i certainly don’t intend to share *everything* here
but what’s the harm in a certain amount of openness?
Yesterday the SR wood kiln was unloaded. Here’s the view inside as this was just getting started:
today, Friday, May 14th, i’m having a mini-staycation — while i’m not going to share what i wrote on the other side of this section of birch bark, i “appended” with this:
On both Mom’s birthdays and deathiversarys in recent years, i’ve often made a fairly big deal of the event by posting something on facebook and/or medium to try to honor and/or memorialize her in some way.
It seems likely that i feel some guilt for not having properly “completed” that task yet (honoring and/or memorializing her following her death just over 12 years ago). But it is what it is.
Yesterday, on what would have been her 79th birthday, i decided not to engage in the way i have in recent years, and didn’t even mention the fact until right before i was about to go to bed (during a phone call with my good friend Larry), and then only in passing, explaining that perhaps that might have been one of the main reasons why i’d gotten terrible sleep the night before.
Regarding that terrible sleep, i generally try to go to bed far earlier than most other humans, often before or around 7pm local time (which is tricky at this time of year in this latitude, as there’s still lots of light in the sky (and coming in my bedroom window)). Tuesday night, May 18th, 2021, i managed to get to sleep without too much trouble (right now i am often fighting significant insomnia). Pretty sure i actually dozed off around 8pm. i did sleep (though fitfully) for around three hours. But at some point well before midnight, the insomnia moved in with a vengeance. Just after 1am (on what officially counted at that point as Mom’s 79th birthday) yesterday, i gave up and grabbed a laptop. An email reply from my very good friend Jennifer had been waiting patiently in my inbox, and i ended up writing her a super long response (she’d posed exactly the question i needed to try to answer).
Wanting to get to the lake really early, i actually felt a little time pressure, but managed to finish and send before dawn. i then did make it to the lake, where i snapped the above picture.
So what else do i want to add?
i’m not really sure…
If i go down the path i’m tempted to, then what i wrote at the outset of this session (just a few minutes ago, beginning just below that dawn picture) would sort of get invalidated (in all that i will have done if i follow through would be to delay my “sharing” by a single day (beyond Mom’s birthday)).
i’m therefore explicitly not going to try to memorialize her right now. Instead, i want to go into a little bit about what i’m (finally!) learning with respect to my relationship with her. Especially in the years that followed our family’s move (in 1970) from the NYC metropolitan area up into the Catskill Mountains.
Our “new home” was on the top of “Donald’s Mountain” a gorgeous chunk of wilderness (woods, ponds, streams, fields) owned by one Jim Knuckle (Sr. — his son Jimmy was two years older than me), who hired Dad to manage his new beef cattle herd (90 registered polled hereford heifers that had already been bred and were due to calve early in 1971).
My guess would be that my parents had already fallen out of love by then (though they would stay together (for the sake of my brother Dan and me) for another decade and a half). Mom was also definitely still drinking. It’s unclear to me exactly when she actually stopped, but it wasn’t too many years later. How much her drinking plays into what i’m about to share is also uncertain, but for several decades at the end of her life, she was very active in AA. So it seems quite likely to me that she had serious regrets about the way she had abused alcohol…
That sets the scene. Dad (who, as i said, i think she was already estranged from (or if not yet, that was in the process of happening)) was the only adult she had regular contact with (our nearest neighbors (other than the Knuckels, whose actual home was in Little Ferry, NJ, and so were only around sporadically, mostly on weekends, and not on every one) were over 2 miles away, down in the valley).
Seems safe to assume (sorry about all of the suppositions, but my memories of the time are somewhat distorted by the intervening 5 decades, though probably mostly by the fact that any “information” was originally filtered through my very young (and immature) brain/senses) that Mom was pretty lonely (hence drinking becoming a problem?). Both Dad and Mom had given me an awful lot of attention when i was very young. As a result (since they were both pretty fucking sharp with regard to “intellect”), i was a fairly precocious child, having learned to read and do simple math quite early. And i had a mind like a sponge, eager to suck in information of all kinds.
Here’s where my theory gets a little bit more uncertain:
i posit that Mom ended up sharing an awful lot of stuff with me (resulting in a very deep bond between the two of us which persisted right up through her death on April 17th, 2009) that may very well have concerned topics which i just had no possible way to process fully or appropriately given my age and previous life experience.
What i’m coming to realize (only very recently!) is that how i ended up reacting to this situation and my relationship with Mom really profoundly affected me.
i think that’s enough public sharing for now.
The leaves have only recently burst forth. i think mostly birch and beech. Though of course the hemlocks here have been providing a certain amount of shade all along, even before the deciduous trees around them unfurled all their much wider photosynthesizing components within the last week or two.
here’s a bit of a story to this location. It’s not very far from the trailhead where i parked this morning, which is good, as my head is in a (physically) tender state right now (which is a whole ‘nother story: TL;DR is that following a concussion i sustained skiing 28 months ago, i’m still nowhere near fully recovered), and so i explictly chose to come here precisely because it’s not a long hike in. That allowed me to bring Teyla too. As in her golden years, she no longer is permitted to accompany me on long hikes (when my head is in a better place and i’m able to engage in that way myself; despite the lack of full healing, i’ve had an awful lot of time over the course of the last 2+ years in which my head has let me hike a lot farther, as long as i don’t have to do much climbing/ascending, though even that has been bearable at times, as long as i take frequent breaks on the uphill sections).
But anyway, it just so happens that i was also here just over 7 years ago. Also with Teyla, as at that point, she was young healthy, and hadn’t yet really shown any sign of the cruciate ligament problem in her rear leg which would eventually sideline her from that longer, more vigorous hikes. A few years ago, she did have the necessary surgery to repair that ligament in her knee. While she came through it very well, she ended up developing a repeated muscle pull in the same leg. So now i never try to take her more than a mile or so at most, as pushing her farther tends to induce the lameness. i’m just really happy that she’s still able to come out with me at all, considering she’s 11 now. We may not get too many more years together in the woods (or even at home)…
Following my initial psychotic break in 2009, i came under the care of Dr. Laurence Schweitzer. Dad was instrumental in getting me to enter in to that relationship.
Dr. Schweitzer had been the psychiatrist on call @ Sharon Hospital that late November morning when i’d been transported by ambulance from my home, handcuffed to the gurney, bleeding profusely from a deep cut on my elbow that i’d sustained climbing in and out of my bedroom window, which i’d broken out with my bass. There was a state police officer in the ambulance with me as well. Obviously there’s a lot i’m leaving out for the moment, as i don’t want to get bogged down in those details. Though i remember a tremendous number of specific details from my psychosis. Perhaps i’ll fill in some of these gaps (probably not all of them) at some future date and append to this page. But not today.
There would seem to be no doubt that the major contributing factor to my experiencing that break was Mom’s death 7 months prior.
years, i came to trust Dr. Schweitzer an awful lot. In hindsight (he passed away in 2016), Dr. Schweitzer wasn’t perfect, but he certainly had a good heart, an awful lot of knowledge (despite some of it having been somewhat ‘outdated’ so many decades after he’d recieved his education), and experience.
In the ER, i’d been given a substantial dose of “Vitamin H”, more commonly known as haldol or haloperidol. i’m quite certain of this as i have a vivid memory of a nurse querying the doctor who was ordering her to add more. “But i’ve just given him 5 milligrams.” is what she said. The rest of the conversation is sort of hazy, but it seems quite likely that i did in fact get more (perhaps a lot more).
After 5 days (the latter part of which was spent in the ICU, as i had some pretty severe lung problems in addition to the psychosis, and raging Lyme disease as well, due to my deciding that it was unimportant to seek treatment for the obvious bullseye from a tick bite which had appeared on my bicep in late May or early June of that year), Dr. Schweitzer ordered my discharge. But i needed to go see him. And he urged me to start taking haldol. Concerned about not wanting to “lose my edge”, i initially declined. Only for a few weeks (at most) though. After an incident at work during which i lost control of my emotions and berated a co-worker who had done nothing wrong, i appeared at my next scheduled appointment with Dr. Schweitzer and agreed to start taking a minimal dose of haldol voluntarily.
Over the course of the next few years, my dosage of that medication varied substantially. In the spring of 2011, i had a very close call. In fact, it’s hard to know for sure exactly where the line between sanity and psychosis lies. But no hospitalization occurred. i just upped my dosage (at Dr. Schweitzer’s direction) a lot. To 4mg/night (initially Dr. Schweitzer had prescribed it as a twice a day pill (morning and night) but following my complaint about several (side?)effects interfering with my work, he changed it up and from that point on, i alwasy only took one dose of haldol every 24 hours: right before bedtime.
Early on in our relationship, i worked a lot with Dr. Schweitzer in order to try to figure out how this had all happened (my mental instability). True to form (isn’t this always the case in psychiatry?), most all of my issues were directly attributable to Mom. At one point Dr. Schweitzer (who only knew of Mom through the stories i related to him), used the word “mailicious” to describe her. Which seemed pretty harsh at the time. And right now, looking back, it seems even harsher. But whatever…
i had been fighting taking the haldol the whole time for those first years. Reluctantly relying on it, because it sure seemed like i needed it in order to keep from going insane again. But i was eager to “get better” so that i wouldn’t need it anymore.
At a certain point, Dr. Schweitzer had heard enough about my past, and the stories of dysfunction, substance abuse and addiction that ran rampant through Mom’s side of the family (Mom herself had apparently been a drinker in her younger days, but stopped at some point during my childhood, remaining sober for the rest of her life and in fact becoming very very active in AA over the course of her final decades). i’ve comt to realize more recently that this attitude Dr. Schweitzer had was really a product of the generation in which he was educated (1950s + ’60s). But frankly it wasn’t very helpful for him to say “Stop thinking about your past”. In terms of how this played out though, he no longer thought it was useful (as he’d learned ‘enough” by then about my problems and my family) for me to come see him and talk about these issues. In fact, (later on, i think, perhaps late i 2014 or maybe 2015) he directly told me “What you need is a chemist.” He was on the verge of retiring and in order to set me up with someone new, he was adamant that all i needed was someone who was good at prescribing medication.
On the bright side (at least in my eyes, at that time), he was OK with me trying to cut my haldol dose down. And so i did. But i didn’t see him very often (since he didn’t want me to engage in any talk therapy with him). After a gap of several months, i met with him in December of 2013. By that point (using a pill cutter), i’d lowered my haldol dose to .25mg/night. When i told him that, he said “Well, you might as well just stop taking it completely, as that amount is essentially only ‘dust’.”
And so i did. That winter of early 2014 was wonderful. i had all my energy back (haldol is very definitely a sedative as well as being an anti-psychotic). Teyla and i were up here in the mountains an awful lot. Climbing Bear Mountain despite a heavy snow pack, and i was just thrilled. Part of me did wonder every now and then if maybe i might go nuts again without the medication, but i suppressed that thought. After all, i’d been trying to follow Dr. Schweitzer’s advice about suppressing my thoughts about my past, my regrets, etc… Even though i never totally succeeded, perhaps i did develop some facility to ‘suppress’. Or maybe i already had that skill. Yeah, that seems likely. After all for decades i’d been suppressing the quiet little voice deep inside me that was asking whether i really wanted to be smoking so much mariuana. Or any. There were times i really wished i could quit getting high. But i couldn’t manage to even cut back, much less stop…
Both Mom’s deathiversary and her birthday occur in the spring, separated by exactly one month. That year (2014) i decided that i was “all better” (after all i was no longer taking haldol). Dr. Schweitzer (who i was now no longer seeing at all, as there was no medication for him to prescribe) had been very clear about his explicit instructions to me. i must not re-engage with the unresolved grief over Mom’s death. i very intentionally decided that spring to disregard that. What did he know?
i felt like i’d failed Mom, never properly memorializing her. And i resolved to correct that error. i would build a tiny free library down in the depths of Sage’s Ravine (just down the hill from where i sit typing this right now) in Mom’s honor. And Appalachian Trail hikers would be able to pick up and leave books for each other there. Sage’s Ravine is truly one of my favorite places on the entire planet. So gorgeous. And remote.
At some point that spring, just before the leaves appeared on all the trees up here, i came by for a ‘reconnaisance’ hike. In hindsight, the fact that i wanted to incorporate wood fired ceramic pottery (having worked Mom’s ashes into the clay before making the bowls) with the names of pets (both dead and alive) on them into this tiny free library might have been a clue that i was already beginning to head off the rails mentally. Nevertheless, after packing several dishes up here (i think i’d carried some of them to the top of Bear Mountain too on other trips?), i wrote myself a note, and decided to ‘cache’ three of them up here. And i did it very near here. Just downhill from where i sit. My guess is about 30-50 feet below the trail. i remember clearly that i picked a certain shrubby leaning little tree to use to “mark” the spot so i wouldn’t forget it, placing these three dishes (their sizes made it possible for two of them to “interlock”: i placed my handwritten note in the smallest one, turned the larger one upside down and it fit over it very nicely, making a weathertight environment in which i figured my note would be fine, and then setting the third upright on top, which would catch the rain water) directly under the overhanging branches of this little bushy leaning tree.
i felt confident i could find this spot and come back to fetch these pots a couple months later when i planned to rope some friends into helping me build this memorial to Mom. In my imagination, we would all gather together in the wilderness to collaboratively help with this project, some of us (for whom this was an attractive option) choosing to get high, but with others (who i knew didn’t have any interest in indulging) being perfectly fine with helping out and joining in the “celebration” of Mom’s life).
After i’d found this perfect spot to cache these three dishes, i walked directly up-hill back to the trail. When i got there, a large tree was growing there, and i decided that that fact again would make it easy to find this exact location. Turning around to look back down the hill (or maybe i did this from the “cache site” itself?) i noticed there were several (2-3) large birch trees down the hill. All i had to do was to come back and find the big tree on the north/downhill side of this section of the trail, and go directly downhill from that point, towards the large birches, and find the bushy overhaning little shrubby tree under which i’d stashed these three (in my eyes, truly beautiful) wood-fired ceramic dishes. The one thing i was quite certain of was that nobody would stumble across them and make off with them.
As it happened, i never did make that tiny free library down in Sage’s Ravine that i’d had my heeart set on honoring my mother’s memory with. Instead i lost my mind, early that June. Again.
i still have no intention of resurrecting the plan (despite thinking that it’d be really cool to build a tiny free library down in Sage’s Ravine). But i have come back here a number of times. A while ago, over the course of at least a couple years, i think, i returned a number of time. And i’ve scrambled down this hillside. Searching, so far, in vain, for those three ceramic dishes i left here, now just over 7 years ago. There are at least 3 candidate trees for the large “marker” trunk on the downhill side of the trail that was just above the ‘stash’ spot, and they’re spaced out over many yards of this trail section. Lots of large birches downslope as well.
It’s funny. At the time, the thought of actually making a map (as a pirate would have) did occur to me. But i was certain that i wouldn’t need it. Of course, i also believed that i would return in a matter of weeks, or at most a month or two. When in reality it was a number of years before i came back to search.
i have no intention to search today.
But i might be back at some point in the future and scramble down the slope again to have another look around. It’s an interesting challenge. And they really were some beautiful dishes: the wood kiln had truly worked its magic on them as they endured its heat and ash.
Also, i’d love to see what i wrote on that note. A dedication (or something?) for the tiny free library maybe…
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i’ve been married for 30 years and one day as i post this. it seems like i really managed to get to a super-important crux after insomnia interrupted my sleep yet again (it’s been quite a battle for the last fortnight or so to get the complete rest i need; even strong sleeping meds are not helping to allow me to fully attain this goal; perhaps now that i’ve had the below insight, i’ll be more successful? 24-28 hours from now i guess i’ll know (it’s 3:46am as i type this directly onto this webpage, and i’ve been awake (and using this laptop) for well over an hour already)).
i have been unable to control/restrain my visceral need to offload my own pain, and so instead of processing it myself and dealing with it as i should, i dump it on others — the best relief i get is when i am able to make the people i’m closest to and love the most hurt
the more i am able to hurt them, the more it feels like i don’t have to feel pain myself
and then afterwards, i feel terrible pain for what i’ve put this loved one through. But this is a proxy. It allows me to feel empathy for the pain of another. Which is pretty awful and intense. But by going through this process, i’ve allowed myself to successfully block the original pain, which i felt such intense fear of experiencing in its totality, as i was literally scared of it ripping my core self and/or sense of personal identity into little pieces.
.
August is now only a week away. Mid-summer. Dog days. Though for the last couple weeks or so here, we haven’t had the opressive heat that so often occurs at this time of year. There was a taste of it previously. Enough for me to be so grateful that it’s been absent more recently.
The daylight is fading faster every day, as the sun’s path (including where it rises and sets) moves southward.
i missed this full moon. Which was yesterday (i think?). Being a morning person, i look forward to catching it as it begins to wane. In fact, as i type this (it’s 2:43am) from our bed, i am still hoping against hope that the heavy overcast will somehow magically vanish in the next hour or so and allow Teyla and i to be bathed in moonlight when we visit the lake before dawn (after i finish writing this, and post it).
So sharing…
Yeah.
Deep breath.
i found that i’d mixed in hurtful content in some of what i shared a bit ago. And so stopped doing so much of it as a result.
It seems pretty clear that i’d “lashed out” in that fashion as a result of the progress i’m making right now. In that shit from deep within me got stirred up. Creating enough internal agitation for it to be vented. It was frustrating that my anger (i’m only now beginning to realize just how powerful my rage is, and how much of it i’ve been carrying around) ended up “coming out” directed at people i love and care about.
My wonderful psychiatrist came to my rescue though, and gave me the opportunity to share with her instead of continuing on with my usual pattern. For well over a decade now, i’ve been writing (sometimes incredibly long!) emails to various combinations of friends (and some family members too). Redirecting this “impulse” instead to just one person: the one who’s helped me so much in the 13 months i’ve been under her care, has been a really interesting transition. The volume of prose i’ve sent her way in the last month has been substantial.
What i am willing to reveal to her is deeper, more intense, and just qualitatively different than all of the things i’d shared with friends over the course of the last 12 years in my writing to them. And i’d been under the impression that what i’d been sharing with them had been pretty revealing (and i still think that’s true). But what i’m writing to my shrink probes down to a whole new level of my psyche. Which i suspect is good. And important.
While the processing i’m in the middle of doing (maybe i’ll forever be in the middle of further processing? or at least as long as i’m able to draw breath, exhale and repeat…) feels like it’s providing me with insights and clarifying my view of myself, my lived experience, how i’ve interacted with the world around me and the people in it in the past, and even perhaps allowing me to believe that i may be able to change substantially in the future in fundamental ways, i’m not yet at a point where i’m able to coherently explain the details regarding so much of what’s going through my head.
Maybe i won’t ever be able to “fully” do that?
It strikes me that language is not as “complete” as it might seem. In that i’m finding that my ability to put into words what’s being thunk sometimes falls well short of my hopes to be able to do so.
Yet there is value in trying. Even if we’re only ever able to “partially” capture what’s happening in our heads, doing so (and sharing with those we trust) is still a worthwhile effort, as something of what we believe, think, know, and/or feel might make it “across the divide” that exists between individuals.
Hmmm.
In switching things up, of course there’s a different viewpoint: Thich Nhat Hanh’s (and others’) concept of interbeing. That we’re all connected. Which i also believe. Along with the idea that we’re also separate (at least to some extent).
So maybe there are ways we can share what we think, feel, believe and/or know more successfully than we can using language alone.
Anyhow, i’m not exactly even sure what i’m trying to convey right now as i write this. Mostly i guess that i’m continuing to make progress.
There is now a sense of peace and acceptance which appears to be a growing part of who i am. And/or who i may be becoming…
i’m grateful for this. And honored for the gifts i’ve received from the people i’ve interacted with as i’ve journeyed down this path. i truly feel blessed.
Now if i can only figure out how to substantially reduce the hurt i seem to be compelled to try to induce in others.
Ann Staples Kennedy, you provided me with an awful lot. And yet, my relationship with you was also incredibly complex, and not wholly positive. Still, i find myself missing you an awful lot, Mom. Wishing that i had the ability to share the things i’ve come to learn since you were taken from this plane by that car accident over a dozen years ago. Yet even this desire feels like it might be problematic.
What i most need is to fully individuate. Which i was never able to do while you remained alive. While i’m starting to understand some of the reasons for this, i’m not sure i’ll ever truly get to the “bottom” of what happened to create such a complicated, in some ways, so beautiful in its absolute intensity, deep bond between us. i continue to struggle to try to fully sever that emotional/mental/psychic umbilical cord. Maybe the answer is to allow the music to come through me and play, listen to, and resonate with our umbilical chord…
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i typed the below today (one full moon cycle before the fall equinox) as a part of an email draft. Due to there being personal information about the people i was writing to (and perhaps some other things i just don’t want to reveal here and now so “publicly”), this sort of starts “abruptly”. Oh well. Deal…
That insight has to do with a possible explanation (everything is tentative at this point, and i’ve realized that’s how it goes with this stuff: i don’t feel certain of anything, but after some things surface, and i turn them over and over in my mind during the next few days and weeks, oftentimes there’s a resonance that i detect, letting me know that i am following a productive path) regarding the (somewhat strange?) reality about how i’ve never really been able (or perhaps willing?) to learn more than the most superficial basics in the fields of both statistics and logic.
It’s all very elusive right now. As if i have the end of a very long tenuous thread that at some point beyond where i can see/feel, is likely very tangled. So i don’t know where it will all lead.
Yet there’s something about my “rejection” when i was younger (and had the opportunity to learn more about both subjects) of statistics as “invalid and useless”. The way i sort of “fell away” from logic was not nearly as “direct”, in that it was more a matter of not trying to pursue more opportunities (or perhaps no impetus to actively seek out and find ways to learn more). But in the back of my mind, i always felt conflicted (quite severely!) in terms of what logical and statistical analyses might be capable of revealing (about anything!).
Yeah, i’m sort of stuck. i don’t know that i’ve even managed to explain enough for this to make sense to anyone else. Maybe it doesn’t even make sense to me (and won’t ever?). So confusing…
Yet there’s a faint feeling that i may be on to something.
How could my inner core, child-like subconscious have so much fear and/or aversion about statistics and logic?
Could those tools be perceived as possibly potentially helping to some day “expose” the ruse which i’ve tried to perpetrate internally? Not just internally, but then also externally?
i just don’t know for sure.
It’s all pretty interesting. And to some degree there’s a weird connection with AI.
Maybe the thinking machine i envisioned helping to create was one that wouldn’t have had to have my flaws.
Yet it seems obvious that emotions are key to what makes us conscious (at least this seems obvious to me?). In that they’re central to motivation…
i’m finding that i’m drifting away from the focus i had (even just a few minutes ago). Is this a sign? Perhaps i got too close, and i’m being subtly diverted away by my own subconscious? This, after all is the mechanism which had proved so successful from preventing me from attaining any self-awareness about what has been deep inside me: my subconscious is truly masterful at not registering any noticeable reaction at all to that which this inner part of me feels is “dangerous”, and with the deception of a master magician, my attention is drawn elsewhere, and i find myself focusing (oftentimes with incredibly intensity!) on some alternative topic, idea, challenge, whatever… And of course, while what i’ve “turned towards” (in the process of “turning away” from the critical stuff that so badly wants/needs to remain hidden) may be incredibly important to others, there are likely no direct connections (from these “safer” thoughts, ideas, feelings, etc…) down into that deep part of my soul where i feel so vulnerable, fragile and scared.
The recursion again is quite interesting. In that now, i’ve looped my “turning away” right back into “diving deep” into the mix of what i was only moments ago, apparently compelled to “drop” in favor of some alternate choice. That the alternate choice is one i can loop around right back to where i was trying to go seems like progress.
There’s so much more to explore here with regard to logic and statistics. Will i one day figure out how to really dive deeply into one or both of those methodologies? To the point that i can learn a tremendous amount about multiple sub-fields below both of those generalist “headings”? i hope so.
Hard to be sure of anything though. Maybe i’m on a complete wild goose chase. And there’s a far simpler explanation (that neither logic not statistics ever really was interesting enough to me for me to have made the effort to really try to learn more).
My heart, gut, and soul tell me that’s not the case. And that there’s something here for me to explore. And that upon diving deep over the course of the next days, weeks, and perhaps even months, that at some point, i will find that things will become far clearer than they are right now.
beliefs, thoughts, ideas, desires, needs, rules, morals, boundaries, borders, feelings