The Lipshitz Condition's Open Salon Blog

The Intractable Migraine

Sun, 8 Feb 2009 21:02:50 -0500

My face is broken, I swear it. For the last week and a half, I've been living with a migraine that won't quit. On Wednesday, Wotan's day, a good day for battle, I checked myself into the hospital to up the ante on the tangle with the pain in my head.

When you have a migraine for more than three days, it's called an 'Intractable Migraine.' Supposedly, you're at risk for stroke or aneurysm because all of the blood vessels in your head are dilated beyond belief. All that I know is that I feel like the Nazi in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' who opens said ark only to have his face melt. I can't remember messing with any holy relics, lately, but I have clearly done something to displease the gods.

The only way to treat an intractable migraine, short of death (which, as the pain, visual distortion, and nausea dragged on was rapidly seeming more and more viable as an option...I was almost even rooting for the anuerysm, which as my mom would say, is a shondah), is to check into your local ED and let them give you an IV full of headache snake juice. It's a mix of Compazine, Benadryl, the kinds of narcotics that do not make you feel good, and some other stuff that I can't recall because I've been half out of my mind the couple of times it's been administered to me. I have to thank the incredibly kind man nurse who stuck me, as he had a soft touch with a needle. He also winningly distracted me from the majority of the ordeal with talk of Chicago, my adopted home town, which gave comfort when it was much needed. Also, he was cute, which goes a long way in my book.

It was originally my goal to blog on OS every day, but clearly I've missed a few. My migraine continues. I might go back to the hospital tomorrow and see if we can't sort this out. My right eye won't focus, which is what bothers me most. Thing is, I think that this is an opportunity to re-dedicate myself to writing. I've been through some stuff. And, apparently, I'm going to keep on going through some stuff. I think that's why it's important to sally forth and start to get it all down.

Radium Chocolate Chip

Wed, 4 Feb 2009 02:02:33 -0500

Living in a homeless shelter is an awful lot like living in prison. There are the rules set out by the institution, and enforced by the staff, and then there are the real rules established by the inhabitants. Resident rules, like staff rules, were often slippery things that changed depending on hierarchy and territory. Like prison, there was a whole lot of chaos and crazy within an enclosed space thrown in to the mix as a multivariate affecting the equation.

For two days after moving in, every new resident is on lockdown, unable to leave. The reasons for this have never been made fully clear to me. Something to do with the staff 'getting to know you and your habits.' Blessedly, everyone kind of knows the drill, and stays relatively clear of the new person during that time. I more or less red, slept, and cried.

I had just left the West Town loft that I had lived in for the past six years. The last day that I had physical possession of my old apartment, I lay on the floor and sobbed. My voice echoed throughout the rooms, as it was empty of all of my things. My body felt stretched to the point of breaking. I was so tired. I just wanted to go home, but was forced instead to say goodbye to my old home that day, not really knowing when I would find a permanent place again.

On my third day living in the shelter, I was involved in a near physical throw down with another resident over chocolate chip cookies. Earlier in the day, an older man had brought in a box of cookies and offered me one. Happy for some sweets, and something kind of normal, I went into the kitchen, which was the only room where food was allowed. Seriously. I would be violated for nibbling a cookie in the hallway. So, the kitchen.

This is where I met Margot. Margot had on her pink bathrobe, which I would later learn was her warning colors. You could easily judge the Margot Threat Level by the color/tropicalness of the day's bathrobe (I swear that I have never seen the woman in anything other than a bathrobe and bedroom slippers).

"DO NOT BRING YOUR TALIBAN TOXIC SHIT IN HERE!" This was about two inches from my face. I thought it was about me. No, it was about the cookie.

I was so not into this. I just wanted to be left alone. But, you know what? I was not going to be stepped to by a four foot tall two braid having wanna be Pochahantas in granny pajamas. I chest bumped her out of my space.

Me: "The FUCK, bitch?"

Margot: "THE CIA GAVE CANCER TO ALL OF THE SOUTH AMERICANS WITH FUCKING! COOKIES!!!"

Me: "What kind of cookies? RADIUM CHOCOLATE CHIP?!"

Did staff come in when they heard raised voices? Nyet, comrade. When scuffles didn't have anything to do with a resident that they deemed to be special, or in need of protection, they just sort of let things roll on to whatever entropic conclusion, or lack thereof, they would settle into. Or out of.

Eventually, someone else came in to the kitchen and put the radio on blast. Margot wandered off. Minicrisis averted. The less new than me girl turned to me. "Thing is, with Margot, if she in pink, you got to get staff to get her out the kitchen otherwise she'll go off no matter what anyone does."

Lesson one learned.

The Rock Festivals Are Coming, The Rock Festivals Are Coming

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 10:02:16 -0500

Rock Festival Season is a time of magic. It's when vegan bar-be-cue scents the air like an aphrodisiac, boys strut around with their artfully trimmed summerbeards and Diamond Dogs-like sunburns on their chests (courtesy of the omnipresent American Apparel deep V that invariably gets shed after day two), and all of the kids shaking their asses to De la Soul like it was 1992. I can't even begin to tell you how many beer besotted and indie rock induced bad ideas I have had at said festivals over the years.

Even the Pitchfork organization, which my friend Dead Mike abandonded in his role as lead critical uhuru years ago because, in his words, "They were all uptight pretentious dicks," engenders goodwill. Last year, they brought us Jarvis Cocker in all of his effete English glory. This is a man who I, and judging by the crowd, about eighty-two kajillion thirty-year-old music fanboys have been in love with since we were fifteen. At one point, Jarvis C. started pointing at his belly button and jerking his head back. I didn't even know that navels were sexy, and that navel pointing could be A Move. It was. I died with adolescent lust inside my very adult body.

On Craigslist, I recently saw a 3/4 ton van on sale for $700. I feel that it would be the perfect vehicle to transport 7-20 of my friends from Buttofmanyjokes, FL to Coachella in style. Unfortunately, this year, the date for Coachella has been moved up two weeks to mid-April (it usually happens at the end). In past years, the greatest hazard associated with this festival has been the peril of seeing Chloe Sevigny in inappropriately short shorts. Now there's a dilemma for both teacher and students: what to do about finals? How to explain to the kids that there will be no final critique because I have to spraypaint Valkyries riding sledges of fire on the side of a van in order to go see Muse in the desert?

Will Bonnarroo be an adequate rock and beardfest? It's around the corner, just down the lane, but it's been a while since I've camped for four days, letting my mind turn to jelly, around actual hippies. I kind of fear hippies. Hipsters want to sell you their adorable ninja or monster oriented plush crafts, and ride around on Italian bikes from the 70's that are worth more than my last car. They are either computer programmers, or can make a mean cappuccino. All of this I support. Hippies, I think, like butterflies, and dance in ways that are inexplicable to most. I don't know their agenda, and worry that, like Hare Krishnas, they will try to recruit me.

I have my Tall Ships o' the Seas calendar out. I'm in the planning phases, but can hardly wait. Throw some seitan on th barbie for me, guv'nor.

Stealing Home

Mon, 2 Feb 2009 18:02:26 -0500

I was never supposed to be homeless. I went to a small, yet incredibly self-important, liberal arts college. When you begin this way, you feel insulated from the world. Life is about learning, the ideas and images that you craft, and the eventual social good that you'll do. I played at being poor: I walked around without shoes, wore thrifted clothes that never matched, and biked everywhere. At 19, I was diagnosed with the Superfun Chronic and Possibly Life Shortening Illness that would rear its head from time to time, but even that just seemed more like an annoying addendum to my life than specific reality. I was young. I had my middle class parents' middle class health insurance. It sucked, but was survivable, when they wouldn't come to see me when the SCPLSI got cranky and I had to hang out in the local hospital.

After undergrad, I worked, and was very successful at, a job in arts administration. I was there for a few years. Things were always a bit nutty -- staff was constantly turning over, our job duties were incessantly increasing while our salaries were perpetually frozen. I would receive cryptic notes from one boss scribbled in flowery handwriting and e-mails from another that seemingly countermanded what I had intuited to be the meaning of the initial communiques. I was constantly urged to do more with less. As it turns out, one of my bosses was embezzling. This was, um, not so good for my health, physical or mental. I decided to move on to grad school.

Grad school rocked. Finding a job after grad school did not.

I took an administrative assistant position in the hedge fund industry, which was all I could find, and suprisingly fell in love. Five years later, after working my ass off, and my way up, I had a pretty sweet deal. This is when I experienced the full wrath of the SCPLSI. Hey, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

After three hospitalizations and two surgeries, my company was over me. I wasn't making money for them anymore. I went into hardcore survivor mode and found another job, even though this is right about the time that IB was beginning to collapse. I remember interviewing for that job with pneumonia. The experience was, in a word, awesome. The job didn't exactly last.

As the cherry on a singular year, my health insurance cancelled me retroactive to the day before my last surgery. I sold everything I could: clothes, jewelry, books, electronics. The funny thing is, when I went to DHS for food stamps, you would have never guessed that I hadn't eaten in a day or two. My clothes were all pristine, and my hair was perfect. I guess that it's only a big deal to look poor if there's no chance of true poverty touching you. When, a month and a half later, I had to move into a homeless shelter, none of my friends knew. The dignity of maintaining appeareances was all that mattered, and it's what eventually got me through.