the News at Six Thirty(ish)
Some points of interest from my life as late:
1.) My father is a ghostbuster.
My dad has a psychologist friend who offered to see me free of charge, since he owed my dad a favor, and I agreed (see below). The favor, of course, is that my father got rid a haunting at his house; turns out someone had given his little girl a stuffed animal with an evil talisman in it. But the cool part is that it turns out Daddy, this psychologist, and Cindy the Prophet (of "you will marry a tall Englishman in Minnesota" fame) are a ghostbusting team. Cindy the Prophet reports the hauntings, Dr. Fred determines whether or not a real evil spirit is there or if the person is just crazy, and Daddy rids the home of bad spirits. I used the term "ghostbusters" to tease Daddy a little, but he totally agreed. You might think I'm being amused and ironic and about this, but I've been expanding my boundaries of "weird" and "crazy" lately. I guess, ghosts or otherwise, if people feel like their houses have been made clean, that's good? Most people like some kind of juju.
(Note for non-Catholics: these aren't exorcisms; only an exorcist can perform those. There are very few exorcists. I met one; he was a tequila expert. He demanded the bar at a wedding be re-opened so he could buy me a gin and tonic. Clearly he has a man who understood that sometimes a stiff drink is necessary. Anyway, they deal with possessions and such. A haunting is a bad spirit at a house or area which manifests itself in subtly weird ways, which usually grow more weird as left untreated.)
2.) It's getting upsettingly easy to manipulate my psychiatrist... because I do not manipulate responsibly.
because who cares? We're all crazy. Except for losers. But lately I have been having fairly specific challenges which even I recognized were not to be played off as part of my artistic wackiness. (Which is SO. EASY.) This is frustrating. I have been going home to see by insurance-covered psychiatrist very often. Some positive changes have been made. Some very necessary ones have not.
My psychiatrist is not dumb; but she does see very many people for max 20 minutes and she does see somewhat economically disadvantaged people for a psychiatrist (read: middle class people with basic medical coverage). So she listens for key words indicating specific problems. For a while I really felt I wasn't getting through to her; then I realized I had been consciously avoiding generic terms because in a situation important to me, I want to be precise. So in a sense she was actually doing what I wanted to avoid: guessing from a very general blob of words.
One bothersome example: She always asks "On a scale or one to ten, when 10 is very happy and 1 is awful, how to do you feel?" I do not think that question can be answered in a meaningful way. I know my answer tells her something, but I think "green" is an accurate an answer as "6" (what I always say). I told her that confused me, and she tried to help by saying "Well, imagine 10 is awful, and 1 is very happy," as if that made a difference. I think maybe it is a trick question, and if you feel like that question can in any circumstance be asked of a human being, you have lost hope and should be given the really fun drugs.
Long story short: I have been trying to self-diagnose, since I don't get to talk to her for very long, so I can learn the key words necessary for making her understand how I feel. I have trouble concentrating and it has been getting worse and worse. I wanted Adderal. I sussed out what to say and I got Ritalin, which is close, all things considered. Now I am pretty sure it's making me manic (one of her legit worries), but it is hard for me to say whether it is the Ritalin or the stress of being at home at this time in the semester (inactivity when I should be working makes me antsy).
The easy with which I achieved this and the dubiousness of my reaction to it alarm me. I'm nervy and drinking cheap red wine which I bought secretly, something I haven't done in months. But I don't know if I like it. I don't like Xanex or Valium either (unprescribed, natch). I just feel sad now because it isn't a fun and crazy thing, just a getting out of my head thing. I guess if my head was an ok place to be, I wouldn't be where I am, which is awesome, but my head is also why I'm not maxing out my potential.
God, poets are annoying. That's why we're all lonely. The fiction writers are way less douchey than us here. Maybe that's because you can sell a novel and poets may as well just beat off about torment and the mind. You only need to surface from wankery for a few hours, sometimes only minutes, to write a poem; you have to have some sense of other people in relation to time to write a novel. Did you know the POETICs elected an anti-poet laureate to express displease with the Library of Congress's choice, Billy Collins? That basically explains it all. We're kind of gross. And into ourselves.
On the other hand, fuck Billy Collins. Hack.
3.) I'm getting very annoyed with my students. I've learned that you cannot be lenient in any way. They are not GU Honors freshmen. They must be made to fear authority. It kind of bugs me, but it becomes clearer every semester. I realized how far I'd come when I talked to the first year students still living the "e-mail me the paper on the day its due" model and they didn't understand why that wouldn't work. I wish I didn't either.
1.) My father is a ghostbuster.
My dad has a psychologist friend who offered to see me free of charge, since he owed my dad a favor, and I agreed (see below). The favor, of course, is that my father got rid a haunting at his house; turns out someone had given his little girl a stuffed animal with an evil talisman in it. But the cool part is that it turns out Daddy, this psychologist, and Cindy the Prophet (of "you will marry a tall Englishman in Minnesota" fame) are a ghostbusting team. Cindy the Prophet reports the hauntings, Dr. Fred determines whether or not a real evil spirit is there or if the person is just crazy, and Daddy rids the home of bad spirits. I used the term "ghostbusters" to tease Daddy a little, but he totally agreed. You might think I'm being amused and ironic and about this, but I've been expanding my boundaries of "weird" and "crazy" lately. I guess, ghosts or otherwise, if people feel like their houses have been made clean, that's good? Most people like some kind of juju.
(Note for non-Catholics: these aren't exorcisms; only an exorcist can perform those. There are very few exorcists. I met one; he was a tequila expert. He demanded the bar at a wedding be re-opened so he could buy me a gin and tonic. Clearly he has a man who understood that sometimes a stiff drink is necessary. Anyway, they deal with possessions and such. A haunting is a bad spirit at a house or area which manifests itself in subtly weird ways, which usually grow more weird as left untreated.)
2.) It's getting upsettingly easy to manipulate my psychiatrist... because I do not manipulate responsibly.
because who cares? We're all crazy. Except for losers. But lately I have been having fairly specific challenges which even I recognized were not to be played off as part of my artistic wackiness. (Which is SO. EASY.) This is frustrating. I have been going home to see by insurance-covered psychiatrist very often. Some positive changes have been made. Some very necessary ones have not.
My psychiatrist is not dumb; but she does see very many people for max 20 minutes and she does see somewhat economically disadvantaged people for a psychiatrist (read: middle class people with basic medical coverage). So she listens for key words indicating specific problems. For a while I really felt I wasn't getting through to her; then I realized I had been consciously avoiding generic terms because in a situation important to me, I want to be precise. So in a sense she was actually doing what I wanted to avoid: guessing from a very general blob of words.
One bothersome example: She always asks "On a scale or one to ten, when 10 is very happy and 1 is awful, how to do you feel?" I do not think that question can be answered in a meaningful way. I know my answer tells her something, but I think "green" is an accurate an answer as "6" (what I always say). I told her that confused me, and she tried to help by saying "Well, imagine 10 is awful, and 1 is very happy," as if that made a difference. I think maybe it is a trick question, and if you feel like that question can in any circumstance be asked of a human being, you have lost hope and should be given the really fun drugs.
Long story short: I have been trying to self-diagnose, since I don't get to talk to her for very long, so I can learn the key words necessary for making her understand how I feel. I have trouble concentrating and it has been getting worse and worse. I wanted Adderal. I sussed out what to say and I got Ritalin, which is close, all things considered. Now I am pretty sure it's making me manic (one of her legit worries), but it is hard for me to say whether it is the Ritalin or the stress of being at home at this time in the semester (inactivity when I should be working makes me antsy).
The easy with which I achieved this and the dubiousness of my reaction to it alarm me. I'm nervy and drinking cheap red wine which I bought secretly, something I haven't done in months. But I don't know if I like it. I don't like Xanex or Valium either (unprescribed, natch). I just feel sad now because it isn't a fun and crazy thing, just a getting out of my head thing. I guess if my head was an ok place to be, I wouldn't be where I am, which is awesome, but my head is also why I'm not maxing out my potential.
God, poets are annoying. That's why we're all lonely. The fiction writers are way less douchey than us here. Maybe that's because you can sell a novel and poets may as well just beat off about torment and the mind. You only need to surface from wankery for a few hours, sometimes only minutes, to write a poem; you have to have some sense of other people in relation to time to write a novel. Did you know the POETICs elected an anti-poet laureate to express displease with the Library of Congress's choice, Billy Collins? That basically explains it all. We're kind of gross. And into ourselves.
On the other hand, fuck Billy Collins. Hack.
3.) I'm getting very annoyed with my students. I've learned that you cannot be lenient in any way. They are not GU Honors freshmen. They must be made to fear authority. It kind of bugs me, but it becomes clearer every semester. I realized how far I'd come when I talked to the first year students still living the "e-mail me the paper on the day its due" model and they didn't understand why that wouldn't work. I wish I didn't either.