It’s Been a Week

This has been a really fucked up week. My stomach hurts, my brain hurts, my heart hurts. It’s been short, but seemed long, and it’s been busy, but seemed empty. And I get up too early and go to bed too early and I feel off-sync with everything.

And that’s life, right? This collection of beautiful and horrible and comforting and terrifying moments, from which I suppose you’re supposed to learn something, if only to know yourself. I don’t know, I can’t explain it right now. Like I said my brain hurts.

So this week I had to hide in the basement from a storm, and hail hit my new car, and now I have a long weekend, and I got a three hour haircut, and sometimes my new house that I love has big empty echoes and hollow places in it that I have to fill in myself. Which is going to have to be OK.

Oh and I have an idea for a new art project, but I haven’t started it yet because it seems overwhelming. But I think next week I will.

Anyway, I still haven’t stopped listening to The Decemberists. Indeed it seems I cannot stop listening to The Decemberists. So here’s The Hazards of Love 1.

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The Decemberists – Hazards of Love 1

My true love went riding out in white and green and grey
Past the pale of Offa’s Wall where she was wont to stray
And there she came upon a white and wounded fawn

Singing oh, the hazards of love

She being full of charity, a credit to her sex
Sought to right the fawn’s hind legs
When here her plans were vexed

The Taiga shifted strange
The beast began to change
Singing oh, the hazards of love
Singing oh, the hazards of love
You’ll learn soon enough
The prettiest whistles won’t wrestle the thistles undone
Undone

Fifteen lithesome maidens lay
Along in their bower
Fourteen occupations paid
To pass the idle hour
But Margaret heaves a sigh
Her hands clapsed to her thigh
Singing oh, the hazards of love
Singing oh, the hazards of love
You’ll learn soon enough
The prettiest whistles won’t wrestle the thistles undone
Undone
Undone
Undone

Your Isolated Information Bubble

Ha!

This is awesome, although technically I do not recall Jesus promising an end to wicked people. But still, it’s funny.

Help Bunny Slay MS!

The summary: Please join us in supporting an uninsured member of the local creative community, who was hit with a devastating illness in April.

The full story: In early April, after experiencing a sudden loss of sensation in his legs, Jason Dunn (guitarist and songwriter for local nerd rock band DICEGRINDER, known as ‘Bunny’ to his friends) was admitted to the hospital, and later diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. His total stay in the hospital was more than two weeks. Despite treatment, over that time his symptoms only worsened. By the time he left the hospital/physical rehab, he’d lost sensation in his entire body, as well as losing the use of his hands.

Here's the spinal lesion that's currently causing all the trouble.

Here's Bunny in happier times, playing with DICEGRINDER

Jason needs our support right now to tide him over this complete financial disaster and ensure that he is able to stay in his home until he’s able to either work again or find another source of income. He also needs help in getting the house adapted to his current needs, and to plan for future flare-ups of this chronic condition.

There are two fund raising events in the works for him. One is a trivia night on May 21st, at Sandrina’s. You can find details about that event and sign up for it here or download the flyer below. (Contact  for more information on that event.)

There will be another benefit event, a concert in June (date TBD) featuring several local bands as well as an art auction.

For those who cannot make these events or who wish to give directly, we’ve set up a PayPal donation site. Truly, whatever you can afford to give will make a huge difference to Jason, and help make sure his bills are paid until he’s able to fend for himself again.

For anyone who’s ever had to work a crappy job with no benefits, and wondered what would happen if they got sick, this is what happens. We all band together and support our own. Please donate if you are at all able.

Please  if you have any questions!

(You don’t have to have a PayPal account to use the link below.)

Emotions are so Mainstream

Exactly

It is perhaps…

not the best time to fall in love with a $249.00 bag. But honestly, how can I help myself? Someone want to buy this for me? I’ve been very good, I promise.

I cannot help myself, it is totally irrational and yet I want it real bad.

God Damn It.

in re: the mouth of madness

I was putting on my lipstick just now and had an insane urge to spread it from one side of my face to the other, like a crazy homeless lady, and then just go on to my meeting and pretend everything was normal, and dare someone to say something.

Apparently It’s National Poetry Month

Or maybe it’s not, someone said so and I am too tired to look it up and frankly I don’t care. It’s just a good excuse to reblog this poem somebody blogged.

Emotional Idiot – by Maggie Estep

I’m an Emotional Idiot

so get away from me.

I mean,COME HERE.

Wait, no,that’s too close,

give me some space

it’s a big country,

there’s plenty of room,

don’t sit so close to me.

Hey, where are you?

I haven’t seen you in days.

Whadya, having an affair?

Who is she?

Come on,aren’t I enough for you?

Bookmark

I don’t feel like this today, but lots of days I do. So bookmarked for those future days.

You Should Watch This

Yes, This

Forget about it

So, another study came out recently talking about memory and stress level. It might not have realized that it was talking about that, really, as it was mostly about people in good moods having worse memories. (link to article about the study from the University of Missouri.) But it put me in mind of other research I’ve read about that indicates that being under short-term stress can enhance memory. Some of this stuff is based on findings that being under intense short-term stress leads to particularly detailed memory formation and that this is partly responsible for things like post-traumatic stress disorder. Basically, when something very traumatic happens to you, your brain records it with great detail. Which is awesome in the primitive brain when you’re needing to understand what happened to you (Fuck, a lion is chasing me!)  to prevent it happening again and learn how to adapt/survive, but it’s not so awesome when you’re reliving stressful shit in vivid-detail flashbacks.

From: Stressed memories: how acute stress affects memory formation in humans.

Stressful, aversive events are extremely well remembered. Such a declarative memory enhancement is evidently beneficial for survival, but the same mechanism may become maladaptive and culminate in mental diseases such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

All of this stuff rings really true to me. It feels pretty darn truthy. It makes a lot of sense to me that when we’re relaxed and chilled out, we’re not paying as much attention and we’re not scanning/recording events to the same level of detail. When we’re stressed out and anxious, we’re constantly scanning and recording/analyzing everything.

When I think about my own memory, and the memories of those around me, I am sometimes startled at the difference in not only the way we remember things, but the things we are able to remember at all. For instance: I have an absurd level of conversational recall. And not just about my own conversations, necessarily. I will remember things other people said to each other, in a conversation I was not party to. I will remember things that other people told me they did, and things that they say were said while they were doing what they did. Even though I wasn’t even there and it never happened to me first-hand.

And since I (sometimes? frequently?)  find dealing with other people and being in social situations pretty stressful, it makes sense to me that this is the basis of the mechanism powering my recall ability. When that conversation was happening, I was in some state of hypervigilance so it imprinted. Problem is, I assume everyone has this heightened level of conversational memory/recall, and I find it annoying and insulting when people don’t remember things I’ve told them or conversations I’ve had with them. Like how the fuck did you forget that when we discussed it last Tuesday and you were wearing that blue sweater and the sun was in my eyes? Don’t you remember because right after that the phone rang and then we all went to lunch and I spilled water on the tablecloth?

And when people do not remember that kind of thing, I have to tell you it pisses me right the fuck off. It’s a waste of my time and it shows that people weren’t paying attention, and if other people are not going to pay attention and what I am saying is not important to them, then why the fuck am I bothering to talk in the first place? Fuck dot that dot

And so I wonder if my expectations about what other people should be paying attention to and remembering are realistic. And if they’re not realistic, I wonder if that matters, or if it’s even something I could or should change. My way of being is no less legitimate than any other way, after all.

But all this research is actually very interesting, and makes me wonder all kinds of things like, does my own memory get worse when I am more relaxed? How do things like anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressants affect levels of concentration and memory formation? Is that tied to this stress-equals-memory thing? Is this part of why Ativan has an amnesic effect? It’s not the drug that blocks the memories, but the drug that blocks the stress that carves the memory into your brain cells?

And is this why, even without drugs, you don’t remember happy times, but you do remember terrible times? (For instance, it’s increasingly hard to remember day-to-day happy times with Bruiser, I have to concentrate to remember the way her tail curled up, and the way she ran across the yard, or snuggled up in my arms, but I remember in stomach-churning detail every second of watching her die. I remember the car ride there and the way the everything smelled, and the sun seeming so rude and cruel when I got back in my car to go home. I remember worse things than that, that I won’t even tell you about. Those memories I have to actively work not to replay in my head.) Is this where pessimists and misanthropes come from, how they’re made? Is this why no one but me seems to be paying attention? Is that why everyone else seems like such a pile of assholes all the time?

It’s a thing to ponder.