howl_at_the_sun

I took my dog, Rhymer, for a walk in Castle Rock Park, where there are squirrels. On squirrel-less trails, he stays more or less nearby. On squirrel-ful trails, apparently, he turns into a ravenous beast and vanishes into the horizon. Hmm.

So, he went off on one such expedition, and I turned around and walked the other way. A while later, he came galloping gleefully back and sped ahead off me, off into that horizon. Hmm.

I turned around and walked the other way.

Repeat about 20 times.

The dog finally walked, beaten, at my side, panting as though he couldn't breathe. I walked a short loop with him maintaining a respectable distance and then took him to my parents' house. My dad took the other two dogs for a walk. Normally, this would be an occasion of Much Angst for Rhymer. As I am sitting here writing this, however, he has no energy for proper angst. He whines in a vague, breathless way, hauls himself to a standing position, walks about two feet, and thumps back to the ground, panting furiously. He recovers a little, then does the same thing again. Pant, pant, whine, stand, pace, thump. Repeat.

It is one of the more pathetic things I have had the privilege to witness.

( Here be pictures.  )

I spent a lot of time running around interviewing people and taking crooked videos (oops!). Thoroughly exhausting. And now I've accumulated even more research material. ... Why was I thinking that I needed that again?

I recently acquired a beautiful new Sony camera in order to do interviews for my Public History Project. So, accordingly, procrastinating about said project, I took pictures of the cat and dog. I also took a video, but it made me seasick to watch, so I'll have to work on that.
( Photos behind the cut. )

It is strange and glorious to be unreservedly happy.

I have made sense of depression that I have not ever made before, and it is ... a bizarre kind of relief.

I've always had it in my head that depression is like riding a runaway horse. Except, instead of the horse, I am riding my emotions. When they start to run away, it's usually toward a horribly nasty emotional state. And for some time I've been able to identify that they're going there, when I am starting to spiral, but like a runaway horse, simply *knowing* that the horse is running away does not by any means make the horse stop.

I observed that I had gotten better at dealing with *actual* runaway horses. That is to say, my horse. If I feel her start to think of running off, I can usually prevent it. Usually. If I catch it before she's gone. If she's gone, well, then I ride it out and get control when I can. Usually, if I go back to the basics and drill her a bit, or sometimes even get off, the running off does not happen.

I told Barbara that the problem was that I could not do the same with myself.

And I called my dad, after the session, telling him that I was unhappy about not doing things, unhappy with feeling unable to do things -- i.e., I was unhappy with getting away with emotionally. I don't think he understood that. He said, well, why don't you just do it? If you want to do those things, why not just make a real commitment and follow through with your plans?

I melted. Of course I melted. If there is one thing I have been doing, it is trying. I don't like to think how much of my effort and energy has gone into knock down drag out fights with myself so that I can get things I need doing done. I don't like to think about how much I've had to try to do basic, basic things that are hard for no explicable reason. And so, the only alternative that seemed left was that I really did not have that much strength; at the end of the day, I did not have enough spine, enough will, to get through. Not enough to make myself try as much as I should. Or, perhaps, that I was broken, so much so that trying wasn't worth it, because it wasn't working.

I had a bad night, you bet.

Then I thought about the runaway horse. If I were riding a runaway horse, and someone told me that the horse was not stopping because *I was not trying hard enough* to stop it, I would think that they were an idiot. Pull harder and fight more with a horse that's running away, pit yourself against its strength, and guess what happens? The horse runs faster, and you get tired. Stopping a runaway horse is not, on the whole, a matter of strength. It's absolutely a matter of knowing what to do and when to do it. It's knowing the tricks of how to ride, of how to stop the horse from running away to begin with. It is never, for most people, a matter of strength.

It's not a matter of strength. Such an odd thought. Such a relief of a thought. It's a matter of knowing not just how to ride, but how to work through already existing problems; it's a matter of training. It's a matter of knowing how to communicate and how to refine things, and some days the bloody horse will still run off with you. But it gets better, and it doesn't get better because the rider gets stronger; it gets better because the rider learns how to deal with the problems.

 1) There is such a thing as too much tomato, even if you really love tomato.

2) Coriander cannot fix everything. 

3) It is okay to throw out a dish before anyone else has a chance to verify that it really is that bad. Especially if you do the dishes afterward to conceal the evidence.

From Freedom & Necessity by Emma Bull and Steve Brust.  "I'm doing this mostly because it's opened wide a door to a room inside me that before I could only guess at by the light along the sill and through the keyhole. It's a room in which all those things in me that, living the normal life of a well-bred woman, I could never use--strength and speed and hardiness; command over my mind and body; respect for the language of my senses; a certain ferocity of the spirit-- are not only useful but essential. In that place life is lived as if in mid-air over an obstacle, between leap and landing, with everything committed and nothing certain. Everything happens fast enough."

Finding a good tea cozy is a tricky proposition.

Edited to add: I mean, look at the sort of thing that I'm working with! http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12249921&ref=sr_gallery_1&&ga_search_query=tea+cozy&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=19&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title

5) The "Just One More Source" stage
a) You are lying to yourself. It's time to admit it.
b) You already have twenty pages of notes.
c) Synthesis is not that scary. You can do it!

6) The "Talk to People Who Link You to Comics On the Web But Not Webcomics" stage
a) Damnit, Richard.

1) The "I Will Solve the Fundamental Difficulties of Multiple Viewpoints and Experiences in my Brilliant Narrative" stage
a) First of all, no, you won't.
b) Second of all, the assignment doesn't call for that.
c) Finally, you are making this so much harder than it needs to be.

2) The "Proliferation of Theses" stage
a) In theory, this is necessary part of the process.
b) In practice, writing that paper would be a lot easier if you didn't keep changing your mind about what you were writing about every paragraph.
c) See point 1c.

3) The "Listen to Weird Finnish Music Video Over and Over and Over" stage
a) Do you even like the video?
b) Then why are you listening to it?
c) Staring at youtube videos is not writing.

4) The "Write A Livejournal Post" stage
a) Oh, uh... Damn.