Puttin' On The Ribs

THIS YEAR, FASHION WEEK RESEMBLED "FASHION WEAK" WITH ITS NOW-FAMILIAR TIDE OF CATWALK WAIFS.  A FEW THOUGHTS ON AN INDUSTRY TRAFFICKING IN DANGEROUS IDEALS.

The latest from Emporio Armani's spring/summer 2015 sports line, unveiled in Milan to murmurs of shock and concern.  In promoting its attendance of the show, The Sunday Times of London was cut down to size (so to speak) after it tweeted the above from the viewing gallery.

To those in northern territories, late-September heralds the transition to ominous autumn skies flanked by blazing, golden fields and forests of unpredictable ombre; it is in this time of change we enter the Libra period of the Zodiac belt.  For those unfamiliar with symbols of astrology, the configuration of stars that determine this sign are roughly comparable to the shape of an ancient scale or balance, such as the mechanisms used to measure Roman coins, or librae.  Thus, the motto assigned to children born within this zone:  "I weigh."

I find this eerily appropriate, given that heaviness --as in a woman's heft and proportion-- is not only a regretful fixation of my own, but also the many patrons of international Fashion Week.  Having now wrapped official shows in New York, Paris, and London, these semi-regular, slavishly engineered events involve the world's most exclusive clothing houses.  Respected participants promote hotly anticipated new looks, fitting all manner upon dewy-faced sylphs who stride and pose upon elevated stages, bearing on their taught, angular frames what presenters hope will become the soon-to-be-coveted trends --- whether in direct sales or as mirrored by others.  Celebrities and style forecasters will from there dictate what is ultimately popularized, cherry-picking various aspects of a designer's line and stylization for approval and endorsement.  Generally in this system, an ensemble gains initial prominence when worn by an individual of notoriety.  Fresh, "edgy" wearables take longer to become firmly embedded into the broader mainstream, and once they do so they are, ironically, no longer considered covetable, or at least not by the savviest couture snobs.  At this point, the elite distance themselves from such "tired" frocks, replacing them with the next reimaginings from Bryant Park or the Carrousel du Louvre.  This is why updated installments of designer lines arrive as quickly as themes can be reworked and produced --de novo or in recognizable incarnations-- as to be en vogue one must be, above all else, unpredictable.

Who --or what-- is for sale?  (Stella Tenant by the fabulous & fantastical Tim Walker, VOGUE Italia circa 2000)

Yet still, season after season, one rule is as rigid and unchanging as Anna Wintour's severe bob and unflappable reserve.  Be it hair and makeup, mood music, even the health/race/age/class of the models themselves, every aspect of a successful runway presentation is put in place to be disseminated and absorbed.  Those eager for and capable of sartorial reinvention will take-on the newly-minted traits and gimmicks, demonstrating in a mere arrangement of materials what it means to be of the moment.  Coco Chanel once observed that "being different" is the sign of an irreplaceable, extraordinary individual, yet the very industry in which she gained notoriety is founded on parrotry.  Fashion operates as a delicate juggling act, a difficult trick in which style-mongers and their ilk express themselves as one-of-a-kind but also summon recognizable, definable schools of dress.  This is where we return to the idea of balance.  How can we be unique, listening to our own instincts and inclinations, forging our own pathways, living in the margins --- yet also not "rocking the boat" with such vigor that we completely overturn it, drowning ourselves in the process?  How can we be both unconventional AND approvable, in-step yet also willing to challenge and tweak the accepted uniform?

Now behind us:  Christopher Kane's designs from Milan, March 2014 (Photo:  Christopher James, British Fashion Council).

In the publishing realm, a brand is called an "imprint," reflecting the original process of applying pressure to mark paper with a carefully arranged message.  I am surprised that this term is not more regularly associated with brands of clothing, given that in order to stay profitable, their ultimate purpose is to imprint upon the public what constitutes the fashion du jour, i.e. what we should consider --by their authority and verdict-- the most covetable modes of dress and physical condition.  It's about generating new sales by getting us to believe in the merchandise they choose to spin, subscribing to what's "in" and "out" as seen in a catwalk stage show.  And with fashion, everything is being merchandised --including the models.  The models are the face of the industry (and also its breasts, stomach, legs, arms, hips, hair, and thighs).  For this reason, how these women and men come across has substantial impact on the public, for they serve as our standard bearers, our beacons in the fog of overwhelming opinion.

An additional view of the Armani presentation (Photo:  Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Much comment has been made in the last twenty-odd years in regards to the ever-shrinking BMIs of those selected to represent the Big League labels, particularly their most prominent covergirls.  (I will speak more on this in my follow-up entry, an essay pertaining to curvaceousness in popular music --think: "Bootylicious"-- as paired with the phenomenon of "skinny-shaming," itself a reaction against all-too-often-caustic "thinspiration.")  The much-publicized heart failure and subsequent death of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos in 2006 has aroused efforts to regulate the health of those hired to stride upon the slick elevated platforms.  I'll resign myself for now to end with excerpts from British newspaper The Independent, which wrote with unmistakable frustration on the prevalence of noticeably wan representatives in the latest round of designer presentations to be unfurled upon its home turf.  As an individual with a state of health comparable to or even beneath Ramos', I at times hesitate to sponsor the repeated refrain of:  "these girls look awful; they should be removed from the public eye."  I personally subscribe to the notion of selective exposure -- that a very thin person has a responsibility to display less of an area --say, an especially corrugated ribcage or origami-sharp triangle of shoulder blade-- if said feature is demonstrative of a perilous standard.  It's simply a matter of decency.  The opinion in the UK write-up read to me as a tad condescending, coldly referring to the models as "emaciated creatures."  Such dismissive objectification is nothing new and certainly exists in many number of forms within a superficial field.  Even so, I believe it bears further dissemination and gladly volunteer space herein to the author's voice:

The photos from London Fashion Week all look the same.  Identikit parades of skeletal women prowl down the skinny catwalk in front of hundreds.  Collarbones jut fashionably from beneath the strips of cloth that barely cover their modesty, or their protruding ribs, and their strikingly beautiful but gaunt faces all say the same thing:  I'm hungry.

Despite the obvious malnutrition of most Fashion Week supermodels, however, the media continues to print the pictures, giving the industry's 'thinspiration' message airtime and making the press implicit in the projection of an impossible and unhealthy image of beauty.  [...]  It's a shame plus size fashion has gone largely unnoticed again at this year's London Fashion Weak, shunned in favour of models with sallow faces and sharp elbows that grace the covers of newspapers and glossy magazines, their poised but starved bodies inspiring thousands of easily influenced teenagers.

As the emaciated creatures process down the Fashion Week runway tonight to a barrage of flaying lights and fashion accolades, spare a thought for the 13-year-old girl who will skip breakfast when she sees the photos in the paper tomorrow morning.  The fashion industry has the power to cause serious damage, and the responsibility to ensure it doesn't.  - Chloe Hamilton, September 17, 2014 (The Independent, no. 1,189, London, UK)

*  *  *

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." - Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN (1854)

To Have My Cake And (Not) Eat It Too

What a great array of sweets are made available to those of First World status!  And yet our wealth of bakeshop delicacies means nearly nothing to an anorexic --whether observance owes to a holiday, birth, matrimony, or other, more garden variety occurrence.

For entertainers in the television arena, there's no sweeter dessert than an Emmy --its sharply-stepped lightning bolt wings protruding triumphantly skyward-- to validate your efforts.  Although I remain begrudgingly removed from that industry in my own work, I was pleased to learn that this year's ceremony will be broadcast live from Los Angeles on the evening of the 25th, which just so happens to be my birthday.  It should offer a pleasant escape into red carpet pageantry and "insider" tattle, which I admittedly subscribe to now and then via the scrolling headlines of online gossipmongers.  My father's health has been touch-and-go, his system (and attitude) showing stubborn resistance and mild collapse under more aggressive approaches to chemotherapy.  Fortunately, today he's demonstrating improved resolve on most if not all fronts and, with it, my own outlook has rebounded somewhat.  If the recent, frustrating days in --which I watched him dismiss offers of nourishment, succumbing to anguish both physical and cerebral-- have left me with any leading lesson, it is that most acquaintances, be they family or other ilk, expect that I would not be so petty as to distract from his battle competing issues of my own.  But in truth, my "demon" is also a disease, malignant and very real.  I understand many will regard me as loathsome to air grievance, especially as a white American living under the umbrella of my parents' charity (with government assistance an inestimable boon unto itself, and recognized as such).  However, I simply must repeat that living with an eating disorder is not a walk in the park.  (Okay, some days it IS less of a struggle to get by and DOES in fact involve charging through a public green or plaza no and then.)  But a paralyzingly fear of change, and with it any increases in calorie measure or content, keeps me leash-bound to a very limited spectrum of foods and possible endeavors.  I try to address this dilemma with a sort of Groundhog Day approach --wherein I exploit the redundancy of a restricted routine to improve my art and attitude in baby steps. But hours free from household chores/nurse-care/wedding prep/compulsive exercising/paralyzing sleep are fleeting.  I am jealous of my father in that even when ill he still manages to consume much more than I might on any given day.  And he knows not of the tremendous guilt I feel when I do "indulge," even if I reassure myself that food is the power force necessary for life (and that I am all-too-haggard anyway).  I am fortunate to permit myself great quantities of iced tea to take the edge off an empty stomach; thus I realize I don't have it "all so bad."  I just wish I could grasp the nettle --or, more accurately, the provisions and possibilities made available to me-- without someone having to hold my hand for reassurance.  I yearn to strike a balance between obeying the rules of my disorder and the allowances of a "normal" eater ---to have my cake and (not) eat it too.  Most clinics dealing with anorexia strive to eradicate it outright, but I believe this is unrealistic once you've *literally* embodied it, as I have, for a lifetime --that compromise is (for those patients of somewhat advanced age) a more feasible solution.  Even with a major fashion event like an awards show I spend most of the telecast away from a TV because, unless watching from a gym, I cannot incorporate exercise into rapt scrutiny of the screen.  Instead, you'll more likely find me zipping down the backstreets of town, catching newly-released photos of the dresses being paraded via iPhone.  Then, with energy sufficiently spent, I'll make my way home.  There I'll prepare a late dinner, changing into more comfortable attire and cleaning myself of the day's goo 'n grime in the process.  I eventually situate myself comfortably in order to tune-in, but by that tardy stage of the proceedings most newsworthy happenings have been seen and commented on by the world and I am again late to the table.  By my own volition, once again I come up short.

A part of me envies those who show resourcefulness in helping themselves (especially to a treat).

POSTSCRIPT -- At last weekend's Creative Arts Emmys, Discovery Channel's crab fishing reality series Deadliest Catch netted a trophy for Outstanding Cinematography in its field.  And the title of the episode submitted?  "Careful What You Wish For."  Not yet sure of the implication, but I'll consider that a sign.

Cold Comfort

(Vintage appliance logo for Sears' Coldspot® refrigerator line)

Awaiting apprisal on my father's condition --he having been released only moments ago from hospital care for ulcer management-- I find distraction in the sunny images of a June 1956 McCall's ("The Magazine of Togetherness").  Feast on these ice cream and/or beverage-themed minutiae from its pages -- and read my related, if not outlandish proposal to a local outreach program seeking to make "gains" (literal and metaphorical) in eating disorder treatment and awareness.  Sent by e-mail to the executive director of this not-for-profit (as well as to my sister and a friend), the following is the conversation we exchanged electronically over three sweltering days in late July.

McCall's June 1956, p. 150 (detail)

From:  Lorena S.

Message:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

Mulling over a sponsorship program for recovery, Project AnorexiCone, perhaps, in which I eat at Dorman's daily for a month.  Donors to the program would receive my original artwork; I'd post photos of me with my ice cream on an Instagram feed.  Silly  but also serious.  Anyway, I want to kill two birds with one stone-- help others, myself, and maybe bring some attention to the issue.  I could certainly use the motivator of being held accountable.  Maybe not the healthiest way to go, but it could be an interesting approach to this crazy situation and help me raise funding for a future elsewhere.  Is this just totally ridiculous?

From:  Jennifer S.

Reply:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

I'll donate.  Not sure you can use Kickstarter though.  They have very particular rules about what constitutes a project and anything similar to funding moves etc. doesn't count.  You may get money to pay for the ice cream though.  Look into it.

From:  Mary O.

Reply:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

Gee, Lorena, I don't know.  It's a creative idea and gets me thinking about using such an approach to fund our new Eating Disorders Association of Maine -- however, I don't know you and would have to defer to those who do…  Would this be good for you?

As an aside, if you look at EDAM's website, you'll see some photography.  Their board has spoken about wanting to include original art by people who have struggled with one or more of these illnesses.  If you ever would like to donate a piece to be included for consideration, please let me know.

All the very best,

Mary

McCall's June 1956, p. 120 (detail)

From:  Lorena S.

2nd Message:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

Mary,

You are right to hesitate, as I have been flirting with something like this for at least a year now.  Initially, I wanted to use Kickstarter for a campaign called Milk Money, in which concerned parties would chip-in so that I might buy (and, naturally, consume) a milkshake per day.  I once told Dr. B. that me drinking such a thing would be the equivalent of seeing me leap from a tall building (as far as risk and fear are concerned).  But I have had several people suggest locally-made shakes (as opposed to fast food versions) because such things include relatively wholesome ingredients (such as milk, obviously).  At any rate, I was all gung-ho about the Dorman's idea last night but now again am thinking it's a weird, tacky vanity project.  I think that hearing about the fellow who raised thousands for making potato salad has shot my head into the clouds.  I suppose I figured that people would forgive the charity angle as long as they were indeed receiving art in exchange for funding -- and I know nothing gets me feeling accountable quite like the double spotlight of sponsorship AND publication via social media.  I wonder if anyone would realize how much of an unprecedented move this would be for me -- or if, instead, I would inspire viewers to scoff in disdain.  To be quite honest, I might rather put-together something titled Part of A Complete Breakfast in order to ensure that I truly eat a healthful meal during the day, as I still reserve most of my food for the late evening hour.  However, the logistics of such a campaign are less easily outlined, and certainly not as headline-grabbing as the ice cream route.  But, again, I was writing on a lark and likely won't do it (unless I hear resoundingly positive feedback, of course, which is doubtful).  But I know I am in a position to help bring awareness to a taboo subject that many refer to as their deepest shame and undoing.

Striving for change,

Lorena

McCall's June 1956, p. 122

From:  Mary O.

2nd Reply:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

Hi Lorena,

I get it -- and I'm so pleased that you are still striving! 

I do like the idea of having, rather than ice cream, a complete breakfast. 

Maybe first eat breakfast, then after awhile add - dare I suggest it - lunch. 

And then - when possible - dinner.  Three actual meals a day.  Ah! Success!

All the best,

Mary

McCall's June 1956, p. 119

From:  Greta V.C.

Reply:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

If I ate Dorman's every day for even just a few days, I'd feel really sick.  It would probably be worse for you than what you're doing now.

I don't think you need Kickstarter for this, although a chunk of money is always nice.  You just need to know that we are all relying on you to take care of yourself, and we are.  I like the Instagram idea though!  Why not add to your daily intake and Instagram your meals?  But no cheating.  You have to eat whatever you post.

McCall's June 1956, p. 14 (detail)

From:  Lorena S.

3rd Message:  A small Kickstarter:  gaining #'s by way of Dorman's Dairy Dream

Yeah, you're likely right.  Ice cream is not the best band-aid.  Oddly enough, Mom just won a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to The Camden Cone.  Talk about serendipity!  It expires in October 2016, so that gives me some time to get my act together (ha).

"Missed Opportunities" or "Too Late", acrylic on 16" x 12" canvas, 2011 
(with spoon added August 2014, shortly after writing this entry)

Totems of Transylvania, Prefigurements of Malady and Disruption

What new terrors await unmasking? Blinded (and blind-sighted) by present complications.

Strange, perturbing happenings have descended upon my little world -- a fast-moving fog shrouding my life with uncertainties and new concerns.  Just as an infusion of milk might hang and twirl in a tumbler of cold summer tea, an opaque murkiness muddies my comprehension of where things lie.  Friday evening, news broke that a lifelong pal, our high school class valedictorian and virtuoso researcher, had been admitted to the Coronary Care Unit of a Brooklyn-area hospital.  According to his anxious and understandably distressed mother, a colleague had escorted my friend to Park Slope Presbyterian earlier that day after the chambers of his heart became blocked and slow to function.  Apparently, appraisal by emergency room attendants swiftly led him to the management of cardiac specialists and, as of mid-day Saturday, rumors of surgery for a temporary pacemaker had been substantiated -- by a woman calling from Europe, no less.  (Needless to say, this fellow has a far-reaching path of influence.)  That an otherwise robust thirty-three year-old holds in his chest such an instrument is both bewildering and wholly unexpected.  To relieve the serious mood amongst those effected I've started observing that, like Darth Vader, he's "more machine now than man."  Perhaps he will emerge as some sort of modern variant on The Six Million Dollar Man?  Certainly, knowing the cost of healthcare, his bill may approach such a tally.

To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit:  "I'm not bad.  I'm just dyed that way."

The parents of the afflicted felt an understandable desire to drive through the night to reach his bedside, and, in their absence, I adopted my usual duties of caring for their cat.  Now it begs inclusion that this perfectly genial and good-natured animal had the misfortune of being born a black breed, which, although elegant in appearance, carries with it the stigma of superstition.  As most of us are told as young and impressionable Trick or Treaters, popular thought connotes such animals with the Devil's brand of bad luck.  Jack truly is a friendly and appreciative creature and in no way deserving of a prejudice built by centuries of myth and dubious allegory.  However, it is well worth mentioning, as only later that night a bat no larger than a moldy lime scrambled down our chimney as I sat adjacent, eating my second, larger meal for the day.  Exhausted and apathetic, I failed to devise his release or (God forbid) extermination.  As with other species of fauna maligned by negative reputation, I harbor special interest and sympathy for these ostensibly liminal beings.  Dismissing tenets of demonology and Gothic literature, I instead revere their delicate beauty, fascinating taxonomy, and remarkable physical capabilities.  Furthermore, being that they are a sort of hybrid of rodents and birds --two of my favorite animal orders-- they are to my tastes just as charming.  (I am confident Beatrix Potter herself would have made delightful characters out of them, and perhaps she held specimen in her menagerie at one time, despite their jarring absence from her more familiarized cannon.)  The bat took several turns of flight, tracing the rectangular perimeter of our large back room, then melted into shadows.  Over twenty-four hours passed without indication of his presence, with reemergence timed for midnight Saturday.  Now making circles in our front corridor, he quite literally whooshed past the faces of my parents as they gingerly felt their way down the bannister from the second floor bedrooms.  Despite it being late (beyond midnight) and with my father in a state of undress (his nightgown), they were determined to get him to the ER, a good twenty-minute drive north along coastal Route One.  Having changed into trousers and summoned my mother, he hurriedly explained that urgent medical care was necessary -- available pain killers had already proven ineffective.  Apparently, a ripe canker in his abdomen had become unbearable; under its impact he was now succumbing to fainting and fever.  Every year with the first signs of fair weather my father tackles scraping and repainting of our mid-nineteenth-century townhouse.  For as long as we had seen summer he had been displaying symptoms commonly attributed to lead poisoning:  constipation, difficulty sleeping, irritability, low appetite, even lower energy.  Naturally, it was not unreasonable to assume this as a probable diagnosis given his frequent exposure to old layers of veneer in his work with clapboards, porches, and, most recently, a rickety, neglected trellis.  Bloodwork had not found evidence to substantiate our suspicions, but something was amiss with his gastrointestinal functions, and he refused meal suggestions with increasing regularity, opting for only the simplest foods and half-portions.  This of course has been distressing to witness; I have done my best to supplement his diet with liquid alternatives such as chocolate Ensure® vitamin drinks and strawberry-banana smoothies bottled by Odwalla®, a Coke® subsidiary.  All of this had come to a head  --quite literally, in fact, as that winged pest was now diving towards ours.  Upon safely reaching the local clinic and being examined it was determined that he should be given care there only until he could be transferred (by ambulance and on stretcher) to a more capable facility.  Apparently, all the doctors trained to administer the necessary endoscopy were away on vacation --sailing, likely-- and he would find better treatment awaiting him in Portland.  For the next day and a half my father was permitted no food as he prepared to cleanse his upper GI tract for the EGD.  Only by noon on Monday did we receive interruption from suspended worry and uncertainty, finally receiving an answer and, with it, mild relief.  According to a call placed post-surgery by the patient himself, two small stomach ulcers were detected during the procedure, which required immediate cordoning.  Also, we later learned, a tumor in his throat may be responsible for the random and violent hiccup attacks that regularly leave him croaking, muck like a dog straining under collar.  This is the most I can divulge as of the current hour; although cursory, the above report helps me feel like a responsible friend and daughter to those afflicted.  It calms my mind with its unburdening and confronts nagging concerns related to the two-pronged arrival of those iconic Halloween "fiends," those so-called harbingers of doom.

Marlon Brando was often seen as a friend of the misunderstood and the disenfranchised.  Here the actor is shown in his early days with a clearly beholden underdog --er, "undercat."  
He would have likely been a proponent of Black Cat Appreciation Day, arriving on Sunday the 17th.

I find comfort in addressing superstition directly, quelling its rumbles with written disclosure.  Illness is a natural and unavoidable part of life -- shades of death color all things.  For every ailment that brings our knees to buckle, another opportunity awaits for us to reclaim posture, composure.  As one popular Japanese proverb says, "fall seven times, stand up eight."  The bat that entered our home this weekend did not find freedom on his first few laps within its walls nor manage escape until his second day of residence.  But he chose to fly again, compelled by instinct and the invisible lasso of a rising August moon.

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?"

In Service of The Heart

A "Careful" Resuscitation

I have been a woefully negligent custodian of these pages.  I realize that.  My lax approach to writing affords me no license to brand myself a "blogger."  Even still, a nagging sense of responsibility impels that I deposit the occasional submission, and I hope there is at least one of you who derives benefit from the effort.  Irregardless, I can assure that when I do have something to share, that information is often precious ---and therefore assigned significance by way of mere inclusion.

---

The last several weeks have seen me assume an unexpected (though most welcome) role:  Maid of Honor.  Almost precisely one month to this day my father received a long-distance phone call --on his birthday, no less-- in which the well-spoken voice on the other end kindly requested that he give his attention to a delicate matter.  Fortunately, it was Charlie --my sister's long-term beau-- requesting permission for a proposal of marriage, to be  promptly issued that weekend when taking recess to the coastal destination spot of Bournemouth, England.  Everyone in reach of our family is of course thrilled for the couple, none more so than my father, who wept tears of joy at the news.  With the wedding targeted for the first Saturday of September we were essentially allotted three and a half months to move from planning to execution, and I am trying my very best to devote extra effort to this new position of bridal consigliere.  Jenny is extraordinary on many counts; the strength and surety with which she conducts herself demonstrates the fierce will of a vintage Taurus.  Rarely have I sensed in the past that she needed my help for anything, so to act as her wingman on this momentous project is a unique opportunity and privilege.  It has also provided a focus for the summer, with very specific assignments and goals, the least of which being to improve my appearance.  I am no Pippa Middleton, but I do hope to make for a nice addition to the team flanking her altar.  And unlike Pippa, I would hate to divert attention from my older sister on the day that she adopts her partner's name.  I mustn't stand-out; my bearing needs to blend seamlessly with the other attendants, a company of ever-swelling ranks now claiming five bridesmaids and two groomsmen.  My sickness must not sour the ceremony, a milestone captured by countless trained eyes (if not digital devices).  I owe it to the betrothed to present myself within a degree of normalcy.  I cannot distract from or sully this chapter of their romance.  Don't cast shadows Lorena.  If anything, cast rice.

May Love Be Your Salve

Scout for ways to make a positive impact

Love is the most powerful tool that any sentient being can yield, stronger and more resounding than hate.  Whether carried by man or animal, it is his most valuable currency, capable of enormous impact when exchanged.  It doesn't depend on a certain level of experience or sophistication, having equal potency among all ages.  It is, quite simply, a major key to understanding Life's major whys and hows (or so I have come to conclude).  Accompanied by knowledge and craft, both creative and functional, love might be the illumination Carl Jung spoke of upon declaring,  "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."  

Indeed, few make a better argument for love's application than columnist Andrew W. K.  Writing from his weekly platform in The Village Voice, this astute counselor recently responded to a reader seeking relief from a depression so deep and penetrating that suicide had become a very real option.  His answer, while not unprecedented, was equally affecting and effective; I cannot speak for the original correspondent, but it profoundly resonated.  My veins, previously withered from caustic dysphoria, were immediately infused with a rich, burning charge.  Why not redirect some of that attention and energy consumed by depression elsewhere?  Stray outside of your own being and its stagnant concerns:  "[T]urn away from yourself and towards your neighbor.  ...  Give your love to the world and you'll get more purpose and meaning back in your life than you ever imagined possible."  

Please don't laugh, but have long intended to "do good", so to have that confirmed as a valuable, rewarding use of one's faculties fuels me with an extra pinch of brio.  All too often I view myself as burdensome to my family and detrimental to the earth at large; I markedly experience less self-loathing when I have taken pains to improve both houses.  Below, I have excerpted the sections of Andrew's essay that most seized my attention.  His reasoning falls closely in line with the "Thought for today" from June 16th, as opportunely published in Maine's Portland Press Herald the very morning I was piecing together this entry.  By Ivy Baker Priest, former U.S. Treasurer, the quote states:  "We seldom stop to think how many people's lives are entwined with our own.  It is a form of selfishness to imagine that every individual can operate on his own or can pull out of the general stream and not be missed."  If, after considering Priest's words, you are still questioning your place and value on the planet, I implore that you read on...

"It's healthy to think about life and death, even when we're feeling hopeless.  Or perhaps especially then.  We shouldn't be afraid to try and imagine what it would be like to kill ourselves.  Often times, it can help us get a refreshed perspective and appreciation for the astounding adventure we're part of, and how truly frightening and challenging it would be to really end it all.

"...[B]eing dead is an impossibly unimaginable experience anyway.  It might not even be an experience at all, but rather the total void of non-experience.  When I've been in pain, sometimes non-experience sounded pretty good.  Whatever it is to be dead, almost all of us have tried to fathom it, and in times of great anguish, we've probably wondered if it might be preferable to the discomfort of daily living.

. . .

"As far as dealing with depression, I have a simple suggestion that I think could work like magic to heal your soul and lift your spirits.  It's a very simple thing called... Helping other people.  Sometimes setting aside your own troubles and focusing on someone else's in their time of need can have an incredibly powerful effect on relieving you of your own despair.  This is especially true when you help someone you don't know.  Of course it's good to help family and friends, but connecting with someone unknown to you, and being able to simply exercise your good will, can provide a unique and uplifting energy that almost nothing else compares to.

"Some might say that helping other people just to make yourself feel good is selfish and not true generosity.  But I think the fact that it benefits you is exactly the point.  We are all bound together.  No matter how much we like to think of ourselves as unrelated and apart from others and their plight, we are, in fact, all in the same boat.  God or evolution or both have specifically wired our brains to feel pleasure when we help other people.  Our health responds positively to acts of human kindness, whether we perform or receive them.  This reward is meant to be tangible.  It's supposed to feel good to do good for others -- we're then motivated to do ever more good.  To be able to relate to someone else whom you never met before is to be able to relate more deeply to yourself."  

---

And with that, reader, go forth and assist!

On Depression: A Letter From Henry James, 1883

(In which the nineteenth-century novelist valiantly attempts to rally the spirits of friend and essayist Grace Norton.)  

According to the recently released compendium Letters of Note:  An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving A Wider Audience (first published within the U.S. earlier this month and sensitively compiled by British blogger Shaun Usher), James was likely still reeling from the passing of both his parents upon his hearing from Norton.  She had contacted the author, searching for direction, having been deeply effected by a similar loss to her family.  Most famously known for 1881's The Portrait of a Lady, James is accredited with infusing stark realism into his many works of narrative fiction, and here he speaks with the clarity and pragmatism that comes from experience.  It is almost eerie how vividly his voice still carries.  I recommend turning your attention to this stirring note of counsel ---if not also to the above publication, a remarkable trove of dispatches to and from historic figures who, through the application of words, manage to enlighten, amuse, astound, enthrall.  - L.S.

Henry James (National Portrait Gallery)

131 Mount Vernon St.,

Boston

July 28th

My dear Grace,

Before the sufferings of others I am always utterly powerless, and the letter you gave me reveals such depths of suffering that I hardly know what to say to you.  This indeed is not my last word---but it must be my first.  You are not isolated, verily, in such states of feeling as this---that is, in the sense that you appear to make all the misery of mankind your own; only I have a terrible sense that you give all and receive nothing---that there is no reciprocity in your sympathy---that you have all the affection of it and none of the returns.  However---I am determined not to speak to you except with the voice of stoicism.

I don't know why we live---the gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup.  In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which is probably good not to forsake.  You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power.  Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses---remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own.  Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can.  We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most.  We help each other---even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the efforts of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make it possible for others to live.  Sorrow comes in great waves---no one can know that better than you---but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it passes and we remain.  It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end.  Don't think, don't feel, any more than you can help, don't conclude or decide---don't do anything but wait.  Everything will pass, and serenity and accepted mysteries and disillusionments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new opportunities and ever so much life, in a word, will remain.  You will do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you.  The only thing is not to melt in the meanwhile.  I insist upon the necessity of a sort of mechanical condensation---so that however fast the horse may run away there will, when he pulls up, be a somewhat agitated but perfectly identical G. N. left in the saddle.  Try not to be ill---that is all; for in that there is a future.  You are marked out for success, and you must not fail.  You have my tenderest affection and all my confidence.

Ever your faithful friend---

Henry James

PERSONAL ASIDE:  My father and I do not communicate much on matters of delicate nor profound concern, yet, just when I had become convinced that my lingering melancholia and obsessive-compulsive patterns were inappreciable to even my most immediate family, he altered me to this text, leaving his copy of Mr. Usher's book open to the letter above.  No stranger to dark moods himself, he reminded me with one modest gesture that he is a sympathetic and kindred spirit.  Lesson being, never underestimate others (or, as James himself admonished, "don't [...] generalize too much").