[-empyre-] A reply to Alan

[Deena Larsen]

 Hi again,

Alan asked if I would mind posting my response to his comment publically, so here it is.  I promise to follow with an intro tomorrow.

But I had also wanted to pose a question, so maybe buried in my reply is this idea--in your personal lives, how much of your pain and despair do you sublimate into writing/creating/reading/experiencing art?

And tied to that--why do you read/go to plays/listen to music/consume art?  

Why do you create art?  What does it do for you?

Because knowing how this creative force works in our lives, I think, is the first step to understanding how that translates into the virtual/nonvirtual worlds.
 ....

Deena Larsen
http://www.deenalarsen.net

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Deena Larsen wrote:

> Thanks Alan.
> 
> I need to get that article.  I like the Vulcan saying "I grieve with thee."
> Yes. sometimes you can do nothing but be silenced in the overwhelming grief
> and depression.
> 
> I think in a way, emotional pain and physical pain have the same effect--some
> people can keep on and just chug through it, others don't. And it is a
> complex weaving of factors.  But there are times when people curl up in
> comas to respond to physical trauma, and into catatonia to respond to
> emotional trauma.  And that is ok.
> 
> I have learned a few things from the grief counseling. The most important thing I learned was that grief episodes can
> be like epilepsy--sudden, agonizing events.   And that is ok, just have the
> attack.  I have cried at drugstores, looking at a picture MaJe would have
> loved.  Or in a park when a dog like ours went by. Or... And I just stand to
> the side, and try to cry quietly.  And when I am in too much agony, I simply
> rock back and forth in silence.
> 
> But everyone has their own thresholds of agony, their own way of coping. 
> And depression is chemical, you don't ask someone to snap out of a broken
> leg, neither do you ask someone to snap out of the chemical fog.  Someday,
> perhaps, we will find cures.  But for now... one moment at a time. 
> 
> I get SAD, and I am gearing up for it--already getting the symptoms.  So I
> tell myself I will not commit suicide between October and April, I do a
> website for a florist so I get fresh flowers every week, I grow a bulb in a
> bowl of stones, and I read this poem out loud every day:
> 
> These tricks work for me. But my pain is not yours, my depression not yours.
> So... take it for what it is worth.

> Wait
Galway Kinnell
> (to someone contemplating suicide)

> Wait, for now.
> Distrust everything, if you have to.
> But trust the hours. Haven't they
> carried you everywhere, up to now?
> Personal events will become interesting again.
> Hair will become interesting.
> Pain will become interesting.
> Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
> Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
> their memories are what give them
> the need for other hands. And the desolation
> of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
> carved out of such tiny beings as we are
> asks to be filled; the need
> for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
> Wait.
> Don't go too early.
> You're tired. But everyone's tired.
> But no one is tired enough.
> Only wait a while and listen:
> music of hair,
> music of pain,
> music of looms weaving all our loves again.
> Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
> most of all to hear,
> the flute of your whole existence,
> rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
> ?Galway Kinnell
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