The Battle of Midway

Hanging tropaeolum, my first-ever "Instagram"

As we arrive at the first half of yet another month, my status is mired in the ambiguity of an incomplete passage, like tide waters caught between ebb and flow.  I like to fancy myself a proponent of health and healing, this blog in itself evidence of such inclinations.  And yet I continue to fraternize in the milky shadows of half-committment, with disordered behaviors dictating my days --even now, after sixty-seven posts.  Both caustic and tiresome, these proclivities leave my life forever derailed, if not staid and unpromising.  I feel discarded by the universe, like free-floating space shrapnel in repeating orbit, never to connect with fresh subjects or touch ground.  I am of dueling mindsets, pro-recovery and against, stubbornly entrenched in what is familiar and recognizable --even if that entails extraordinarily bizarre, always daunting rules of preservation.  Enchanted, deceived, and ultimately betrayed-- such is the history of my lifelong flirtation and partnership with this voluntary privation, fueled by a myopic preoccupation with thinness.  Even now, a third of the way into my second year of this site, I remain an obstinate fence-sitter.  A cliche exhibited in far too many advertisements and magazines is to use a headline such as The Battle of the Bulge to coyly convey the hard struggle of reducing one's measurements.  But let's be honest, if I am to reference any headlining World War II combat campaign for superficial purposes it would have to be The Battle of Midway, for such is my ambiguous, halfhearted positioning.  I am "mid-way"-- not wretchedly incapacitated by my disease nor beyond disability, not abstaining from dieting ritual but also not without my minor indulgences and moments of reprieve.  I consult an intuitive, valued therapist, but don't see much progress from our sessions.  I research and contact hoped-for treatment options, but while walking the back roads for exercise, iPhone at hand or ear.  I read "inspiring" quotes and advice columns, but fail to absorb their lessons.  It has become rather clear that no one, not my network of local specialists nor contacts within a modest social circle, will enforce the help I need.  At nearly thirty-two, I have to help myself.  But in maintaining the deportment of a misinformed, delusional, fearful juvenile I prolong adolescence --and with it, subordination to my benefactors (mother; father;  state service providers) and my disease (anorexia).  It relates to an article seen yesterday from Carolyn Hax, Washington Post columnist and life coach of a prefab, finger-food style.  On the matter of personal development, she suggests:  "Knowing what's right is hard.  Doing what's right is harder.  It's not about being unruffled.  It's about retraining ourselves to use more productive behaviors than the broken, maddening, ineffective, self-destructive old ones.  It's about figuring out our limits, and enforcing them.  It's stuff we can take decades to get right, if then.  Doesn't mean it's not worth trying."  But what manner of episode, be it momentous or even traumatic, must pass for me to earnestly try -- full-throttle, gung-ho, all in?

Finding solace and support in the daily papers

Until I might find the answers necessary to correct my straying course, I have charged these restless hands with projects serving as both distraction and necessary courtesy.  To pay tribute to the patience and compassion demonstrated by a dear friend, I have returned to a collage I began on my final day at the Maine Media Workshops.  The project was assigned by our instructor as an illustration of the following conceit:  "It is raining, but the sun will come out."  Immediately, I spun this into an allegory for depression and the restrictive rules we obsessive-compulsives appropriate internally, using splintered vertical lines and boxes of muted tones, in partnership with dripping black paint, to reference shadows, water, blood, tears, prison bars, darkened windows.  These elements alternate and intersect inside a busy, frazzled plane, a play of hard-edged patterns thickly woven.  Horizontal stripes intend to capture the idea of movement, bringing the eye from left to right, with intervening orange and lavender furthering the sense of broken, breaking rays --be they of sun, hope, or opportunity.

When I haven't been dallying within this claustrophobic landscape of magazine shards and crusty glue, I engage myself with family concerns.  First and foremost of these are the mounting financial obligations of my maternal grandmother.  I have intend to relieve some of her burdens by partnering as a representative for various products she produced in her heyday as a textile artist.   Although she continues to diligently operate as a purveyor of worsted wool yarns (dyed to her specifications in Portugal) she has not recently capitalized on the remains of previous business endeavors, in particular, woven luxury home goods produced in the early 1990's.  This same time last year I had measured, tallied, and photographed her substantial inventory of throws, shawls, and baby blankets, all thoughtfully designed by she in quality mohair, cotton, and acrylic chenille, respectably.  Using this data, in combination with good old-fashioned door-to-door salesmanship, I established tentative contracts with two Midcoast showrooms focused on locally-sourced housewares and finery.  Thus far, I am most excited by a collaboration effort with a well-connected interior decorator, one who owns and operates a waterfront showroom in a neighboring tourist enclave.  She is immediately recognizable as a woman of dignity and unfussy elegance, one with an experienced, perceptive eye and instinct for quality craft.  (What's more, it is an added bonus that she also just happens to be the third wife of screen legend Tony Curtis.)  In a separate campaign for cash, I have submitted half a dozen ads to Craigslist, and again to a regional traders' sourcebook, listing such like-new home appliances as a small gas generator, an oil-fueled water heater, and an electronic knitting machine.  These, along with a beat-up sedan and a few high-profile items, have been gathering dust in my grandmother's barn and are ripe for resale.  Unfortunately, her expectations lean towards higher amounts than one might realistically expect to collect, and has even insisted on placing these wares with "lucky" numbers, as influenced by her beliefs in a gathering spirit field and unified cosmos.  (Don't ask.)

Street detail, Los Angeles:  radial starbursts in tar

Closer to home, beyond serving in jury duty and dabbling for the first time with the photo sharing app Instagram (above), I am concerned by new behaviors exhibited by my father.  To his credit, at a weary 77 he is retrofitting aspects of his lifestyle -- taking more naps and insisting on meals of reduced complexity, richness, portioning.  Heavyset and pre-diabetic, he can doubtlessly benefit from a smaller waistline.  Yet even so, it raises my concern (and ire) that he would skip or refuse meal suggestions when upset, as if leveraging these lapses for a power born of sympathy.  He speaks of constipation and gastrointestinal distress, so his pains are not merely emotional, I'll admit that much.  I tell him he would do well to consult with an accredited dietician, providing the name of my own (who I have admittedly not seen for ages).  As of this summer, his general physician is unceremoniously retiring; therefore getting him to an internist must first involve registration with a new practitioner   Of course, the irony of the situation is not lost on me.  Even the aforementioned nutritionist wrote in an e-mail:  "It is very difficult to watch people you love being anxious about food and limiting food choices.  It must be particularly hard for you to experience how the people around you were probably feeling about your own issues."  Alright, Universe -- consider me humbled.  

When one's self is reflected in the life of another --
 is this what is meant by "the mirror has two faces?"