About a bird

Anxiety is high around here. August always seems to ratchet up the nerves. Summer has lost its charm, but not its edge. The humidity and the heat and the smells and strangers barking at each other in the street. Hurricanes and tropical storms are coming this way, they keep saying. One after another. Who can say what's next?

I've had conversations with not one, not two, but three loved ones who were beset with (they knew) irrational fears. I feel like I spend most of my time in Reassurance Mode. I'm glad I can be the one who's relatively calm (for once), but then I worry about their worry, because worry is bad for the health.

No one is sleeping. And when we manage it, our dreams are weird.

A few days ago I found a dying baby sparrow on the sidewalk. He blinked fast, flapped his wings, toppled over. His claws were mangled. There was nothing I could do, but I couldn't leave it. My downstairs neighbor came by. We sat down by the bird, in the middle of the sidewalk. Other passersby stopped and weighed in on what could be done. The baby bird kept blinking. I made some phone calls. No one asked why I was bothering with a baby sparrow, which I appreciated, but there was no real help to be found. We murmured to it. The blinks stopped. Mostly we were relieved. We wondered whether we helped the baby bird as it died, or terrified it. We did the best we could. We knew it wasn't much.

Yesterday that same neighbor texted me: "I am not kidding, there's another dead sparrow in our driveway," she wrote.

"Don't worry," I wrote back. "It's just Zombie Sparrow, come to exact revenge."

She was sure there was a bird epidemic. It would just figure, wouldn't it? The heat is rising, birds are dropping from the sky. What's next?

There's no question there's plenty to worry about. There's always a crisis. But I keep thinking how, on one of the hottest days of the year, people came upon two goofballs crouched over a baby bird, and they stopped to see what could be done. I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is we have each other, which is so cloying, but I mean it. Everything's scary, but we can be pretty great. Even in the middle of August, and everything dying around us.

On art, and fun, and saving your life

This Saturday was my first watercolor class ever, at the Brooklyn Museum.  I thought I knew my way around watercolor, but the more I learn, the more I learn that I don't know what I'm doing.  And really, I just want an excuse to paint for a couple of hours a week. It's a ten-session course, and I get to take it with my dad. Not to mention a lively assortment of art nerds. I say that without judgment, as I am one of them. These are my people. You shall know us by the graphite smudges on our cheeks.

One of my class paintings. Oh, but I have a lot to learn.

I cannot begin to tell you how fun this class was. It was stupid fun. I can't explain it. We didn't do anything ground-breaking. But by the end of the class I was giddy. I get such joy from this, it's embarrassing. Why is it embarrassing, you ask? That is an excellent question, and one I should bring up with my imaginary therapist.

It's been too easy, over the past few weeks, to set this new habit of mine aside. Life gets tiring and complicated and by the end of the day I'd rather watch the Daily Show than haul out my paints or find something to sketch. (The other day I sketched Jon Stewart. Multitasking!) I have to push myself, but I'm so much happier when I do it than when I don't.

As I wrote in my latest blog post over at Babble, I started painting after my psychiatrist suggested I figure out what "fun" meant, for me.

During one of my sessions with my psychiatrist, most of which were spent with my head deep in the tissue box, he asked me what I did for fun.

“Faaaahn?” I said.

“Fun,” he said.

“What is this ‘faaahrn’?” I said.

It seemed like there was a trick to his question, like my source of fun would have to be esoteric and challenging, something that hadn't occurred to me before. Like samba lessons, or advanced magic. I considered art, and disregarded it at first because it was--well, not easy, but natural. I've been drawing and painting my whole life. It seemed like cheating. Like I was getting away with something. As if fun needed to be hard. I am a slow learner, folks.

I want everyone else to have something like this. Especially those of us dealing with depression--we who tend to focus more on feeling okay, on avoiding pain, than seeking out joy. If you could do anything that's pure fun, what would you do? Bonus points if it's embarrassing. I suspect you're all secret clog dancers.

Some disorganized ramblings along with these sketches

Last week I was experiencing post-panic-attack ennui and wondering if I should give in, once and for all, to my agoraphobic/weirdo tendencies. I AM a writer, after all! What reason have I to go outside? Or look people in their scary faces?

Instead of bricking over the door, I sketched. A lot. Like while I watched TV with Henry. Who did not approve my drawing of his feet. For the record.

Then the dog woke up, and made me walk him. Jerk.

(This was before he had to be Coned. He's much better now, thanks for asking! He has no more need for a cone, and it looks like we've avoided the need for surgery. His vet declared him the healthiest fourteen-year-old dog she'd ever seen. AT LEAST fourteen, we reminded her. He could be much older. He could be the Methusaleh of dogs.)

I also sketched Izzy. She still hasn't forgiven me. It's actually a flattering portrait.

(Charlie sleeps a lot.)

Then I was all, what do I draw now? And my living room was like HELLOOOOO. So okay.

At the end of last week I went on an audition. Of all things. I thought I was a writer who never had to put on pants? Except to walk the dog? And even then a longish coat will suffice? And now I'm being called on to put on mascara and emote in front of a camera*? (*Magic soul-catching box.) Next week I'm going on another audition. One that is totally unrelated to the first one. I apologize for being so cryptic but this is all very puzzling to me. I hope to tell you all about the goings-on when the results are in. And I'm on BROADWAY!

(p.s. not Broadway.)

All is well, and all will be well

Everything is fine but I am having a hard time convincing my mind of that--my mind, where things that don't exist seem to matter.

My thoughts keep circling around a few choice incidents: like how, last week, we lost Henry in the park for a few terrifying minutes, minutes that seem to stretch on and on in my memory, even though it wasn't that long and of course he was found, completely fine, if scared. But for those few minutes, we screamed into the woods, and there was no answer. That's where my memory is stuck.

And then it fast-forwards to a few days later, when I crossed a busy street against the light (stupid, I know, so stupid) and Henry was behind me, with Scott, only he bolted after me, and there were no cars even near him, but he wasn't looking and he followed and that's my freeze-frame, the innocent following, the trusting, damn it, all my fault.

The culmination occurred only a few minutes later, I think--maybe a half-hour?--when the encroaching stomach-sick that was threatening me all day, struck--on the subway. Where you really don't want something like that to happen. And I don't know whether it was the nausea that gave me a panic attack, or the panic attack that's been almost overtaking me for days kicked the nausea into high gear, but either way, I had to get off the train. I was in a blind panic and I told Scott, I have to get off the train now, and we were nowhere near home, and then I was on the platform, retching (unproductively, painfully) behind a garbage can, and I had no feeling in my arms and I was bathed in cold sweat and between retches I informed Scott that he had to get an ambulance because there was no way. There was no way I could get home. I was going to die there. On the G platform. The G! The very worst train!

At any rate, Scott (fortunately) did not panic, and no one called an ambulance (although a very nice passerby did offer to help, which was so kind--I would keep my distance from a lady retching on the subway platform, personally) and Henry patted me on the back, and the crisis subsided, and we actually got back on the train, where I shivered and sweated and felt generally pathetic.

That was my Sunday. Yesterday I was sick, curled up on the couch all day. Today I am better. I had a burger that was off, or a flu, is all. But I feel like an open wound, and my mind keeps going back, to the park, staring into the woods, or to the street, Henry following me, to the mistakes I keep making--or that moment in the subway--I don't know. I don't even know why I'm telling you this. Only that I feel alone with my thoughts and they won't let up and I am exhausted. I wish I could give myself a break but I am still not fully convinced that I deserve it.