About My Past, pt 2: Angel's Child (long)

For those who don't remember the previous entry in this series, here's the link. This one is just as long.

I was the oldest in the family with three brothers and two sisters. My brother Joe was born two years and a few months after me. Early pictures of him show beautiful child. Yet, you can see that there was something in his eyes that wasn't right. Those pictures were taken during peaceful moments in an otherwise catastrophic time.

From birth, Joe couldn't feed, couldn't suck a nipple correctly, and couldn't keep anything down when he did. As my parents struggled for a year to keep him nourished, doctors were at a loss for a diagnosis. Then, he began to have seizures.

Movie Review: American Mary

Katharine Isabelle as Mary Mason in American Mary, by Jen & Sylvia Soska

Despite living on a film noir budget, I broke down and ordered American Mary from the Amazon UK. It's a horror movie made by one of the most fascinating collaborations, Jen and Sylvia Soska, the Twisted Twins who are lifelong horror fans. This would be their second movie, their first being not nearly as ambitious. The Soska's illustrate a principle my biology teacher called inclusive fitness, but that's a subject for a different horror movie.

Reading, thoughts and findings today

I watched American Mary last night. I waited to see this since I heard of its production, and it did not disappoint. Review to follow this afternoon.

I'm now more halfway through with Glen Duncan's Tululla Rising. I'm surprised to be enjoying it much more than the first in the series, The Last Werewolf. I was so disappointed in that one, I only starting reading Tululla for speed-reading practice after a friend gave it to me. Tululla's a much more interesting character than Jake, the protagonist from the first book.

More on writing

I always wake up planning I'm going to write, no matter if it's weekend, holiday, birthday, I don't care. This morning I got up at 4:45. My cat was at the foot of the bed snoring and moaning in her sleep, like a squeak-toy. It was a funny thing to awaken to. 

Getting up so early sounds really motivated, except that's not how I planned it. Sometimes I just awaken feeling alert. I read more of Solomon's book, for about a half hour, and then wrote.

One way to start.

Wake up, feed the cat. Read Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon. Get up again, schedule everything in my day, trash, dishes, clean bathroom, write blog, write story. I have my first look at the Internet. A picture of a friend brings the bite of depression. For the next half hour, I feel trapped in my life. It's cold in my apartment, cold outside. Soreness, small pains, a cat scratch, an ingrown toenail, stiff muscles, all feel inflamed. I take aspirin to keep it from getting out of control. Inflammation can damage the heart. I take the rest of my medications and vitamin supplements. 

My cat had her morning manic and is now fast asleep on the bed, so there's amusement to be found there. I finish my breakfast, which is the same thing every morning, Grape Nuts. Breakfast isn't my fuss-about-it meal, it's my pour-it-in-a-bowl-and-slog-it-down- so-I-can-start-my-day meal. Internet suggests a half dozen things to read. I realize I forgot something important on my schedule, so it's obsolete before I get to the first item. Okay, that's why Desktop Notes is such a great program.

Slut Shaming, Pt 2: women to women to men

Slut shaming comes down heavily on women, so why do females engage in it?  I might be accused of mansplaining this issue, however, since I'm a man, I don't have much of a choice. Since it's better for all involved if men understand the issue, too, being seen, and not heard isn't the better option.

I might not be female, but I do understand humiliation. I understand harassment, bullying and defamation. I can be fair about these when it's connected to slut shaming.  

Neither sex is monolithic in its view on anything. In fact, even on the issue of choice, pro- and anti- are split about almost even among women. (Among men there's a fifteen percent difference favoring antichoice).

Fluff

Okay, I'm up against deadline, I'm tired, I need to lay down, so I'm going to write about just about what's happening and postpone the longer, issue-oriented article.

Fluff actually refers to my cat, who as you have seen, is a sweet, delightful little long-haired creature, who has issues. Anyway, I was watching a WWI documentary on youtube, The Great War. She was in my lap, I was petting her, she squirming with delight and squinting with affection. Things couldn't have been better.

Then, she has one of her spontaneous panic episodes. He claws came out in every direction. Where I had been holding this warm ball of fuzz, now it had moving thorns. She wasn't scratching at me, she was trying to gain traction and run away. Part of the traction she gained was in my throat.

What a difference 24 hours makes.

A couple of minor setbacks today. I was supposed to meet friends at a happy hour last night, but couldn't find the place. It turned out, I had the street wrong! How could I mistake Manchester for Olive? I didn't lie down at 5 as I felt I should, that's probably why. I might have arrived late, but I would have arrived.

I went home and gave myself a triple vodka. I seldom have that much, usually a single or double. Then I woke up this morning with a sore throat, and itchy mouth, took some benedryl, slept for a few more hours. Didn't really feel any better. I had to cancel tonight's plans. I slept through the early evening and finally got up. I did a few hours of writing on the novel today, but for the most part, everything from last night on has been a wash out for everything except reading. 

Hoping to be back with it tomorrow. I have to finish a chapter of writing. Late tomorrow, I have to work on another blog entry.

Update: 12:45 1/18/13 I've actually been able to turn this into a very productive evening of writing.

Rediscovering joy

At the recommendation of a friend, I've been reading Andrew Solomon's Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression for my nonfiction. I'm only 94 pages into it, which is not very far. The book is close 500 pages of prose with a 40 page bibliography. It seems to cover depression from every different angle. 

On pages 34-37 the book tells the story of a Cambodian woman named Phaly Nuon, who survived the brutality of the Pol Pot's Killing Fields. For reference to how ruthless the regime was, one out of four people in Cambodia were murdered or died of starvation during that time. For the size of the population he ruled over, Pol Pot was many times worse than Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Afterward, in a Thai refugee camp, she saw women who were wasting away PTSD and depression. She treated these women by following four steps: forgetting, working and loving; and then the most important step, teaching them that those three are all inter-related, part of a whole. Phaly has had so much success, that she has been a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize more than once.

Not made for 9 to 5.

My hours are extremely irregular. I put in eight hours writing today, but I started at noon, found myself worn out 3:30, napped until 6, wrote until 8, had dinner, started writing again at 9, and finished up at 11:30.

I get mentally worn out during the day. The temptation, which I've indulged, is to blame this on concussions I had as a child. I don't actually know. I have told doctors about it, but because the US now has the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world (and this is not an exaggeration), and the most expensive, I can't actually afford to find out, and our medical system won't solve it anyway.

I will get overwhelmingly tired at irregular times during the day, and if I don't go to sleep, I will begin to make stupid mistakes. If I try to push through it, I'll continue to make mistakes, my mood will crash and I'll get a migraine. This has been going on for decades. This isn't a normal tiredness, either, like one you get late at night, what I'm feeling now. This is, "I feel like I'm going to die" tiredness. I can't predict when it will happen, but it happens some time during the day no matter how much sleep I get during the night.

American Mary: a good digression.

I went to a party last night. I didn't know hardly anyone there. It was a benefit for the owner of the pub, O'Malley's, who had suffered a stroke. It was, of course, at that pub. I'm on a stringent, fixed-income budget, and ran deficit last month, so I have to choose my socializing carefully. 

A trivial fact about me: I fear nothing in life more than a stroke.The very thought of it is frightening.

I went alone. Several different groups were meeting there, and I knew almost nobody. I did talk to a few people, but in between time, I sat alone thinking about the scene I was going to write. That's what I do now, I daydream about my characters or about the scene, when I'm driving, when I'm walking, not when I exercise, though. Then I watch TV. It's probably an expression of both my opinion as a writer, and my Attention Deficit Disorder.

Slut Shaming, pt 1: Rape

What does a guy have to say about the subject of slut-shaming? My own message is that women as well as men engage in it, and I think in about equal numbers. Yes, I think it's possible that even though it comes down preponderantly on females, I believe other females are just as likely to be slut-shame as males are.

 Especially for adolescents, "slut" is a smear used to knock somebody off the status ladder. However, they do it with a sense of justice that is pretty much assented to by adults. It's a dynamic that has a lot in common with bullying, which with I have a lot of experience, on the receiving end. One of my old observations about bullying is that often the adults signal, consciously or not, who gets bullied. Children try to aim their aggression at kids whose oppression make the instigators feel secure and justified.  This is why Conservative Christians have said that anti-bullying campaigns are actually promoting the "gay agenda." They are admitting that they depend on bullying to instill homophobia in kids. Having gone to Catholic schools in the '70s, I could attest that the most damaging thing you could be called was "fag," or some variant. Second worst was n*gg*r-lover. And no, there were no African-Americans at my grade school and very few at my high school. Bullying was a means to indoctrinate both homophobia and racism. The latter definitely wasn't part of the Catholic teaching, in fact, I've probably mentioned before, the nuns did their level best to stamp it out in the students. Unfortunately, the racism was endorsed by the parents, and their sway won out. For homosexuality, though, the parents and the church agreed.

A super athlete? Presume cheating.

I'm trying to post two times a week on substantial topics, but in doing so, I'm endangering now my goal of 2,400 words to read on my novel. After days of working on the topic I want to write about, (Slut-Shaming) and discovering I have too many thoughts requiring too much background and documentation, I've decided, for this deadline, to fall back on a different topic. This is the way I'll have to write this blog, small, simple topics interspersed with bigger, more complex ones. It's called lowering expectations.

Speaking of lowered expectations, I hear that Lance Armstrong is considering a public confession of his doping. After all the vehement denials, he's thinking of coming clean. I'll believe that when I see it. This is somebody who couldn't restrain his ego and competitiveness to give himself anything less than seven Tour de France titles.

Sex!

Handyman's Porn

 
No, the title of this entry isn't just to get your attention, that's really what this is about. As a blogger, I often run up against conundrum: how much do I really want to share? I'm very cognizant of how information on the Internet can be used against me. Information I should not share, such as: when I will be on vacation (what a concept), so I only talk about events retrospectively. My birthday: that's identifying information.

Then there are the subjects that can burn bridges and make enemies of  people I don't even know, or turn friends into enemies. Don't I know about politics and religion, but another of those is sex. If your views don't coincide with the social norm, stay quiet; and if they do, the social normals see little point in talking about it. The safe view in this culture is monogamy: no sex outside of marriage, no fancy plumbing (intercourse only, and some souls restrict that to mish), no birth control, before or after sex.

Newtown massacre.

Flag and shattered sky at Newtown

I'm late posting here about the Newtown shooting, but-- with the handle of caseymoz, I was posting/arguing about it on the Democratic Underground for the week after it happened. Some examples:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1997575

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1977591

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=337620

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=338503


Descriptive words can only turn this horrific tragedy into some kind of fiction. All 20 children, 28 people total were murdered in such a cold, malicious way.

Day off, I guess.

I don't plan to take days off. It just happens that way. I'm a writer, self-employed. Every single day I get up with the idea of working on my main project. On days like today those plans don't pan out, but it's a holiday, so I suppose nature just meant it like that. This seems to happen consistently about one, sometimes two days a week. In other words, I get a day off whether I want it or not.

I have taken up to three weeks, though without such a day off. The work doesn't only include writing. I do a lot of reading. For my writer's group, I always have to read and critique somebody's work. I'd give anything to have a 1200 wpm reading speed or better, but reading does help you as a writer. Then there's studying the finer points of grammar and style mechanics.

You then have to practice. This blog would be considered practice. I find that issues I want to write about the most simply tie me in knots. My writing about my family life turned into heap, and it's taking a lot of work to unsnarl. I want to take on some more pertinent and controversial issues. However, it seems that I still respond to other people's posts far better than I can generate my own blog entries. I do this here and here. Why don't I just link them in my blog? Because by the time I get around to writing my blog, I'm trying to think of my own issues to write about, and often I respond to posts spontaneously; those are the distractions. I'm afraid if I do, the blog becomes incoherent.

It was very nice together for New Year's. My reading seemed acceptable. There were only about nine people there, a very brief reading compared to others the group has had, which was good because it left the rest of the time for partying. One guy knew about four verses of Auld Lang Syne. Which was good because nobody thought of any other way to hail the new year when it came about.

I remember as a child looking at how long the years were and thinking that living until the year 2000 would be virtual immortality. I'm fortunate.