Damage/Control

By Cornelia Read

There are times when I just suddenly feel entirely too damaged to navigate the vicissitudes of normal life: like, grownups. And happy/sane people. 

 

I am suddenly (in my head) this small filthy-cheeked guttersnipe crouched behind a lone potted palm in some gilt-bedizened Late-Baroque banquet hall's darkest corner, peering out from between lush fronds at the revelers arrayed--sparkling with wit and grace--before me. 

They are laughing (not unkindly) and talking and dancing the foxtrot, leaning in to lay hands on one another's forearms as they share wonderful jokes. In flawless French. Not even tripping over the subjunctive conjugation, or anything.

I don't know how they do it, because by comparison my tiny black heart is a mere rattling pitiful handful of clovis points and potsherds, garroted together with half a frayed shoelace and one dessicatedly reptilian albatross toe.

 

Also, I have a really bad haircut. And no small talk. And my sneakers are of course filled with frigidly filthy slush, like very small foot-shaped Sno-Kones. That leak.

Furthermore, I have had nothing to eat for three days but cold nettle soup.

and one spoonful of someone else's gruel. Stolen. About the theft of which I feel fathoms of guilt. 

 (We are still in my head, here. I actually just had some cheese and stuff--no worries.)

This is mental scenery which could only be properly rendered by Edward Gorey... a rejected frame from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, perhaps: "C is for Cornelia, Consumed by Self-Doubt."

Which would be entirely perfect because it would *also* mean I got beaten out at the sad-childhood-demise-poster-model audition by Clara, Who Wasted Away--not to mention Desmond, Thrown Out of a Sleigh. And Fanny, Sucked Dry by a Leech.

 

(Fanny totally wins, BTW. Leeches are foul. I mean, look at that fucking thing. Bleh! And I say that not even knowing which end is the actual part for sucking blood.)

I do not believe I get any joy out of feeling this way, though most Twentieth-Century psychotherapeutic paradigms would beg to differ, claiming that I secretly--yea, lustily--revel in the excruciating omphaloskeptic glory of such blatantly Rococo Dickensian Sarah-Crewe-in-a-rusty-barbed-wire-thong self-loathing.

Mostly, when I wallow in that mode, I just think I'm an idiot. And kind of damaged. Okay:  too damaged. From stuff that maybe a better person would have survived without quite so much mental craquelure.

Which is not to say that I do not experience joy. I do, so profoundly. Joy is the whole point, rare and glancing though it may be.

I guess, really, the truth of the matter is that I'm just deeply in touch with my inner Leonard Cohen.

And I'm goddamn lucky, too, because I mine that vein pretty deep for my writing, being one of those "if you cut me, do I not bleed narrative?" types. And--yea, verily--I almost make a living at it.

Also, I am not living actual tragedy, at least most of the time. Just indulging in the angst of privilege, which is a fucking luxury in and of itself when you get right down to it--even when it hurts.

I mean, for God's sake, I am not a stick-limbed Biafran child with a belly bloated to the size of a small Hindenburg, too weak to brush the flies out of my eyes. I am not being strafed by Jap Zeroes in a Nanking rice paddy in the late Thirties. I am not trying to survive Dachau on nothing but lice-cakes and meager once-a-day servings of cabbage-shadow soup. Or jumping from a window of the Triangle Waist Company fire--100 years ago yesterday.

 

Or tsunamis and radiation, or getting shot at in Libya or Damascus right now.

I live in America in the twenty-fucking-first century. We have antibiotics and anesthesia. We have birth control (and my personal favorites: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Right up there with epidurals.)

We even still have unions--at least this month.

 

Also, no one hacked off my clitoris when I hit puberty, or married me off to Warren Jeffs at the age of twelve

and I am allowed to vote even though I'm equipped with ovaries and a popo. Plus which I went to college and have circumnavigated the globe. And didn't die of either syphillis or TB as a result (thank you, tetracycline and isonicotinylhydrazine [INH]).

And lo, eventually I got fucking published. Which boggles the mind.

I am, to quote the aliens who show up in the middle of Monty Python's Life of Brian to scoop the title character out of mid-air--just when he's tumbling off the top of a mud-brick ziggurat-esque building and about to go fatally splat in the streets of Ancient Israel--a "lucky bah-stahd." (Because hey, it's Monty Python, so even the aliens totally have British accents.)

Okay, so there has also been some abandonment, autism, infidelity, divorce, a boatload of pretty fucking brutal verbal stuff, suicides and other hideously untimely deaths of beloved friends and family members, plus a raft of miscellaneous but still ruthless ugly shit I don't really want to go into right now. All of it crowds the hell out of my mosh-pit life like several dozen thousand Nazi-punk assholes ripped to the gills on methanphetamine and Olde English 800. Especially over the last couple of years.

But we all have some of that: the kind of stuff that doesn't seem less awful even after you cry about it at great length. Repeatedly.

I'm starting to realize that it's what makes you a grownup. Which sucks, but there it is.

I even ended up discussing it with a shrink yesterday. Okay, mostly the fact that I'm writing about some of the nastiest crap at the moment.

"That must be hard," he said.

I crossed my arms and smiled at him. "Ya think?"

"But surely you find it cathartic?"

"I find it like opening a vein every morning with the claw end of a cheap hammer. Onto my keyboard."

He kind of blanched at that, poor guy.

I leaned forward. "You don't really feel better afterward. Just tired."

"Then why do it?"

"Because I get paid," I said. "I don't have a lot of other skills. I'm a really shitty waitress. And because maybe it will help someone else who's going through the same kind of shit."

He nodded.

"Look," I said, "could we just do the prescription part of this? It's starting to snow again."

I pretty much don't get the whole shrink thing. Obviously. But I show up for the meds.

It just feels like whining, to me. And I keep thinking about how bored they must be. And try to make them laugh. Which is ridiculous.

I'm not repressing much, believe me.

Because mostly one endures, you know? Even if it all seems overwhelmingly, irredeemably sad every goddamn time you happen to be lying awake in the dark at three in the morning and the bad monsters show up.

But there are things you can do when you feel like a clinically depressed Canadian in a Saskatchewan February, navigating the longest and darkest L. Cohen latitudes of the soul.

Like, read something. If you don't have the concentration to handle a novel, or even an essay, try a sentence: 

Always behind you stands waiting something immense and black, something fresh and brilliant, and within one bound you are in it.

--Romola Nijinksy, foreword to
Paul Claudel's Nijinsky

I mean, that's from a woman whose husband ended up in a bad nuthouse. He looked back over his shoulder at her as he was being taken away and said, "Femmka, ne desesperes pas, car il y a un dieu." (Do not despair, little wife, because there is a God.)

Or this, from an essay by the guy who wrote Clockwork Orange:

What matters is talk, family, cheap wine in the open air, the wresting of minimal sweetness out of the long-known bitterness of living.

--Anthony Burgess, "Is America Falling Apart?"

And I say if you don't have family, make one. You'll probably have a better time at Thanksgiving, too.

Or just read the following, which makes me laugh every damn time:

I'd like to clear up one last thing before I go off and eat an entire banana cream pie by myself: men and women do not get stuck together when they screw. Oh, sure, you can beat her at arm wrestling, throw her across the room, mow her down in the line for Bruce Springsteen tickets, but you're no match for her vagina? Come on.

 


If a woman could keep you inside her by clamping her vaginal muscles in an inextricable viselike grip, you'd be there now.

--Shary Flenniken, National Lampoon

You will find the linguistic elixir of mental succor in totally unexpected places.

The following is something I culled from an article about cheese-and-chutney sandwiches that appeared eleven-ish years ago in Salon, for instance:

Don't tell me that making a quiche can be equally fun, and that cheese is no dinner, because even monkeys know this. It's just that when the ball is bouncing, or everyone's leaving to go swimming--in the dark, when you're stunned and splashing in the bracing ink, and you are the ink, and you find yourself going 'oh, my God, oh, my God" like in that Chekov story--you want your kitchen time to be brief.

--Chris Colin, "Ancient, Yet Edible," Salon

I mean, come on... that's just a paragraph brimming with sheer beauty. Lapidary and sublime. The bad monsters don't stand a chance against it, not even mine.

They will be reduced to staring forlornly at the horizon, lowing in sympathy.

And that's as good as it gets, I think.

You can't control damage. You can survive it, you can even try to gain wisdom out of it--or use it as something against the dull impasto of which joy can be more deeply savored, whenever joy returns to you--but the damage won't be tamped down. 

You can't outrun it, either. You will be scathed. The only way out is through.

That's how it works, being alive. Which of course utterly sucks, and I'm sorry it happens that way. I would fix it if I could.

But here's what I always forget, whenever I'm hiding behind a potted palm all dirt-cheeked and orphany in the glamorous-parties-I-don't-belong-at of my mind: you have to tell someone.

Preferably someone who's known you a long time, and likes you anyway. (If you don't have one of those, email me and I'll do the honors. Really. Because absolute strangers have done it for me, many, many times.)

A newish lover is probably not your best bet, and I say that having just burst into tears two nights in a row at three a.m. in this very nice man whom I like a great deal's bed. He was terrifically kind about it, but it's hard not to feel like a total freak in that situation if you are the cryer rather than the cryee.

I ended up discussing that with my pal Andi yesterday afternoon, actually. Apres shrink.

"So, this poor guy," I said. "I ended up totally crying two nights in a row at, like, three in the morning."

"What did he do?" she asked.

"He was extremely nice about it. Said he was happy I felt comfortable crying around him, and that sometimes people just need to leak."

"Obviously a mensch."

"Obviously. But still... I mean, maybe I'm just too damaged. To be around actual people. Like, guy people, especially. It seems patently unfair to vomit up all your shards of glass and lumps of coal into someone else's lap when they had nothing to do with it. I mean totally right up there with whoever threw that Stroh's bottle at Iggy Pop's head at the end of his earlier version of 'Louie Louie.' Not the one where he says, 'A fine little girl's waiting for me/But I'm as bent as Dostoevsky,' and talks about AIDS and homelessness and how fucked up Bush is. The dirty one. That he did with the Stooges, apparently live. Which is actually the only Stooges song I ever liked at all--"

"--You are not damaged," she said.

"Please. I am the fucking empress of damage. I'm soaking in it, like the bowl of Palmolive Madge always had."

"You are not damaged. You have survived a bunch of incredibly shitty circumstances. Which is different."

"It feels like damage," I said. "I mean, especially when I keep bursting into fucking tears and stuff. Who would want to be around that?"

"I would. Every day. In fact I am kind of pissed that you don't live next door, and that you have other friends with whom I have to allow you to spend time. So there."

Which is why I love Andi.

And then we both agreed it's too bad we're not lesbians who are madly hot for each other, because that would just simplify a whole bunch of shit.

A final thought (really! I promise!):

I remember once standing in a long line at the counter of a framing store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the fall of 1997, and that week it felt like everything I had loved in my life was in ruins.

I didn't want to be standing in line, I wanted to slouch back to my car and weep in the parking lot with my forehead against the steering wheel. But I'd already been there for twenty minutes and I didn't know if I could gird my loins enough to come back, so I just blinked a lot and tried to breathe really, really shallowly.

Which is totally NOT what they tell you to do in yoga, but is rather helpful if you're trying not to burst into tears in front of a framing store full of strangers.

So, okay, I was standing behind two women who were just shooting the shit with one another. They started talking about poetry. One quoted a stanza of her favorite sonnet, which was lovely but I don't remember it at all.

 

The second woman said, "You want to hear my favorite bit of poetry?"

Woman number one nodded.

Woman number two spread her arms wide, closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and intoned:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

And I was just... gobsmacked. Slackjawed. The fever broke and there was this thrill of Lux et Veritas radiating outward from my chest.

The chick opened her eyes and brought her arms down, and I tapped her on the shoulder shyly and said, "Please, who wrote that?"

She laughed and said, "oh, crap, I can't remember! I know it will come to me..."

I gave her my email address. "If it does, will you let me know?"

She promised she would, and later that afternoon I got an email from her.

Two words:

Leonard Cohen.

It's from his song "Anthem."

I liked that verse so much I went home from the framing store and painted it in gold across the back of a chair.

Here's a video of the whole thing from Youtube. It was posted by someone called 7generations with no explanation, and titled

"Singing Leonard Cohen's Anthem deep in the winter of 2010"

I don't know who these people are, but I totally love them:

 

 Take that, imaginary potted palm.

Comments

[The Tart's Kitchen]

Cornelia, you have hit the nail on the head. I don't know about you, but it usually just comes out of absolutely nowhere, hangs around for a couple of days, and then WHAM, I'm back to normal. How fortunate we are for fantastic friends who do everything they can to pull us out of it.

[gaylin in vancouver]

I don't know much about how helpful a shrink might be, I go to a psychologist and it has helped a lot. Recently I have been learning the difference between endurance and resiliency. Huh, they are not the same thing.

I know about damage,
multi-generational sexual abuse
brother dead at 16
family alcoholism
and no help for any of it, or talk of any of it please, we are 'nice' people.

And yep, sometimes it does show up and smack me around some. I totally get the what am I doing at this party feeling as well. I feel like that most everywhere. That is why I like my own company, at home, in the quiet where I can breathe.

I am totally lacking in peer-age friends, that is why I come to TLC, you my peeps. If I lived anywhere near wherever it is that you live, I would borrow Andi, be her friend, feed her cookies, talk her ears off . . .

[Lindy]

As one who has never felt what you feel, you are helping me to understand the funks I see in my friends at times. Sure I get blue days and bad hair days, but for me a good night's sleep helps it to go away. But, will I ever get published... with or without the f-word? Maybe a little angst would help.

[Reine]

I knew there was a reason I liked you, Cornelia.

[Reine]

And I still like you. More than ever, now.

[marie]

You have a profound gift for sharing feelings and the images here speak to us in a most touching manner.
I suppose the phrase "With a little help from my friends" might be appropriate today but when it comes right down to it what is life without the connection between others and ourselves. God Bless, Cornelia.

[Reine]

One night I dreamed that I lived in a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. Leonard Cohen was on the horizon, singing "Hallelujah."

[Reine]

If you lived in Cambridge then, I lived there at the same time. Was that the shop on Mass. Ave. sort of, I think, near Ferranti Dege (RIP)?

[Josh]

Well, living in Delaware and all, I'm a big proponent of better living through chemicals. Those SSRI's sure flatten out the swings, and that increased-chance-of-suicide side effect hasn't really happened yet. Ambien is also a big help, especially when I have a lot of laundry to do, which I do in my sleep from time to time.

Now, if only I could get into a relationship with someone I would like to have as a companion and sexual partner, and if only I could do it like the last one, almost exactly 25 years ago, i.e., by falling into it and not actually trying at all. I am still contemplating sending her a anniversary card, even though, you know, we've been divorced for over a year. After all, she picked out my apartment, which is literally whispering distance from the house. (I intend to talk to the dog from my 10th floor balcony when she is out in the back yard, which I can see, without a telescope, from my balcony.)

[Reine]

Ah, Josh. Wish you the best. Do keep on.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

This is a tremendous blog.

My husband introduced me to Leonard Cohen, and there are times that I just cannot listen to him - his voice carries such weight and pain that I can't feel the part that reminds us about the light.

Have you seen the movie/documentary about him? We saw it in a local arthouse theater several years ago, and it was wonderful. Not enough Leonard performing (they had others paying tribute) but a nice look into his very simple lifestyle. He wrestles with each word - some songs take him years to write. I recommend it to you!

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

Just looked it up and the movie is called "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" - here is the link from IMBD:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478197/

[William]

Cornelia, you just went so far beyond brilliant! Amazing? Incredible? Pick whichever word you want...:)

[Karen in Ohio]

Good God, girl, you can write. Reading anything of yours makes me feel as though I've been pulled through a wormhole, backwards. You wring the emotions out, you do.

Word I had to look up: omphaloskepsis.

Everyone has angst, but not everyone puts it to use as well as you do. "The Tart's Kitchen" is my daughter, and I hope she's able to do as good a job in managing the dark as you do.

[judy merrill larsen]

Wow. Just wow.

I need to go write down those lines. Or etch them somewhere so I can always find them.

[Nancy Pickard]

Cornelia, you have the most wonderful vocabulary. I just wish you didn't have to personally endure the meaning of some of the words. Love to you.

[Margaret Maron]

The very fact that you wrote those words, in gold, on a chair you'll see every day is life-affirming.

[Laura (in PA)]

As I sat reading this, I could hear my daughter's iPod upstairs playing "Hallelujah". I have tears in my eyes at the breakfast table.

I wish I had words that express my feelings as well as you express yours. I don't, but man, my feelings runneth over. I hope that man of yours continues to be the mensch you deserve.

[Carolyn Boudreau]

I just finished reading a book by Elaine Aron Ph.D called The Highly Sensitive Person. It is going to be a game changer for me. Just sayin'

[Maryann Mercer]

So it's all right that I just copied those words and posted them as my status for today, yes? A couple of longtime friends are dealing with unfixable things these days, and I don't really know how to help except to be there. That "perfect offering" syndrome, y'know? Sometimes being there has to be enough. Like Kathy, I can't always listen to Cohen...but Hallelujah is one of my favorite songs...there's an uplifting of the spirit for me in that music. Having done the therapy thing to try and work out some stuff (very briefly because the doctor never really wanted to talk about anything but the year I was five...go figure), I think I'm better off channeling my angst into writing...except that it comes out quirky and funny. A good thing?
Thanks for the Saturday morning wake-up, Cornelia. :o)

[Storyteller Mary]

Thanks for honestly facing those demons that try to torment.
It's amazing how much help is just waiting for us to reach out for it. Back in my newly-divorced days, I was telling a a few fellow Prudential agents (all guys, I was the first woman agent in that office) that I was fine most of the time but that sometimes sadness hit me in the middle of the night when there was no one to talk to. Five of the six said, in unison, "you could call me." These were not best buddies, just work colleagues, but they were sincere in caring.
Yesterday I stopped at a neighbor's house because her mailbox was open. I decided to take the damp mail to her door, since I was out of the car anyway. She fed me delicious soup and said that she hadn't realized how much she and her mother needed company right at that moment. . . accident? maybe not . . .

[Kaye Barley]

Every time I think I've read the most powerful thing you could possibly write, you top it. oh sweetie, I'm going to quote Nancy here because she said it so perfectly, "I wish so badly that you didn't have to personally endure the meaning of some of the words. Love to you." Thinking about you and smiling because you have the incredible Andi (and she has you).

[Harley]

My big sister introduced me to Leonard Cohen when she was off living in Haight Ashbury and I was back in Nebraska undergoing adolescence. I was the only 14-year old at my farm school singing "Suzanne." This whole blog is singing my song.

And Phil Ochs. Another not-exactly-Pat-Boone kind of singer/songwriter.

Cornelia, it may be, as someone (who was it?) says, "hell is other people" but then heaven is art, and poetry, and friends -- and this morning, for me, it's you.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Cornelia, I would play that video, I would, but I would cry. (I lived on tea and oranges for about a month in college, because that's what Suzanne did.)

Love you love you love you--you are amazingnly amazing.

[Fran]

Ah sweetie, Andi's not the only one who wishes you lived next door. Lillian and I miss you every single day.

I've been reading a lot of Lisa Gardner's stuff lately, and she has made me realize that there's a terrible weight and expectation that comes with surviving. That simply surviving the crap isn't enough -- that people turn to survivors as touchstones of strength, which is almost harder to bear than actually surviving.

I get that. Expectations can weight you down like rocks on your soul.

But know that we love you, absolutely and with no reservations, urchin or glam-puss. You're our Cornelia, now and always.

[Harley]

p.s. your shrink is lucky to have you.

[Tom]

Glad you're here, Cornelia (and Harley's right, that's one lucky M.D.).

[Brunonia]

You are cursed with brilliance, I think. It's what we pray for as writers, to understand all that is human. I wish you easier and more joyful times, which no doubt will come, but I also thank you for finding the words to express what it feels like to crouch behind that lone potted palm.

[Reine]

I love you. " Take that, imaginary potted palm."

[Cornelia Read]

O, dear Tart's Kitchen/daughter of Karen in O... yeah, exactly. How very, very fortunate we are despite the numerous sneaky WHAMs life sidearms at us. My friends are like... manna... nirvana... ambrosia... I am fucking well blessed with a tribe of fine people who go both long and deep. And are really, really smart and funny, on top of their already breathtakingly awesome Bodhisattva-ness. I'm so glad you have that too.

gaylin, there's a difference between endurance and resiliency? WOW! That sounds like a mega-profound distinction to understand. Would love to hear more, if you'd be willing to explain. I dream of finding a shrink/therapist/whatever-person who could toss me at least the kindling-and-wadded-up-newspapers of insight (and a couple of matches, what the hell), but so far... sigh. And I've spent time with, let's see--eleven of them over the years, starting when I was eighteen. Sporadically, but I feel like I've made an effort. And I have only two peer-peeps locally, at the moment. I totally get that. Andi's in Seattle, so WAY closer to you than to me geographically. She likes cookies, too. But also, I am a strong believer in virtual tribes who gather around the well together via the internets. Powerful shit, how we find and sustain one another, even through the ether. And, oh, 'nice' people! My grandfather Thurston's favorite phrase... plus he had a stammer, so it was often "......*nice* people... *don't*." I told that to a friend the other day who said, "'don't' what?" and I said, "don't *anything.* Feel, think, act, live, dream..."

Lindy, you are a very fine friend to want to know what those who matter to you are going through if you don't get these funks yourself. And, oh, man--the curative powers of a good night of sleep are profound indeed. I am obviously still catching up for those weepy nights over the weekend,as I went right back to bed after driving my daughter to campus this morning and slept solidly until two, which is why I am so late in responding to comments. And as for angst-- I don't think it takes angst to write, but empathy is essential. And you obviously have that in spades and hearts and diamonds and clubs, so go for it!

Reine, my sweet:

*I like you, too, now more than ever.
*I want THAT dream, with Leonard as soundtrack and Georgia in charge of scenery. Fucking AWESOME! You lucky bah-stahd.
* YES! THAT EXACT FRAMING SHOP!!

Josh, thank you for being a Delawarean and supporting Pharmaceutiania. I think maybe your state flag should have helpful pills on it or something. I wish Ambien worked for me, but it just wires me wide awake for some reason. Laundry in your sleep! Yikes! Although that could be helpful, I suppose. My friend Candace apparently makes herself sandwiches on Ambien, and then goes back to bed before she eats them. "Usually peanut butter and jellies. Which I don't even really like. I find them on the counter in the morning." And, holy shit, we are total twins on the wished-for and ex- relationship front right now. Almost exactly twenty-five years ago, I fell into one the just worked with no bullshit, and kind of bloomed and was solid and sustaining for a good long while. And then exploded so, so badly, out of nowhere. I feel like I know as little about why it worked as why it stopped. And I have no idea how to find another one. Just flailing at the moment. We shall prevail, though, you and I. God damn it.

Kathy, thank you! And the Leonard doc is online on Netflix, so I will watch it. I used to have a tribute CD called "I'm Your Man" in the early Nineties, which was lovely. All kinds of cover versions. And much of his music I have to be very careful about listening to: Famous Blue Raincoat, Last Year's Man, Who By Fire... but Sisters of Mercy and Hallelujah and Chelsea Hotel #2 are uplifting if I'm not in complete damage mode. Suzanne just kills me, more because I first listened to Judy Collins' cover thousands of times as a little kid and it just brings home the loss of so much--that house, that decade, my family. All the single moms, each of them a Suzanne. Gah!

William, you gladden the potsherds of my tiny black heart, thank you!

[Reine]

"*I want THAT dream, with Leonard as soundtrack and Georgia in charge of scenery. Fucking AWESOME! You lucky bah-stahd."
You can visit me there anytime. There or Mr. Bartley's. Or as we knew it then, Mr. & Mrs. Bartley's. At the table by the skillet with the egg frying. Sunny side up. I'll be sipping a lime rickey and eating string fries.

[Cornelia Read]

Karen in O, you have a lovely daughter (cue Herman's Hermits, "Mrs. Jones...") and I'm so glad you're willing to come flying backwards through the damn wormhole with me--thank you!

judy, so glad you liked them. I gave that chair away. Time to paint another one...

Nancy P, thank you. I am honored that you think so, truly madly deeply.

Margaret, I gave the chair away to someone who needed it more at the time, but it's time to paint another, as I just told Judy.

Oh, Laura--now you went and made me cry too. That's so lovely, to hear Hallelujah at a distance in the morning, being played by someone you love. The man is a world-class mensch, and a fine friend. I'm just working on the whole "be here now" thing. Always hard for me.

Carolyn, I am SO getting that book, thank you!

Maryann, my status is your status. Or Leonard's, I guess. I think he would want us to share? I hope he would.

Storyteller M, NO ACCIDENT! And I may have to switch to Prudential, now. Speaking of mensches. How wonderful!! And damp mail and soup... perfect.

Oh, Kaye... you are so, so lovely. Thank you.

Harley... oh, Phil Ochs! "When I'm Gone" was such a thing to listen to, this year--considering all the parallels. And "I Ain't Marching Anymore" always moves me to tears. My dorm parents turned me on to him, Sophomore year of high school. I still love them. And I kind of think hell is me when I withdraw, and heaven is other people. The ones I love. Maybe Limbo is other annoying people. And the DMV.

Oh, Hank... tea and oranges. Just those three words and I'm back in my living room in Carmel, dancing in circles aged about seven and looking out over the Pacific through the triptych of arched front windows, green-black cypress branches framing the view on a foggy day. *Shit.* I adore you.

Fran... you and Lillian are manna people, for me. I take such strength from that leather jacket, and knowing why you gave it to me. Sometimes I just open the front closet and pet it. Surviving is really hard, but glorious. And we all get to grab hands and dance on the other side of it, to each of our favorite songs, all at once.

[Reine]

erase the fries... onion strings.

[Cornelia Read]

p.s. Harley, and I'm lucky to have his prescription pad.

Tom, glad YOU'RE here, for all of us...

Oh, Brunonia... thank you. For every word of that. So much.

Reine--Mr. Bartley's? How did I spend so much time in Cambridge and miss THAT? Might have to drive down right now...

[Reine]

Oh, you MUST!!!

[Elaine Viets]

Amazing. Not going to add more words. You've already said it better.

[Cornelia Read]

Thank you so very much, Elaine.

[gaylin in vancouver]

Reading the comments made me decide to put Bif Naked's 'I love myself today' on iTunes.

Cornelia, it was a big revelation at the psychologists office this week to realize that while I am a very resilient adult, what I though of as resiliency when I was a child was sheer endurance. My brother died on Labour Day 1971, school started the next day and I went. Because it was the first day of school and I was a good girl, so Grade 7 started right on time. I am working on being proud of myself for turning endurance into resiliency as an adult. My psychologist uses EMDR and while I don't understand exactly how it works, I don't care because it does. A combination of talking (crying) and EMDR for the last year has made a huge difference. I have also done a lot of various types of counselling, groups, 12 step programs etc over the years and this last year has been the biggest help.

When my brother died, there was no funeral or memorial. My mom was extremely depressed and wasn't going to let anyone see her that way so no closure at all, for any of us. He died at 16 of leukemia and when it would have been his 50th birthday in 2005 I shaved my head for charity, raised $1400 for kids with cancer.

I have been sort of fortunate in that I have been on sick leave since last May, so I have had time to recover from being ill and to use this time to see the wonderful Trisha the psychologist and heal my heart as well.

I wish I had your way with words to write about all of this. I appreciate your writing so much. Thank you.

[Cornelia Read]

gaylin, thank you so much for explaining the difference. A huge help.

I actually did a lot of EMDR in Boulder, about 14 years ago. I forgot about that shrink--a hypnotist, actually--and she's the only reason I can get on airplanes happily now without throwing up for three days first. Huge improvement.

We need to have a memorial for your brother. I spent a year hanging out with a brother and sister who moved into the house across the street from us in the early seventies, while the brother, Brian Richter, was dying of leukemia. The family had come from Chicago so he could go to the children's hospital at Stanford for treatment, about an hour north of Carmel. He was eight. I still miss him a lot. Talk about resilience... and endurance.

[Keith]

Amen.

[Reine]

Gaylin, yes... god.

[gaylin in vancouver]

Cornelia, I am sorry to hear about your friend Brian. Losing people definitely leaves holes in hearts. I sometimes wonder how different life would have been had my brother lived, he was the oldest, the hero child, the family star. The light in my family dimmed greatly when he died. Survivors guilt is another big issue for me.

I just went out for a lovely walk 5 km in the almost sunshine, with spring flowers, trees starting to bloom, people out walking happy toddlers. What a difference a day makes.

If we ever do get to have a TLC gathering, I think we could all have small memorials or alters for people who died. I think we should have a gathering somewhere near where Reine lives so we can all see her new wheelchair!

[Reine]

Gaylin, dear one, you are so lovely.

[Storyteller Mary]

Oh, Cornelia, the stories you have elicited today . . .
Gaylin, hugs and admiration for both your resiliency and endurance; I think we need both (today I'm bouncing back from an unpleasant encounter earlier this week, and enduring a cold).
You have reminded me also of the year my mother died, just days before the beginning of the school year. I knew how proud she was of my work as a teacher, and didn't want to mope anyway (we'd endured years of fighting cancer) so I went to opening meetings and set up my room, and we had the memorial service on a Saturday.
At the same time, one of my students had also lost his mother. He had been in my class the year before, and we both knew we were fellow travelers, though, typical boy, he didn't say much except, "I'm fine."
For a couple of weeks he turned in no work, and I watched and waited. Just before progress reports, I slipped back to beside his desk (a researcher on PBS said that males prefer talking side by side, not face to face). I gave him a list of past assignments and asked, "Do you feel ready to do some work?" "You mean you'll take late work? It's not allowed, is it?" I told him he was a special case, and if anyone complained of favoritism, I'd tell them that we were members of a private club we never asked to join.
That was one time I was very glad I'd decided to be a teacher.

[Terry Shames]

Jeez, Cornelia, I'm reading this at 11:30 at night, and have to root around and find some vodka so i can read it again.

[Barbara Fister]

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing your cracks and letting the light get in. Craquelure is lovely.

[lil Gluckstern]

I don't know if you'll see this, I'm a little late. You all are so wonderful, but Cornelia, you are really amazing in how you describe those terribly lonely and lost feelings. You describe the darkness of isolation, and loss so well. I'm only sorry you had to endure so much. Your writing and indomitable grace enlighten my day, and Leonard Cohen is a master at evoking both joy and terrible pain. Take all the care you get.
P. S. I'm a therapist, and you just might be starting to trust that man of yours with yourself, just sayin' and I could be wrong....

[Cornelia Read]

lil, thank you. Truly.

And as to your p.s. ... yikes!

[Ariel]

I feel exactly the way Andi does. Tell her she'll have to mudwrestle for you, babe.

[Cornelia Read]

What would Mr. Eggert think, dear Ari?

[bags mulberry]

I like ANMJ on FB & just subscribed to the email feed! :)