Friday, February 25, 2011

Speaking De-Motivationally: Poverty and Random Disorders Take Their Toll

I tell people I'm medicated--for my safety and theirs: 100 mg of sertraline (which is just the generic form of Zoloft). While I absolutely hate medications and have my issues with the traditional medical and psychological professions, it actually helps. On my meds, my brain no longer feels as though it's being shaken all the time, and I can usually find the wherewithal to do things that need to be done. However, when other disorders are added into the equation....

I have some odd thing, related to narcolepsy though not the same, that means while my body is awake, my brain has not yet gotten the total message. Therefore, I am always tired. Always. No matter what I do or how much sleep I manage to get, I feel as though I just got off a 12 hour shift unloading trucks or something (which I have done before, so I know whereof I speak). Luckily, there is a medicinal fix to this problem. It's called Provigil and is in the same family as but is not actually a methamphetamine--non-addcitive, even. And it works. However, even with decent prescription coverage (decent meaning my other meds--all generic--are less than five dollars), my co-pay for it is forty dollars a month. Compared to many other people's prescription costs, this is insanely cheap, and in that sense, I am thankful for the coverage I have. But we simply can't afford it right now. What this means is that though my brain in one way says, "Hey! That needs straightening/cleaning/whatever! Let's do it!" The rest then says, "*Yawn* Nap first, clean later." I have no motivation to do anything whatsoever. Therefore things are not as clean as I would normally have them, and that in turn makes my brain feel all shakey, regardless of the 100 mg of Zoloft.

In fact, we have friends coming over tomorrow afternoon, so I have to straighten and clean. I know this, but what have I done? I took a two and a half hour nap, after which I was supposed to go ahead and finish Latin homework and find an article for a paper I have to write this weekend. Didn't happen. Nap, sandwich, and now this blog. And I am still tired. I will still be tired in the morning after 7 or 8 hours of sleep. I will be tired the next morning no matter how much sleep I get.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

I'm Having an Affair with an Adverb: Waxing Poetic, the First

It's no secret that I love poetry; I've written it (and everything else I can manage) for as long as I can remember. Being in poetry workshops has only made this love an obsession. Everything I think tries to come out in lines, in fact. Anyway, the point is that I tend to fall desperately in love with words and poems and lines and, well, I get somewhat carried away at times. The following is one poem I've become engrossed in. The bolded lines I'm in love with...

* * * * * * * *

Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Ode to Roseanne

Let's be honest here: I am a Netflix addict. I love being able to pull up random movies and tv shows whenever I want. I've seen awesome documentaries and a ton of movies from my childhood that I had completely forgotten about. Tonight I was super excited to discover that they have all the seasons of Roseanne on instant watch. So of course, I started with episode 1, procrastinating my ass off in the worst way. I had forgotten just how much I love this show!

When I was younger, I loved all the family sitcoms, but I particularly loved Roseanne. While I was jealous as hell of the Huxtables and all those other families, I turned on Roseanne because it was the one family in which I could see myself reflected. Even though some of the other sitcom families weren't exactly perfect; Danny Tanner was a widower whose friends had to step in and help raise the kids, for instance. But all of the rest of them never seemed to have any financial issues. I don't remember one single episode where the Tanners or the Owens were worried about groceries or the bills. For me, that was certainly far from reality. Even when I lived with Mema, who owned her house and car, we were living on a Social Security budget, and she ruled the bank with an iron fist forged in Great Depression. (Too bad I never picked that lesson up, right?) From my perspective, the Connors were the only normal family on tv.

I don't think there's really a point to this except to say that I'm thankful for Roseanne. She made me feel like less of an oddball among the DJ Tanners and Vanessa Huxtables of prime time.