My youngest brother took the last watch.
I remember him lumbering
down the Spanish stairs to say,
“She's passed.” None of us cried.
How could we mourn a mute
and waxen body in blue diapers
as if it were our mother?
Death is so impersonal.

II

Three legal miles from landfall
I felt her ashes between my palms,
silky as talcum powder and odorless.
I sprinkled them on the sea
where they sunk underwater
like snow in a snow globe.

Funeral flowers followed:
leopard lilies, white carnations,
scarlet roses, birds-of-paradise--
and her beloved pink antheriums,
strange flowers without scent
from her bedside, outlasting her.

We circled twice and headed home.
I watched the flowers rock
in our widening wake
like the paper boats
she taught me how to make.
She folded them so perfectly.
She could fold a fitted sheet
so you couldn't tell it
from a flat one.


I can't rate myself.

Craig Erick

What I greatly fear...

My essay, "Four Kinds of Poems," is now available at Blue Fifth Review.

There is also a poem of mine, "Almost Eden," with an audio there.

There's also a new book out by Emily Martin, ethnographer and anthropologist, from Princeton Press, entitled Bipolar Expeditions. She has honored me by quoting one poem of mine at the very beginning and one at the end. I recommend the book for a new societal take on manic-depression, especially mania in the marketplace.


The entry below was written yesterday, August 22.


I

This morning, after my first cup of coffee, what I greatly feared came upon me. I had a brief thought about my disability and how I had failed to deliver myself from its charitable bondage through being a writer, or by returning to medicine, or in anyway becoming “a useful engine” as Thomas the Tank, my grandson’s favorite, advises. Inevitably this thought was followed by the familiar spiral of worthlessness and failure to which I had become accustomed in my depression. Then I began to think about my darling Rachel and how selfish it was of me to think about me and my failings, which made me erupt in tears, of course, during which the object of my tears changed to the loss of Rachel. But I don’t know if that change was genuine or engineered to escape my own guilt about grieving over myself and my failures instead of my loss.

I know all grieving is grieving for yourself, for how can you possibly grieve except for your loss? I suppose one can genuinely grieve about the lost potential of a life cut short, but that seems like a historical insight. The loss of a loved one can never be so intellectual at first touch. It is more of an emotional amputation, sometimes accompanied by a “phantom limb” syndrome. You imagine the person is there but they’re not. Where they were is an emptiness they used to fill. In searching that negative shape for memories, a cascade of images appears in my mind of Rachel from babyhood to adulthood: all the joy she gave me, how she stretched my love, how she taught me unconditional love simply by being my child. How can you lose that?

In Kenyon’s case it is easier. I look behind me in the car and he is not there. I walk beside a river and he is not swimming. I glance to my heel and he is no longer heeling.

I have two other daughters that need me. They are technically adults and don’t need me like they once did, and I try never to infantilize them in my mind. But right now I need to hold them, to see them, to believe in them. They are equally dear as Rachel. But are they? Nothing is as dear as that which has been lost, as in the parable of the lost sheep. Rachel, coincidentally, whose name meant “ewe,” has left a whole collection of stuffed animal sheep behind, of which Sarah has become the curator, just as I am now the curator of Rachel’s collection of Oz books.

Jacob’s dad did not even attend the memorial service and is incommunicado. I don’t know when I’ll be able to see Jacob again, the last living vestige of Rachel I can hold in my arms (though he doesn’t like that, preferring to scramble out of them).



II

I wish I could say I was in grief or depression; I think still more grief than depression; but as the grieving process proceeds, will grief simply be replaced by the obsession of depression, or will the two morph into some new thing?

I woke up afraid yesterday, not numb. That is more a symptom of
depression. I squired Sarah and her friend around to several beaches and enjoyed watching them enjoy themselves. Sarah is grieving, yes, but she is not depressed. She doesn’t cry about her own sense of failure and then segue to losing Rachel. She does have some guilt about her last conversation with Rachel, but her sad-feelings are all Rachel-oriented. Of course, she is lucky enough not to have a mood disorder, for which the whole family gives thanks.

At Glass Beach I let the wet particles of sunlit gravel and glass fall through my spread fingers over and over in a sort of hypnotic ritual. I lost myself in that. God bless the gravel.

I do not want to dishonor the memory of my daughter with a depression, though to ascribe any control to myself over that is ridiculous. Kathleen says, “Just let it all out. You can’t distinguish the two. This is not a time for that.” Good advice, I think. I try to take it.

Someday I will stop crying, I guess. Or maybe never. I was once a star in this world, a power, a doctor over other doctors, a paid musician and teacher of poets, and now I am what? A small voice in the wilderness? A pinpoint on the Net?

Did I mention how the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference spent three days crushing my dreams during the weekend between Rachel’s viewing and memorial? I had paid extra to meet with an agent for half an hour. Her first words to me? “You’re in the wrong business.” And why did she say that? Because on my application I had the temerity to say “I want to make money writing.” Most writers don’t make money, so I was told. I think I knew that.

I gave the first ten pages of my thriller to another agent, and she e-mailed me to say it lacked “pageturnability,” that too soon I segued into some philosophical tangent. Me? C’mon. I’m as literal as concrete.

I was well received for my music at the Art in the Gardens festival, through which I sleepwalked just as I have been sleepwalking through life since Rachel died, except when I break down, which I think is a kind of waking. To stay busy, to move my body, to take the girls to interesting places, this is all good. But when the carousel stops the lack of motion assails me with all the inertia of death.

“Pray for us sinners at the hour of our death.”


III

Like Rachel, I am a dreamer. I, too, think the world is unfair and that Peter Pan should never grow old, that Puff the Dragon should not be deserted. Unfortunately, to be too enamored of childhood is against nature, which cautions: “grow or die.” Part of my great grief for Rachel is the knowledge of how painful it was for her to negotiate the world while her deepest psyche was dominated by a vision of an overidealized childhood, which became a lost paradise.

Expulsion from paradise is initially separation from the womb, after which comes psychological, and ultimately, with the cessation of nursing, a new kind of physical separation from the mother. Later childhood Freud called "the latent period," as ages 5 - 12 are fairly conflict free. It is the age of Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter. It is the adulthood of childhood, where the illusion of independence is encouraged and supported by the family on which the child actually depends.

The terror of independent identity dominates adolescence, which is the process of finding an adult personality: who you will be for the rest of your life. Failing this last stage means too much dependence on others for the rest of your life (though we are all dependent to a degree). Some remain, intrapsychically, at an earlier stage where separation and independence have not truly been achieved, where only merging insures safety. And the price of that missed stage is often drama, testing those who love you to reaffirm an intense merging, usually through reciprocal emotional pain--accusation, forgiveness and resolution--to be repeated over and over.

Unlike Rachel I grew up too independent, unable to ask for help, afraid to be a bother. Perhaps depression is in part nature's revenge for my claiming emotional independence at too early an age. But that's who I was; it's not as if I chose it.

Unfortunately my early independence did not make me any better at the practical details of life, since I, too, am essentially a dreamer. At 52 I have no money saved and no health insurance. I am often charged with overdraft fees of $35 from my bank. I have not bothered myself about the practical aspects of life; they have never particularly interested me, though when too long neglected they always bite me in the ass. This dereliction towards reality may or may not be part of a poet’s nature, though I now refer to myself as an ex-poet, though that newly assumed mantle has more to do with the practice of poetry than my nature. Even in my grief I have resisted the urge to poetry.

Today I permanently deleted several more of my poems. I aim to get my oeuvres down to a manageable 200 poems worth preserving. Worth preserving for whom? For me. So I have something to point to after 40 years of scribbling, to be able to say: “This is my best. This is the best I have done.”

Here’s an unpublished poem about an interaction with Rachel when she was perhaps three years old, one editors have never favored but one that I won’t delete:


Home Surgery

Daughter, when I freed
the glass sliver from your heel
you screamed, you shook, your foot lurched—
so I gripped your ankle with all the firmness
love could muster.

Plucked from your sole, the fragment shone
like a jewel in the bathroom light
while blood streamed, mixed with water,
into the white altar of the sink.

At the moment you hurt more
from my maneuvering,
did you doubt me?

That thought wounds my heart
more deeply than the matador
can bury his long blade.


No doubt the poem is too direct, even maudlin for today’s sensibilities. It is what it is, a record of a parent who must inflict pain to deliver a child from more pain, which requires a great deal of trust. For all her trust in me, Rachel was the kind of child who would prefer to let a sliver fester than have it out due to her fear of pain. As she grew older, even the pain of a lecture or punishment was too much for her to bear so that her feeling of being hurt made her forget the point of the lesson. As I’ve said before, she was too much like the Princess and the Pea, except that she could do with an imaginary pea.

Kathleen and I had such trust with Kenyon. When I performed surgery on him in Mexico after the veterinarians had bungled the job twice, the anesthetic wore off before I finished stitching up his chest. He looked at me but never moved; his eyes trusted me implicitly. Animals are so much easier, duh!

In her defense, Rachel could be convinced of the right thing to do, the right path to take, the responsible decision, and with all her heart she would commit herself to that course of action. But within a day she would usually forget her former resolve and go wandering about seeking another solution, as if the problem had never been addressed. I made so many lists for her in her life, partly due to her ADD, since she had only 20% of normal auditory memory, which makes teaching a difficult thing. I am amazed when my daughter, Sarah, does something after being asked once, and yet that is the norm (within the limits of willful disobedience).

I promised I would not turn this blog into a journal of grief about Rachel, but if I write from the heart I have little choice at present. And the writer’s drama is now, for those who have been following my blog: Will CE again succumb to depression? And for how long? And with the complication of grief, can his chemicals possibly be balanced? Will he feel hope again? Will he feel like a useful engine someday?

One thing I fear is that I may be down for the count, damaged and depressed in some fashion for the rest of my life. I’ve always come back before but I’ve never had a blow like this follow so soon after a nascent recovery from an extended depression.

Will I retreat into myself more and more, keeping the world at bay, avoiding participation? Or will I strike out once more in the hopes of feeling human again?

In the interests of the latter I did do something courageous yesterday; I signed up for two fall courses, one in Creative Writing and the other in Mushroom Identification. Presumably when I identify the right mushrooms I will be able to write more creatively.


Thine,

CE

Briefly

We returned from Rachel's memorial with our youngest daughter and her friend, "Barfie," in tow.

It's a great comfort to have Sarah with me now; neither of us can fill the hollow left by Rachel's death, but it helps to have Sarah fill her own space.

Rachel is more defined by what she has left behind in us, a retreating, conforming space like a death mask or a mold for making a bronze.

I've never had so much space missing before.

I believe I am in grief, not the dreaded other condition.

After 12 hours of travel yesterday, Kathleen bravely woke and went to work. My idol.

Sarah and Barfie enjoy picking blackberries. They're city girls.

On a more important note, I want to thank all of you who have spiritually supported us during this time; rarely have I felt so supernaturally buoyed by the prayers of others.


Craig Erick

Kenyon must leave us, too.

Sadly, in this time of intense grief, Kenyon's life has ceased to be neutral and consists mainly of the slow endurance of pain, punctuated by a few treats. Kathleen has bravely decided to put him down tomorrow. As she pointed out, even if we left him here with someone during our trip south for Rachel's memorial, he wouldn't eat; he might not even get up. He lives for Kathleen. He rises on his trembling, aching joints and shuffles forward for her. He would do anything for her; he would stop his suffering for her if he could.

The timing could be better but Kathleen's right; it's time. We intend to take him out for one last swim today. His appointment with the vet is tomorrow at 4:15 PM.

Some of Kenyon's story appears earlier in this blog when he was kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico until we won him back. He's now been back with us longer than he was apart from us, which is a blessing.

Kenyon's a little over 14 years old. For the record, I am not a "dog person," but he is the bravest and most loyal animal I have ever known, and a beauty besides. And a champion swimmer. Even now people comment on his beauty as he limps along the beach.

Kenyon has been Kathleen's service dog for many years (though he now needs a hearing-ear dog himself). I wanted to hold onto him past Rachel's memorial service but Kathleen is right; that would be selfish. It is time, perhaps even past time.

I have never seen a bond between a human and an animal like Kenyon and Kathleen have; it's uncanny. I call him her "familiar."

At least we knew this loss was coming. I don't know if that makes it easier.


Craig Erick

Sitting Shiva

The Jews sit Shiva for a week and then go back into the world. Yesterday Kathleen went back to work and I returned to my writing. Despite a sense of unreality and a constant feeling of exhaustion, it is time to soldier on. This will, of course, not prevent bouts of weeping and the thousand-yard stare; but continuing in life is best when walking through grief.

The Jews also set one year aside for mourning, after which it was officially over. These recommendations fit the needs of the human spirit well, though no law should be made of them. "The Law was made for man, not man for the Law.".

I am especially grateful to my sister, Elisa, who has given me the luxury of having no financial worries during this time of arranging plane flights and motel reservations. I also want to thank Tom Summers, Rachel's great uncle, whom I think paid for the viewing and cremation. When I went into the office to pay, the funeral person said, "It's already been taken care of." (I aim to pay him back but will not burden myself with such concerns at this time.)

Several things have occurred after Rachel's death which, for those who know our family history, will be instantly recognizable as something to do with Rachel.

1) While nuzzling Kenyon the night after the viewing, I apparently hurt his left shoulder and he bit my nose and bruised my eye; nothing serious, though blood was spilled. I am only the second human he has bitten.

2) Though I have needed shoes for months, the first day we returned to the coast we walked into a shoe store in a daze and each bought a pair of shoes.

3) While walking through the flora near the beach, the local salt-marsh flies attacked me en masse and I have been scratching myself ever since.


I have no intention of turning this blog into a journal of grief, but when it bubbles up I won't repress it. My writer's conference begins tomorrow and I have two musical performances on Saturday.

It's cool and humid here.

I sleep but I never feel rested.

My pants are tighter.

What's this about weight loss and grief?


Kiloneutral and holding,

Craig Erick

Rachel Elizabeth Chaffin: 11/11/1977 – 7/29/2007.

Here's a picture of Rachel with her son, Jacob (I obviously picked this for Rachel, as Jacob looks as if his gruntle has been dissed):



Here's one of her partying with her friend, Ritchie:



Ironically--isn't everything ironic?--on the last day I blogged I was to later receive the incomprehensible news that my eldest, Rachel, had died the night before.

Rachel, my little blue-eyed lamb with the beautiful coppery hair. She apparently died on the evening of July 29 and was discovered by a neighbor the following morning. It was not suicide, it was an accident. A coroner’s report is pending.

Rachel was 29, a single mother embroiled in a custody battle with a man who promised to marry her but continually added conditions to the prospect until it was unattainable. Not one for whom adult responsibilities came easy, I was so very proud that she proved she could handle them.


When visiting her apartment the day before the viewing, one daughter of mine said to the other: “So who gets the piano?” “Only Papa plays,” said the second. “Will you take it, Papa?”

Whereupon someone else said, “Yeah, let’s see if it’ll fit in your van.”

I never thought about whether I wanted this ancient spinet. But it was far easier to say, “Yes” than dispute the direction of others, so I ended up driving its tonnage through the curving two-lanes of the Redwoods and on home.


She was the most beautiful of children. Her pediatrician, who had two of her own, called her “one of the most beautiful babies I have ever seen.”

Indeed. Rachel grew up irresistible, irrepressible, with a smile sweeter than an apricot, her hair thrown into Shirley Temple coils by the least humidity. I loved to watch her hair change hues through the sun’s daily arc. She was the most trusting of souls. She was the sort of person who would always trade her cow for some magic beans, never questioning the other's motive.


This was Rachel’s favorite of my poems:

Under Noise

By repetition noise escapes us:
the dishwasher’s cycling, the radio’s drone,
the whine of sirens over the shuffle of traffic,
the refrigerator's hum, all
inhibit alarm by repetition.
Below observation
in the deep recess of impression
the same damaged record spins
until we no longer notice the crackle
because it is too familiar.

Listen: I give you the soft carpet
of diminished volume, no sound now,
no sound but your heart pumping
and your lungs filling
as in surf throbbing
and breathing through
the polished sand.

Listen to your own Atlantis
wreathed in kelp and coral:
Beneath the green depths
your quiet is unspoken,
given by the blank waters.
You have no tongue to disturb
the imperturbable earth’s revolution
moving with some silent purpose.


She was verbally and mathematically gifted and could understand nearly any poem after one reading, puzzled that her sisters didn't get it so quickly.


When I was trying to explain to my grandson about his mother’s death, I showed him a picture of Rachel on my knee and told him that just as he was her child, so she had been my child.

“Jacob,” I said, “I’m so sorry that you lost your mother.”

Avoiding eye contact and splitting his attention between a toy in his lap and a video, Jacob replied: “I’m sorry that your daughter died.”

Jacob is five.


Everything is new now. I drive into town and notice things I never noticed before; formerly familiar clerks are re-examined like potential aliens. Actually everything is alien.

I wander in a world so changed even the most basic of facts seems questionable. I think of myself in the third person a lot. While weeping I sometimes imagine how I look weeping and whether my grief is only a show—even though I am most often alone when I weep.

Such thoughts are remnants of my depression.

Thank God my psychiatric medications began to work three days before I heard of Rachel's death, and that so far my precarious chemical status has held. I can’t imagine what this experience would be like if complicated by self-doubts about the authenticity of my grief, in view of the depersonalization that depression and grief share. Depressed, the sufferer often thinks he's only "faking it." Thank God that due to medications I know I’m not.


As for tragedy, I've learned never to ask "Why?" The Book of Job cured me of that.

When Job argued with God about "undeserved" tragedy, God said: “Can you make this whale swim in a direction you prefer? Can you put a ring in the nose of a giant warhorse and guide him? Can you instruct a crocodile?”

Job sees God's sovereignty and gives up his complaints. “Who am I,” he says, “to claim to understand the Almighty? I repent in dust and ashes.”

What makes Job indispensable to any religion is his courage to confront God with the very principles God had ostensibly taught him. Job, and even more his notorious "comforters" were guilty of the illusion that success in this world is a sign of God’s favor. Jesus knew that one by heart: “He maketh the sun to rise on the just and the unjust.”

Whatever the horrors of this world, I cling to the irrational belief that God is God, as Job teaches, and that God is Love, as the Apostle John wrote. His justice is greatly overrated as having any influence in this world, though there’s always talk about a future reckoning. But if God is indeed Love, who cares about a future reckoning?

Who ya gonna believe? The truth or your lying eyes? Aye, there’s the rub.


I believe Rachel continues and is at peace. In my heart’s heart I feel assured of this, a certainty based neither upon the psychosis of a manic-depressive nor the wish-fulfillment of a devastated parent.


If anyone would like to attend, or send cards and flowers, Rachel’s memorial service will be held on August 18, 2 PM, at

Grace Lutheran Church.
6931 Edinger Ave
Huntington Beach, CA 92647
Phone: (714) 897-0361

If a donation is preferred, please send one on her behalf to TARA.



In grief and shock but kiloneutral,

"Dr. Papa Craig"