GREETINGS FROM GUATEMALA

Am settled in for the next 8 weeks. Trying not to fall down in the cobblestone streets and uneven sidewalks. It's been colder here than usual, but there are more hours of daylight and plenty of sunshine each day. The nylon windbreaker I brought for wearing to and from the airport in Seattle is now a 24/7 garment. I even wear it to bed over my nitegown! Guatemala not only has no central heating, it has no heating at all (except in the fancier hotels).

Fortunately I packed a small space heater down here some years ago and my friend Sarah stores it for me when I'm gone. It's been chugging its little heart out every night. My days are busy with important things like Scrabble with John, and lunch out with other friends.

Hope you all are warm and happy for the new year Love Jean

THE DICTIONARY CHRISTMAS


In September 1944 a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman had stopped by to show our family his treasures none of which we could afford. But there had been this library-sized dictionary weighing at least ten pounds that I coveted in a silent and intense way. Even though we were poor, I may have mentioned something about how useful it would be for the whole family.

That family consisted of my mother, my younger brother and me. We lived at 355 Hillside Avenue in Santa Fe, New Mexico just beyond where the pavement ended. We were poorer than most of the kids in the private religious school I attended, but not poorer than many others in the area. I had just turned nine and Christmas was mostly the lackluster school pageant and gift exchange.

At home a pinyon tree sat in a corner of the living room flanked by two small painted wooded Mexican chairs with rattan seats. The previous Christmas the chairs had held a doll for me that I neglected and may have lost, and a bear for my brother that he still slept with. We had decorated the tree one evening, stringing white popcorn together with a large needle and thread to drape back and forth across the branches; we also pasted construction paper strips in bargain-table colors (no red and odd shades of green) into loops to make chains. As the twenty-fifth approached a few tiny packages and Christmas cards clustered around the white sheet at the base of the tree.

Then one day I saw that my little chair held a huge rectangular gift, wrapped in shiny pink paper. My mother loved anything pink. I knew the gift was for me and I hoped I knew what it was. Maybe, just maybe…

So, for the first time I could remember, I eagerly anticipated Christmas morning.

Two days before Christmas, my mother of gypsy habits and rampant impulsivity had heard that the geometry teacher from school was driving to Los Angeles for Christmas. Suddenly she decided we just had to visit her sister Ruth who lived there with her family. Mr.Chidester was a hapless soul who never had a chance once my charming mother set her sights on his transporting us to California.

In a scant hour we were packed up and picked up and off on another of her last-minute adventures. Neither my brother nor I had even met Auntie Ruth; we didn’t know our cousins or uncle; we did not want to leave home. “It’ll be such fun,” my mother kept saying.

I remember us driving straight through, stopping only once for several tedious hours for Mr. Chidester to take a nap. .

On Christmas Eve day we arrived on my aunt’s big fancy house doorstep. Of course Mother had not bothered to inform Auntie Ruth that we were coming. I felt the terrible awkwardness of it all as Auntie Ruth said and did all the right things, but her lack of sincerity was palpable to my sensitivities.

At least my cousin Joanie, six months older than me, was honest in her impatience with her mother’s “poor relations.” I suffered through the fuss to get us settled for the two nights we would be there and the patronizing small talk of the dinner table. The following morning as they opened their lavish display of presents, my mother, my brother and I received hastily wrapped gifts. We had brought nothing for them, of course. All I could think about was my big shiny pink package waiting at home.

My present from Joanie was a copy of Heidi. Although a book was normally the best sort of present for me, as I opened it up I saw a bookplate on the inside front cover declaring, “This book belongs to Joanie Stanton.” My humiliation was complete when I saw her smirking face. I said the obligatory thank-you, but couldn’t wait to leave the next morning.

Mr.Chidester’s car finally liberated me from the horror of family obligations. The drive home was still tedious but made bearable by putting distance between Joanie and I. It seemed as if we had been gone weeks instead of just four days

Home at last, the first thing I did was to tear into the shiny pink paper despite my mother’s entreaty to be more careful and save the paper for next year Of course I got my much beloved Webster’s Unabridged dictionary. Pure joy! And I’ve been wallowing in words ever since.

At the time I couldn’t understand how come my worst Christmas ever had produced the best gift of my whole life. Later I realized that it was a perfect real life mixed bag-- bittersweet and satisfying all glopped together.

THREE MINUTES A DAY


In wintertime I am sad, so SAD. My life is complicated by SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – where the lack of daylight pushes me inward towards hibernation. The lack of daylight conspires with the lack of sunlight to increase depressive tendencies. So I’m at the mercy of both the rotation of the earth, and the weather.

The rotation of the earth is totally reliable and predictable; the weather is capricious and fickle. However, once the winter solstice occurs around December twenty-first, there begins a slow creeping towards spring, and hope begins to bloom in my heart.

According to the weatherman, we get three more minutes of daylight every day no matter what the weather. Not much to begin with, but it adds up. Three more minutes of daylight every day means over twenty minutes a week that becomes an hour and a half per month. So eight hours of thin dreary daylight in early January turns into a full-bodied extravaganza of DAYLIGHT for over sixteen hours daily by the summer solstice around June twenty-first.

I comfort myself with those three minutes through January and February. I also appreciate every scrap of anemic sunshine over the winter months; the sun comes out and I scream, “YES!” If I’m driving, I pump my fist, yes; otherwise I do a little sun dance. If the sun stays out long enough for me to bask, I bask blissfully.

I usually don’t really begin to feel better until near the spring equinox in mid-March when I stop counting the minutes. By April, sunshine and daylight pull me from bed earlier and earlier each day. I have more energy. Suddenly, I’m an optimist.

But in January I count the minutes like pennies in a piggybank. One of the ways I have dealt with SAD in past winters is to go to Guatemala for two or three months where sunshine and good friends who play Scrabble help to pass the time. When I must stay here I do have a lamp that simulates daylight; I increase my vitamin intake; I see my therapist more frequently. All these things help, but I never stop pining away for true spring.

Some winter days seem interminable, but, paradoxically, I never have enough time to do everything I want. On the other hand, the weeks and months and even seasons often seem to speed by. All except for winter with its three-minutes, three-minutes, three minutes of daylight rationing. Hang on! Here comes another three! Can spring be far behind?

CHANNELING CAT


I’m not much of an animal person, but I sometimes exhibit a cat persona.

In the late afternoon or early evening, depending on the time of year, when the sun streams through my bedroom window and pools on my bed I seldom pass up the chance to curl up and float -- basking like a cat on a windowsill.

And although I could stand to lose a pound or fifty, I, as my long-suffering friends can attest, am a finicky eater. I’m allergic to garlic and fish; I hate onions and have become expert at picking onion fragments out of otherwise acceptable meals – an Asbergerish obsession. I also find the texture of some foods can be a deal-breaker. Yogurt, for example, is just plain icky; I’m creeped out by slimy things.

At a potluck if I can’t easily identify the ingredients in a dish I will ask others to sample it for me. When I can I bring my own food taster; Morris, the cat, would expect no less. Those friends who are cooks often volunteer to prepare a separate batch for me sans garlic, sans onions. I do try to be properly appreciative, but I do miss the onion-sorting-out process. Nobody seems to understand that I like to play with my food.

Like many cats, I can be civil, but it would be a mistake to call me civilized. I usually have soft paws, but have not been declawed. You cross me at your peril.

I’ve been told I have an aloof manner and an abrupt style. In any social situation there comes a point where I’m simply done. When that happens there are no niceties in my leave taking. I just turn my back and. cat-like, slip away

Like most cats I have my idiosyncrasies. I’m fond of water and I love swimming. Perhaps I more resemble an otter in that regard.

People have often suggested I get an animal, a cat perhaps, as a companion in my old age. Two reasons it never was a viable idea: One: I was responsible for raising four kids; I no longer want that kind of responsibility -- or any kind of responsibility. Two: I don’t want to share the rest of my life with a feline scene stealer. I have enough trouble getting the proper sort of attention for myself as it is.

I once saw a reader board that announced, “Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.” I’m currently interviewing for staff positions.

MARKING TIME


Mark came to visit me a few days ago. Mark is the second oldest of my seven grandchildren, and the one person these days who really has time for me.

He’s someone I can comfortably be myself with. No walking on eggs. No fear that he might feel embarrassed by me -- just a sense of mutual okayness and a willingness to tell each other the truth.

Mark is twenty-three and kind. He never mentions it when I doze off for a minute or two in the middle of a Scrabble game; he accommodates himself to my slow pace as we walk; he answers my stupid computer questions without making me feel stupid.

Mark had a hard time of it growing up, but when Mark is unhappy he doesn’t whine about it. What I desperately want for Mark, of course, is the same thing any halfway decent parent or grandparent wants for their children or grandchildren. I want Mark to be happy.

And I can no more tell him how to do that than my mother could do so for me. I was near forty when I learned how to make myself happy. And, accepted that it was my job to do so.

I remember Mark as a reasonably happy toddler some twenty years ago. At that time I was living in what Mark’s mother called “the mother-in-law driveway” outside their home. Mark would come out to visit me and I’d sit him on my lap where I introduced him to the brightly colored DOS computer games that I enjoyed – Cosmo, Duke Nukem, Word Rescue.

Mark’s parents, my oldest son and daughter-in-law, were less than happy with me about turning him on to the seductive world of computer games. My own mother never did get over the idea that the comic books I feasted on every Saturday morning in Dickie Pitman’s garage would corrupt me in some sinister way. Perhaps they did.

Anyway, as it turned out, Mark makes his living these days working in computer gaming systems. And he has become my go-to guy for computer problems. I probably take advantage of him for that.

But when we’re together we talk about books and politics and the difficulty of finding the right sort of friends. Not just someone to play Scrabble or Warcraft with, but someone worthy of sharing our honest feelings with.

After Mark left I was wondering if he knew how much I appreciated him in my life.

So I wrote this piece to tell him.

A HALLOWEENIE ROAST


I hate Halloween! If I had a porch light I’d keep it dark on All Hallow’s Eve. I’d outlaw candy during the whole month of October. I might even ban pumpkins.

I know it’s un-American to have a “Boo Humbug” attitude. Even Christmas has its “Bah Humbug” champions in Scrooge and the Grinch. But Halloween, which started out as a perfectly respectable pagan harvest festival, was first co-opted by The Church into All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. Here in America Halloween has been further co-opted by Hallmark and Disney into the orgy of materialism we have today. Halloween is now big business, second only to Christmas for compulsory holiday spending.

Halloween’s “trick-or-treat” rituals teach our children to be extortionists or petty terrorists. Greed is encouraged as some parents drive their children to affluent neighborhoods to acquire better loot. We lament childhood obesity yet feel obliged to spend money we can’t afford on empty calories for our youngsters. We costume our children in store-bought images of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the devil, yet are horrified and bewildered when our teenagers identify themselves as Goths and venerate vampires.

I’m not against childhood fun and “Let’s Pretend” and dressing up. I’ll even admit to having a soft spot in my heart for a really good pirate, as well as enjoying Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Years ago when my children were young I usually went along with their Halloween plans. I helped create costumes and carve pumpkins; I walked or drove around on trick-or-treat excursions. I grudgingly bought candy to hand out to strangers.

Back when I was a child myself our family didn’t do Halloween; we had a harvest fest at our church school instead. This anemic get-together was eclipsed by Santa Fe’s weeklong fiestas that have been celebrated since 1712. The best part for me was the giant marionette effigy called Zozobra, known as “Old Man Gloom”. Zozobra was burned the second week of September to conclude the celebrations, and, as he writhed in the great bonfire with spooky shrieks and moans, all the gloomy worries and troubles of the previous year were symbolically burned up in the flames.

The burning of Zozobra is a tradition both exciting and practical, unlike our North American Halloweens. After I began traveling in Latin America I discovered other autumn traditional events equally interesting and integral to their culture.

In Mexico November 1st is known as El Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day) and November 2nd is El Dia de los Muertos (All Souls Day). El Dia de los Muertos is more commonly known as The Day of the Dead and it is believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit with their living relatives to eat and drink and be merry as they did when they were alive. The whole family treks to the graveyard with favorite treats of their departed family members and they have a picnic together in loving memory.
In Guatemala The Day of the Dead is celebrated similarly, but with the addition of plenty of firecrackers. As a matter of fact any day in Guatemala is an occasion for much noise and firecrackers. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the fact that Guatemala has known civil war much of the last hundred years, and shooting off guns was common.

Most autumn celebrations are full of noise and light – firecrackers to scare away evil spirits; bonfires to warm living souls before the cold and dark of winter settles in our bones. I have no trouble with these rationales for Halloween.

Jack-o-lanterns are fun and pretty harmless; I appreciate the creativity and whimsy. The rest of Halloween I find disturbing without reason. Halloween encourages the worship of materialistic false idols.

Give me Zozobra who still suffers for our sins every September in Santa Fe, or a cheerful Day of the Dead family picnic in the candle-lit graveyard.

I’ve recently become intrigued with a weeklong Labor Day event in Black Rock, Nevada. It’s called Burning Man and each year over 40,000 people come together in the desert to create a temporary community that bans commercial transactions and encourages barter. Burning Man sounds like a merger between Woodstock and Zozobra. My kind of hedonistic and artistic expression.

I’ve just added, “attend Burning Man” to my bucket list.

HIDING OUT

by Roberta Jean Bryant


Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico I had two favorite hideouts. Indoors I’d take a blanket and pillow and a stack of library books into the high top shelf of my bedroom closet where I’d have to shinny up the doorframe to gain access. Outdoors I’d take my books and climb up into the backyard tree house -- both happy places where my mother couldn’t find me.

Hideouts have been an integral part of my life ever since. As a teenager my mother was running Skyview Lodge (an early version of a motel for summertime tourists). It was two stories tall with the Southwestern pueblo-style architecture that featured a flat tarpaper roof. My books and I would migrate up top when there were chores to be done.

When I was eighteen I rode along with a friend and her mother to Chicago. After they left I stayed for my first solitary travel adventure. I got a trainee job and hid out in a Michigan Avenue pea-soup-green basement room where I shared a bathroom with the tailor shop down the hall.

The next year in college at Highlands University in Las Vegas (New Mexico not Nevada) I had to live in the women’s dorm with a doors-locked curfew at ten o’clock. I’d sneak out of the dorm several nights a week to hide out at Storrie Lake with my boyfriend and a shared sleeping bag.

We later married and my hiding places grew increasingly desperate in my increasingly manic-depressive life. In manic phase I’d shriek at the children and leave the house to huddle around the corner near the garbage cans until I could “get a grip.” Depression was a gray hideout all its own.

Years later when I began to earn money from my writing I made a down payment on a large station wagon to ferry the kids around in. The station wagon became my favorite hideout and my symbol of independence.

Divorce brought me a nine months reprieve from daily motherhood and a place of my own at the Blue Ridge apartments; finally, a place of my own, and no need to hide anywhere else. Then, a return to motherhood, and my car became my refuge once again; my car, and my queen-sized bed -- half for sleeping and half serving as a makeshift desk.

My next move was into a small office suite on Eastlake just north of downtown Seattle. I decided to temporarily sleep on a futon in the larger room where I held classes until I could afford a separate apartment of my own. With the doors locked and the drapes closed I had once again a place of my own. Eight and a half years later I discovered that temporary had obviously meant eight and a half years of camping out in my office.

Deciding to actively promote my second book, I closed down my office, put furniture in storage, and bought a small RV that functioned as a hideout on wheels. I became an itinerant teacher, working my way down the west coast presenting workshops in the major cities, attending American Book Association conventions, doing book signings in independent bookstores.

I figured if I couldn’t eke out a living, or got tired of all the driving and phoning, I could always return to Seattle and open up an office again. I knew how to do that. In the meantime I was living out my teenage dream of traveling for a living. My hope chest had been a cardboard carton full of travel folders. Marriage and children had sidetracked me for several decades. When I was back in the Seattle area I parked in what my oldest daughter-in-law called the “mother-in-law driveway.”

I loved my vagabond life. For twelve and a half years I loved my vagabond life. I finally had reached retirement age, was tired not so much of traveling as the upkeep and breakdowns of an aging vehicle, and put my name on a waiting list for senior housing.

My final hideout is my senior housing one-bedroom apartment; third-floor western exposure. All I see out my windows are trees and sky and occasional spectacular sunsets. People tell me the place is tiny, but having lived in a small RV for years, it still feels spacious to me. I feel like I’m living in the best of both the hideout worlds of my childhood. It’s clean and warm like my closet shelf, and hidden in the trees to give me a perfect tree house perspective.

FOOLS AND CHILDREN


They say God protects fools and children. It’s obvious to me that I’ve been operating as one or the other most of my life. After all, life is a risky business.

When I was thirteen I lobbied hard to come up to Washington state and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce. I talked her into hitchhiking from Marysville to Everett to ballet class once a week “I’m a good judge of character,” I told her.

When I was fourteen and back home again I used to sneak out of my window at night and ride over to the movie theater on the wrong side of town. I got creeped out a few times, but never frightened enough to stop.

When I was fifteen my mother, younger brother, baby half-brother and I were living in a primitive cabin on a cliff overlooking the Pacific north of Arcata, California. My brother, thirteen-and-a-half, and I had carved out a rough trail down the sandy bluff to the tiny beach 600 feet below. We talked my mother into going down with us for a picnic one day. I assured her I could carry baby Russell. “No problem,” I said. And so I climbed down and back supporting Russell on one hip while clinging to sketchy handholds and bushes. No problem.

At the age of seventeen, having just graduated high school, I traveled to Chicago on my own, found a trainee position, and a tiny basement apartment on Michigan Avenue, promptly got fired, and found a less demanding job as a waitress at Stouffer’s Tearoom. I also, on one of my late night walks, acquired a stalker who wanted to take me to Florida with him. I went home to my mother instead.

Marriage and motherhood tied me down for a few years, and I became an armchair traveler courtesy of the public library, but I never passed up any opportunity for adventure with or without the kids. I wore out a Chevy station wagon in those years.

After a divorce, travel was high on my list of priorities. I picked up hitchhikers on a trip back from Los Angeles (a story for another day). I racketed around the greater Seattle area to singles dances at night after the kids were in bed. I answered singles ads in The Weekly for a while, after which I taught an Experimental College class titled “Playing the Personals.”

On a trip to see a friend in Salishan on the Oregon coast I stopped my car on a steep driveway and had to step outside the car for a moment to push the buzzer to get the gate raised. As the car began slowly drifting backwards I flung the door open and myself inside just in time to brake to a stop. One of the scarier moments of my life!

Other than the trip down the bluff with my baby brother and hitchhiking with cousin Janyce most of my close calls only risked my own neck. Then I agreed to lead a small group of writers on a trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. As group leader I assumed responsibility for those who traveled with me, but did not understand how challenging that would be until I encouraged one young woman to ride the subway back to Chapultepec Park after a group excursion there one afternoon. I felt sure she could handle any problems, but four hours later when she still hadn’t returned I was in a torment of worry. After another hour and a half she returned happy and full of stories. “I knew you could do it,” I told her, vowing to be more cautious regarding other people in the future.

I should have understood from that experience how worried my children might be when I began traveling around the states and Canada all alone in a small RV, or took off at Christmastime to travel by local bus without reservations in Mexico and Guatemala. But I was as clueless as ever as I accumulated more adventures and close calls. I even left for seven weeks in South America without much of an itinerary and without any way for my kids to contact me. This was before the age of cell phones and e-mail, but my kids were busy with their own lives and it never occurred to me that it might be important to stay in touch.

Although these days I’d like to think I’m neither as foolish nor as childlike as I’ve been throughout most of my life, the feedback I get from family and friends suggests that I’m still more delusional than not. And when I lock my keys in the car, set off the smoke alarm regularly, or trip over the hem of my long skirt and fall down, it’s a good thing that I can trust God to continue to protect fools and children.

CONFESSIONS OF A SCRABBLE SLUT

by Roberta Jean Bryant


“You’re nothing but a Scrabble slut!” my friend Delilah remarked. “You’ll play Scrabble anywhere, anytime, with anybody.” Delilah likes stirring things up, using provocative language, always hoping for a good argument.

“Pretty much,” I cheerfully agreed, to her dismay.

Scrabble for me, I confess, is an addiction, an affliction, a passion, a joy. Although I’ve always been obsessed with words, Scrabble was just a fun game that I was pretty good at for a long time. And for years I was too busy earning a living to have time for much game playing.

After I stopped traveling and working fulltime I joined the National Scrabble Club on a whim. The weekly meeting of the local chapter was in the U district at night and I hated driving at night so I seldom attended. I read the monthly newsletter, found a Sunday afternoon meeting in Lake Forest Park and started playing three or four games a week there. I noticed that some of the Sunday afternoon players used what looked like a chess clock

I discovered that any relationship between Scrabble Club games and family Scrabble was in name only. This Scrabble had less to do with words than it did with
strategy and intimidation – like a combination of chess and poker – ultimately a numbers game. It was important to keep track of the power letters – the high-face-value J, K, Q, X, Z and the four versatile S tiles, to memorize the Q words such as qat -- which did not require a U, and to be bold about swapping puny letters in lieu of taking a turn. This new-to-me Scrabble was challenging and bloody serious. I loved it. And I didn’t always win. But with delight I always learned.

I found out about a tournament in Portland over the Labor Day weekend and decided, again on a whim, to sign up. At that time I was still living in a small motorhome so the travel and accommodations were no problem; I could sleep in the hotel parking lot. Playing Scrabble with a clock might be a problem. So, I managed to play a few games with the clock before Labor Day. To my dismay it added a level of distraction to my game because every time I completed a move I had to remember to hit the clock; this stopped dinging my quota of twenty-five minutes and started ticking away at my opponent’s minutes. Each game took fifty minutes total.

I’d always been a fast player, but this clock thing could bite me if I forgot to hit it and allowed my opponent to take his turn on my minutes which I did several times. I headed to Portland with both excitement and trepidation. I feared I’d be outclassed and outmaneuvered in every game of the twenty games scheduled. My goal was to play as many games as possible with people who were capable of beating me. I figured that covered everybody, so, how could I lose? At the very least I’d have the opportunity to learn a lot about this new Scrabble.

I was astonished to win over a third of the games I played, and I did learn a lot. I knew I was seriously hooked when I bought my own clock and began accumulating gear. I now own seven sets of letters known as “tiles,” four Scrabble boards, three tournament dictionaries or word lists, two travel Scrabble sets, one clock, and several instruction books for tournament players. Some of these things I actually won at tournaments.

These days I play as often as I can manage. I play games with Maven -- a computer Scrabble setup. I play several e-mail games daily with people I met at tournaments. I used to have a friend I played two games with nightly, and when I spend up to three months in Guatemala during the winter I have a group of friends I play with every day.

In addition, I keep attending nearby tournaments resolved to continue doing so as long as I am having fun. I never considered myself to be particularly competitive until I began playing tournament Scrabble. Now I know myself to be intensely competitive. And although winning is important, winning is still not as important as having fun and learning. I am perpetually in search of a worthy opponent -- someone who is as avid about playing as I am.

What I like best about my guilty pleasure is the fact that playing requires everything from me in every moment I spend at the board – all my problem solving ability, all my stamina, all my patience. What I get for this investment of time and energy is pure joy in being in the now. For years I failed to properly appreciate the value of a joyful pastime in my life, until I experienced a deep depression with no joy to be found anywhere.

Bottom line on this wordy subject? Have board; will travel. Scrabble, anyone?

KILLING POLLYANNA


Niceness is a plague upon women. Society places a premium on it -- deeming niceness as an unmitigated and necessary virtue. This has resulted in generations of women pretending to be nice at the expense of their own integrity; women violating their selves lest society do it for them.

Pollyanna, the heroine of a 1913 children’s lit classic, plays the glad game – always finding something in every situation to be glad about. The glad girl serves as the poster child for philosophical statements such as: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” “Silence is golden.” “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.” That one works really well if the goal is the accumulation of the most flies! Pollyannaism has been defined as “excessive optimism to the point of naivety; a refusal to accept facts.”

Back when I was married I tried to keep myself in line using the comparison game. Telling myself, at least I’m not as bad off as Louise. Or, regarding my husband, at least he doesn’t drink, or smoke, or beat me. I should be glad for my many blessings. Ignoring the fact that I was miserable. Ignoring his verbal abuse of me, and our children. Ignoring the fact that he had no respect for women in general, and no respect for me in particular.

At that time I had no way of sticking up for myself; I had grown up in a religion of lonely women; my mother simply took to her bed if things didn’t go her way. Besides it was a different time in society as a whole. One result for me was that I squandered my lifetime quota of pity on myself. Wallowing for months at a time, drowning in inarticulate grievances. Struck mute by abysmal self-esteem, and a sense of deserving no better.

There is something to be said for the power of positive thinking and all that crap, but not here, not now. I find it interesting these days that people are often more interested in my rants (of which this is an example) than they are in my occasional lyrical or descriptive efforts.

Ironically, ranting aside, I know myself to be a genuinely kind person – fundamentally good. I abhor hurting people’s feelings. Despite the fact that I’m uncomfortable when I’m accused of niceness in general, I admit that, in particular, my kind behavior can seem to fall into that category.

However, being referred to as “nice” these days is a damning-with-faint-praise cliché. Call me boring, call me rude, call me tacky, just don’t call me nice. For a long time I’ve known that, for women writers, niceness needs to take a backseat to truth telling anyway. Therefore, I think killing Pollyanna – that false niceness inside me still – is a continuing worthwhile goal.

TEN WAYS I KNOW I’M DEPRESSED

By Roberta Jean Bryant


1. It’s sunny outside
I know it’s sunny outside
I don’t care if it’s sunny outside

2. I hate myself
I hate everybody else
No exceptions

3. I see everything in shades of gray and black
even rainbows

4. I don’t feel like going to the library

5. I’d rather take a nap than play Scrabble

6. One of my children calls and I find a way to screw it up
I don’t even know what “it” refers to

7. I feel as if I’ve outlived my usefulness
and they’ll be sorry when I’m dead anyway
I don’t even know who “they” are

8. “Cheer up, things could be worse,” I tell myself.
So, I cheer up
and, sure enough, things get worse

9. I am not hungry
and I never stop eating

10. I’ve quit writing
even in my head






CAR TROUBLE

by Roberta Jean Bryant


My 1995 Toyota Corolla is important to me. It’s certainly my most valued possession--maybe more important to me than my small apartment. A recent visitor to my apartment asked me why I didn’t have a sofa even though I’ve lived there almost six years; I didn’t have a good answer for her; it had never occurred to me to question it. The previous twelve years I had lived in a small RV where I did not have running water. If I wanted hot water I heated it on the propane stove. Practically speaking I did not want to drive around with heavy gallons of water in the tank sloshing around. All these things represent choices—peculiar choices maybe, but choices nonetheless. I do love that my apartment has hot water on demand.

My car represents freedom, independence, and mobility. I am currently coping with decreased physical mobility, so being able to get around in my car is more significant than ever. I identify and over-identify with my car. Even though car insurance and maintenance takes a disproportionate amount of my social security income it’s worth it to me. More choices. I do not have any extra money for car repairs; I do budget for routine oil changes.

Several months ago my car was having problems; the heater didn’t work very well; the engine sounded like a 747 when I started it up; there was a funny smell inside. I thought maybe cold weather and old age were affecting the car the same way they did me. I talked to two of my sons about the problem. They agreed that fifteen years old is getting up there for a little car. I was feeling old myself and definitely had problems getting started on cold mornings.

I’d been wrestling with a seasonal depression--wondering if I’d outlived my usefulness. I began disasterizing. Maybe my car had outlived its usefulness. I worried about the car breaking down, getting stuck, or causing an accident. Not my usual frame of mind. Driving was anxiety producing; not fun. Despite all that, I did not take the car to my reliable mechanic, Dave. “I can’t afford it,” I told myself. My head was firmly stuck in the sands of denial. I kept putting off getting it checked out. Making no choice is a choice.

Weeks later when I finally took the car in for an oil change I mentioned the 747 factor. A short time later came the bad news. $800. worth of bad news; something about a water pump causing all the trouble, and them needing to keep my car overnight. And $800. “Maybe I could sell a kidney,” I said in a let’s-kill-the-messenger tone of voice. Not cool. Wrong choice of words, but I felt no choice about getting it repaired.

The good news was that I did trust my mechanic, and he gave me a loaner car. And I had a credit card that would handle the $800. It might take me the better part of a year to pay it off, but peace of mind was worth almost that much.

After ransoming my pride and joy, I tucked my credit card back in my wallet and prepared to drive away. “You know,” Dave remarked, “it’s a good little car; there’s a lot of life left in her.”

Dave’s words followed me as I drove home in the cold rain feeling better than I had for months. Maybe, I thought, there might be a lot of life left in me too. Suddenly I chose to feel better. $800. worth of instant therapy!

Quote of the Day

"Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them."
Alfred North Whitehead

GOOD MOURNING

by Roberta Jean Bryant


No it’s not a typo. I deliberately put the U in morning.

For a long time now I’ve had trouble with the standard greeting, “Good morning.” Even more trouble with its counterpart, “How are you?”

I understand intellectually that these pleasantries are social lubricants and probably necessary in a polite society. However, I have a literal mind and a perhaps misguided sense of honesty. Maybe I should have lived in a ruder society.

The problem is that it’s not always a good morning for me. And, more importantly, people do not want to hear my opinion about what kind of morning I think it is. So, there I am – always on the brink of spoiling somebody’s perfectly good day.

I’m trying out a new response to your good-morning greeting: “Good mourning, spelled with a U.” It covers the bases of social nicety. Most people will hear just the good-morning part, and all of us should be happy. The few that understand will know that I’m in mourning on account of the wretched day.

Back to, “How are you?” People don’t really want to know that either. When I complain I’m depressed or in mortal pain it’s a real conversation stopper. Equally distressing is when I’m happily burbling on about the glorious pink dogwoods blooming, and my fellow human being is in pain. Outside of my internist, nobody, me included, appreciates an impromptu organ recital.

I’m experimenting with ambiguous, but honest, responses to, “How are you?” Such as, “I’m ambulatory. I like the fact that many people don’t know what ambulatory means. These days I’m favoring, “I’ve been better.” Or, “I’ve been worse.” Covers the bases.

Now that you’re listening, I am also incensed by the ubiquitous, “Have a good day,” said upon departure. Who are you to tell me what kind of day to have? I do understand how snarky that sounds, but that’s how I feel. Not that you asked. Not that you really want to know.

My favorite daughter used to have the following outgoing message on her voice mail, “Have a good day… unless you have other plans.” Makes you think, don’t it? Works for me!

THE ZEN OF SWIMMING


If I had to specify a religion these days, I’d choose swimming; it’s the one thing I do religiously. I go every day to the old Foster High pool, which, when it was orphaned seven years ago, was adopted by the Tukwila Parks Department. The pool is on life-support due to budget problems, but Robert, the maintenance guru, keeps things working.

I prefer lane number one, to myself if possible, so I can do my Zen of swimming thing -- in search of momentary peace of mind, or relaxation, or inner wisdom. All good stuff this Zen of swimming.

When I mentioned this to someone in the pool she bristled at the word Zen, and, when I tried to explain that Zen was more a philosophy than a religion, and swimming was my time for meditation, she still seemed uncomfortable. “What’s the difference between prayer and meditation?” I asked.

She just shrugged. “I think that prayer is talking to God; meditation is listening for God,” I said. Her hostility slightly mollified, I returned to dogpaddling in my lane trying to listen.

There I sought to merge with the water, with the flow, with the now. I tried to ignore the weather, transcend the water temperature, outswim my chattering monkey mind. Listening, listening, listening.

Listening is difficult when the pool gets crowded. There’s my nemesis,“The Splasher,” whose aggressive swim strokes disturb everyone’s measured laps. There’s the ladies who swim to socialize that arrive in couples or groups who-must–not-be-split-apart; they crowd into anyone’s lane with their chatter, chatter, chatter. In the summertime there’s pods of shrieking children.

Those are the times I get to practice my defensive swimming, and my patience, or a colorful variety of swear words, often in a foreign language. One of the best things about swimming is they can’t tell when you’re crying

At one time when I had a church to attend, it was always a hassle to get there at all. I’d have to get three or four sleepy preschoolers washed and dressed for Sunday school. I almost never felt like going, but was almost always glad that I’d gone.

Swimming is like that for me, especially in the wintertime. “Too dark, too wet, too cold,” – my favorite winter rant, and I never feel like going. But I go seven days a week religiously, and invariably I’m always glad I’ve gone.

A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND


Trying to explain manic-depression to someone who hasn’t experienced it is like trying to explain Mozart to someone who is tone deaf. But I’m going to try.

It was 1992. I’d just quit my job, bought a small used RV, and planned to spend the following six months traveling and writing. I’d saved a little money, had a handful of zero-balance credit cards for an emergency, and expected to work along the way from time to time as needed.

I’d started out in a campground on the Oregon Coast. A friend had asked me to check out a few properties to buy down there, and in the process I’d fallen in love with a little weathered turquoise beach house with several glorious Monterey cypress trees on the property. The realtor who had shown it to me felt like a kindred soul. It was an “as is” estate sale for only $39,000, and had “location, location, location.” I couldn’t resist it.

The next day, in great excitement, I called my daughter in Seattle. “Guess what?” I enthused, “I just bought a house!” I went on to describe it in great detail. Her silence told me she was more concerned than excited. “Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I’ve got it all figured out. It’ll pay for itself. I’ll rent it out to cover the mortgage. It’s a terrific investment.”

I didn’t mention that I’d spent all my savings, and maxed out my credit cards to swing the deal. Suffice it to say I was operating in manic mode where the known laws of cause and effect as well as those of bank loans, mortgages, and maintenance costs on an old house seemed irrelevant and unnecessary. In manic mode I don’t need sleep, I talk too much and too fast, and my mind races in a dozen different directions. Anything seems possible and nothing can go wrong.

During the following three months I had to upgrade the whole electrical system and replace several major appliances in order to offer the place for rent. In addition I discovered that my conviction that I could negotiate a mortgage before the monthly credit card payments came due didn’t quite work out. The bank wouldn’t grant a loan on both the house and the property, but only on the property alone as the house lacked a proper foundation; it had been built directly on the sand. (An apt metaphor for my “business plan!”)

On the other hand I did find a reliable tenant with a steady job who loved the house. This fact lulled me into a false sense of belief in my own good judgment. Then several years later I was able to sell that house to the tenant for nearly twice what I paid for it. Proof positive that I’d done the right thing to begin with.

Drunk with that success and still operating in manic mode I bought a different piece of real estate for almost three times what the first one cost. Necessary repairs stretched my resources past the breaking point, and I ended up borrowing money from friends and relatives including my former mother-in-law. My first tenant made promises and excuses but failed to pay any rent and finally moved away in the middle of the night leaving rent in arrears, the house in shambles, and garbage everywhere.

My next tenant offered to pay the rent a full year in advance. He admitted he had a poor credit record but said he had just won a lawsuit. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

Instead of banking the prepaid rent I traveled for seven weeks in South America. When I returned I had to face problems with both the septic tank and the well water, and, ultimately, a lawsuit, which I lost. I should have realized at the outset that my jackpot tenant made his living by suing people.

The only good news during my landlady years was that no tenant turned either house into a drug lab. In retrospect I understand the irresponsible greed and irrational exuberance that has afflicted the real estate and financial markets the last decade or so.

In manic mode I make really bad decisions. Being in manic mode is like living in a prism, which intensifies the emotional energy that flows through it. As sunshine through a prism creates rainbows or can start a fire, so in manic mode things are either magic or tragic. Sometimes both.

My real estate tycoon phase lasted maybe five years. Cleaning up after myself, and straightening out my life and finances took another ten years during which I bounced from manic to depressive several times over. In manic mode I often hooked up with the wrong men many of whom were also manic-depressive. I used to say “I love the manic-depressives in my life.” I used to brag “At least they’re not boring.”

Manic-depression is now called bipolar; there’s Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Roughly speaking, the difference between the two is that those suffering from Bipolar I create problems they can’t straighten out themselves and tend to move in and out of institutions such as jail, or rehab, or the psych ward.

I have been diagnosed as Bipolar II. For me manic mode feels like living in a Technicolor movie where I’m the star. Depressive mode feels bleak; no energy; no hope; no dreams. It’s an unending dreary slog in grainy black and white accompanied by a what’s-the-use attitude. Maybe the catatonia of depression is nature’s way of compensating for the exhaustion of mania.

Earlier in my life I spent the better part of a decade during my marriage in a chronic depression. I didn’t get dressed in the morning; I didn’t open my living room curtains; I didn’t talk to the neighbors. I remained unavailable to my husband and children in some important ways. When I finally shifted into manic mode I asked for a divorce and became a real estate tycoon.


Before I had a proper diagnosis and treatment my bipolar states could last for months or years at a time, or be rapid-cycling where I shifted from one to the other without blinking which left my friends and family confused and often terrified.

My last manic-depressive breakdown occurred seven years ago and it almost killed me. I finally reached the point where I said “I’m tired of the manic-depressives in my life; they’re too exhausting.” That was the day I stopped subsidizing the manic-depressive in myself and became open to treatment. Fortunately I found a good doctor and within a year or so with proper medication I started to feel alive again.

Nowadays bipolar can be managed with medications that are much more precise than the heavy-duty drugs which I resisted taking for decades because they used to leave my manic-depressive friends dry-mouthed or drooling.

The daily pill I take has changed life for me in ways both subtle and profound. I’ve stopped thinking that my dramatic mood changes were due to weakness of character or lack of will power. I understand that I was probably born with a biochemical imbalance, which should have been treated much earlier and not ignored or rationalized away. However I must accept the side-effects of increased insomnia, and weight gain. And I still have mood swings that are greater than the norm.

Overall, I don’t miss my house built on sand; I don’t miss being an overwhelmed landlady; I don’t miss the devastation of living with bad decisions; I don’t miss upsetting my family.

I do, on occasion, miss the full-blown intoxication of being manic.

IN PRAISE OF EPHEMERA

by Roberta Jean Bryant


I’m an ephemeral events junkie, and particularly delighted that my most favorite example is arriving a month early. Pink dogwoods are blooming everywhere. They look like clouds of pink butterflies settling on silver-gray bare branches. If I could sing I’d burst into song, but end up settling for, “Look, look! Isn’t it glorious?” repeated many times over while driving around in the springtime.

“Ephemera” is a collective noun used to categorize “anything short-lived or transitory.” Antiques Roadshow experts refer to “paper ephemera” such as ticket stubs, event programs, letters and such because they are often discarded and most do not survive the years with the same permanency as a blanket chest or rocking chair.

Flowers are perfect. They bloom and die in a relatively short time span. Butterflies and fireflies and houseflies; asparagus and artichokes and pizza; clouds and rainbows and hailstorms. The aurora borealis and shooting stars and comets. All ephemeral.

Friends and lovers can often fall into this category too – much as we might wish it otherwise.

One reason I love ephemera is that I’m forced to enjoy them NOW. There’s no such thing as, “Wait a minute,” or later when a sunrise or sunset is happening. Often you can’t properly plan an ephemeral event anyway; too many variables.

Nevertheless, I am planning my annual pilgrimage to Denny Hall on the U of W campus. There I hope to find the huge old pink dogwood festooned with its seasonal costume of rosy butterflies before they fade away as perfect ephemera are wont to do. I don’t want to miss the show.

THE IDEA FACTORY

by Roberta Jean Bryant


For many years I drifted, unconscious to the idea factory between my ears. I thought I was not creative, nor interesting; just the lazy daydreamer some teachers had told me I was. I struggled to be a good wife and mother to justify my existence. I read widely enjoying the ideas of other people -- other people obviously smarter, more creative, and less lazy than I was. I secretly dreamed of being an author – not a writer, but an author – a writer of books.

In pursuit of this dream I signed up for a twice a week writing class -- in part because I desperately needed to get out of the house two nights a week. I loved listening to the teacher and the real writers in the class talk shop. I struggled against the tides of my fluctuating self-esteem to get a few words on paper that I could reluctantly drag to class – perhaps to be read aloud.

Within several years I began to be aware of the idea factory in my head which churned out way more ideas for stories and articles and books and Reader’s Digest anecdotes than I could possibly ever have time to develop. The idea factory was open 24/7; it ran three shifts – daytime, swing shift, and the insomnia special. The idea factory was an equal opportunity employer. Ideas ranged from first-rate to pure dreck; they included children’s Sunday school stories as well as the occasional x-rated scenario.

It took me several more years to learn a useful discrimination -- to be able to choose the ideas worthy of the hard work that writing entailed. As it turned out I was not particularly lazy, just a fairly incompetent housewife. Housework wasn’t interesting. Writing, as difficult as it was for me in those early years, was at least an interesting process.

I discovered that marketing the things that I wrote needed the development of a whole new skill set; necessary skills and challenging ones -- especially the public relations ones that entailed talking to agents and editors at writer’s conferences. I had started out as recluse and loner, seldom talking to grownups. The idea factory kept me busy with new approaches to persuasion and publicity. I achieved a certain level of what the world called success.

Busy decades passed. I semi-retired. The idea factory laid off personnel and almost closed. I drifted through a personal recession and a bankruptcy of ideas. I continued to drift. Depression said, “Who cares anyway?”

As it turned out I did. Although I had small hope of it working again, I joined a weekly writing class at the senior center.

The idea factory is open for business. And hiring.

EPIPHANY

by Roberta Jean Bryant


I struggle now with GRAVITY

My son he mutters “entropy;”

my doctor mentions “atrophy.”

My fear shrieks out “infirmity!”

and, can I stand indignity?

Yet nothing’s worse than apathy …

… unless it be false sympathy.

SEVENTY-SEVEN JOURNALS


I first began writing a personal journal on June 23rd, 1963. I was twenty-seven, had been married almost seven years, and my full time job was taking care of our three preschoolers. I was angry and had scared myself with that anger.

I’ve recently reread my shelf and a half of raggedy eight by ten spiral notebooks -- seventy-seven in total. The biggest challenge was trying to decipher the faded pages as well as my often-illegible handwriting. Another twenty-four smaller travel notebooks await my curiosity and patience.

So, I’ve been keeping company with my journal for fifty-seven years off and on. I’ve thought of it as a portable friend – ready to listen at any time of the day or night. Some entries are as brief as a sentence; others (especially in the divorce years between 1973 and 1983) go on and on and on for dozens of pages.

I was struck by the dizzying emotional roller coaster they chronicle. Almost fifty years of off the wall mania and staggering bouts of depression before I was diagnosed as bipolar II and began to receive treatment a few years ago.

And I was amazed by the distortion of memory that summarizes and twists facts to fit. I found how often I lie to myself, and tell others the same lies. For instance I’ve often said, “I didn’t talk to grownups until I was over forty.” I love the drama in that statement, especially when contrasted with my current proclivity to talk too much (just like my mother by the way!). What’s true is I didn’t feel comfortable talking to grownups until I was over forty. What’s true is that I’m an uncomfortable amalgam of my father’s taciturnity and my mother’s excessive verbosity.

I didn’t talk much at home because every time I did I got into trouble. Home meaning the dozen or more places my mother found to live. Every time we moved my brother and I had to leave important things behind. Around my mother I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And, in retrospect, I think when I did speak up or express my opinion I shocked her in some way. Home meaning the five different houses that witnessed the best and the worst of my nineteen year marriage. In my marriage verbal abuse was slung back and forth, much of it in the guise of humor. I see now how often I collaborated to make myself an easy target.

My raggedy journals have captured raw emotion, quiet introspection, and way too many Dr.-Phil-like analyses and self-improvement programs. Nevertheless I see clearly the advantages of journal keeping; although I am beginning to wonder about the wisdom of leaving them behind to bewilder and shock my children. That consideration aside, my journal is a primary form of self-expression, a safety valve, an emotional catharsis. Most of all it functions as a reality check; a place to recognize the disconnections between what I say and what I actually do; a repository of lies and half-truths; a halfway house for unacceptable feelings.

A terrific fringe benefit has been that the more I was willing to learn about myself the more I seemed to know about other people which went a long ways toward closing the gap between myself as a self-styled loner and many of those others.

CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTODIDACT


I’d been engaged to teach a one-day workshop in journal writing. The group, an organization that served mostly therapists, had asked me for a course description and an instructor biography. Two days after I mailed it off I received a phone call. “We need to know your degree level,” a cultured voice requested, emphasizing “degree level”. “It’s necessary to provide credibility for our members.”

I resisted a temptation to apologize for my inadequacy, my lack of any degree level at all. It had taken me years of experience as an adult education teacher to overcome a self-esteem problem and break myself of the habit of automatically volunteering apologies, but I faced a dilemma.

Although I thought the biography I’d sent her was adequate, it was clear she needed something more or different. I promised to send a rewritten biography, of course, but I couldn’t tell her I graduated from an unaccredited religious high school and had completed only four quarters in a backwater teacher’s college in Las Vegas, New Mexico. I wouldn’t award myself a mythical degree in whatever. I couldn’t flippantly tell her I was an autodidact -- self-taught – even if it was true. Especially if it was true!

What to do? I picked up the most recent catalog of events and workshops the group sponsored and read over all the biographical paragraphs. They reeked of PhD this and M.A. that. Also the language was more formal than what I’d sent her. So I rewrote my biography using formal language and added three specific references to experts I’d “studied with.” I concluded with, “R. Jean Bryant was educated in the libraries of the West.”

I knew she wouldn’t like it, and probably would fail to appreciate my honesty. I knew she wouldn’t call me again, but that I’d be on probation of a sort and would have to prove my expertise in the lecture that would precede the workshop. I also knew I would do a good job despite my lack of a formal education. And so I did.

I had gotten into teaching through the back door maybe ten years earlier. Although I had taken one “Introduction to Education” class in college before I got married, the teacher had been so boring I thought maybe he had already died and no one had bothered to inform him. Before I took that class I had thought that teaching was potentially the most exciting job in the world.

Four children in quick succession and a career as a fulltime mother absorbed my time and energy. I was an avid and eclectic reader and dreamed of being a writer. I finally began taking an evening class in creative writing. The teacher was wonderful. Somehow she believed, in me and continued believing in me, until I believed in myself.

Writing was excruciatingly difficult for me. The blank page terrorized me; it seemed to shout, “You’re bore-ing! You’re not creative. You’ve never even done anything interesting.” But I desperately wanted to be a writer, so I persevered. Writing was so difficult I thought there was no point in doing it unless I could get published, often quoting Samuel Johnson who said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Perseverance paid off. Within two years I had begun to sell humorous essays to “Charmed Land,” The Seattle Times Sunday magazine section, and other local markets. My self-esteem grew. My attitude in class was, “Hey, you guys, if I can do this, anybody can do it.”

I took that attitude with me when I joined a second writing class at the downtown Seattle YWCA. At the end of that session the instructor asked me if I was interested in teaching that class the following year. She had noticed how helpful I was with my fellow students. I jumped at the chance and, despite my lifelong shyness, I went and interviewed for the job.

I had found my true vocation. After several weeks where I tried to inflict a lesson plan on the students, I began to realize that writing can’t be taught. It can only be learned, and each writer must teach his/her self through the application of words onto paper. My job was to encourage that struggle; my job was to facilitate the would-be writers in class; my job was to help them get from where they were to where they wanted to go with their writing. I learned to listen to my students and trust my intuition. My reputation for doing just that spread by word of mouth and my class filled up ironically enough with multi-degreed professionals -- teachers and therapists.

I was terrified they would find out that I was uneducated and therefore unqualified. Maybe I was selling smoke. One day I was whining again about my fears to a close friend. She stopped me and asked, “Do you respect your students?”

“Yes, of course I do. I’m in awe of them. It’s a privilege to be part of their creative process.”

“If that’s true,” she said, “then you have to respect their choice of you as their teacher.” What a concept!

I eventually learned to appreciate that what set me apart from every other writing workshop teacher in the Greater Seattle area was my lack of a degree. I didn’t know how writing was supposed to be in a formal sense. I just knew when a writer told the truth, when a writer spoke in an authentic voice. I could listen for and encourage that.

My background for being a good teacher consisted of many learning experiences, including my first peak experience. When I was almost six years old in the early fall something happened at school in Tacoma that unlocked the secret of reading for me. I was so excited that I ran home, banged on the screen door, and the minute my mother unlocked it I demanded that she sit down so I could read to her. I turned out to be a natural speed-reader. I attended nine schools in four states in twelve years. By the end of the first week in any new school I had read all my textbooks. After that I always took a stash of my own books to school; my teachers learned to leave me alone as I was always ready to recite, and they learned it kept me from making trouble in class due to boredom.

Home was wherever I had a library card. I haunted the libraries of the West and did battle with librarians. In the summertime in Santa Fe I was allowed to check out only two books a day, so I did -- two books every day. Some of my choices were not age-appropriate (I was nine), and I often had to do a verbal book report to assure the power-hungry librarian I had actually read the books or convince her I had my parent’s permission. My avid and eclectic reading habit provided the unorthodox foundation for my true education, and continues to do so.

Writing was a different kind of education for me, especially journal writing which was overtly therapeutic. I ultimately came to believe that most writing was therapeutic -- not only poetry and fiction – novels and short stories, but biography and autobiography and creative non-fiction. We write out of who we are. We bring who we are to the page, and to the myriad of decisions that any piece of writing entails.

The Virgin Blogger

I've been obsessing about trying to do too much with this blog. Drunk with the satisfaction of having got it up and running, but seduced by ambitious possibilities. Head banging for weeks now with little to show for it. So, I've decided to update this blog weekly for starters. Then play around with other possibilities at my leisure. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Writing for Recovery

Once again, slipping over the edge into a serious depression. Once again, I can't remember how to get myself out of it. Once again, wondering what's-the-use-anyway. That was several months ago. I've been clawing my way back ever since. Raging against apathy and increasing infirmity (both mine). Near paralyzed by lack of will (also mine). Discouraged (definite lack of courage).

My middle son is 47 -- in and out of a suicidal depression (bipolar heredity my side of the family). I tell him I understand. And, that for people like us who had spent so much of our lives struggling, we are hard-wired for an inability to give up completely.

I can't fix things for him. I finally remember that walking and writing were lifelines for me when I was his age. Can't do the first; haven't been doing the other. So, I drag myself to the swimming pool seven days a week, and I join a writer's group in search of a deadline. I'm finally writing again. Writing for recovery. Once again.