A Constellation of Low-Grade Anxieties

I've been thinking lately about anxiety, and all of its different manifestations, and how seldom any of the things we worry about, usually between the hours of 2:30 and 3:45 a.m., actually manifest in the bright light of day. (Planet X, I'm talking to you.)

If we're unlucky, I'll get tongue tied,
then manage to say something so
incredibly awkward that the other
passengers will attempt to throw
themselves down the elevator shaft
to escape the noxious cloud of
awkwardness.

I have no trouble reading deeply personal poetry into a microphone, or delivering a presentation to a hundred people (thanks, no doubt, to a career that has frequently required me to babble at length in public settings about subjects on which I am at best marginally well informed). However, ask me to make small talk to people on an elevator and, if we are all very lucky, I'll be tongue tied.

Bruce is anxious about nuclear war, North Korea, being left without adult supervision for more than 30 minutes, and where he and his sisters will live as grown ups that will meet their individual preferences while still being close enough to not be a hardship for me to visit them. Yet, on the fourth day of his first year in junior high, he got up in front of a class of fellow sixth graders and acted his little heart out for the first time, displaying emotions and facial expressions that had the class laughing and clapping. He likes to play his viola for me, but he worries if I am ten minutes late in the driveway.

Number of times I've heard her sing: 1
She tells me this is because Alto 2 is really
boring and all she does is hold a single note
for a really long time so there's nothing to hear.
This is called lying.

Eleanor doesn't worry about international politics or war, but every choir competition or performance sends her to the bathroom for a ten-minute panic attack.

Betty can make friends with the new kid in class and deliberately change seats every single day so she can sit with as many new kids as possible, but attempts to hide behind me at family gatherings.

I have a friend whose anxiety sometimes won't let her leave the house, but is brave enough to share her struggles on social media and even begin a memoir about them.

So anxiety is something we all have, but in strange and subtle ways, like a fingerprint whose swirls and ripples tells the story of our emotional lives.

I've been embarking on a sort of challenge here lately, inspired by <I apologize for the banality of this in advance> Pinterest. I know, right?

Okay, it's 15 minutes before
6:00 a.m. But still. Until this
summer, I was pretty sure
all times before 6:00 a.m.
were part of some sort of
alternate and particularly
sketchy dimension.

So, this challenge is in addition to all of the other challenges I keep giving myself. First, there was the Continuous Practice challenge, inspired by a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook. That challenge was to do something creative every day as an act of mindful creation. Now, the actual challenge, I never could figure out how to join on Facebook. But, never fear, I blended it with the Morning Pages challenge from one of my favorite bloggers, Little Coffee Fox. (Her motto is "Inspiration Through Organization," and I promise you, I feel the irony, and it burns.). So, my "something creative every day" became "to write morning pages." I even, and this should call for some form of electroshock therapy, have been getting up before 6:00 a.m. to meet these challenges. And because that wasn't challenging enough, I decided to make one of my three morning pages devoted to a challenge from one of my other favorite bloggers, Brigit Esselmont of Biddy Tarot (since college I've used tarot cards as a tool to help me examine my thoughts, question my motivations, and generally find new ways to think about what's going on in my life). And when you're already doing three writing challenges a day, what's one more? I intended to go to a poetry critique group one Saturday with the prompt of writing a seven-line poem. I didn't actually go, because Hurricane Harvey came through and I wasn't sure if I'd need to go into the office or not. Never fear, though, because I really got into the prompt and began writing a six- or seven-line poem every evening.

So, of course, when you're already doing four overlapping writing challenges a day, what you obviously need (besides to stop following so many bloggers) is to go on Pinterest and find inspiration for a fifth writing challenge. And, oh, my friends, Pinterest will provide!

*Also interesting? How the truth journaling
aspects of my morning pages manifestation
of my continuous practice is reflected in my
tarot draws and expressed in my daily poems.
Because I am a multi-tasking beast, people!
(For those who don't tarot, the reversed
ten of swords, very appropriately, suggests
cutting through the lies you tell yourself.)

Anyway, Writing Challenge #5 is something called "truth journaling." The idea is to pour out what psychology folk call the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) on paper, and then methodically cross-examine those and debunk them. I like me pretty well as a person and am reasonably content with my life, but I do have some very deep anxieties about my exterior. The interesting part of the truth journaling aspect of my morning pages manifestation of my continuous practice* is how, when I really reflect on each little thing I don't like about my appearance, it really traces back to some bit of social anxiety from my youth. I'm too tall? Comes from years of kids asking me how the weather is up here, hordes of well-meaning adults asking if I played basketball, and decades of frustration in department stores trying to find sweaters whose sleeves reach the wrist. My feet are too big? Comes from the horror of needing black shoes for marching band and having to buy granny shoes at SAS. All minor, low-grade anxieties that linger like the after-effects of a pot of sauerkraut, polluting the air long after the ridiculousness of teen angst has passed. Examined in that light, they were as outdated as the granny shoes and much easier to put in the dumpster.

I highly recommend any one (or more!) of the challenges above. Since July 16, 2017, I have written 267 pages, 74 continuous practice sets of morning pages, reflected on 88 tarot cards, and written 36 six- or seven-line poems. I've gotten some great insights into myself and others, and I've gotten at least a bit more comfortable with looking in the mirror. All of which may, possibly, just maybe, be worth getting up at 5:45 for.

The journal my kids got me for Christmas. I started writing in July and it's half full. This will make them happy because it will give them something concrete to shop for next Christmas.
Also, Sharpie pens are awesome.

French Lessons

Hair: Personal adornment or personal
curtain? Eleanor is partial to what I
call the "Cousin It" look.

Eleanor, my eldest child, is a high school freshman in her first semester of French I. Learning a foreign language is challenging for the shy, because teachers insist on making you practice, which requires you to actually speak out loud in class. (I know, right? As any true book nerd could tell you, the whole purpose of learning a foreign language is so that you can correctly pronounce foreign words in your head when the characters in that book you're reading use them.)

So, French is a struggle for her, not academically but socially, and she is a little bit intimidated by this whole talking thing. I empathize with her completely--I took four years of high school French, followed by two years of college French, stayed with a French family for a week my junior year of high school and spent six weeks studying in Paris in college...and I was still intimidated by the thought of actually applying that knowledge by talking to real people.

So I told her the story of the shining moment I learned to really speak French, fluently and with confidence.

It was 1992, and I was studying abroad in Paris in my final summer in college. Overachiever that I was, that would put me at the ripe old age of 20.

Le sigh. Eleanor is closer to 20 than I am. So are Bruce and Betty.
Actually, so is Bob Cat. Damn. I need wine.

Anyway, I mostly hung out with two girls named Rachel and Leslie. The three of us were independent and adventurous, but of the three of us, I was the only one who spoke French.

We were encouraged to explore the city;
however, we were strictly forbidden to
go to Pigalle, the shady red-light district
of Paris. I swear, us getting off the Metro
at the one place in Paris we were forbidden
to get off the Metro was a complete
accident, but the fact that we stopped for
photos before getting back on probably
speaks volumes and may explain the
anecdote that follows.

We decided one weekend to take a trip to Mont St. Michel, on the northern coast of France. Mont St. Michel is a monastery perched on a picturesquely remote island. So, being the designated French speaker, I was in charge of purchasing our train tickets.

Me: We would like 3 tickets to Mont St. Michel.

Train Ticket Guy: There's a train that leaves at midnight, stops at Caen, and then arrives at Mont St. Michel.

Me: Is that midnight Friday or midnight Saturday?

Train Ticket Guy: Midnight Friday.

Me: Perfect!

So, we three young ladies in our backpacks show up at midnight Saturday, which is of course, the time after 11:59 PM on Friday night. You may be able to see where this is going, in which case you're ahead of us.

A train actually arrives at midnight, quelling my last lingering fears about how that conversation with the Train Ticket Guy went. We make it to Caen and look for our connection. It is not until 2 p.m.

WHAT?

As it turns out, every night at midnight there is a train from Paris to Caen. But the immediate connection to Mont St. Michel only happens on weekdays, i.e., right after the 11:59 PM that happens on Thursday. Thankfully, no one was too mad at me, realizing that it was pure madness for any civilized country to schedule a train departure for midnight. Had any parent or responsible adult known our predicament, they would have suggested a hostel or hotel; however, as mentioned, we were young, independent, and adventurous and felt that that would be a poor use of money that could otherwise go to wine.

Speaking of peeing in the park, this is one
of my favorite statues (at Fontainbleu).
I love the dogs' expressions. Diana the
Huntress is all power and energy and
doing the Queen of the Hunt thing, while
the dogs are like, Meh, I gotta go.

So we decided to spend the night in the train station, obviously. You meet all kinds of people at a deserted train station after midnight; fortunately, none of them killed us. We met a young couple going to "meet the parents." There was a large, loud, drunk group of creepy guys who kept trying to hit on us. That was amusing for a while, but eventually we went back to the waiting room and slept on the train station floor. If I told you this was the only public waiting area I slept in on this particular trip, I'd be a liar. It wasn't the cleanest, either.

You don't exactly sleep in, when you're sleeping in a train station, so we got up at 6 and wandered around Caen. This happened to be the day of the local celebration honoring the Normandy invasion in World War II (it was June 6). The thing I remember most from Caen was at the festival, when a young mom suddenly stopped, pulled down her 2-year-old's pants, and swung him in the air so he could pee in the park.

Anyway, some hot cocoa and sightseeing later, we got back on the train and finally made it to Pomtorson, the town closest to Mont St. Michel, at which point, as the designated French speaker, it was my job to call the hostel and ask them to come pick us up. And it was the hostel's job to tell me that we were too far out of town and they weren't going to and we couldn't make them and we might as well just stay in town.

It was at this moment that six years of French finally paid off. I was tired. I had slept in a train station, gotten lost in a strange town I hadn't intended to visit. I had a very bad cold. I had had enough. So I let the desk clerk have it. I argued, vehemently, eloquently, rapidly, occasionally profanely, and above all fluently in French for an entire five-minute phone card. It was the culmination of my French education, which almost made up for the fact that I lost.

It probably goes without saying that we did not give up at this point. We did manage to find lodging in town, and had pizza at a restaurant that sold pizza with fried eggs on it, although none of us ordered that (the limits of our adventurousness didn't go quite that far).

In the morning, we walked to the depot to rent bicycles to ride to Mont St. Michel, a distance of some 7 km or so. Unfortunately, the bike rental place wasn't going to open for another 5 hours. So, naturally, we hitchhiked. After walking a couple of kilometers, we got picked up by an empty tour bus and the driver lectured us about the dangers of hitchhiking all the way to Mont St. Michel.

Mont St. Michel. For some reason, other people had no problem reaching it in much less dramatic ways, as evidenced by the fact that we ran into one of the other people from our group there. Also, as evidenced by the fact that Sunday mass was super crowded, and it is probably safe to assume that none of those people had to hitchhike on an empty tour bus.
In hindsight, I was like the worst tour guide EVER.

So, as much as I might hope that Eleanor gets over her shyness and becomes fluent in French...I have to say, I hope she becomes fluent in a more traditional manner, by speaking in the safe, well-lit, climate controlled classroom environment and that she never, ever takes a train leaving at midnight.

Me, on the left at Chateau de Azay-le-Rideau.
Ah, 1989!

The Domovoi in the Oven

I read an amazing book last weekend, The Bear and the Nightengale, by Katherine Arden. And I mean 'amazing' not in the sense of 'really great' or 'awesome sauce,' as we use it today, but in the original, medieval sense, "overwhelm or confound with sudden surprise or wonder." 

The surprise and wonder come from the fairy tale story, with its beautiful setting and magical creatures. The best of fairy tales, and this is one, evoke those feelings.

The confounding and dreamlike confusion comes from being thrust into the completely foreign world of medieval Russia, in the far north, at a time when Christianity was new and the same people went to church on Sunday and left crumbs for household spirits.
Reading the book feels like you're sitting around the fire with Vasilisa, the herione, listening to her nurse's fabulous tales of the Winter King, being amazed while the winter wind howls outside. Under Arden's telling, you can feel the winter wind and the struggle to survive, where the lives of the whole community lie on the knife's edge between survival and starvation. 

There are many things to love about this book. One is the very human complexity of the relationships. The wicked step-mother is no caricatured Disney villain. She is ripped from relative luxury in the Kremlin and sent to marry an older man in the wild and freezing north and her 'madness' comes, in an odd sort of way, from the best of intentions. Her daughter, Vasilisa's step-sister, is beautiful but kind, in a way that fairy tale step-sisters seldom are, and she loves both her mother and Vasilisa sincerely. In general, each member of the extended family is trying, in their own way, to do what is best and to take care of each other--but, as in real life, intentions and actions get horribly muddled. It is a complex, nuanced characterization of family. The plot is well crafted and suspenseful as well.

But the true protagonist of the novel, and the reason it amazed me so, was the landscape. In an interview with Krista Tippett of On Being, Irish philosopher John O'Donohue, speaking of his own landscape of Western Ireland, said, "landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive. What amazes me about landscape — landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time."


That is the the amazing part of The Bear and the Nightengale, the part that draws you in. The setting, the characters, the plot: all of these are shaped by and interact with the landscape. The people exist in a way that requires them to have transactions with the landscape, to negotiate the materials of safety and life, to watch it closely to see whether it is giving or taking away life. Thus, it is not surprising that the people believe in more concrete manifestations of the landscape, like the domovoi (household guardian) who lives in the oven and, for an offering of crumbs, will help with the mending and housework and guard the door. (The domovoi was my favorite of the supernatural creatures...I totally want one, but I don't think our oven is big enough. Maybe they come in a modern teacup size? I'm with the step-mother on the bannik issue--guardian or not, having a spirit watching you take a bath would be a little creepy.)

The domovoi. Vladimir Chernikov
See what I mean? It would be awesome to have a domovoi. He could help with the dishes, make sure I didn't burn anything, and he could totally play with the cat and keep Bob from breaking stuff all the time. Although, maybe we already have a domovoi and that's why Bob breaks stuff at night, because he was chasing the domovoi. Maybe it isn't Bob stealing all the bread, it's just a hungry domovoi. Now I want to get a nightvision camera in my kitchen.

Per Mr. O'Donohue, "it makes a huge difference, when you wake in the morning and come out of your house...you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you, but in a totally different form, and if you go towards it with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you." 

Rusalka, found here.
Wouldn't she make an awesome friend? She's
a great swimming coach, has a sweet comb,
and will mostly try not to eat people,
if you ask nicely and hang out sometimes. 

This sense of "real and watchful reverence" pervades the characters of Pyotr Vladimirovich's household, most of all in his daughter Vasilisa. As a child, she befriends a rusalka, a sort of succubus-like figure who entices and drowns young men, a friendship made of promises and gifts--in other words, a relationship. These spirits, these manifestations of the landscape, become her friends, alive and interdependent. It is a strange and beautiful thing to read about--in short, amazing.

The Bear and the Nightengale is an excellent tale that surpasses the standard of the genre by creating complex, nuanced characters and puts them in a landscape that has truly come to life. The culture of this period of history was fascinating and mostly unknown to me before I read it (pro tip: there's a glossary, which I didn't find until the end of the book and which would've been helpful sooner). I highly recommend it, particularly here in Texas when a hint of arctic air is most welcome.


For fun, here's a poem I wrote on topic a year or so ago. It is said that the rusalka was once a jilted lover, which explains her vengeance upon young men.








Rusalka

My eyes once were full of stars,
  My heart hooked to the rising moon,
Before he cast me into the river
  With his rough farmer’s hands,
Eyes dead like winter.

Red hair twined among the reeds
   While his face faded above
And the cold water claimed me.
   Madness here, beneath the river;
Time slithers in the silt.

Dark thoughts nibble at my toes.
   All I can remember is my hate.
I am waiting     waiting      waiting,
   Swirling vengeance in the current:
When you come to fish.

Come on, wade in:      closer.      There:
    Red hair twined among your ankles,
Pulling you in, dragging you to my bed.
   Men keep fishing, and I’ll keep catching--
Until one of them is him.