chicago part 2: Lincoln Park

We moved on to Lincoln Park, where we enjoyed the zoo (click for larger)...

pygmy hippo walking/swimming underwater	tall guy & short wimmin visit polar bear

...and the Chrysanthemum Show...



...and the fall colors of the park.

chicago part 1: dim sum

I made "before & after" pix:


On the left is the tabula rasa...or tabulae rasae (???) since both the table and the record of our food (the first word I thought of was "scorecard," ha ha) are blank and clean.

On the right, you see the table and, uh, scorecard—twenty-three dishes later.

Yes, twenty-three.

They're small dishes.

Here are seventeen of them (click for larger image).



And here are Ang & Shamus enjoying them.



Jessica, Franklin, and Chris, we missed you. And if you wish, we will go here again next time. We promise.

two of us sunday driving

(that's a Beatles song that was playing in the car on our way home)(actually there were four of us, but I love that song)

What a great day. Gorgeous fall weather, blue sky...dim sum, then the Lincoln Park Zoo and chrysanthemum show (who knew how many kinds of mums there are in the world?), then an unexpectedly spectacular piano performance (during which Loopy bought me lovely stuff from Lush!!), an unexpectedly spectacular dinner (during which I entered nirvana, specifically during the dessert course), and chocolate and music in the car.

Chicago = best anti-depressant ever.

Pix tomorrow.

stunning pix!

I don't know why I didn't visit Nina's Flickr site before, but Loopy directed me to it. WOW!!!

Whether you know Nina from her blog or not, you should really check out her photos. It looks like she went on a wonderful walk today and took some particularly amazing shots. Here is a tantalizing taste—click on any photo to see a larger version, and to see some other equally gorgeous pix from today (& other days too!).

roll with it

I don't want people to worry too much about me here. As I said to one of our friends lately, I feel like this depression thing has been stalking me for years. I feel like I'm always going to be running away from the depression unless I turn around and actually deal with it. Even though it's tough going, I feel like I'm moving through it instead of sinking into it.

I mean, I never really dealt with it after I hit that low point back in New York. It was more like I just got sick of it and started suppressing it, whereupon I became perennially anxious and high-strung instead. And ever since, fear of depression has kept me from dealing with the anxiety or anything else. So it stands to reason that when I managed to calm down my anxiety, here we find depression underneath it.

I've even accepted that maybe I'll have depressed periods throughout my life and it really doesn't have to be the end of the world. I've started referring to depression as something that happens to/for/with me from time to time, instead of just as this Big Scary Thing That Almost Killed Me in 1995. The less I dramatize it, the stronger I feel about working through it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I hope it's reassuring if anyone was worried about me.

But thank you. For worrying, if you did. I am so lucky to have such friends. The best thing about my life is the people I love who love me too.

---

Anyway, today two things happened that lightened the gloom a bit.

First, I went to a seminar at the meditation center. I asked about the difference between passivity and acceptance—between "roll with it" and having it roll over you and flatten you.

A couple of people had helpful comments, but what really struck me was one woman who said that after she first "became Buddhist" (I'm not Buddhist, I'll just repeat for the record) she had this same confusion. At one point she was letting her young son hit her and not resisting because she thought that was the "Buddhist thing to do."

Friends pointed out that that was insane. And eventually she could see that it just made her son more anxious, more angry and more aggressive. She realized that the loving thing to do was to observe and accept her son's anger with empathy and compassion, but also not to let him hurt her. Both of them feel better that way. So she encouraged me to look at the outcome and learn from that...

This is kinda what I was trying to get at yesterday, but having the metaphor of a child helps me to visualize how to handle that angry part of my brain. I mean, there's no point in getting angry at an angry child—the situation just escalates. Similarly, getting angry at myself for being angry at myself just creates this never-ending spiral of fury.

But passively letting that voice berate me just makes things worse too. But if I can relax and just take that step back and just observe it, be kind to it in a firm but gentle way... just as one would (ideally!) do with a difficult child.

Easier said than done, but like I said, that child metaphor helps me connect with some compassion and detachment and empathy. Some space and openness instead of this narrow, dark intensity.

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The other good thing that happened today was that I actually did finish the task I promised to do for the Black students' advocacy group, and I presented my work at their meeting (I snuck out of the meditation retreat in the middle of the day to attend part of it). I could see that my work was useful and constructive to the group and people thanked me for it. It contributed to everyone there feeling that the group is making progress, that "we're getting things done." It felt really good to be a part of that.

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Tomorrow we're going to Chicago. We were supposed to see Franklin but he seems to have vanished under a mountain of work, or something like that. Maybe it will yet happen..... anyway, we plan to eat a lot (us? eat a lot? I bet you can't imagine!) so it should be fun and I should have something to blog about besides the inside of my head. Yay!

not exactly

Continuing the thought from the post below... It's not exactly just self-criticism. The sensation of pain in the chest, that is. It also feels like wanting to do something, wanting to take some kind of action, and feeling helpless.

In the whole "chakra" worldview (which I file in the category of "take what you need and leave the rest"), the head is intellectual thought, the chest is willpower, and the stomach is emotions (that's an approximation from a non-believer—sorry if it's sloppy).

So maybe the pain in my chest is like a mass of willpower, that is so strong in so many directions that it cancels itself out and ends up stuck.

The book on depression I was just reading talks about how depression isn't actually low energy, although it seems that way when you feel like you can't move—depression is actually an overload of energy and emotions that just, like, short-circuits you.

Which does make sense. People who've known me a long time know that I've never been lacking in willpower and determination, and sometimes that leads to bursts of intense activity with impressive results (people who've only known me since I moved to Madison may find this impossible to imagine).

But when I have trouble channeling all this intensity into effective action, it's like, it all builds up and overloads me.

love it or shoot it?

Yesterday I commented to "our little Italian friend" that "I feel like I can't prevent people from hurting me. It feels like they just reach right in my head and do whatever they want."

But, now that I've identified that intense throbbing pain in my chest as a steady stream of inchoate self-abuse (that was the "final piece" that fell into place yesterday—I hadn't previously realized that I could be mean to myself without actually using words), I've realized that other people don't reach in my head and hurt me. Not at all.

Other people say and do things, and then I use that to hurt myself.

It's tempting to berate myself for berating myself. But I read in a book that I should try to love myself for it instead.

This is not easy. But I thought of a way. I can appreciate that this berating voice just wants things to change.

I want to be a teacher. Or at least to get out of this slow-burning purgatory of sitting in cafes not working.

So, look, the part of me that is screaming "what the hell is wrong with you????" 24/7 just wants these things, too. I love this voice for wanting to help, wanting me to achieve my dreams and be happy. Really.

It's not working. I don't love it. Instead, I have a growing the desire to shoot it. That can't be good.

I'm sorry for posting this stuff that isn't very interesting and is probably sort of self-indulgent. I'm just getting sorta desperate and I hope if I post it I won't forget it. But maybe I'm just making things worse with all this introspection.

Don't feel you have to read it. Really.

Speaking of self-indulgent, remind me to post what the book says about "how to tell the difference between taking care of yourself and being self-indulgent." That was useful.

Useful, useful, blah blah blah. It feels like I'm going nowhere. Don't bother to suggest anything, I promise you, I've tried it. Or it feels that way.

Maybe I should get a job. It would at least get me out of my own head. But then I'd never have time to finish my work.