Save small businesses!

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while. We'll have to save the updates for a while.

In the meantime, here is something important that I got from a dear friend today. I will try to have more links about this up soon.

*****

Hello everyone...

I've never ever sent a wide reaching email to everyone who's on my personal email list before, and I apologize if this is the first email you've received from me in a very long time (or if you don't even remember who I am?)...but this is very important to everyone - as the impact will be great for everyone - business owners and customers alike. Please pass this information along to everyone you know!

As you may or may not know, the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) is coming into effect on February 10, 2009. Our soon-to-be-EX-President, GWB already passed it into law and we are now facing an epic battle to save our small businesses!

In a very small nutshell, the CPSIA mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and goods marketed to children 12 and under. The manufacturer must permanently label each item with a date and batch number. Failure to do so would result in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines for each occurance. (You can read a very good summary of the law at http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/Home)

Sounds good on the surface, right? Of course! I totally believe in the assurance of safety in the marketplace! However, the wording of the CPSIA is too far-reaching and would result in the removal and destruction of ALL handmade children's goods on market shelves today. You see, when this law takes effect, it will be illegal to sell or even donate inventory manufactured before Feb. 10th without the proper certification in place. It would even be illegal for you to try to sell your used kids clothing on Ebay! As a result, all of these items will be tossed out to fill our landfills - never reaching the hands of even a needy child.

But wait, testing is good, right? Yes! Of course! But consider the impact on your small/micro-business friends who already make handmade toys and kid's clothes responsibly out of known safe materials with standard safety in mind. They are already bound by current laws to create safe products. But, the CPSIA does not distinguish between small/micro businesses and big business. As written, the law encompases each SKU made by the company and requires that each size be tested as well as each color. Add that up and testing will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - within the reach for huge corporations, but far beyond the capabilities of most small businesses.

As a result of this law, it is speculated that small business funding will be cut, banks will retract loans and businesses will shut their doors since there is no way anyone could run those numbers and come up with a profit! In the Wall Street Journal, Rick Woldenberg was quoted as describing February 10, 2009 as "National Bankruptcy Day" (source: http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/national-bankruptcy-day/).

All in all, this will GREATLY impact ALL small companies who make anything for kids under 12 including all handmade clothing, costumes, toys, blankets, diapers and even baby carriers. It will impact parents, grandparents, relatives and friends with kids by, at minimum, ensuring the removal of all unique, handmade items from the shelves of shops, boutiques and stores all across the country.

While I completely believe in product safety and testing to ensure the protection of our children, this act as written will surely force many, if not the majority of small/micro business owners to close their doors and cease the production of the products and further push our economy downward as hundreds of thousands of people flood the already dried-up job market.

We need to ask our Congressmen and Senators to rewrite the CPSIA to support our country's small businesses and exclude all items made in batches of less than 5,000 units per year or manufactured within the USA and trusted countries with established toy safety regimes such as Canada and the European Union and that they all be held exempt from third party testing requirements. If they still feel that testing should be required, then we should ask them to provide free testing services for USA manufacturers and importers from Europe or Canada with revenues less than one million dollars.

I encourage you to read the links below and do your own research before writing to your Congressmen and Senators. After I fully comprehended the impact of such a law, I signed the petitions and emailed my Congressman and Senators right away (using a modified version of the Handmade Toy Alliance letter).

By taking a stand, we can save our country's small businesses. Thank you in advance for your action and support of the handmade community.

Sincerely,

Marlo Miyashiro
Jeweler / Teacher / Mentor
Organizer, EtsyRAIN.com meetupSeattle, WA


marlom.com (jewelry website - day job)
tote2go.com (recycled fabric bags - new line)
imakecutestuff.com (personal blog)
imakecutestuff.etsy.com (etsy shop - crafts)
marlom.etsy.com (etsy shop - jewelry)

James.

James is sitting right next to me, watching me write this. He's refused to read my blog until I write about him.

Look, here he is:

See him? He's right there.

He says to mention that he's really good at "doin' it". Doing what, I'm not sure, but he's great at it. Or so I'm told.

Now he's just told me to go to hell and that we're breaking up.

Anyway, I am deeply in love with this guy and now we're living together.

And that's the short update. Long update comes later. Everything is fabulous* for a change.

Mmkay, must dash.

*His choice of words. Over "fantastic".

3 to 1.

I thought that I'd follow up my over-medication of women with anti-depressants with this:

And what do parents with hyperactive young boys do? They stuff them with Ritalin. They drug them so they’ll sit still and behave. The last time I read a number, Ritalin prescriptions were at least 3 to 1, boys to girls. But I don’t like to look at the numbers because it makes me too sad. It appalls me that parents would feed their kids pharmaceuticals. People managed rambunctious kids for centuries—just take them out to do stuff.

I'm looking forward to reading Kiley's article, even though I don't particularly care for his journalism.

Having just spent the past weekend with Matt's kids and Jinny's son: four young boys, ages 9 to 13, and one girl aged 6. Yep, boys sure do get nutty and bothersome when you keep them inside for hours on a nice -- or not so nice -- day. Enough to drive you mad.

We took them out and let them run around the park for an hour.

Problem solved! Went back, ate lunch, chilled out. It was a great time.

Parents are dumb.

HRC and the end of a campaign.

Check out the comments as well.

I know that I'm getting a skosh too sensitive to some of my male colleagues' attitudes towards sexism. I know that a couple of ECB's quotations were undoubtably "reverse sexism".

But the comments made me sick.

I don't like talking about the fact that I call myself a feminist for much the same reason that I prefer not to discuss my faith overmuch: labeling oneself anything tends to create a certain amount of censure in some percentage of other people and I am combative enough to have to know how to pick my battles. As Becky says, feminist is the other f-word. But it's exhausting that many people around me (mostly men but often enough women) just don't see anything wrong with our deeply misogynistic society. Regardless of HRC's campaign strategy, that should have been apparent to all. Course, maybe that's just me and my bitter, bitter reaction to life in the (also deeply-misogynistic) theater.

Gah. Keeping up a fight is exhausting.

I'm a-go to bed now.

Oh, and via, of course, Slog.

I'd like to share...

...this.

It accurately sums up my feelings on Obama's recent primary win over HRC.

I'm certainly not voting for McCain, BTW. DO NOT WANTZ four more years.

If McCain wins, I will likely expatriate.

"...not like we thought it was!"

Jinny and I went to American Apparel yesterday.

I sort of hate contemporary fashion. I mean, I love fashion and the expression oneself through what one wears, the sociology of fashion, if you will, but...wow. Gold disco leggings.

It's not that AA (ha!) doesn't have quality basics, but their most fashionable pret-a-porter lines are just atrocious. I do see a few people wearing such things around Capitol Hill, men and women, and they are ugly. And tasteless. Blech.

It was amazingly beautiful out yesterday and it still is today. There is unseasonably warm May weather lately, leading to a "Severe Weather Warning" -- use sunblock! drink water! -- and other tips for the perpetually sun-deprived.

It's 88 out right now. And sticky. Unusual heat even for August, let alone May.

The oppressive heat seems appropriate: Big Love closes tonight, and I feel oppressed, heavy. Otherwise, I've had such a spectacular week.

This week I went to a fundraiser for a show that a friend is involved in and barely got in the door before I saw one of my former castmates inside, clearly involved in the same piece. I dashed away in a panic, quickly walking to the nearest bus stop and trying to get my heart rate back down. On my way through Fremont in the warm dusk, I stopped inside a small bookstore. Books are comfy; I understand them and feel at home with them. If I have an attack in public, frequently I manage to get around books to calm down.

I didn't do much besides skim spines as I walked around until I reached the poetry section, where, on impulse, I grabbed a fat, comprehensive Rumi translation and opened the book at random, reading the first lines that I came upon.

I thought, Yes! It isn't like I thought it was!

And I went back to find old friends, make new ones, and network. I felt powerful for the first time in a month.

When you eventually see through the veils to
how things really are, you will keep saying
again and again, "This is certainly not like
we thought it was!"

Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy.

I thought of a female friend of mine who once complained that sharing a room with a man took effort. "It's as though," she said, "his being there, his existence, demanded some of my attention." Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy. But it's real and it's more than just being able to walk around the city after dark without the fear of being raped. It's the way strangers look at you on the street, or the way they relate to you on the phone, or the way their bodies in space interact with your personal space. Think of the inconsiderate seven-foot-tall oaf who sometimes winds up in front of you at a concert and then imagine that man appearing everywhere in your life, stepping on your toes and stumbling back into you and all the while not so much as acknowledging your existence. Many MTFs experience these losses of privilege—the abstract privilege that's concomitant with masculinity—as a series of surprising, disheartening blows. Their gender transformation is going to take a bit longer than they thought, it turns out.

This week's The Stranger.

Stop being weird, Salt Lake City.

And all the other cities.

Although the Insect Man in Naples sounds sort of adorable, with his broken English.

Via Slog.

A second adjunct: 1 in 8.

Re: women's mental health.

1 in 8 women are diagnosed with major depression, which is twice the rate of diagnosis in men.

Ugh. Too much I could say about this: women not being taken seriously by mental health care providers, improper diagnosis and treatment of illness, differing cultural stigmas for men (not encouraged to step forward) and women (over-encouraged) regarding diagnosis and treatment.

Via NAMI.org.

And now, because I owe the rest of you all one:

I just wrote about 3/4 of a great blog about how much my really good male friends rule, as an adjunct to my "men can fuck themselves" blog. It all got accidentally deleted. Poop. I don't want to re-write it. I'm going to give you the truncated version now, in which I give some specific shout-outs to a few of the wonderful men in my life:

My brother-in-law, Kenneth, whose long-suffering patience with my sister and I does not go unnoticed, and my nephew, Roscoe, aged 3 and 1/2. Little boy hugs for a magical auntie are a good reason to get up in the morning.

My uncle Tim and cousin Dave, who would very much like it if I came to visit for a long, long time in New Zealand.

Jared, the first man after I got outside the hospital to make me feel like a normal person, not a fragile thing in need of being saved. He once told me You'll be fucked up forever, but you won't always be fucked up. Which makes perfect sense.

My friend Devon in DC, who takes the time to respectfully pray for me and check in on me in a concerned (but not smothering!) manner even though he's about to go on the biggest adventure of his life: fatherhood. I'll be an auntie again!

E***, the lovely man in Paris who I miss so much. Plane tickets out there are not too expensive...unlike Wellington...

J-romy, the best ex-boyfriend ever. I'm sure glad that hurricane didn't kill him.

My mentor, Tony Curry, the gayest straight man in Seattle and a wonderful friend and artist.

And, finally, the man who indirectly inspired my tirade: Anthony.

Normally, I give the men I date cute little nicknames like "Mr. Grey" or "Very Nice Rock Star". I don't particularly like to be known for the men I have sex with, because I like sex and, while many of these men (and women, when that happens) are interesting, fun people, I wouldn't describe myself as serious about any of them. None of them are interested in being serious with anyone and are rarely warm people. Fun is different than loving.

Anthony is the first one who deserves to have a name. He is the first man that I've had a sexual relationship with in a long time who treats me simply as human. A female human, to be sure, because there is a difference, but still. He was a happy accident, as I haven't been in the mood to date around lately. I haven't felt like I had anything to offer anyone, and besides, how do you bring up mental illness casually in a date setting?

Them: ...and so I got the Belltown condo after I got back from Oslo where I was honored with the Nobel in Literature -- don't you just love Norway? -- but I still mostly live in the New York townhouse. And then I got shortlisted for the Booker while I was volunteering at an AIDS clinic in South Africa, but that was before I rescued those orphans from that downed prop plane in Bolivia...and what about you? What do you do? Would you like another martini? My treat.

Me: ...uh...I make stuff...and noise...you don't happen to have a Xanax, do you?

Right? What do you say?

When Anthony and I met neither of us were looking for anything, so we kept upping the ante trying to scare the other off.

Me: You should know that I'm mentally ill and I refuse to lie about it.

Anthony: Okay. I've been arrested seven times. No convictions, but once was for inciting a riot.

Me: Whatever. I was hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation.

Anthony: You know, I was in rehab for that once. Well, that and heroin. I mean, I tried to overdose...it was thing whole thing, see, I was nineteen...

Me: Well, I was in this December...

It went on like that all night the first time we met. I guess you're not supposed to tell the other person all your faults up front, but I find it pays off in the long run.

I find him utterly remarkable: sensate, strong, masculine, loving, and brutally honest, Anthony is very much a man who lets me be true to myself, does not try to control me, and would not allow me to control him. His laugh, I think, is how I knew that I could trust him: I'm so tired of dating or being friends with men who can't laugh. They give you a tight-lipped smile and chuckle every so often, but hardly ever do they let loose with a giant belly laugh. I find that if a person can't laugh and feel that limitless joy, he or she can't grieve, either, and are either shallow or always slightly sad yet frightened of their own tears. And if they can't face their own pain, maybe they can't face the pain of others. When you love a person, you have to love their sorrow as much as you love their joy.

The fact is, meeting Anthony gave me a new perspective. He's the first person besides my sister and my therapist to tell me that I'm handling my illness well, and that he admires me and is proud of me for it. He's one of the only men to treat me like a regular person instead of an invalid, not like I have --SHHHH -- CANCER. My girlfriends* like Patricia and Jinny and Becky get where I'm coming from, because they've been where I've been, and it's no big deal. But these men in my life? Forget them for the clueless fucks they are...until I had this good person who happened to be a man treat me as the strong woman that I knew I was and not the sickly girl that the rest of them saw.

So...yes, Virginia, there are spectacular and true men who can be concerned and caring for women without being condescending, patriarchal assholes with oedipal complexes. And I know the difference between the two when I encounter them. It has nothing to do with owning a dick, just being a dick. We're all people, just trying to make it in the world, but I want to make it on my own with no one trying to live my life for me. So if you were a man who felt wrongly targeted by my last blog...well, for a start, you probably didn't read it very carefully. I'm sorry if you took the wrong message away from it. Yet this is my personal forum, where I am allowed to have strong feelings on many subjects and this one has a context that I have yet to include here. If you knew me well then you'd know that I'm far too soft-hearted to stay very angry for long unless you personally hurt me very badly. So I'm not sorry that I wrote it, and I'm not sorry that I advocate for women's rights, and I urge you to wait until I write about the context to judge my anger.

Or, call or write me yourself.

*This is not to say that I haven't met discrimination -- because what I was talking about, ultimately, is discrimination -- from women, but it tends to be of a much different type. Perhaps I'll blog about that next.

And I want this one.

Cheeses save.

Attitude adjustment in a cup.

I want one. It will make me less cranky. Good news for all, then.

Go. Away.

I don't know how it happened, but I've started to hate men.

And by men I mean you, over there, with the Y chromosome. All of you, save for maybe 5 or 6 of you. You're probably also white and have never been diagnosed as mentally ill. But you might have; what do I know?

I'm sick of all of you "worrying" about me. I'm sick of you thinking that you know what's best for me. I'm sick of you trying to control me. Sick of the snide remarks about my choices in life: sexual, chemical, financial, or emotional. These things are not your business.

I'm tired of hearing that I need to do this, that, or the other. I can no longer stand having to listen to your dramatic sighs and proselytizing. I don't want you to keep tabs on me. I'm an adult and I am capable of taking care of myself. I've probably been doing it longer than you have. If I need something, anything, from you, I'm completely capable of asking for it. Don't assume.

I don't care if you haven't realized that you're acting this way or not. Just go away until you know how to stop. I'm that tired of it. I have been listening to all of this for years and I bought into it until recently. Now I can't believe that I ever tolerated it in the first place.

Get a life.

Stop judging me.

I'm not singling anyone out: it's all of you unless you know otherwise or I haven't seen you in so long that it doesn't matter.

Because it bears repeating, stop judging me.

Yes, you are.

Few of the women in my life are doing this because they have (surprise, surprise) almost universally been where I have been. So they don't judge. They don't patronize. Most importantly, they don't treat me as fragile or a freak, the way you do. They get it. It should come as no shock that the majority of diagnoses for personality disorders are for women. That statistics says something important about the state of health care in this and other countries.

I wouldn't have believed this gender split if I weren't living it.

You know, I've really tried not to feel this way. But the overwhelming evidence that you all feel that you can run around deciding who and what I am -- again, all of you: how can it be all of you? -- is astounding. I mean, really, how did you get such a feeling of entitlement? You have no qualifications in regards to any medical diagnosis that I might have and the rest is simply none of your concern. Yet you are over-concerned with my life and well-being, to a disturbing, codependent level.

Your "help" is making things worse. Trust me. If you feel the need to talk about how much I should be listening to you and your ideas about how I run my life, call a professional. It's their job, not mine. My life is none of your business unless I make it such.

I'm not currently interested in apologies, either. Later on, when I've cooled off, sure. For right now, just go away.

Did I mention?

I'm adjusting to new meds, too. But I think they're going to put me on lithium along with the citalopram...oy...

Empty rings around your heart.

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

I was fired.

I'm not in the show.

It was hard.

It is hard.

Very, very hard.

And I don't know how to talk about it.

And I'm not far enough away from it not to be angry.

But I think it was wrong.

And now we ride the circus wheel
With your dark brother wrapped in white
Says it was good to be alive
But now he rides a comet's flame
And won't be coming back again
The Earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are
He didn't mean to make you cry
With sparks that ring and bullets fly
On empty rings around your heart
The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

Why does my latte taste like the ocean?

I have wept in more coffee shops in the last year than the rest of my life combined.

Jake and I met at a Starbucks during lunch and talked about the possibility of me leaving the show. Today, a week before Big Love opens.

There isn't anyone to blame: I can barely function in rehearsal and Jake doesn't know how to tell me what I need to do to perform well. We're both at a loss.

It was strange to think, when I got cast, Oh, well, now I have to live until at least halfway through May. I can't let anyone down. But I'm still letting people down. I've never felt like I was doing a bad job before in a show, but I can't seem to get a handle on this character. And not just any character, the pivotal character of the show, the one on whom the entire spine of the play gently balances. I had a moment last night when I just cried out, sobbing in the stairwell of my theater, What am I doing? I must be such an idiot for thinking I could do this at all! Why am I here? Why don't I function properly inside, like other people? Why can't it make sense? Why, why, why?

It's exhausting, this constant crisis.

I'm meeting with Jake and Lou to work on whatever needs to be worked tonight. If I have to, I'll do it every night until we open.

I think I'd like to sleep a little now.

All this talk of love.

Sorry that I haven't posted more lately.

I'm in a show right now. Big Love.

I'm finding that this is the most difficult rehearsal process I've ever been through. My meds have been adjusted -- a higher dose -- and, after three months, I'm still anxious and rage-filled over nothing, shadows. If it doesn't work, I think they're putting me on Lithium, which scares me.

All I do is argue in rehearsal. Mostly with Jake, who is directing. Arguing with your director is one of the most unprofessional things an actor can do and I would have been fired by now if he wasn't my friend and didn't know what I was going through. Still, I have no answers to make it better and neither does he. Last night I cried because I got so frightened of getting hurt during a physical scene that I help things up for ten minutes. Then Jake and I went in the hall and argued more and I suddenly decided that I should never act again. Finally, Lou, our stage manager came back and held me for a bit and said that she understood everything that I was going through.

And then I got my face on and did a run-through for promo photos.

In the middle of all this, I met someone. I'll tell that story in another installment...

I'm feeling mighty lonesome
Haven't slept a wink
I walk the floor and watch that door
And in between I drink
Black coffee
Love's a hand me down brew
I've never know a Sunday
In this weekday room

I'm talking to the shadows
from 1 o'clock til 4
And lord, how slow the moments go
When all I do is pour
Black coffee
Since the blues caught my eye
I'm hanging out on Monday
My Sunday dreams to dry

Now a man is born to go a lovin'
A woman's born to weep and fret
To stay at home and tend her oven
And drown her past regrets
In coffee and cigarettes

I'm moaning all the morning
and mourning all the night
And in between it's nicotine
And not much heart to fight
Black coffee
Feelin' low as the ground
It's driving me crazy just waiting for my baby
To maybe come around... around
I'm waiting for my baby
To maybe come around

My nerves have gone to pieces
My hair is turning gray
All I do is drink black coffee
Since my man's gone away

Chicks before dicks.

Okay, so what I really have to do is spend more time with my girls.

I worked at the theater all this weekend helping Jake get stuff ready for tech week and then I went and hung out with Jinny and her son Storm Saturday night. Jinny and I had drinks in the kitchen and in the morning I came back and made brunch for the three of us. I'm still there right now, just chilling out, Sunday-style.

Life is so much better after having a good long vent with your lady friends. I needed this: I needed to get out of my head, forget about boys, and loosen up a bit. I guess I'm not breaking up with Balagan right now, either. I think we just had a weekend of make-up sex: I made curtains, moved flats, cleaned the Cabaret, put lamps and lumber in storage, stripped wires wearing a hand-knit angora sweater, and got down and dirty and covered in theater filth. And then I had a wonderful night.

The sun has come out today.

I love a good Sunday afternoon.

Simple things less simple.

The day after my interaction with Mr. VNRS I received the loveliest e-mail from a dear friend, who I hope will not mind me publishing an excerpt and will forgive me for not asking first. (I will take it down if you ask me to!) I find his writing -- English is a second language to him -- beautiful and poetic in its simplicity and speaks to me of another time when writing a letter was an art.

I don't even know how to start... Good morning?!

Hopefully you are doing alright. Apologies in advance for the probably messed-up shape or order of thoughts and things in this e-mail... Complete with a few months of intensive English forgetting-by-not-speaking-anymore. I think I just basically want to hear from you... And of course, offer some news also...

I believe that last time we saw each other was very, very brief. ...I must have appeared very rude...because I had to leave as C*** was starting to feel sick.

So I didn't stay...[a]nd I couldn't even have a little chat with you. It was all too short... And then... Time flew.

I have read your post, earlier tonight, about how you (sorry if I'm betraying the idea by re-expressing it) are basically envisaging how seeing someone is seeing them for the last time. It's really insane, it brought (still does bring) tears to my eyes, because when I hugged you goodbye on that night that I described above, I had exactly the same idea in my mind...

...with a different mindset, though. I was probably trying to anticipate for the reverse-culture-clash that I knew was ahead. But basically this kind of self-cynical sadness that lays behind the idea seems to be exactly the same.

I do not really know how or why we initially became (good) acquintances... Besides the fact that we have a connection of geekiness, and maybe art sensitivity (which you're so amazingly good at expressing)... It seems like a great and precious thing, though. Therefore I do not really know or understand why we never developed a stronger bond either... Meaning, we rarely hung out, if at all. It's even more impressive now that some time has passed. Can you believe that we met in 2004? That was more than three years ago. You forever are part of the very significant people of my life in Seattle. Even though I am capable of having the same kind of thoughts about people coming, going, gravitating, I still mean it.

And I have no idea why I am telling you all that in that order. I am starting to wonder if it is making any sense, and if it's not becoming too boring!

...Your health. I wish I could help. I really, really do. I feel terrible that I've missed a few seemingly crucial episodes. And to punctuate this short summary of unsummarizable feelings, I am also really, really glad that you are seemingly in good hands at the right time.

...For months I have had archived e-mails from you that "I really need to reply to". Until it's so far, distance and time-wise, that the words are just rushing out and no matter the order, they are just too many to make all the sense they should.

But hey... I wanted to say hello. Simple things. I hope that you are healing. I really wish I could easily spend some time sharing some physical space with you. I wish I could have seen Space. I wish we'll perform some karaoke together some more time. I miss my roommate of only three months. All that.

Context just makes these simple things less simple to say. For example, I am fearing that they might not appear sincere. But they are.

Have a nice day,

Random, distant E***

How wonderful, and such good timing.

This is what I mean about my life: in my own way, I am mind-blowingly fortunate. I do have people who love me; a long list of them. I understand that I haven't always been deserving of their esteem and that, at times, I know have been a frustratingly absent friend. I've been trying to change, but, of course, not fast enough for my own tastes.

I find that the moments of the greatest craving for my own death are characterized by a longing, an overwhelming feeling of love for my people accompanied by a feeling of insurmountable distance. It's almost a sweet feeling, and I feel unafraid of whatever may come next. It's a high, and infinitely preferable to a deep and miserable depression.

But I remember what it's like to be happy, too, happy all the time and so much so that you think you'll burn away from the feeling. Clean, simple, uncomplicated.

I think, from now on, I must search for these times of an unburdened heart.

I expect to be very bad at it. Maybe I'll get better in time.

Re: "Gender Stereotypes Trump Racial Stereotypes in Every Social Science Test."

I'm too sick to comment except, as a professional woman, DUH.

Because he thinks he should be consistant.

I'm trying to figure out how to value a human life.

And not just how one values a human life, in theory, but how I and the people I want close to me value life though action, word and deed.

But first, a selection from bobrauchenbergamerica by Chuck Mee:

19 Dessert

Bob's Mom brings out a cake and
sets it down on the picnic table.
As this next scene goes along,
Susan starts to eat compulsively,
taking pieces of cake or cupcakes from the table--
at first absentmindedly, at a normal cake-eating pace,
and then more and more compulsively,
until she is stuffing it into her mouth.

BECKER
I think I know how he feels myself.
I thought you cared for me, too.

SUSAN
I did care for you.
There was something about you
I don't even know what it was that just hit me
I couldn't help myself
but then it turns out
it was like a summer storm
it passed as quickly as it came
and then it was over.

BECKER
Maybe it wasn't over for me.

SUSAN
I'm sorry.

BECKER
I don't think you can just drop someone like that
and just say I'm sorry.

SUSAN
I didn't just say I'm sorry
I am sorry.

BECKER
This is why some people call women fickle.

SUSAN
I don't think it has anything to do with being fickle.
How it is for women:
Women feel what they feel when they feel it
and then when they don't feel it any more they don't feel it.
Unlike a man
who won't know what he feels when he feels it
and then later on
he'll realize how he felt
and so he'll talk himself into feeling it again
when he doesn't feel it
because he thinks he should be consistent about the positions he takes
and stick to them
so a man always thinks he feels things he doesn't feel
and so he never really knows how he feels at all.

BECKER
That could be true.

SUSAN
Of course it's true.
Pretty soon
you're going to thank god you had such a narrow escape
you're going to feel lucky I dumped you

BECKER
I'm never going to feel that.

SUSAN
Maybe not.

BECKER
I think you must be a sort of a tease
or worse
some kind of seducer and dumper kind of person
who is just a loose cannon
cutting a swath through men
leaving them wrecked all around you
what is that all about?

[She speaks, with a mouth full of cake,
eating as she speaks,
with greater and greater animation as she goes on,
till she is yelling through a mouth full of cake.]

SUSAN
Maybe that would be about something
if it were in any way true
but it is not in any way true
I'm a person who is looking for true love
like anyone else
except the difference is
I am trying not to be afraid of my feelings
and censor things
and lie and lie and lie all the time
pretending I feel like this or that
going with some guy because I couldn't be sure any more
how I felt about him
because he had some things I liked and other things I didn't
and trying to talk myself into not caring about the things I cared about
and caring about the things I didn't care about
because I've done that a lot in the past
so I am trying to let my feelings lead me through life
And
feelings are feelings
they come and go.
So probably I'm just as disoriented as you are
and left in the lurch
suddenly dropped
or thrown down the stairs
it's not as though this is not a struggle for me too
but the one thing you can be sure of is
if ever I am sure of how I feel
in a way that is the kind of feeling that I know will last
then when that time comes
if it so happens that I do tell you I love you
then you can be sure of it.

Not all of this applies, some of it is here out of pure love for the writing.

Long story short, I ran out of meds and went into crisis this weekend. I had to leave work early Monday to go to the ER to get a script written for me. I called Mr. VNRS from my sister's car and very nearly begged for company later that night. I was scared for my life and I finally felt like I could trust this person enough to ask.

"I don't know," he said, cagey. "I'm going roller skating. I've been planning it for a week. Don't you have any other friends you can see?"

I had spent the previous night first being a near-fight-starting wet blanket at our friend Becky's birthday and then sitting in my bathtub trying to calm down enough to sleep and not murder myself.

"Um. No. Whatever. I'll...call you."

We didn't get out of the ER until 10, at which point I was so overwhelmed that I went home and passed out and slept until noon the next day. My old friend Dan came over and helped me get functional enough to get the script filled, later reporting that I seemed "1000% better" post-drug. It's true, I am not currently harboring a desire for my own death, which, all in all, I am going to consider a bonus -- even if it means a return to the hypomania and nausea of re-adjusting to citalopram. (Blogger doesn't recognize that word and suggests I replace it with recitalists or extramarital. See? Hypomanic! Normally I would neither have cared nor shared. Modern pharmaceuticals' gift to you.)

Later, the Rock Star and I spoke briefly about his comment. I asked him not to do it again if I came to him for help since that might cost me my life. He said that scared him. A lot.

I'm trying to understand this exchange, which confuses and upsets me. I also have a cold and audited for Balagan at the TPS generals (more on that front later), so everything is kinda weird, body-wise, and that also limits my critical thinking.

However, and more importantly, I have a personal issue where I minimize disrespect done to me and maximize disrespect done to other people. So, if someone hurts me and my friend the same way, I will usually be more angry on their behalf than my own. Make of that what you will in reference to my character and history.

So, I feel that the Rock Star's behavior is unethical and, more to the point, calls my basic notion of his good character into question. I look at this and think: This is a person who does not make friends. He does not love people: he sees the potentially-dangerous consequences of his actions and behaves discompassionately. This is not love, and, if not, what really are the people he calls friends?

Speaking with him a little did not help, and, instead, the only excuses I can see for his behavior -- fear, or lack of emotional preparedness -- were not there. As far as I could tell, he simply...didn't choose to care. It wasn't important enough to him.

It's extremely challenging for me to ask for help with this, my disease, this irrational chronic existential crisis that I can't help but feel is mind-numbingly cliche and embarrassing. Even my closest friends, my sister, people who, like the Rock Star, were there every day for me in the hospital, I can hardly bring myself to interrupt their lives to save my own out of sheer guilt. I must have felt very ill and a danger to myself to know that I had to ask for help.

But now I feel I don't know this person. I feel nothing less than revulsion for his choice. For my friends, even if it is a person who has boundary issues, I would save their life first, and then have the longer conversation of why this is inappropriate behavior. This is triage: stabilize the acute and then treat the chronic.

But I have a disease, I realize, an illness, wherein I cannot always see my emotions for what they are. When I hear this from my lover, I hear, "Oh, what are you doing tonight? Slitting your throat? Yeah...not feeling that so much. I'm going to spend time with virtual strangers who call themselves our friends, and you can come if you want. No? I guess no one will miss you. You have fun, though. With the throat slitting and all. It's cool that you're into stuff, you know, keeping busy. Bye."

No, really, that's how it sounds. Hell, when people tell me they worry for me I hear, "How unfortunate that your life is hard! If it's convenient then I'll maybe be around. If I'm there. You know." Which, rationally, I know is not what they are saying, they're saying, "I love you! Please, please don't go." It's symptomatic of the disease that I have a different translation.

So, all this beggars the question, how do I react to this? Should I take it at face value, has this person been misrepresenting his nice-guy front? Should I feel dirty that I trusted someone who has no ethics, should I feel suckered? Should I feel sorry for them? Should I forgive them, try to be friends if nothing else? Should I avoid a toxic situation all together? Would I feel more or less upset if I were a spectator and not a participant?

I truly, desperately want this to be a fluke, that Mr. Very Nice Rock Star is as nice as he seems to be. I have for some time been wondering why he has few, if any, close friends or confidants. Maybe it's not that he's uncomfortable with intimate friendships, perhaps he's incapable of it for other reasons: he may be unable, for whatever reason, to give that level of respect that I expect from my other intimates. I don't want that to be the case. But I'm afraid it it may be, and that I will have lost most or all of my respect for him literally over night. Yet at the moment, how do I know what is real? If I don't know my own reality, do my feelings even have a place?

I'm frightened. This makes me feel sick: shunned by someone I love, for the first time since getting out. I want my friend back. I don't know what will happen. I feel like I am clinically unlovable.

Last night I hung out with Jake and told him all this. All he said was, "Well! That's when you call me. Why didn't you call me? Hello, best friend! You should have just come over. I miss you! And don't think about it too much. Everything's going to be okay. I promise."

That's the best lie I've ever heard.

I want to hear it again.

I went home and did just what he said I'd do.

I now have three all-time favorite unforgettable best pieces of theater art and a second most timely for me as a person work.

Single-moment-in-time-stretching-away-into-the-distance performances, in chronological order of my seeing them:

1. My hero Mary Zimmerman's The Secret In The Wings (Seattle Rep). Simply, it was a bridge between two parts of my life and had everything my girl's heart could dream and everything my woman's soul could need.
   
2. Elevator Repair Service's 6+ hour word-for-word performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald's grim tragedy of undying love, The Great Gatsby: Gatz. Set in a banal office, there is silence, then chaos, then silence again and I was fully entranced for the entire length.
3. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
   

Most Heartbreaking Reflection Of My Life performances:

1. Rent by Jonathan Larson. I was 20, has just had my first psychiatric hospitalization, and was an acting student living in Manhattan.
2. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
   

Last night I saw Mike Daisey perform his newest show, How Theater Failed America. If you don't know about him you may still have heard or read him, as he is not only an actor, writer, and fat man who sits at a table, he is also a commentator for NPR and writes for several magazines. I had seen him previously in his break-out 21 Dog Years At Amazon.com ten years ago so I knew what to expect: a sweaty fat man sitting at a table that you cannot take your eyes off of. Talking. Just...talking. And drinking water.

The basic premise of the show is the imminent economic failure of regional theater, which is largely uninteresting to anyone outside of theater and a terrifying white elephant to anyone inside of it. It tells nothing new. Most art does not tell a new story.

However, it struck me, and I had, at the end, one of those tunnel vision moments at the end, where he is speaking only to me, looking only at me, as though hundreds of other people were not present and we were alone together in the dark. He had spoken about his suicide attempts and being saved by work, nothing but work. Art, starvation, nothing but ramen for months, but it gave him life. And then he said, Go. Go do this work. Be as luminous as I know you are, as you know you are, because this is not political commentary or a failing industry but the only thing that will give you life. Go, work, and Godspeed.

I have no money. I have ten dollars to live on until the 15th and I have 2/3 of a large container of plain non-fat yoghurt in my fridge, uncooked soba in my cupboard, two large containers of salt, and a jar of honey. No produce, no fruits or veggies or anything unless my wonderful big sister buys me apples and carrots tomorrow at the farmer's market. I barely work and don't know if I can manage more hours. But I can't, literally, live another day like this.

The part of my brain that understands money is fatally broken. Things appear, or they do not. This simply is and is not connected to any other function. (I am not this way when I run a business, however.) I do understand that I am dying, right now, and if do not do something right this very fucking moment that very soon it may be too late for me. I cannot wait, it is an imperative.

So. So I guess that I am going to quit Balagan. They are doing nothing that I want to do; they are the Boston Pops performing an over-produced Copeland and I am Jimi Hendrix. The current season is full of large, ensemble casts of solid, proven works with moderate production values and not enough rehearsal time lead by an already-bloated, squabbling administrative team that I could come back and save (I would be very good at that) but, since it already sent me to the hospital, I feel that would be inadvisable. I want to see a man hang upside down in leather and spikes playing Moliere by candlelight for nine people. I want to have five people in panda suits eat sushi in a five-star sushi restaurant. I want to produce Hamlet in Space and cast rock stars who wear body glitter. I want to make punk rock theater. I want to be happy, not broken-hearted; free, not bound; alive, not dead. I feel cheated and tired and I have only thiiiiiis much left to live for.

So. To work, then.

Gōngxǐ fācái, hóngbāo nálái*.

Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year.

Mr. Very Nice Rock Star is a Rat.

*Mandarin: "Congratulations and be prosperous, now give me a red envelope"**.

**In China, red envelopes with cash money inside are given at the New Year as symbolic wishes for prosperity to the recipient. Personally, I have always felt that giving me money was a very lucky thing to do. Now give me a red envelope.

Radio Silence, or Eleven Days and Twelve Nights In A Stone-White Room.

I'm back.

I feel...

...I don't know. I don't know what I feel.

I read yesterday in this book, a book on why people who commit suicide do so, that two conditions must exist for a person who can and will commit suicide (as opposed to the equally-dangerous if less premeditated accidental suicide by suicidal gesture): they must perceive themselves both as a burden on their loved ones and lacking a community, involvement and belonging, to something, anything.

I guess that's where I am. I do feel a burden, I do feel removed from meaning, from belonging.

On November 30th, 2007, I checked myself into Harborview Medical Center for severe depression and anxiety with suicidal ideation.

It was good for me. Right after I got out, I was feeling a little (okay, a lot) better. But now, almost two months out, my meds have stopped working and all of the wonderful people who came out of the woodwork to support me have gone back to their lives. For the which I can place no blame; they have their own lives which I do not want to interfere with. I haven't been able to see anyone to get my medication adjusted. I can barely go to my day job, I rarely leave the house, I see almost no one. A few months ago I couldn't sleep past 9am; now, when I sleep, I sleep until 1pm, sometimes waking only to stay in bed, quietly and warmly, and wondering what would happen if I didn't leave.

The sole bright point, the only thing to look forward to without the guilt of my own absurd existence marring it, is a writing project that I seem to have fallen into with Mr. ARS. A rock opera. We're writing a rock opera. Which, since that's the most absurd thing I could possibly think of to do, seems right somehow. Good. He saved my life, too: he was the one who talked me down at the crucial moment when I am almost certain few, if any, others could have. He knew what to say. He did not cry, or beg, or coddle, or tell me that I had so much to live for. Rather, he calmly stated that, although not a sin, it would be a waste. He knew he could not stop me; he could only ask.

I understand that what I have is a disease. I do not hold myself to blame. I hold my parents somewhat responsible due to their abhorrent parenting, though not entirely because of the overwhelmingly vast mental illness streaking through my family, running wild like a sophomore on Spring Break in Tijuana.

Neither do I hold anyone else to blame. How could I? I only wish that I were a healthier person in order to be a better friend or family member to them.

I feel? Grateful that I have such a beautiful life, angry at my ungrateful self that I do not or cannot appreciate it in all its beauty. Utterly alone at times, although I know in my head that is a lie I tell myself, like the lie that I feel empty.

I know that I'm going to get up tomorrow, eventually eat, knit for a while, and try to breathe and stay calm.

But I do, oh I do, wish that I had a reason to get up tomorrow.