Oh, NPR had a tidbit on BIG STAR the other day. I’ve owned a bunch of albums since college, but I hadn’t really gotten into it to this extent until now. And I think that’s because I associate it with nothing besides the present. I can’t hear “Gimme Some Lovin” by the Spencer Davis Trio or a Superchunk or Coldplay or Archers of Loaf or Pinback song these days, and I send myself on a not-so-pleasant journey toward emotional breakdown every time I try to listen to Sunny Day Real Estate’s “The Ocean,” but Big Star? Brings up zero memories. “Back of a Car” came on the jukebox the other day when I was at the Tune Inn and I almost pooped my pants.
yogi revelations
February 4, 2010Last pose of the class is pigeon pose, which releases all of the tension in your hips. The space between big breaths starts to decrease. Then, straight into savasana, or corpse pose, which always ends practice. This combination always digs deep into my insides and pulls up some hidden memory, and then I cry while lying on my back, splayed out like a dog waiting for a belly rub. Today I traveled immediately back to the day we transported Clark from home hospice in his mother’s basement to the facility. We had started to give him a type of drug that would help his nightmares and visions, but it made him incredibly sleepy, which therefore frustrated him because he couldn’t get any work done or receive guests. He was in and out of consciousness and wasn’t making any sense. The nurse came and told us we were hours or a day or two from the end. Joe came over to hold my hand. The ambulance arrived to transport him, and Joe and the two EMTs helped carry him into the back of the vehicle. I was belted into that ambulance today, post-yoga, sweat dripping down my face. It was so hard to maneuver him at that point, he was in so much pain, and I got so snippy with the EMTs because they weren’t minding his leg, which I held tightly in just the right position to relieve any pressure. I hadn’t thought about that ride down I-66 in a very long time. Yoga is scary like that. I never know what it’s going to dig up next.
anti-repressed
February 2, 2010I thought one of the reasons that I’m able to function is because I don’t repress too much. I’ll cry in public (daily), and talk about Clark when anyone asks. I’m not afraid to bring him up. If someone asks me how I’m doing, and if that day I’m not doing so well, I am not afraid to say so. I realized over the past two weeks, though, that I still haven’t been letting everything out. Last Saturday, Lauren brought me home after I’d put away a few beers and I cried big, gulping sobs on her couch for a few hours and said a lot of things I’d been afraid to say out loud. Once I formed the words, they didn’t seem so scary or ridiculous, especially since I had someone nodding in agreement that yes, these thoughts are legitimate and no, I am not insane.
This past weekend, my videographer friend Liz was shooting footage for her new project, “A Drunk History of Love.” You’d start the interview out sober, and over the course of 40 or so minutes, you’d get drunk. She interviewed couples, those who didn’t believe in love, single people, and me. I drank an entire bottle of champagne in about 20 minutes and released a ton of gunky stuff that’d been clogging my brain for the past seven months. Liz was filming, and couldn’t stop crying, so her friend Matt who was helping her asked the questions. I told this stranger, and the video camera, a ton of private and funny and sweet stories about our struggle and relationship, and it felt great. She’s going to edit all of our stories into a short film, and give me a copy of my audio.
i’m becoming my mother
January 29, 2010My mom called me last night at around 9 during the intermission of “Rain,” this Beatles retrospective tribute thing that my brother got her tickets to for Christmas. I couldn’t keep up with her; she was so excited. “And then they started, they came out, and they went right into ‘This Boy,’ and I thought. I was going. To die.” They went through the early days, eventually getting to “Twist and Shout.”
“Rebecca, I didn’t know if he was going to be able to do it. I thought, there’s no way he can do it. BUT HE DID IT. HE DID IT PERFECTLY,” she said. The “it” she’s referring to is John’s perfectly scratchy wail with all the grit and spit behind it.
“And George even did the dance that he always did during that one part, oh, it was perfect. And when he sang ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps,’ I almost cried.”
I talk exactly like that when I’m really excited about something. I’ll call someone about the new Justin Timberlake song or like, prep them for the first time they hear it, in the exact same way. I talk about the James Franco episode of “30 Rock” similarly. I’ve told my story about how I met Kevin, the lead singer of Better Than Ezra, when I was a SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL, to every single one of my friends, family members and acquaintances, using her exact same tone. If you haven’t seen the five second clip of me in the Rufus Wainwright DVD, then, I don’t know how I missed you. Oh, did you know that Editors are coming to town in a month, and that I’m hopelessly in love with lead singer Tom Smith? Yeah, I bet you did, because I’ve told you how I can. not. wait. for the show probably a million times by now. I hope I am able to convey how amazing these events and songs and things are as well as my mother did last night, because man, she was ECSTATIC.
the club
January 28, 2010I’ve worked at the 9:30 Club for over four years now, five if you count the time I was an INTERN. When Clark and I first started dating, he’d drive by on his way home from work or if he was out running errands, and I’d pop out of my cave-like box office hole, grab a quick kiss and a hug and he’d be on his way. Later when he got a bicycle, he’d ride over just to see me for a minute, even though we just parted ways two hours before. My five-hour shifts were too long for us to be apart. “I miss you so much already,” he’d text. We’d acknowledge that this behavior was sort of insanely obsessive, but ran with it.
I love the people there. After Clark died, many came to the memorial service. They ordered food trays for me, got me a card, gave me hugs and dealt with (and continue to deal with) me having freak crying incidents while on the clock. Sometimes being in the little box office makes me claustophobic and weird, and I can’t help but start to breathe more heavily and feel anxious about the fact that I won’t ever see him ride up to the corner of 9th and V again. When I would go to work when Clark was really sick, just to fake some sense of normalcy, I’d spend the entire time worrying about him and what he was doing and how he was feeling and if he was able to get to the bathroom OK. I think going there and realizing, hey, I don’t have to push to get out of here 15 minutes early, and I can totally stay for my shift drink because no one is reliant upon me, is something I’m not used to yet. I’m still sort of agitated, tapping my foot real fast, but nothing is pressing.
I totally met Johnny Marr last week, though, and Editors are coming soon. Good things.
‘Offering care for the caregiver’
January 23, 2010“It comes as no surprise, then, that physicians now rarely, if ever, learn about what a family caregiver or health care aide must do unless they are faced with caring for their own loved ones. We doctors don’t know or aren’t always fully aware of what it takes to care for a patient after we leave the room.”
“Of particular importance is understanding how the work of caregiving can also give rise to a new set of medical issues: those of the caregiver. Caregiving duties place tremendous stresses on an individual, and not all of those stressors are simply physical and emotional. ‘Some of these 37-going-on-40 million family caregivers have had to give up their own jobs in order to care for the patients,’ Dr. Hood said. ‘That means they aren’t going to be able to put aside money for their retirement. Who is going to take care of them and their medical problems in the future?’”
home improvement
January 22, 2010I tried to put together this “mobile laptop desk” my mom and dad got me for Christmas and failed miserably. It said on the box that it should take 15 minutes to assemble it. I went through 3/4 of the instructions before I had a cigarette “break,” which means I stopped trying.
The pieces.
The boxes.
Then I gave up.
Then I discovered I could still use the table even though it’s not entirely assembled.
airport reading
January 19, 2010The cover story of the current issue of Psychology Today, which I obviously bought along with People and Yoga Journal only because I was at the airport and that’s when you’re allowed to spend $15 on magazines, is called “Heartbreak and Home Runs: the Power of First Experiences.”
“Early loss can poison your ability to trust or feel safe, or give yourself fully in subsequent relationships. There’s a strong link between early loss and depression, and early loss is also associated with diminished ability to form later attachments.”
“But many people find that after surviving a painful loss, they emerge more resilient. Optimistic people take loss better than less optimistic people, as do people who grow up with strong, secure attachment to their caregivers.”
“But the biggest predictor of resilience in the face of loss is ’sense-making,’ weaving the experience into a larger narrative about who we are and what our lives are about. People struck by loss or trauma at an early age are at risk of drawing unwarranted conclusions about the world and their own place in it.”
I think I struggle with that “sense-making” thing the most.
the turnaround
January 18, 2010Yesterday, I did not want to come back to D.C. I wanted to stay in Boston with my sister. It is so comforting to be with someone who knows me so well and who wants to do all of the same things that I do. Usually those things are just eating, drinking, and watching sweet stuff on TV, but whatever. The times we did leave her apartment, we did some in-public eating and drinking and made my “Good Will Hunting” pilgrimage to Harvard Square. We also laugh so hard and so inappropriately all of the time, people must think we are crazy. She brought me to tears in the company of strangers at least once each day I was there.
I had some crying fits throughout yesterday, dreading the flight, landing in D.C., taking the bus and the metro to the reality of unemployment and a city that no longer contains Clark’s welcome home. In Boston, with a sister to tend to me and occupy me, I could pretend for a few days that things were relatively ordinary. Or that I was on a permanent vacation where finding a job and dealing with these stages doesn’t have to happen because I have my sister to feed me and crack me up.
So I was the weird, defeated-looking girl crying in spurts at the gate and on the plane. The thought of taking the bus from BWI to Greenbelt and then the Metro from Greenbelt to Columbia Heights made me even more upset! So I called Cella, who borrowed the Moonwagon to come and pick me up. She said she had a treat for me. I thought being able to smoke in the privacy of my own car was enough.
She had to pee, so we pulled over at a McDonald’s and made bad food decisions, which turned out to be perfect, because the surprise she had was this song, wherein Justin Timberlake equates eating with sex:
So we ate our gross fast food in the car while listening to this song. Then, when we came home, we obviously watched both this and this. Justin Timberlake, James Franco, Justin Theroux, Will Arnett + Amy Poehler? Apparently my sister is not the only one who knows how to distract me.
