Filed under: secrets
Filed under: self indulgence
Much of my life has been punctuated by sudden, and violent, upheaval. I was a mercurial creature questing for happiness in a minefield of abrupt change. Looking for external satisfaction when you’re in inner turmoil is all but impossible. All I knew was that something wasn’t right, something hurt, and some action was required. My get-up-and-go led to a handful of do-overs, and I was without traction in matters of romance, education, and career. More than once, a metaphorical baby got tossed out the window along with everything else.
After receiving my diagnosis in early 2009, bizarre feelings started to take hold. Forward, sustainable momentum leading to my re-entry into college, a volunteer gig that I find immensely satisfying, a handful of close friends, a new lover, and a realistic five-year plan. Weirder than my new-found consistency were my new-found goals. I changed my major to math and started yearning for a career. I developed my first inkling that I might want children that has built up to near-certainty. I want to get married and have a completely banal relationship with someone stable and capable who loves me. I want a house and a yard, a pair of cats, a garden. In short, all of those really boring things that “normal” people shoot for.
For me, this represents a radical change in personality. My best friend/roommate has asserted multiple times that if the roots for these aspirations hadn’t been present for many years, she’d have thought me to have lost my mind. Again.
Math is something practical, fun, and that I have had a knack for since early childhood. My academic rival from 1st to 10th grade signed my yearbook “You really are better at math.” It was a huge victory after dedicating a decade to seeing which of us could get our hand up first. Two years later, I was in the throes of insanity. From the top 10 in my class to the bottom third. Such is life.
I began volunteering with mentally ill adolescent girls in August 2009. The obvious parallels to my own life made it seem more natural, easier, and way more fun than most would think — people usually get wide eyes when I tell them what I do on Monday nights and, sometimes, declare me a saint. Clearly, I am not a saint. (Unless we are counting dirty miracles — in which case, pin my hands and call me Jesus.) The girls have been steadily changing my mind in favor of children. Where, once, I saw myself too variable and selfish to be a good mother, I have begun to realize that a combination of discipline and a caretaker’s mentality would produce a responsible, intelligent, independent human being. The world needs a few more of those. Maybe one or two of them will be mine.
The curve towards domesticity has become sharper as of late. In early December, I found someone with similar goals who turns my crank in a major way. My kind of smart, nerdy, sexy, cocky, and lecherous. After a combined month consisting of visiting and then being formally “in a relationship” there’s active speculation on a possible future together. All of the usually caveats, of course… But there’s breath-holding, finger-crossing, and any other terms you can think of indicating that one desires a specific outcome. Hope indicates investment and the requisite possibility of disappointment.
But all of this — all of these items — the degree, the career, the spouse, the house, the kid, the cat… are all dependent on me waiting. Making the next two years add up to something meaningful and lasting. Of all of the changes I am making, the ambition to remain steady for two years before any big changes occur is the most frightening. I spent 20 years honing my fire dousing skills. All I have now are drugs, patience, and goals. Long-term planning feels a little like a free fall. A little like a prayer to a god that I don’t believe in that I’ll get financial aid, or that the hospital will hire me, or that my IUD doesn’t ruin my fertility, or that he doesn’t change his mind. So much is dependent on external factors, now that I have control of my internal ones, that I feel exposed and terrified.
If you’re the one who is doing the changing, you are calling the shots. If you stay the same, you run the risk of the world moving on without you.
Filed under: self indulgence
Not too long ago, a coworker at the hospital found a Buddha on the side of the road with both arms broken off. He later gave the figure to me. At times like now, I not only do my best to curb the tendency to want, but try to remember that succumbing to the inability to control circumstance may be the only way to tolerate uncertainty. Impotence is, at best, an uncomfortable feeling. For someone who thinks in terms of possibilities, chronically speculates, and plans as if it were a symptom of OCD… Being powerless is waterboarding for the mind.
Over the past six months, I have managed to disentangle myself from an identity that no longer serves me now that I am not accommodating my illness. No longer obsessed with embracing transience (relationship, mood, location, etc.), I’m starting to make progress in the direction of a suitable career, contributing to a cause that I care about, developing close relationships, taking better care of myself physically, and contemplating starting a family of my own. These goals are obtainable, and I’m obtaining them with an ease that I would have found impossible a few years ago.
I recently became involved in a long distance relationship. My first serious relationship since March of 2009. With every passing year — every passing relationship — I get closer to knowing not merely what I desire, but what I need. This person has the potential to be both. It is exciting, terrifying, and baffling.
When one sits down to conjure their perfect mate, they imagine his or her physical features, interests, personality, sexual proclivities, life goals, domestic compatibility, and so on. As a planner, I do this in extreme detail — almost to the extent that the standards would be impossible to satisfy. So, imagine my surprise when I came across someone who satisfies them extraordinarily well on paper. Even more surprising when there is mutual attraction.
He has obligations tying him in one city for the next few months, then will be abroad for a year. I have obligations here in Austin for the next two years. The timing lines up neatly; there’s even an active plan. Hoops to jump through. Compatibilities to test. If things go well over the next few months, we go on to the next six-month round of waiting and correspondence. Then another round. What happens at the end of that? How can I look forward and determine if waiting a year-and-a-half for a man I’ve known just seven weeks will be worthwhile?
The question, “What do you want?” has been volleyed. What I want is to settle down. I want to be done with school, in a career, married, and starting a family five years from now. I’m done with the restless period of my life, and I’m anxious to create something stable and satisfying. It’s a twisted game of Russian Roulette where no one wants to say, “If we get through the 18-month obstacle course, I think you’d be worth marrying.” That’s an insane thing to say to someone you’ve known for so short a time, and easy to misconstrue as an attempt to corner and capture them like big game. So in our delicate treatment of the subject, for fear of scaring the other person off with an extreme level of intensity, we’re circumventing the very discussion that needs to happen. Neither one of us would be involved in a long distance relationship if it weren’t for this perfect storm. I don’t know if it can wait to be discussed until he comes to visit in March, or if the revolver will go off before then.
Due to the nature of the relationship being a variable, any attempt to plan for two years from now is futile. All I can do is see him in March, again in six months, and then in a year to determine what will happen. The huge swaths of time between visits allow him ample time to decide it’s not worth the investment, or meet someone else, or simply tire of me. I’m deeply worried, feeling extremely vulnerable, and almost anticipating ultimate rejection. An equal low to match the high I’ve been feeling since I last saw him.
This is where Buddha comes in. There’s nothing to cling to yet. It hasn’t had a chance to solidify. I need to relax my grip and allow events to unfold as they may.
Or perhaps I just need a strong drink.
Filed under: self indulgence
I started 2009 confused and rough. The year chewed me up and spat out a softer, more sentimental Ash than I can recall myself as ever having been. I consider the first 25 years of my life to be a false start. My life, as I want it to be, began this past year.
Volunteering at the state mental hospital in the Peer Support program forces me to repeatedly rehash my family history. Given the Jerry-Springer-ness of it, one would think that this would be traumatic. But much like repeating the same word over and over again, it begins to lose meaning and becomes abstract, an academic curiosity, distant to me as the Iran-Contra Affair, defanged. For this and countless other reasons, my experience at the hospital has been invaluable.
For a long time, I skirted the subject of my family. At first, I’d refuse to respond to inquiries — angry, lonely, and still stinging sharply from the first eighteen years of my life. Then I minimized. Sometimes I’d lie and say that my biological mother was dead. I’d shrug my shoulders at my father’s death and mutter, “Don’t worry about it; you didn’t kill him” to those who instinctively apologized for my loss. I didn’t want to deal with the stigma of a broken family. I didn’t want to be perceived as damaged goods. Then rage and self defense. I hated my biological mother so intensely — the pain of rejection and abandonment melted and left a hard pit of independence. I felt as though I were without family, alone.
I moved back to the Northeast, in part, to be closer to my aunt and uncle. My aunt had been in poor health and had had a close brush with death that was not communicated to me at the time because I was too far away (in Austin) to do much besides worry. Faced with the prospect of her dying and being unable to see her before that happened prompted my return.
I visited them frequently over the next year and a half while living in Massachusetts. I loved everything about it. I loved the drive down (two hours from Boston, breaking 100 mph multiples times in my new, light, beautiful car). I loved her exuberance when meeting me at the door. My uncle’s good-natured stoicism. Helping in the kitchen. Knocking back beer and playing cards with my uncle until after midnight (he’s still my favorite drinking buddy). Picking marigold seeds completely sloshed on glühwein. Badmitton for hours on Heineken. (Detecting a pattern here…) They are relaxed, content, joyous people who love, accept, and support me as I am and as I wish to be. Each visit felt like a celebration. I slowly realized that I was not without a family. I had a perfect, chosen family.
In addition to my aunt and uncle, I also had Dr. McAwesome at home. He is, to this day, the person to whom I am closest. He receives the uncensored, unembellished truth, processes it rationally and returns in the same fashion. He shares my hobbies, my curiosity, my desire to spend quiet hours indoors, and my domestic patterns. He is brilliant, affectionate, accepting. He is irreplaceable and I will love him forever no matter what the form of our relationship.
When I moved back to Austin, I moved in with a close friend, and quickly made other supportive, mature, and fascinating friends that I admire and love sharing optimistic thoughts and time with. Musicians, artists, nerds. Passionate, intelligent people. People I want in my life forever. That will come to my wedding, that I will call at Christmas, that I will weep for when they die someday.
In short, I am surrounded by awesome human beings. Even Dr. McAwesome’s mother, who wrote me the sweetest, most earnest thank you email for a scarf I sent her for Christmas. My new family is an oddly shaped tree worth embracing, and I heartily thank my biological mother for leaving the month of my 18th birthday. My life will be rich and filled with love.
Happy New Decade, y’all!
Filed under: nerdtastic
1. Establish which qualities are most important to you in a mate (e.g. intellectual compatibility, domestic compatibility, child rearing, sexual compatibility, mutual hobbies, etc.).
2. Assign these qualities a score between 1 and 5, indicating level of importance relative to each other. If you are uncertain of the importance of a quality for whatever reason – possibly uncertain if it will come into play, such as “child rearing” – assign that quality an arbitrary variable.
3. Score the individual on how well they satisfy each quality. I used a 1-5 interval again, but you can increase your interval for greater precision.
4. Multiply the individual’s score for each quality by the relative importance of that quality and add the individual quality scores together for one overall score.
5. (optional step) You can translate this raw score into a percent satisfaction grade by dividing the raw score by the maximum satisfaction (relative importance by max possible grade, add all scores).
Please note that you need to isolate variables, if you use them, as they will alter grades when/if they come into play.
(This is how the world appears to an INTJ.)
Although the ethics of clinical investigation are currently based upon voluntary and informed consent of the subject, it was not until the mid-Twentieth Century that federal legislation provided ethical safeguards in biomedical research involving human subjects. Largely as a response to “reported abuses of human subjects in biomedical experiments, especially during the Second World War” and the Tuskegee experiments, the United States began to define basic ethical principles in medical research in the late 1970s (“The Belmont Report”). Until guidelines were provided by the American Medical Association and laws were enacted that created such entities as Institutional Review Boards, human research went largely unregulated in the United States leading to the exploitation of the infirmed, incarcerated, and ignorant.
The international cornerstone for research ethics came on the eve World War II: the Nuremberg Code. The first paragraph of the Code reads:
The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
Although the experiments of Mengele and Ishii receive great historical attention, the United States cannot claim ethical purity before or after the advent of the Nuremberg Code.
Concerns regarding human experimentation arose in the late nineteenth century, with the roots of the movement planted firmly in animal antivivisection soil. Humane organizations began to include child welfare in their aims in the 1870s, likening the innocence and helplessness of children to that of animals (Lederer 29). Although argued from fallacy, antivivisectionist warnings that animal experimentation would inevitably lead to human experimentation were, ultimately, not without credence. Multiple cases of human experimentation in the 1890s, both in the United States and abroad, fueled apprehension. Foremost was the case of an Italian bacteriologist, Giuseppe Sanarelli who, in 1897, claimed to have isolated the causative agent of yellow fever. During his research, Sanarelli inoculated five of his patients with the inactivated agent, claiming to have produced symptoms of yellow fever (Lederer 49). In another instance, Swedish researcher Carl Janson selected fourteen orphans as test subjects over calves, owning to affordability, in his experiments on smallpox (Lederer 51). In the United States, George Fitch’s syphilis experiments on young leper girls, Henry Berkley’s use of mental patients in thyroid extract trials, and Arthur Wentworth establishing the safety of spinal taps on children did nothing to allay concerns (Lederer 61).
By 1900 the first stirrings of regulation on human experimentation had reached the federal level. Closely linked to the issue of animal experimentation, the aforementioned cases of human experimentation appeared as Senate Document 78 which was entered into the minutes during a Senate hearing on a proposed animal cruelty bill (Lederer 62). Senator Gallinger of Ohio, the originator of Senate Document 78, later introduced Senate Bill 3424 — the first proposal on a federal level to regulate human experimentation (Lederer 71). As a precursor to future legislation, Senate Bill 3424 aimed to protect those incapable of informed consent and proposed procedural oversight (United States Cong.).
Although the American Medical Association’s Council on the Defense of Medical Research circulated a set of codes pertaining to animal research that were, in some form, adopted by fifty-nine of out of seventy-nine medical schools contacted in 1910, the American Medical Association (AMA) could reach no consensus regarding human subjects (Lederer 73). According to Susan Lederer, “Clinical investigators would continue to work without any formal guidelines until the 1940s, when the AMA amended the code to require voluntary consent of the subject and prior animal testing” (74).
At the heart of the ethical issues surrounding human experimentation lies informed, voluntary consent. By current standards, a subject must comprehend both the potential risks and potential benefits of participating in a study as well as feel no coercion to participate. While the nature of comprehension is still very much debated, the AMA’s Code of Ethics demands that:
Voluntary written consent must be obtained from the patient, or from the patient’s legally authorized representative if the patient lacks the capacity to consent, following: (i) disclosure that the physician intends to use an investigational drug or experimental procedure, (ii) a reasonable explanation of the nature of the drug or procedure to be used, risks to be expected, and possible therapeutic benefits, (iii) an offer to answer any inquiries concerning the drug or procedure, and (iv) a disclosure of alternative drugs or procedures that may be available. Physicians should be completely objective in discussing the details of the drug or procedure to be employed, the pain and discomfort that may be anticipated, known risks and possible hazards, the quality of life to be expected, and particularly the alternatives. Especially, physicians should not use persuasion to obtain consent which otherwise might not be forthcoming, nor should expectations be encouraged beyond those which the circumstances reasonably and realistically justify. (“Opinion 2.07 – Clinical Investigation”)
Of particular concern are those who, until National Research Act was signed into law in 1974, were exploited by researchers. These individuals, including the mentally defective, prisoners, and otherwise ignorant, were historically either not informed of or were incapable of ascertaining the risks posed, or were in positions where cooperation was, implicitly or otherwise, mandated. Breach of voluntary and informed consent can present in different ways: a violation of volunteerism by coercion or bribes, a violation of comprehension in instances where a subject is incapable of understanding the risks or their role, and the use of subjects without their knowledge. Each of these three flavors of violation occurred in the United States before the egregious human rights contraventions during the Second World War in Germany and Japan. More disturbing were the violations that occurred after the advent of the Nuremberg Code.
The volunteerism of prisoners in biomedical research is a contentious issue. Liberty is, by definition, curbed by incarceration. In 1915, the cause of pellagra was a matter of debate for researchers, and a serious problem in the state of Mississippi. It was suspected that the disease, which could lead to dementia and death, was caused by a nutritional deficiency rather than a bacterial infection. “U.S. Public Health Service investigator Joseph Goldberger,” Lederer writes, “approached Governer Earl Brewer of Mississippi for permission to conduct an experiment that would induce pellagra in male prisoners. . . Placing male prisoners on a pellagra diet for six months would provide a convincing demonstration of this theory” (110). Due to an incredibly generous offer of a full pardon many men volunteered; twelve prisoners “convicted of crimes ranging from bigamy [to] murder” participated and were released (Lederer 111). Although the incredible leniency toward felons is ethically questionable, the offer of a full pardon in exchange for a six month nutritional study constitutes bribery. Today, research using prisoners as subjects is limited to studies that deal directly with crime and imprisonment: the impact of incarceration, the possible causes of criminal behavior, drug and alcohol addiction, the effect of class, vaccines of prevalent diseases in the prison population, and studies that stand to improve the health of the subject (Macrina 104).
One of the more infamous cases of unethical research is the Willowbrook Scandal. New York Mental Hospitals in the early 1960s were dealing with overpopulation and a huge influx of patients. Struggling to make an arrangement for their mentally retarded children, parents eagerly accepted their children’s admittance to Willowbrook State School in exchange for the children’s participation in a hepatitis study. The consent forms parents signed indicated that their children would receive a hepatitis vaccine; instead, the study was on the natural progression of the disease, and previously healthy children were intentionally infected between 1963 and 1966 at the school (Goliszek 250). Arguing that the children would have contracted the disease within six months anyway — speaking volumes about the sanitary conditions of the hospital — researchers claimed a controlled study of the disease would be more beneficial to scientific progress. They proceeded, at first, to administer purified fecal samples from infected patients to the children orally; after further refinement of the process, intravenous injections took the place of ingestion (Goliszek 251). Current participation of children or the mentally ill, along with all other federally funded medical research on humans, is approved and overseen by an Institutional Review Board which has access to the research protocol and consent forms. In cases where and individual is incapable of granting their consent, a guardian or legal representative gives consent, and the consent must be documented and signed by a witness not of the investigational team, ideally a personal acquaintance the subject (Macrina 100).
The case drawing the most attention in the United States would be that of the Tuskegee syphilis study that took place from 1932 and continued for on for 42 years. Ironically, the university founded by Booker T. Washington became the scene for a long term study of the effects of untreated syphilis in black men. The men were, in fact, unaware that they were infected, were told that they were participating in a study on “bad blood,” and were offered neither heavy metal treatment for symptoms nor penicillin when it became widely available in the 1940s (Pence 279). After criticizing the experiment for six years, and concerned by the Center for Disease Control’s refusal to stop it, a doctor leaked the story to the press in 1972, leading to a congressional investigation and a civil suit that was settled out of court (Pence 283). The subjects of the study, their wives, and their children received restitution and free medical treatment (Pence 285). The case brings up numerous ethical issues concerning race, socio-economic status, education, and deception of patients. As a result of the Tuskegee experiments, the federal government began requiring all institutions receiving federal funds and conducting human research to have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Pence 295). Today, IRBs stand as the first line of defense for the subjects of research.
Aside from research conducted for the betterment of public health, United States weapons development opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of ethical issues. From the pardoning of Shiro Ishii, head of Japanese Unit 731 during World War II, in exchange for bacteriological warfare data obtained from unwilling participants under sadistic conditions (Goliszek 54) to the various radiation experiments performed on humans (Goliszek ch. 4), weapons research on humans in the States is an expansive subject that would set a conspiracy theorist alight.
With the advent of germ theory came a wave of research leading to vaccines and antibiotics. Undoubtedly, the sacrifices of the subjects, whether ethical or otherwise, have benefited both the public and modern science. Though today’s biomedical research subjects are protected by the guidelines of physician’s associations, federal legislation, and oversight committees, the history of medical research in the United States is steeped in exploitation. Regulation may guide scientists, but the choice of right versus wrong is ultimately an autonomous practice. When Stanley Milgram went about studying the role of authority in ethical decision making to better understand the events in Nazi concentration camps he discovered that otherwise average people would do harm to strangers if instructed to do so by an authority figure. The extent of evil experienced in the camps was not limited to Nazi potential, but human potential. “Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.” (Milgram)
Works Cited
“The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research.” The National Institute of Health Office of Human Subjects Research. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 18 April 1979.Web. 9 November 2009.
“Code of Medical Ethics: Opinion 2.07 – Clinical Investigation.” American Medical Association. Report: Issued prior to April 1977; Updated June 1994 and June 1998. American Medical Association, 1998.Web. 9 November 2009.
Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Print.
Lederer, Susan E. Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Print.
Macrina, Francis L. Scientific Integrity. Washington, DC: ASM Press, 2005. Print.
“Memorable Quotes.” StanleyMilgram.com. Stanley Milgram, 1974. Web. 18 November 2009.
“The Nuremberg Code: Directives for Human Experimentation.” The National Institute of Health Office of Human Subjects Research. Reprinted from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, pp. 181-182. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.Web. 18 November 2009.
Pence, Gregory E. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004. Print.
United States. Cong. Senate. A Bill for the Regulation of Scientific Experiments upon Human Beings in the District of Columbia. 56th Cong., 1st sess. S 3424. Washington: GPO, 1900.
Filed under: art/writing
“Ronnie Cutrone: I loved Jim Morrison dearly, but Jim was not fun to go out with. I hung out with him every night for just about a year, and Jim would go out, lean up against the bar, order eight screwdrivers, put down six Tuinals on the bar, drink two or three screwdrivers, take two Tuinals, then he’d have to pee, but couldn’t leave the other five screwdrivers, so he’d take his dick out and pee, and some girl would come up and blow his dick, and then he’d finish up the other five screwdrivers and then he’d finish up the other four Tuinals, and then he’d pee in his pants, and then Eric Emerson and I would take him home.” [1]
I have a fascination with vice. Hedonism has its degrees and, at the far end of the spectrum, it becomes animalism. Prostitutes. Junkies. Transients. All living for “lesser” pleasures. Is it a simple addiction, or a driving life philosophy? How self-aware are these people? Are they knowingly exchanging time for intensity of experience? Is it worth pissing on yourself to feel that good?
The obtainment of pleasure is the master of human focus. When will it come? How long it will last? How do I maximize it? This includes all types of pleasure. Everything from religious to physical passion. A great emphasis is placed on the security of future pleasure. Indulgences of less decadent flavors — such as family, home, and other domesticities — are the commonly accepted goal. Fleeting pleasures like sex, drugs, adventure, and other dopamine-steeped activities are considered less valuable experiences and, from a religious perspective, of an evil bend. I don’t intend to discuss the merits of pleasure varietals, but to explore the curious habits of those who live in a near-animal state of sensualism.
When living in Boston, I frequented the Harvard Book Store. One afternoon I was scanning the fiction section when I noticed a sign indicating that both Bukowski and Kerouac were available only by request. As an avid Bukowski reader, I found this odd. Certainly, he was a filthy old man constructing semi-autobiographical novels out of lewd diction and awkward sentences, but I never considered him worthy of censorship — and most definitely not at my usual bookshop. I approached the counter and asked a young man in an argyle sweater vest why Bukowski was kept off of the shelves. The employee looked at me, smirked gently, and replied, “Because people steal it.”
I now had something tangible in common with those who would shoplift.
A common question asked of me by the uptight, educated sorts is, “Why do you like that drunkard?” Because he was free. He lived his life as he chose, which is a greater achievement than may be seen from the Harvard students across the street from the bookshop. Those students will spend their lifetimes questing for a socially acceptable happiness. Respect, financial security, and acknowledgment on the menu. These items are complex desires with winding roads leading up to them. Life seen as a series of obstacles between the man and his goals.
There was a purity to Bukowski’s lifestyle. He existed. He woke, he drank, he wrote, he fucked. His goals were no more complex than procuring a bottle, or orgasming. Crude, but nearly touching on Buddhist ideals in that he removed a number of the wants most men experience. As he put it:
“I made it to the bed, got the clothes off, dropped in as down in the railroad yards they moved across the tracks picking cars, places, hoped destinations — better towns, better times, better love, better luck, better something. they’d never find it. they’d never stop looking. I slept.” [2]
Perhaps the most self-aware example of living in a hedonist, animalistic state would be Dash Snow’s Hamster Nests. The Nest would entail hundreds of shredded phone books, Dash and a group of his friends, and enough drugs to render them burrowing, defecating, fucking, drooling animals. Dash, Dan Colen, and fifteen of his pals “rolled around” in a room filled with shredded books for eight hours in preparation for the installation at the Deitch Projects gallery for the first public exhibition of a usually private party.
Snow, born into an art-royalty family, was self taught — possessing a ninth grade education. Presented with incredible wealth and a choice of outcomes, Dash chose a life that ended with one final binge in July, 2009. Addled with drugs and alcohol, in constant trouble with law enforcement, and living the life of voluntary poverty, his point is not to be mistaken. He saw purity in the lives of rodents.
Spiders and rodents know something that we have forgotten. Whether that simplicity is nobler than the complexity of culture, economics, and intellectual engagement is open for debate, but I cannot dismiss these artists as mere drunks and junkies. Authors and artists, emissaries of beauty and emotional existence, are too often entwined in lives of abuse and insanity.
“I wasn’t asking for love. but something was odd. the books never spoke about it. the parents never spoke about it. but the spiders knew.” [3]
[1] Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Grove Press, 2006) 31.
[2] Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1969) 88.
[3] Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1969) 116.
Filed under: self indulgence
4:30AM Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. Something incredibly foul just crept forth from my dog’s ass onto my bedroom carpet. Note to self: dogs are not disposals for leftover wet cat food. I should know better.
It’s not as though her movement was loud but I heard her creeping about due to the fact that I was awake. This is my second night off of Risperdal. I have slept for four out of the past 36 hours. I am tired, but my brain is still doing somersaults.
For years, this had been the way of life. When battling it, I tried all of the standard cures for insomnia. Quiet time before bed. Exercise. Meditation. No eating within X hours of bedtime. Sticking to a schedule. Useless. Useless. Useless. Over time, Ambien ceased to work. I could stay up on a pair of 25mg Benedryls and a few stiff drinks. I fought with it for all but a couple of years during which I accepted the constant fatigue and irritability that comes with constant sleep deprivation and simply slept only when I could no longer stay awake.
A blister pack of small, pink pills changed that. An antipsychotic (or neuroleptic, if you’re a diplomatic member of the mental health community) called Seroquel brought me down like an elephant gun. Hell waking up, but sleep was sleep and it was a recuperative coma after a few exceptionally difficult nights in a row.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later that my diagnosis came. Bipolar disorder and insomnia make excellent bedfellows, it turns out. My brain does somersaults not because of that slice of Havarti an hour before bed, or because I was chatting on IM until the very last moment before switching off the light — it was flopping about because of some funky business of my neurotransmitters.
During a full-tilt manic episode, I was perscribed Risperdal, another antipsychotic. The feeling was sudden and intensely calming without sedation. Twelve trains of thought were reduced to three, restlessness and talkitivity cut to above-average levels from Severely Obnoxious and Disturbing. As the episode passed, I took less and less of the drug until I was taking a modest dose at bedtime. And sleeping. And able to wake the next morning without feeling as though I were coming out of a tranquilizer dose intended for a mastodon.
Now I am attempting to quit Risperdal. It has an unpleasant side effect of weight gain that I am less than enthusiastic about. However, I am thinking now that the solution is more exercise and not giving up my sleepytime drug. Healthier, but irritating.
The idea that there is something incurable, life-threatening, and alienating living in your head is difficult to accept. Feeling your own mind turn against you, show you things no one else can see, or feeling it will you to do imaginative and bizarre things, or having it turn in dark directions and wells of fear and despair… It is a discomfort that is challenging on a good day. It’s not a disease you can excise, cure, or manage with lifestyle changes. It will be with you until you die and, often, cause the strings tying you to reality wear and warp. Denial is a huge issue for bipolar patients. We feel perfectly normal most of the time, and who wants to take medications with obnoxious-to-debilitating side effects if you don’t have to? But when you go off of those meds, you open yourself to the risk of perilous highs which are chased with dark and lingering lows. My insomnia reminds me that I am not like the rest of you and I take my Lamictal faithfully.
Worse than accepting a chronic, incurable disease is the notion that my soul is tainted. I don’t believe in a human essence, but I was conversing with someone tonight who did. He felt that humans were much like nesting dolls, each smaller shell containing darker and truer secrets until you reach the center, where we keep our “secret self.” This was discussed in the context of sexual proclivities. His main point being that you only glimpse the true nature of another in the moment of release, when each wooden doll facade is dropped and a bare person and their bare wants lie exposed under you.
That moment is a dopamine storm. This happens for drug users and the mentally ill (drugs that block dopamine, like Risperdal, are used to treat such states for schizophrenics and manic patients). What I call dopamine surge, he called the human spirit. If the state of orgasm is innately different than that of mania and cannot be reduced to its chemical components, that brings up the question “What is mental illness?” A disease of the flesh is one thing, but a sickness of soul is another.
My lack of faith brings me great comfort during times like these. I am simply sick, I am run by a series of chemical reactions, and the smell of dog feces has dissipated enough to no longer keep me away from my bed.
Filed under: self indulgence
There’s nothing quite so tiring as moving. Physically as well as emotionally. Over the past two days, what was MY space, is returning to a room in a house that is not my home.
All of my linens have been packed up, my dishes, my finer toiletries. I’m using Chuck’s towels, Chuck’s plates. I inherited one of his perfumes. I’m drinking a beer brought over by a friend of Chuck’s. I’m living out of a large suitcase for the next month.
I’m feeling pretty lost at this point. Boston has always seemed like a pit stop in relation to my life. I’ve only been here a year and a half, and I have condensed a failed relationship (turned friendship), two jobs, and one mental breakdown into that short time.
I’ve learned a few indispensable lessons while here:
The lion’s share of dissatisfaction I have felt in my life is due to an illness, not any failing of my own. Furthermore, cycles of misery have altered my decisions. Particularly in the realm of relationships.
I’ve been compensating for a lack of personal stability by chasing stable people. This has always proved fatal for the relationship. Chuck and I have talked about this at length, and life philosophies come into play. He and other lovers I have had over the years have a strong need for predictability/safety in their lives. Over time, I grow bored and frustrated, and leave. I’ll never do well with these sorts… The “nice guys.” I’m much too caustic and mercurial, and the lack of stimulation and friendly antagonism leads me to stagnate. Good men, just bad for me.
I have felt like a failure for not having finished college yet, or knowing what direction to go in. I keep changing my mind, thanks to the disease. Changing how I feel about life, uprooting, flailing, drowning. I’m reasonably certain of my course now, and am heading in that direction with a plan now.
Every facet of my life is in flux. My location. My relationships. My career. My mind.
As a manic-depressive with a delta tattooed on her neck, this feels comforting.
Filed under: secrets
