The Disquieting Damozel

"You're Not in Wonderland Anymore, Alice."

This blog is one "sub-weblog" of our main blog, The Flatland Almanack.  Please do visit us there! I post a note on this topic every now and then, but The Flatland Almanack is my daily blog.  This one is for longer pieces about the forces in life that knock you off balance (literally or metaphorically) or that yank the ground out from under you.

My other topics (listed in the left-hand sidebar) are all much cheerier.

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To see a complete list of links for "The Disquieting Damozel," click here.

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"Timor Mortis Conturbat Me" (Reprise)

The one thing about growing older is that you reach a point where you realize that every day brings you closer to losing someone you love----a parent, a friend, a pet, a spouse.  This is of course true throughout life, but for most of us, losses prior to middle age are much more widely spaced.  Then suddenly you reach a point where a lot of people you love are at or near the end of life.

I think this might be at the root of the panic and depression so many of my friends seem to be experiencing.  Even the medication doesn't help all of them.  One who has always been a pillar of strength is currently caught up in a depression/panic spiral and nothing seems to help.  I remember very well what this is like and indeed have to be pretty vigilant in staving off similar feelings of my own. 

Still Here, Still Working Full-Time on the Political Blog

I really DO intend to begin blogging about my own life again.  But getting Buck Naked Politics up and running (and with a 200+ technorati ranking) and still working full-time has absorbed all my energy.  Please visit me there!

Thursday 13 #5. 13 Things I've Learned About Panic Attacks.

IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT HERE OR ON THE HOMEPAGE, I WILL PUT A LINK TO YOUR T13 UNDER MY ENTRY ON THE HOMEPAGE (my blog doesn't do it automatically).

I worked for years at a volunteer counseling center where I encountered many clients who were suffering from panic attacks.  In addition, I've frequently talked friends of mine through panic attacks.  So I am not really sure why, following my discontinuance of hormone therapy after a hysterectomy, I was apparently incapable of recognizing that I was suffering from panic attacks myself. 

Panic, SSRI's, and Adulthood in the 21st Century: What are YOU on?

1. TO SPIN OUT OF CONTROL YOU FIRST HAVE TO BE IN CONTROL:  THE ORIGINS OF MY PROBLEM.  You know, I thought for a long time that I was handling adult life fairly well. 

When I first started being (technically) an adult, I didn't do so well at it; I was really behind the curve in working out how being grown up differed from being an adolescent.   I went on being a maturity-challenged child well into my thirties.   Fortunately (in retrospect, though I didn't see it that way at the time) I got involved in my early thirties with a much older man who had little tolerance for the liberties and excuses I was inclined to allow myself.  He and an older female colleague I didn't like at all were major forces in bringing me to maturity.  Painfully, though.

"Snooping Bosses"--TIME Magazine, week of Sept.11, 2006.

  EMPLOYER SPYING. RE:  TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE, "SNOOPING BOSSES" by Kristina Dell and Lisa Takeuchi Cullen at 62-64 (Sept.11 2006 issue).   

Most of my friends get quite worked up about the Bush Administration's domestic spying.  I'm much more worked up to find out from this week's Time Magazine---which, come on, you can't get more mainstream media than Time, yeah?---about the scope of employer scrutiny of employees both on the job and off.

I mean, it's one thing for the government to get all up in your private business in the interests, allegedly of "national security."  At least they have what some citizens consider a compelling reason.  I'm not comfortable with the idea, mind you, because I am all about individual privacy and the right of citizens to be secure in their homes, but I have always been secretly certain that the government keeps tabs on people it wants to keep tabs on and that there's not a lot private citizens or even the Congress can do to stop them so long as they're able to conceal the fact from citizens.  I don't mean I think it's okay; I just have always thought that it's how things work. 

Doing Grief: A How-to Guide for Surviving the Death of a Spouse or Other Life Partner

Advice from a layperson who's been there.

1. The realities of public vs. private grief. First of all, despite whatever self-help books you may find out there, there isn't really a protocol your can follow for surviving a real loss. How you cope with it depends in some respects on who or what it is that you are grieving for. One problem with grief is that our society, with its counseling and self-help mentality, simply does not make room for it. In the last hundred years or so, we've gone from a world which enforced mourning on survivors whether they liked it or not, to one which barely makes room for it.

To the extent that we in the U.S. do make room for it, we adopt a sort of all or nothing approach: someone is either mourning, and therefore should be left alone to get on with it, or they are not. People don't like to think about death and they don't know how to talk about it.

Advice from a layperson who's been there.

1. The realities of public vs. private grief. First of all, despite whatever self-help books you may find out there, there isn't really a protocol your can follow for surviving a real loss. How you cope with it depends in some respects on who or what it is that you are grieving for. One problem with grief is that our society, with its counseling and self-help mentality, simply does not make room for it. In the last hundred years or so, we've gone from a world which enforced mourning on survivors whether they liked it or not, to one which barely makes room for it.

To the extent that we in the U.S. do make room for it, we adopt a sort of all or nothing approach: someone is either mourning, and therefore should be left alone to get on with it, or they are not. People don't like to think about death and they don't know how to talk about it.

Your Health Care Provider Secretly Hates You: The Unbearable Hostility of Hospital Waiting Rooms

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog 07.18.2006]

Yesterday was not a good day for journaling.  At 8 AM Nick had to have a certain medical procedure, inconvenient and uncomfortable, but unserious, so naturally I had to go with him.   The procedure ended up taking the whole of the morning---a whole morning of me sitting in the waiting room in a chair that managed to be both unpleasantly straight and oddly unsupportive of the lumbar spine.  Mine was out, so it was torture.  Plus I was a little worried; when a family member undergoes a procedure, one always is, a little.

Do the designers of hospitals have a brief to make waiting rooms as unpleasant as possible for those waiting?  The waiting room where I had to sit for two hours this morning was positively plush compared to the ER waiting room of the same hospital, where I had to wait much, much longer (and I was the person who was ill).

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog 07.18.2006]

Yesterday was not a good day for journaling.  At 8 AM Nick had to have a certain medical procedure, inconvenient and uncomfortable, but unserious, so naturally I had to go with him.   The procedure ended up taking the whole of the morning---a whole morning of me sitting in the waiting room in a chair that managed to be both unpleasantly straight and oddly unsupportive of the lumbar spine.  Mine was out, so it was torture.  Plus I was a little worried; when a family member undergoes a procedure, one always is, a little.

Do the designers of hospitals have a brief to make waiting rooms as unpleasant as possible for those waiting?  The waiting room where I had to sit for two hours this morning was positively plush compared to the ER waiting room of the same hospital, where I had to wait much, much longer (and I was the person who was ill).

Homeless Bloggers: What It's Like

[previously published at The Flatland Oracles on 07.15.2005]

At Blogger Buzz I came across a posting that linked to this article at Wired News--"Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless"---explaining how homeless people can use blogging to re-connect with the world.  There's also an excellent article at Salon.com about homeless blogger Kevin Barbieux. 

Homelessness is a subject that causes me extreme anxiety if I stop to think about it.  One of my dear friends is intensively involved in working with the homeless.  Joe is a person of extraordinary grace, and also tact, who has no trouble looking another human being in the eye, without regard to the person's status.  I am certain that he would address a homeless person, an A-list celebrity, the President, the prime minister of England, the Nobel prize laureate, and God with exactly the same equanimity.  He is one of those people who can look suffering and humiliation in the eye, which is something that I have decided I must teach myself to do.

[previously published at The Flatland Oracles on 07.15.2005]

At Blogger Buzz I came across a posting that linked to this article at Wired News--"Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless"---explaining how homeless people can use blogging to re-connect with the world.  There's also an excellent article at Salon.com about homeless blogger Kevin Barbieux. 

Homelessness is a subject that causes me extreme anxiety if I stop to think about it.  One of my dear friends is intensively involved in working with the homeless.  Joe is a person of extraordinary grace, and also tact, who has no trouble looking another human being in the eye, without regard to the person's status.  I am certain that he would address a homeless person, an A-list celebrity, the President, the prime minister of England, the Nobel prize laureate, and God with exactly the same equanimity.  He is one of those people who can look suffering and humiliation in the eye, which is something that I have decided I must teach myself to do.

To Those Searching for Employment in the Too Much Information Age, A Warning

[first published at The Flatland Oracles, my previous blog, on 06.12.2006]

MySpace partners with Simply Hired. MySpace and Simply Hired have launched MySpace Careers, a job listings site geared toward the MySpace demographic. [CNET News.com]

This announcement pairs up nicely with yesterday's headline from the New York Times:  For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume. Kids today, eh?  They have at their fingertips a whole world of ways to get themselves in trouble that couldn't have been imagined by their parents (many of whom know much less than their children about all the ways available for them literally and figuratively to show their arses).

[first published at The Flatland Oracles, my previous blog, on 06.12.2006]

MySpace partners with Simply Hired. MySpace and Simply Hired have launched MySpace Careers, a job listings site geared toward the MySpace demographic. [CNET News.com]

This announcement pairs up nicely with yesterday's headline from the New York Times:  For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume. Kids today, eh?  They have at their fingertips a whole world of ways to get themselves in trouble that couldn't have been imagined by their parents (many of whom know much less than their children about all the ways available for them literally and figuratively to show their arses).

The Etiquette of Death and Dying (07.10.2006)

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog]

Lately, I've been chatting a lot to a friend who is a thanatologist.   She does counseling for the dying and for their families, both before and after death, and works with a lot of Hospice patients.  We had a really interesting conversation about death and dying and she recommended a couple of books for me.  Our conversation really got me thinking. 

I've become very interested in the subject of death.  How is it we're so unprepared to deal with it?  Seriously, isn't that a bit weird?  It's the one thing---besides the fact of being born at all---that we all have in common and that we can all absolutely expect.   Actually, it is not a 'bit' weird; it is extremely strange.  We are an entire culture in denial about this basic fact of existence.  Why?

Lately, I've been chatting a lot to a friend who is a thanatologist.   She does counseling for the dying and for their families, both before and after death, and works with a lot of Hospice patients.  We had a really interesting conversation about death and dying and she recommended a couple of books for me.  Our conversation really got me thinking. 

I've become very interested in the subject of death.  How is it we're so unprepared to deal with it?  Seriously, isn't that a bit weird?  It's the one thing---besides the fact of being born at all---that we all have in common and that we can all absolutely expect.   Actually, it is not a 'bit' weird; it is extremely strange.  We are an entire culture in denial about this basic fact of existence.  Why?

Antic Panic.

It took me months to feel like writing again.  I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I knew that something was.  I was frightened all the time.  I used to wake up at night shaking all over and in a cold sweat.  I often thought I was on the verge of dying.   I ought to have recognized the problem because I've dealt often enough with people in the midst of panic attacks, but I couldn't get my head around the fact that it was happening to me?  Where did it come from?  Why?  Nothing had changed.  Nothing was wrong.  But telling myself what I already knew didn't do a bit of good. 

Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts

originally published at "The Flatland Oracles" in "The Disquieting Damozel"

My late husband Don claimed to be able to see or sense both sorts.  And since his death, I get the impression sometimes that he's pretty persistent himself.  I know it sounds a bit absurd.  

He was a strange man. As time goes by, I understand him less. Everything I thought I knew about him is disappearing into his enigmatic last few days and all of the things I learned about him after..

               

My late husband Don claimed to be able to see or sense both sorts.  And since his death, I get the impression sometimes that he's pretty persistent himself.  I know it sounds a bit absurd.  

He was a strange man. As time goes by, I understand him less. Everything I thought I knew about him is disappearing into his enigmatic last few days and all of the things I learned about him after..

               

Epilepsy. It's Like This: Bzzzzt!

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog on 09.10.2005]

Epilepsy.  People always want to know---even if they are too polite to ask me---if it feels as weird as it looks.

“What’s it like to have a seizure?” a young man currently under my tutelage asked me. “Is it true you can tell when one’s coming on? Does it hurt?” He had the right to ask as he’d just rescued me from being hauled off in an (expensive: $500) ambulance following one such episode, and he was worried.

[1]  'Ignore it and it will go away.' No, actually, it won't. I had my first seizure that I know of when I was a year old. I had some sort of viral illness. It might have been meningitis, but was never diagnosed as such. After that, I didn’t have any problems until I was in second grade; I had a seizure one day in school. I was doing a writing exercise and suddenly I couldn’t write anymore. I was terrified and started to cry. I didn’t fall down or anything; I just couldn’t write. My teacher was surprised because there was nothing she could see that would explain it. My parents were annoyed, as they thought I'd just had a bout of hysterics. My father was more annoyed when, following the seizure, my handwriting deteriorated completely and I went from making 'A's' to making 'C's.' It was as if I really had forgotten how to form the letters; eventually---several years later---I re-taught myself. Nowadays, of course, handwriting wouldn't matter so much; but it mattered then.         

The Heroic Medical Professionals of New Orleans---and then there's Dr. Zed. Paging Dr. Zed!

It's impossible to overstate how much I admire the medical people who are there on the scene.  Their role in lessening the death toll and giving some people whose plights would otherwise be hopeless a fighting chance cannot be overstated. 

Which made my friend Jane's experience yesterday all the more difficult for me to process.  Jane was recently diagnosed with a certain chronic but non-life-threatening neurological disorder.  To control it, she must take medication (probably for the rest of her life) that affects her concentration and, to a certain extent, her short-term memory.  She's been most depressed.  As an epileptic myself, I understand the depression. 

The Ghost in the Image: Photography & Memory

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog]

 

I have a lot of photographs of my late husband Don and also of my first husband, whom I divorced when I was 30. I was going through a trunk and ended up looking through a pile of them.

I contend---and I know most people would disagree with me----that a photograph is a far more evocative and powerful aid to memory than a videotape. To me, a videotape is as puzzling and unrevealing as reality itself as it unscrolls before you.

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog]

 

I have a lot of photographs of my late husband Don and also of my first husband, whom I divorced when I was 30. I was going through a trunk and ended up looking through a pile of them.

I contend---and I know most people would disagree with me----that a photograph is a far more evocative and powerful aid to memory than a videotape. To me, a videotape is as puzzling and unrevealing as reality itself as it unscrolls before you.

How John Donne Missed the Point (08.22.2005)

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee etc. etc."  Yes, but that's not the worst thing.  If its tolling for you, you can't hear it and you don't care about it.  It's when it's tolling for someone you care about, on whose existence you've shored your life, that you experience the reality of death.  You don't know the hour of your own death, but you also don't know the hour of anyone else's.

You’re going through your life, under the illusion that things can’t change much and perhaps even that you have some control over whether and how they change.  Then your spouse, lover, mother, sibling, best friend dies.  A huge hole opens in reality.  An essential piece is swallowed up in the voice.  You can believe what you want about meeting them again or about their happy reunion with God; they're gone.   

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee etc. etc."  Yes, but that's not the worst thing.  If its tolling for you, you can't hear it and you don't care about it.  It's when it's tolling for someone you care about, on whose existence you've shored your life, that you experience the reality of death.  You don't know the hour of your own death, but you also don't know the hour of anyone else's.

You’re going through your life, under the illusion that things can’t change much and perhaps even that you have some control over whether and how they change.  Then your spouse, lover, mother, sibling, best friend dies.  A huge hole opens in reality.  An essential piece is swallowed up in the voice.  You can believe what you want about meeting them again or about their happy reunion with God; they're gone.   

Chaotic Simplicity---Matisse & My Mom.

After talking at length to a clerk from the local Quaker meeting, I started thinking about what it means to live a simple life.  Can you have simplicity with a lot of colors in it?  My favorite painters are Matisse and Kandinsky.  I need color in my house, but not much else. 

            One of my favorite books by the astonishing A.S. Byatt, one of my favorite writers in life, is the set of three short stories called The Matisse Stories.  All three stories involve fairly mundane events in the lives of women---the first, for example, is about a middle-aged woman who gets a haircut she loathes and ends up more or less laying the whole shop to waste; and can't we all identify with that?---but at the center of each story is one of Matisse's paintings. 

The False Nostalgia Syndrome (07.02.2005)

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog]

 It’s not déjà vu. Nor is it a ‘remembrance of things past’---or at least not any part of my past.

I think it must be part of ordinary human experience, since most people I’ve asked about it say that they’ve experienced it or something similar. People I know, like my friend Santee, who believe in past lives---a point on which I simply have no opinion---can easily explain it as the remembrance of things past in a past life.

 It’s not déjà vu. Nor is it a ‘remembrance of things past’---or at least not any part of my past.

I think it must be part of ordinary human experience, since most people I’ve asked about it say that they’ve experienced it or something similar. People I know, like my friend Santee, who believe in past lives---a point on which I simply have no opinion---can easily explain it as the remembrance of things past in a past life.

The Flatland Tarot---A Reading.

[published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog, on July 19, 2005]

    My dear friend, Elinor Spancel (not her real name...), is a  Tarot reader---a professional. Naturally, I don’t believe she can really foretell the future, but at the same time, she is always right. For this reason, I sometimes consult her in times of severe doubt and stress.

She’s a skillful reader and a conscientious one and therefore doesn’t pretend to foretell the future. She tells you what you should do in the present. She tells you how to avoid the outcomes you don’t want and increase your chances of obtaining the ones you do. And isn’t that what we all really want from an augury, from prayer, or even from our therapists?  And it's what you never get.

                          Elinor is very clear that she can't foretell the future.  She says it's impossible to describe the characteristics of an entity that doesn't exist.   Elinor told me back in college, when she first got interested in divination, that the only real use of an oracle is to tell you what you should be doing now, based on the factors---both internal and external----that are already in place.  If you look at those carefully, you won't know what is going to happen, but you might get a sense of the direction in which events are tending and what you need to do in response.   And for this reason, she's not like any other fortuneteller I've ever heard of.

Table of Contents---Links.

"You're not in Wonderland anymore, Alice."

This is a frequently updated list of posts in this blog (by category).  Scroll down to read the two most recent posts (as for any blog); or click on these links to find a particular post.  You can view all posts under a particular topic by clicking on the category name in the sidebar; see a list of recent posts in the sidebar; or review the weekly archives. 

This blog is one "sub-weblog" of our main blog, The Flatland Almanack.  Please do visit us there! I post a note on this topic every now and then, but The Flatland Almanack is my daily blog.  This one is for longer pieces about the forces in life that knock you off balance (literally or metaphorically) or that yank the ground out from under you.

My other topics (listed in the left-hand sidebar) are all much cheerier.

COPING WITH DISABILITY, ILLNESS, ANXIETY, & ANGST

• Epilepsy.  It's Like This:  Bzzzzzt!
• Antic Panic.
• Panic, SSRI's and Adulthood in the 21st Century:  What are YOU on?

COPING WITH LOSS

• How John Donne Missed the Point.
• The Ghost in the Image:  Photography & Memory
• The Etiquette of Death and Dying
• Friendly and Unfriendly Ghosts
• Doing Grief:  A How-To Guide for Surviving the Death of a Spouse or Other Life Partner (Part 1)

COPING WITH THE TURN-OF-THE-MILLENIUM WORLD

• The False Nostalgia Syndrome
• Chaotic Simplicity:  Matisse & My Mom
• The Heroic Medical Professionals of New Orleans---and Then There's Dr. Zed.  Paging Dr. Zed!
• Your Health Care Provider Secretly Hates You:   The Unbearable Hostility of Hospital Waiting Rooms
• To those Seaching for Employment in the Too Much Information Age, A Warning
• Homeless Bloggers:  What It's Like
• Snooping Bosses:  A comment on the Time Magazine Article (Week of September 11) by Kristina Dell and Lisa Takeuchi Cullen.

STRANGE ANGELS (FICTIONAL & SEMIFICTIONAL)

The Flatland Tarot:  A Reading.