The Problems, The Solutions
“A Picture Guide to Escalation of Force” or “From 0-10 in 4 Easy Steps” by Joe Merritt.
I wanted to write a post about:
the talk I gave at the Strathmore the other week, how lovely everyone there was
reading novels for a change of pace
the morning dance party playlist this week (still Lemonade)
double rainbows from the balcony
coffee & podcasts in the shower
breakdancing
how cold it is in my apartment
baseball games
but
Five years ago tomorrow, my father died. Every year as the date approaches, I think maybe it won’t affect me, because it’s just a date. But there’s some kind of cellular memory at work here, and it does. The first two or three years, I used to regularly forget he’d died and then have to learn it all over again. That entire thing would unfold in less than a few seconds, but would leave me winded. It still happens, usually when I’ve woken in the middle of the night, but as I’ve gotten more used to him being gone, the sudden emotional prick of the fact of it occurs less.
Last week I sat down to jot down some notes from the past few days, just regular daily record-keeping sort of stuff, and a whole thing about my dad that I guess I’d been thinking about came rushing out. And suddenly he was closer to me than he’s been in a long time–I mean the memory of him was more vivid, I could call up his face in a more precise way than I can most of the time. Hear his voice. And it made me cry (in public) and I was so…grateful. I used to dread this time of year, would plan ways to outrun it or sink into it–go on solo writing vacations to places like Pittsburgh. But because the grief is no longer a constant, acute pounding, I am actually grateful for the depth and ritual of it.
Around this time of year, I cry. The way I didn’t right after he died. The way I don’t most of the year. In public. I kind of like crying in public, around strangers, because they don’t feel responsible. They don’t want you to talk about it or worse, try to cheer you up. They just go on choosing cantaloupe or listening to the lecture or eating their burrito. When I cry at home there’s always the great (imagined) risk of getting washed away by the tears–of dissolving and never coming back from the grief. I don’t prefer to cry around people I know, I think partially because people can’t figure out how to deal with the tears of someone they care about and I don’t want to make people I care about uncomfortable. But crying is necessary. From an article by Dr. Judith Orloff in Psychology Today:
Emotional tears have special health benefits. Biochemist and “tear expert” Dr. William Frey at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis discovered that reflex tears are 98% water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying. After studying the composition of tears, Dr. Frey found that emotional tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress. Additional studies also suggest that crying stimulates the production of endorphins, our body’s natural pain killer and “feel-good” hormones.”
As I’m typing this, I’m vaguely remembering a dream about a baby last night–someone else’s baby–he (I think he) was crying and just needed to be held and rocked.
There’s this amazing poem in the James Franco Review, which I’ve copied the first four lines from below. I love it so much. Read it and write, about “The Problem.” It’s enormous, but try to write twenty five focused on the problem “the problem is…” and twenty five on the solution “but the solution is…” Some of your lines will be shit. That’s okay. Others will astonish you with their accuracy. You can always edit, as long as you’ve done the writing. 20 minutes love. Go sit in a coffee shop and do this; go ahead and cry. Make it a little awkward for a stranger, they’ll be fine. So will you.
by Ola Faleti
- The problem is all inside your head, others will say this.
- But the problem lingers in your wrinkled bedsheets.
- The problem turns a five-minute shower into a fifteen-minute one.
- The problem makes your stomach shift when you spot the back of the head that disappointed you.
Read the rest here
My first five:
- The problem is a knot I cannot untangle
- The problem whispers to me, as I try to walk away, “how can someone be normal after…”
- The problem is that I agree
- I forget that I’ve been thinking about this at all when I see a four ducklings snoozing in the sun, their mother, also small, standing beside them head straight, wary
- It’s all this responsibility
powerpoint is my new favorite medium
