Rick McCollister's Open Salon Blog

Dear friend,

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:01:35 -0500

Thank you for your notes today.

I apologize for being a little bit off my rhythm lately. The thing about depression is that it's so damn needy! In an odd way, though, depression and I made our peace a few years back. It has its own cycles; their timing is not always convenient but they do always complete themselves.

I don't suffer from depression any more. I see it now as just one of the many aspects of my whole self. I don't fight it, because that doesn't work. And fighting it is only fighting with myself, anyway.

Breathe, you offered. Breathing is circular, periodic, cyclical. Isn't it interesting how much of life is rhythmic? Hearbeat, respiration, sleep/wake, brainwaves, mating, seasons, music. I accept depression now as part of my unique cycle of life, the winter counterpart to my summers of creativity.

I have been so lucky in my life! You would have to look a long time to find someone with more gifts and good fortune than I have had. It's been a strange thing to live with at times. There have been moments when I felt afraid and ashamed of the blessings I have. I've even felt guilty about being here at all. But I do not feel afraid or guilty now. Not any more.

A few years back I started learning to welcome connections. I learned to relax, and to breathe. Before, trying to make relationships work was like holding my breath to get the oxygen I needed—nonsensical, unsustainable. I guess I had been afraid that if I released that one breath I would never get a chance for another.

But just when I thought I'd wasted all the oxygen I was entitled to, friends began to appear. Somehow I was able to relax and let them be friends. I let them love me even though I knew I was not deserving of their love. Sometimes I would tell them that, and they would just laugh gently and keep right on loving me. They changed me, forever. They let me love them, too. They let me find my way to discovering the difference between I love you, the gift, and I love you, short for I'm drowning oh my god please save me.

And every day since, then, even the worst days when depression demands its due, I remember that I am not alone and that life is cyclical and that there is more loving left to do. I relax into balance. I remember that depression is merely the flaw in love; without love, no depression. I am grateful for love. I remember to breathe.

So thank you, friend, for your unexpected gift of connection and encouragement. Thank you.

Pull focus

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:01:42 -0500

After my second nap of the day, I woke up at 5pm. Something had shifted, sure enough. Locked back in. I just got back to the cave, and it's bedtime (I am determined to not give in to the night curse).

And suddenly I can connect with many things to write about, and I am feeling a reduction in my fear level. There might even be a rant coming on! Hope to catch the wave; aiming to clear this fluff from the feed with straight out morning pages in about seven hours. See you then...

Sleep stuck

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:01:20 -0500

My body clock is goofed up again, in spite of going to bed before midnight every night for the last month and waking up rested after six hours of zolpidem-assisted sleep.

Last night I got to sleep by 11:45. I slept all night without waking up. At six my alarm started ringing; I hit snooze every ten minutes until 7:30. Then I got up and said, "Well, I must have needed the extra sleep." I tried to act like I was glad for another morning. I took out my morning pages notebook and stared at it for a few minutes. Then I got back into bed. I slept another five hours.

Yesterday was similar, as was Monday. I think it started happening over the weekend. Anyway, I'm up again now, but it will take all the willpower I can muster not to crawl back in there.

Concurrent with the sleep weirdness, I can't seem to write anything at all. Putting these words down feels like pulling the starter rope on a lawnmower that just won't start: rrRRRRRrrr.... rrRRRRRrrr.... rrRRRR.... nothing. Went back to 40mg citalopram Sunday, that will kick in another couple of days or so.

Well, let's see, it's 2:17. I have to be at group at 6:30. I have some stuff I need to do to prepare for that, maybe 45 minutes worth. I guess I can go back to sleep until 5:00. Setting my alarm...

Joke of the day

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:01:06 -0500

A guy goes to the doctor. He says, "It hurts when I do this."

The doctor says, "Then don't do that."

January walk

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:01:50 -0500

Written January 15, 2004

One cold January morning, a man went for a walk. He had walked before, but this morning was different. The man was not walking to get thin. The man was not walking so his cardiovascular system had a prayer of continuing to function.

He was walking to begin.

To begin what? Life. Living again. And as he walked, he began to remember. His memories were not conscious – not most of them, anyway. His memories did not reside in his brain. They lived in his muscles, and in his bones. They lived in the walls of his blood vessels, and they lived in his chest and his feet and his groin and his eyes.

These memories were cast by the imprint of youth, when everything was possible. It had not seemed that anything was possible then. It seemed like everything was a struggle then. But if that young man had only understood how free he was then, he might have flown.

So he begins to fly now. It’s not too late. He begins to fly by first remembering how to walk. His muscle memory guides him. He does not know where his walking will take him. He does not care. It’s January, and it is cold, and he is walking. He is free again.

I’m home from the walk, which began at the railroad tracks cutting across Old Cheney, then along the shutdown line leading behind the penitentiary.

I just want to write now. No paragraphs. No long sentences, just short ones. I want to photograph Alex and Meg this weekend. I’ll think of a way to inspire them. I wonder if there is anything Mandy or Charity would like to ask me? Do they wonder anything about me, or do they already know everything, or do they not care? I mean not apathy, merely disinterest. Non-interest. Lack of interest. It’s gray today, mild and cool outside. On the wet side. I am warm in here on the love seat, looking out the window. What will I discover next week asking my mother to tell me her life story? What will I stumble across on the way there? On the way home? In the next two days? As I write whatever appears two pages minus seven lines from here? “X” marks the spot. This time and this place. I haven’t even seen The Horse Whisperer. I want to watch it, too. Keep it simple. Truth is what it is. Defending Your Life. What about that one? A good choice? A “thoughtful gift, ” as Mandy would say? I think so. I feel so. I burn so. Time is the fire in which we burn. Requiem For A Dream? What is a “requiem,” exactly? A song? A writing? Or just “a work” which memorializes and summarizes and encapsulates the heart of a time or a place or a person or a dream? I don’t know. That’s why God invented dictionaries and Shrinky-Dinks and Smith’s Theory of Relativity. Time is the money machine that keeps Wells Fargo executives driving Mercedes and BMWs and Hummers and Lexus SUVs. Yay for them. Hooray for time, for the time value of money. I’m screwed thanks to the time value of money. Is it that they don’t get it, my bankruptcy-happy acquaintances? Or that I don’t get it? More pictures I want to make. Pull everything together now in a big pile, so it will be easy to move. No rummaging necessary. If it ain’t on this pile, it’s garbage. Trust me, I’ve already done the poring and the collating. There are no absolutes. It’s all relative. It’s all about compression, too – that’s why it all fits in such a small pile. Ain’t technology a wonderful thing? I used to be part of “technology!” I used to make it. I used to create technical things that people wanted to buy, in hopes that my family and I could laugh and relax and never be hungry. I failed at that. Mission Impossible. Why do I always accept these impossible missions? Why am I writing when I have nothing to say? “The Book Of Questions” has already been done. But that’s all I have – questions! I’m hungry. I could not eat for two weeks and be just fine. Good thing, too! Then what? Angie Dickinson living in her station wagon in a neighborhood of boxcars, kept warm by smoldering trash? Is that me? It goes like it goes. I don’t want your money, any of you. None of it. I have earned this moment, just as I earned all the moments before this one. I will die for love. The people in the World Trade Center offices and stairwells died for love. Didn’t they? Can’t I? Am I dying for love now? What difference does it make, really? Is there any such thing as security, really? I am secure, as secure as anyone. Less? More? Relative. It really is all about relativity, baby. Jack Kerouac’s manuscript of “On The Road” sold at auction for over two million dollars. Old Jack himself – the one who filled dozens of feet of continuous roll paper with “typing” (as Truman Capote later characterized it) – died penniless. Enlightened, perhaps. Wrote something that was real and true, perhaps. But he ended up with nothing to show for it. Sounds fine to me. Take it. Take whatever you want, honey. It’s yours anyway. It was all for you to begin with. Really, just come on over and get it all. I won’t be needing it. All I want to do now is understand. I believe in this stuff, You were right about that. Are you ever wrong? Gosh, not that I can remember. It’s more important to be right than happy. Right? Organic gardening for health? Juice Plus? The cover of Time Magazine this week explores how your love life keeps you healthy. Hilarious. Ironic. Tragic. But what does being always right get you? Mysterious unrelenting body pain? Fibromyalgia? Goofed up brain waves? Maybe – but also security! Right? Let’s keep “rightness” in the spotlight here, shall we? Right where it belongs. A little more to the right. Haha. I have to piss. I want to create. And all this prose without the benefit of dangerous drugs! I’ve snapped, folks. Let’s make love! Oh, wait, I forgot. I’m alone! You can’t make love alone – even though that seems to be just what I insist on trying to do. “Please stop writing! This sucks! You say nothing! Stop wasting ink and paper!” Fuck off. Do I have any needs at all besides eating and drinking and shitting and pissing and breathing and sleeping? Is writing a need? Is loving a need? I feel like a fool. A maroon. Next book up to be read: “Against Love.” Why read? Why ever listen or speak or visit or kiss or travel or get drunk? Is it possible to have acid flashbacks without ever having taken acid (that I know of)? Alex just called. He only let the phone ring five times, so I had to call him back. He says he’s coming over momentarily. I’m glad. I love him. He is why. He and his sisters are why. I can stop wondering why now. That’s why I am alive. Should I waste any resources on any other kind of love? Are there different kinds of love? What’s the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone? Please respond in first person. When you’re in love with someone, you would die for them without a moment’s hesitation if to do so would protect them from pain or would bring them anything good. But what if they asked you to die for them? What if they demanded it? Yeah, probably even then. But that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? Both the asking and the dying? What is the point of all this living and loving and paying and creating and regretting and controlling and dying? Why do I still have it in me to be in love? There seems to be no value in it whatsoever. I don’t get to decide that, though, do I? Who does? Her? I don’t know. If you can’t think of anything to write, then just go ahead and write for three pages: “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” In case there is confusion in anyone’s mind about this later, let me clarify that I am writing this now because I want to be. I choose to be writing. Nobody is making me do it. Nobody told me I should do it. I don’t care who reads it. I’m not writing it to be read. The sun will come up tomorrow, and who knows what the tide will bring in? Eventually it will bring this piece of flotsam and/or jetsam into another person’s harbor, at which point they/he/she might read it and take something from it, or make it into paper airplanes upon which they/he/she can fly away home. I don’t know. I can’t see to tomorrow, let alone to that abstract far away future. It’s just ink and paper and bullshit anyway. What is to be said? And my point is what? What do I feel? What do I believe? I know, but I can never seem to say it in a way that matters. I don’t know anything – that’s what could go on my memorial. Who will remember? What will they remember? Now my feet feel a bit cold. Here comes the petitioner, with Alex riding shotgun. Good, she stopped at the bottom of the hill. I guess she has nothing she wants me to let her tell me today! What a relief. We’re all stocked up here! Thanks for playing.