Cirque du Malaise

Every once in a while — okay let’s just call it once a month — I resign myself to take a mental health day. A mental health day is when, despite the mountains of work and exercise obligations and “should’s” and “must’s” and “have to’s,” one instead collapses on the couch in a state of general malaise, maybe sobs a little bit, and then watches 8 straight hours of mindless television while eating cookies and soup for dinner (in that order).

Mental health days are absolutely essential for maintaining spiritual equilibrium, especially around the holiday season. And to be really worthwhile, they have to happen when it’s least convenient and there is the most amount of pressing things to get done STAT.

I had a mental health day yesterday. Mondays are good days for mental health days because they are a) high pressure days to begin with and b) a great way to set you up for a week of saying “fuck it.” On this particular Monday, I had just gotten back from spending the weekend with good friends up in Mendocino. I had already taken a half day to drive home, and was planning to buckle down the moment I arrived at my office in order to power through several hours of work before going to yoga at 6:30pm like a good Godfearin’ yogi.

But it was not to be.

It was too cold in my house to think (cursed damp 55 degree November day) and things were out of sorts. Because I was gone all weekend and have been busy lately, there was an ominous pile of laundry calling me. There were tumbleweeds on the floor and a sink full of dishes and, try as I might, I could not ignore them. But I couldn’t get myself to do them, either, because that would just be admitting defeat over my concentration issues. So instead, I did the logical thing: I flung myself on the couch, had a tantrum for just a sec, and then commenced to watched back-to-back episodes of Six Feet Under until midnight.

I didn’t go to yoga. You know how they say, “You never regret going to yoga”? You know how they say that? You know how they tell you that going to yoga will fix whatever ails you? That if you have a cold coming on, you should “sweat it out”? If you just got really bad news, you can “find gratitude” on your mat? If you are experiencing general malaise, you should “get out of your head”?

Sometimes they are right. I’ve had these yoga-saving experiences; I have. But I’ll tell you what. Nothing brings you back to a state of equanimity and peace like a good old fashioned mental health sesh on the couch.

The slow decline into winter’s dark days is a time when my bio-clock says “Slow down! Hibernate! Store up fat for winter!” and accordingly, my energy level plummets and I desire warm, high-calorie foods and less activity. This is the season when I am most inclined to blow things of a social or active nature off and geek out on the Internet instead.

I used to fight it. I used to self-judge. But I’ll tell you, I’ve really learned to abide by my need for a periodic mental health day. I’ve been taking them my entire life. They really do work. Better than yoga.

I’m really into making pottery. I don’t talk about it all that much, partly because it’s hard to talk in words about something that happens purely from the right side of your brain, and partly because, well, it’s my thing, and I don't always feel like sharing it. Sometimes it’s nice to have just one thing that you don’t share with anyone else. I go to a pottery studio once a week and make things. And usually my favorite part of these evenings is putting in my iPhone earbuds, blasting some Chopin, and tuning everything and everyone else out.

Last night though, was different.

I was feeling sad when I got to class. I have terrible jet lag this week, it’s been rainy and glum in Mill Valley, and then, fuck it all, Steve Jobs died yesterday.

I know it’s a little weird to get emotional when a public figure dies. I did not know Steve Jobs and I really do have bigger problems to worry about. But Steve Jobs was that rare public figure whose existence actually did touch my life, personally, and the lives of those around me. He impacted my own life deeply with his brilliant product innovations at Apple, but also with his creative vision, in which way he was truly a role model. THINK DIFFERENT. He was a legend, and he really did the change the world. He definitely changed my own life. Everything I’ve ever done that matters, I did on a Mac.

So when I got to pottery, I was feeling heavy-hearted. I didn’t really want to be there. And I definitely didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to stay home and worry about what’s going to happen to the world without someone like Steve Jobs in it.

I put my headphones on, and I started throwing pots. But then, a funny thing happened.  I somehow ended up talking to the guy next to me — a new face at the studio — and ended up having a really meaningful evening. He was a visiting ceramic artist who gave me a whole bunch of insightful tips about how to throw on the wheel. Some of them were useful practical tips: “Get in, get out.” “Keep your elbows in close.” Others were more philosophical.

I watched him give a demo on how to throw off the hump. This is where you take a huge pile of clay, sloppily center it on the wheel, and then make little objects (bowls, mugs, whatever) from just the very top part of the wedge. In this way, you can pop off a whole bunch of things really fast without having to keep wedging, centering, and cleaning off the wheel. It also gets you away from the rabbit hole of being obsessed with centering the entire lump of clay perfectly, which can be a real time consuming OCD endeavor.

My favorite part of watching him throw off the hump was that he kept spinning these beautiful creative pieces, cutting them off the hump of clay, holding them up for everyone to admire, and then smashing them on the floor.

He said: “pottery is not precious.”

And this is what I love about pottery. You can’t take it too seriously. It’s a transient creative format. You can focus everything you’ve got on the most brilliant piece of artwork you have in you, but there are a million things that can go wrong. Even if you manage to throw it successfully, cut it off the wheel without warping it, carry it to the shelf without tripping, and trim it without fucking it up, you never know what’s going to happen in the bisque fire, or the subsequent glazing fire, or when some silly person picks it up to admire it and then accidently drops it. There might be an earthquake, or you might put a glaze on it that ends up sucking. You might get it home, only to have it break in the dishwasher, or slide off the edge of the table, or maybe the handle just breaks off one day. The thing is broken before it was ever born.

You’ve all probably heard the fable about Achaan Chaa, the Buddhist master, who loved his tea cup. His disciple said, how can you teach us about non-attachment when I see you always use that same mug? In the words of Mark Epstein:

“You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Pottery is all about nonattachment and it’s also about getting over yourself.

I left the studio in a great mood last night, grateful for a few lessons learned. And then I came home and watched one of the many Steve Jobs videos circulating around the Internet in memorium, the one in which he said:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

So far, turning 40 has been epically bleak. I’m not going to lie. For those of you who haven’t yet reached this milestone of despair, brace yourselves. It’s been nothing like turning 30, when I felt really, really old but also super relieved to not be in my suicidal twenties anymore. My twenties had been all about reading Sylvia Plath and Anais Nin and journaling about how nobody understands me while popping pills and going through the occasional cutting phase. My thirties, in contrast, were about yoga and Buddhism and self-care and reinvention. Unfortunately, that whole trend seemed to peak about ¾ of the way through the decade, and the last few years have been a rapid decline back into my cold hard atheist roots and occasional rebellious cigarette smoking.

So what lies ahead for the 40s? I suspect I’ll spend a big chunk of it freaking out about my looming 50^th birthday. Fuck the what. For now, I just keep repeating the phrase “I’m forty” to myself over and over, to see if it sticks.

(A friend of mine tried to cheer me up by attempting to convince me that the phrase “Life begins at forty” is a thing.  It’s not.)

I used to think that Hope For a Better Future was the one thing worth living for. You know, that future when I would have a family, kids, a front porch, etcetera? But I’ve changed my mind. The one thing worth living for, it now seems, is humor. Things that are funny. Like my friends (especially Vanessa) and Oatmeal comics and Shelby Fero on Twitter and this new Ricky Gervais show Extras. I live for other things too. The special connection I share with my feral cat, Budapest. My rich inner life.  Whipped cream.

That’s all for now. I’ll let you know if it gets any better.

Sauerkraut is really good, too. My friends made this for me. It's fucking delicious.

I’m turning 40 quite soon. How do I feel about this?

Let me illustrate by telling you about a nightmare I’ve been having: I’m driving a giant truck speeding down a freeway; the brakes don’t work; I can’t slow down; there is a big-rig on fire spinning out of control and about to jackknife into me; oh, and I’m going backwards.

That pretty much sums it up. Thanks, brain.

This morning I had a meeting with a longtime friend client, Cynthia Simon. She said, “How are you?” and I said, “I’m freaking out about turning 40.” Cynthia — who is a beautiful, stunning, radiant post-40 woman herself, laughed and said, “You’re doing fucking great.” I appreciated that — mostly because of the swearing. But, I’m not actually doing that great. I’m doing pretty terribly, if you want the honest truth. I’m kind of losing my mind about it.

I just so happen to be reading By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, a novel about two self-involved yuppie New Yorkers in their early 40s who constantly refer to themselves as “middle aged.” Really? Middle aged? I asked a few friends of mine this weekend — women about my age or slightly older — whether they think we are in fact “middle aged.” They all basically agreed that we are (as did Wikipedia, fucker). I nodded as if I could handle this information on a cerebral level, but inside, I was quaking with terror and rage at this concept.

In my mind, “middle aged” applies to people who have gray hair (that they don’t, ahem, color), retirement plans, and grandchildren. “Middle aged” does not under any circumstances apply to people who have barely figured their shit out, are single, live paycheck to paycheck, and still remember the sordid moments of their bohemian childhood quite vividly. Yes, my grandmother was technically just a few years older than me when she became a grandmother, but things were different then.

Incidentally, I had a lovely session with another of the intuitive Cynthias in my life —Cynthia Mellon — and she informed me that I have what’s called “renunciant karma.” She explained that in other times and cultures they might have called this “nun karma.” Remember when we were teenagers and endured tragic breakups with our boyfriends and then exclaimed in a tone of abject despair: “That’s it! I’m just going to be a nun!” Ironically, I actually am, apparently, going to be a nun. You win again, 13-year-old Joslyn.

Still, the middle aged thing is not sitting comfortably in my mind.

What does this all mean? I wish I had a nice tidy answer for you. But at the moment, all I have is this recent shoe purchase to tide me over:

Would a middle aged person wear THESE?

I only fell down 4 or 5 times when I tried to wear these today. I’m gonna push through. A homeless dude at the Whole asked me why I was wearing them. I said, for practice. He said, for practice for what? And I said, to be good at it. And he said, kindly, that he would teach me how to play the bass guitar if I need to be good at something.

That really happened.

I just finished reading Man's Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. (I should say that I just finished RE-reading it, since I've read it before, but thanks to the magic of old age forgetfulness, I can now re-read books I read when I was younger and it's as if for the first time. Perk of dementia.)

Food for thought:

More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human problems rather than neurotic symptoms.

In other words, just cuz you're miserable does not mean you're maladjusted. After all, life is kinda hard.

And also:

Edith Weisskopf, before her death professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, contended, in her article on logotherapy, that "our current mental hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to  be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable happiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy."

Well said, Edith. A legend before her time.

Takeaway: It's okay to be sad, depressed, miserable, and just generally over it sometimes. Don't let the positivity propogandists tell you otherwise! "Mental hygiene," ew.

I was editing an article for a client, Dr. Susanne Babbel, in which she described a simple journaling exercise about hope. This exercise is intended to give trauma victims a purpose in their life, but it’s basically straight out of the pages of The Artist’s Way, one of my favorite creative projects.

Hope is kind of a hangup for me right now.

Last year while at a retreat I was given a piece of red string to tie around my wrist with a wish. The idea? When the bracelet wears off, the wish comes true. I wished for “hope” — in other words, the possibility of some of my personal dreams coming true. The red string was tenacious and stayed on for months until it was ratty and gross. It finally fell off on one arbitrary but markedly hopeless day.

Recently, I’ve been re-reading Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece Man’s Search For Meaning, which recounts his experience in Nazi concentration camps in the 40s, and his theory that only those with hope and a purpose for their survival made it through the war, despite their physical conditions and the things that happened to them in captivity.

Hope. It’s all about hope. Freud thought it was all about desire, but it’s all about hope.

I need to work on this. So, I decided to try Susanne’s Hope Exercise.

First, you make a list of things you genuinely enjoy doing. Things that give you peace and put you in your right brain (that’s your creative mind — the one where you lose track of time). Not things you think you should like doing. So not, in my case, things like “practicing yoga” or “going to Burning Man” or “eating mushrooms.”

1. Writing
2. Reading novels
3. Hiking Mt Tam
4. Cooking
5. Going to the movies
6. Taking pictures (heart you iPhone)
7. Making pottery
8. Picking flowers (especially late at night off the neighbor’s lawns)
9. Making things for my imaginary spice company, Simple Basic
10. Lying around listlessly in the sun

Second, make a list of things you would like to achieve in your life. This is big picture, blue sky stuff.

1. Write a book
2. Make actual money off a personal creative project
3. Have a family (not picky about what kind, very picky about the participants)
4. Go to France
5. Learn to speak another language (ideally, French)

Third, make a list of baby steps you can take to get going in that direction. This takes an “off the paper, into the world” mentality that I rarely possess.

1. Take a writing workshop (I’m trying to manifest one at Esalen later this year. And by “manifest” I mean “get around to putting a deposit down for it.”)
2. Spread the gospel about Recovering Yogi relentlessly while working on my side project with Matthew Teague Miller, a children’s book we’re writing called The Clam Before the Storm.
3. Steal a baby. (Just kidding.) Alternate plan: Elope with gay BFF in Thailand later this year. (Again, kidding. Sort of.)
4. Pray to money gods while making a plan with my cohorts Leslie and Vanessa to really do this France thing. Next year.
5. Pull out those Rosetta Stone CDs I bought off Craig’s List and develop an iota of self-discipline about my French lessons!

Now, the good part: you share it (like I’m doing here). This turns it into an incantation. Saying things out loud makes them real!

1. ennui
2. pathetique
3. tres bleak
4. nostalgique (Thanks to my friend Ben for coining this one. My new favorite.)
5. coup d'état of the soul
6. cirque du malaise (Love this one so much I just bought the domain name.)
7. chagrin (Thank you, Vanessa)
8. affreux = simply awful (Again, Ben)
9. joie de noir (Y'all should follow my superfly witty friend Michael on Twitter for more of this action)

I need a #10 to round out the list. Anyone?

And in honor of depressing French poetry, I'll leave you with a little Anaïs Nin. I found this in an old diary from my epically morose Anaïs Nin phase in my early 20s. It's fittingly melodramatique.

...At that early age she was bemoaning the irreversibility of life. Already she was aware of how the past dies... She watched every minute of the day as she lived so that nothing would be lost. She regretted the minutes passing. She wept without knowing why, since was young and had not yet known real suffering. But without being fully aware of it, she had already experienced her greatest sorrow... She did not know it then, as most of us never know when it is that we experience the full measure of joy or sorrow. But our feelings penetrate us like a poison of undetectable nature. We have sorrows of which we do not know the origin or name.

(From Winter of Artifice)

I was thinking about sad things today on my walk to Tennessee Beach, and at a certain point I started to think about the epically sad poet Sylvia Plath, who wrote some of the saddest things ever, back in her day. Sylvia had mental problems. She was also incredibly brilliant—one of the most legendary female poets ever to live. And, as far as I am concerned, one of the only readable poets, period.

I'm not usually a poetry girl. But some of my favorite lines come from her book Ariel, published in the early 60s after a severely dramatic and terrible period in her tempestuous marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes. Soon after Ariel was published, Sylvia gassed herself to death. Ted went on to marry his mistress Assia Wevill, who had once escaped Nazi Germany, but eventually also killed herself over a man. Way to go, Ted.

This is an excerpt from a Sylvia Plath poem called The Tub. I took the liberty of truncating it and left out a line. If you want to read the whole thing it's here.

each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.

in faith we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

I once had a teacher tell me that my extreme neurotic tendencies were due to my incredible imagination. I have long held on to this extremely optimistic interpretation.

Lately I’ve been relying on my imagination to keep my spirits up when things get tough. For instance, when I was feeling panicky about entering into my first ever silent retreat a few weeks ago, I decided to pretend instead that it was the 1800s and I had TB and had to go to a sanitorium for some life-saving R&R. This tragic make-believe story cheered me up immensely and made me feel like a heroine in an Emily Bronte novel.

While I was in the retreat (which actually did feel kind of like a recuperative mission for my mind and body) I variously entertained myself by pretending I was at fat camp (due to the delicious but extremely low-cal meals), an asylum (also not that far off base), and prison camp (that was just for added dramatic flair).

Now that I’m back in action and spending a lot of time onsite on the 22nd floor of an office building downtown—one that I’m positive was built before the invention of the concept of earthquake-proofing—I truly rely on my imagination to keep my spirits up. Today, when I found myself shivering under a green knit shawl while eating spoonfuls of cold, congealed steel-cut oatmeal and being bathed by fluorescent light, I decided to pretend that I was a poor Irish peasant during the potato blight and that the oatmeal was my one and only meal of the day. That thought gave me such comfort. There’s nothing like some good old fashioned romanticized drear to lift flagging spirits.

My imagination has a life of its own. When I’m not paying attention, it can swiftly hijack my thoughts, not to mention the destructive power it has over my meditation practice. I know it’s just trying to help—bless it’s heart—but sometimes I have to gently remind it that it’s not invited to sit down with me on the zafu.

My creative mind is particularly insidious when I’m asleep. I have fucked up dreams. Luckily, during this last silent retreat, I was reminded once again that I am not my mind. So when I wake up from a nightmare, I can more easily shake it off and be like, good one, mind, but I know you don’t control me.

My cats do.

If you ever want to test your self-esteem to its absolutely threshold of resiliency, I highly recommend becoming an Internet writer, particularly on Elephant Journal, which for some reason seems to draw out the worst in unaccountable anonymous commentators. I’ve been called a lot of things by various and many complete strangers over the last few months.

According to the populace over at Ele, I am:

• Selfish
• Childish
• Inauthentic
• Judgmental
• Cowardly
• Egomaniacal
• Extremely self-absorbed
• A terrible pet parent unworthy of having cats
• A criminal for letting my cats go outside (yes, literally, a criminal)
• An unethical meat eater
• A horrible friend lacking in compassion and basic human decency
• A psychopath
• A sociopath
• A “whiny yoga instructor” (I’m not any kind of yoga instructor, actually, but I don’t want to nitpick)

I have several ex-boyfriends who I’m sure would agree with all of the above.

But yup, I have to confess, it hurts my feelings on occasion. It’s true, dear readings of Elephant, I have feelings. Which I guess rules me out as a sociopath/psychopath. Borderline personality disorder, maybe?

Still, in my darkest moments of writerly self-loathing, I can’t help but think of this timeless poem by Mary Oliver:

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.