The last time I wrote in this blog was in fact during my winter break. So I look forward to the practice of writing again soon!!!

Her brain, laughing in delight,
grew quick legs and jumped away,
naked.
Pink.  Dragging the stem behind it
Like a tail

This brain, who shall remain nameless,
Proceeded to go out to the disco.
Boogied off a few folds from
the top and the sides.
Sycophants bought it many drinks
and the nameless melted a few more
yards into its beer.

Out of sweet revenge and just for fun,
it went to the nearest higher learning facility,
sprouted some wings and grasshopper tendencies
Flew down halls full of clamoring students.
The females screamed (because it was still nude)
And the males grabbed at it with big
sweaty hands.

Springing and flying, it bounced out the
walls of classrooms, screeching
in mania.  Imprinting its unraveling
body, patterning the dull shade of white.
Fully exhausted and a bit lonely
After losing much of its tofu flesh

A cabbage.  A smaller blind and deaf head.
Deleafed, deflowered, demystified.

It was indeed tired now.  Sits down at a tree stump.
But it couldn’t reach and I’m not Shel Silverstein.
So it sat, in a little lump, on the earth.
Grass soon grew over it and in its
Sleep one day just sunk in.

A seed, a stem, the spirit.
It sprung into a purple flower,
soft petals surrounding
a face with the smile of
Her.

And though her body was cremated
they are still on the search for her brain.

For Barbara Metcalf
March 1994

We hope to get to the gym regularly, beginning now. I am particularly excited about the new gym, for its basketball court (!) and its newly-renovated and clean facilities. We had been going to a place down the street for the past few years and after having been a member of the most fabulous, eucalyptus-scented locker rooms with marble floors and a whirlpool, all-women’s health club for 10 years, the local fitness dive was not so inviting for me. It was a perspiration-scented cesspool filled with unattractive people (mostly males half a step beyond our evolutionary predecessors). Needless to say, in the past few years I’ve gotten kind of large because I avoided that place like the plague while donating money to it on a monthly basis.

It has been unseasonably warm this week with highs in the 60′s yesterday. A positive impact on my mood was not felt until today, which is why, I suppose, I am jabbering away. It might also have to do with looking forward to going back to school. Amazing that I feel this way since it felt absolutely fucking terrible last semester. I really hope I can get smart. I really hope I have what it takes to write a dissertation! At least today, I have hope.

I would like to be. To know, believe, and speak the truth. To believe that there are others who value this and who are not afraid. I have wanted this for decades, have not been able to attain it, but I keep trying.

I keep trying.

I begin by focusing on self-care. I need to make self-care a priority. Eating well, exercising, and well…learning how to meditate to stay connected with what I know deep inside. It is particularly easy for me to fall prey to pessimism and negativity. I can also be easily influenced to momentarily believe in the material paths to happiness that inevitably lead to crushing disappointment. Disappointment not only in the failure of experiencing true contentment but more importantly, disappointment in myself for indulging in what I know very well to be shallow and disdainful.

It’s been a difficult couple of years working in a field that I’ve loved and wanted to be a part of since I was an adolescent to find that it is full of corruption, politics, and craziness. My naivete has been shattered by finding in the country’s premier psychiatric hospital that those whose charge is to help the troubled are just as but usually more sick than the patients. I found the sadism there, in that supposed bastion of emotional and psychic safety, that I have been trying to flee from for most of my life. On the research side of the field, I find high-level people driven by competition, politics and narcissism. Am I different from these people. I have struggled for years to get to this place. And in the past two years, have had many, many, many “Oh shit, I think I fucked up!” moments, panicked that I’d just spent 5 years of my life to get somewhere I don’t want to be.

That can’t be it. I am in this for my own reasons, and can be true to them despite the environment I have to endure for the next 5 years. I resolve to be true to myself.

It is all connected. It is all connected by the “I”. I need to be. I resolve to be more intentional. To be more present no matter how painful it is. To be true. To not fear making mistakes. To not fear ridicule.

To care for myself and those I love.

To be real.