The three-mile circuit around the docks where my floating home is tied up takes about an hour. I make my way up to the end of each one and wheel around to the next, sucking in the salt air and the winter light that slants in over the headlands, checking the minus tide, the mud exposed in the flats, listening to the birds out searching for grub, giving each neighbor a nod and a smile as I march along.Passing though the shed at the entrance of Issaquah, I eye the giveaway shelf and snag a secondhand issue of The New Yorker, the front-cover illustration of a family gathered around the holiday table, every face turned screenwards, scrolling.
Really solid point here: "I do want out of the trap, but I’m not here to disappear." On a lighter note, I'm reminded of Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry," and the riff on going soft, when a character struggling with depression or anxiety would literally start to blur on the screen. When you're really depressed, it's not actually funny -- you do feel out of focus, like you're vanishing. Leslie Marmon Silko's character Tayo refers to himself in the third person, like Coates, during his time in the veterans hospital, where he claims that he has become "white smoke."
I wonder if there is ever a permanent "recovered." But I take your point that the perpetual "recovering" trope feels unnecessary and even flimsy.
Love that closing image -- evocative and unresolved. Way to let it finish in the reader.
Good ponder Josh. Can we truly be recovered? I do think so--from things--from moments--from old stories and habits. Living in this world as humans we are constantly in recovery from something until we die. It is a never ending process of letting go and beginning again. At least I hope so.
I love this nuanced take on the word recovery and how recovered is an often fleeting state that’s not sustainable, if we ever get there to begin with. That can leave us feeling hopeless or like we need to constantly have our guard up so the thing—whatever it may be—that we’re trying to recover from doesn’t tear its ugly head again, which is also unsustainable. Instead, aiming to be present and calmly facing the challenge is a more healthy, realistic approach for the long term.
I found your Substack after attending the SF meetup last week and really loved reading this.
"My belief is that some of what feels like depression is always a version of I can’t work like this. It’s a retreat that encodes a plea for change, and I’m forced to admit that I already know what some of those changes need to be. "
“Another second and I would have been destroyed. But another second—and it was over.”
I love this quote by Oates that you referenced. It speaks to a moment in time that each of us come up against--each in our own way. For those of us that have been to the darkness, we must understand that this too shall pass if we allow it to.
Way to piece together a beautiful essay about your ongoing recovery 🙏
Many people find that some diseases or addictions there is no recovery from but only a kind of stasis. if they take out your spleen then there is no "recovery" only a new normal. The same can be said of addictions, there is no recovery only a new normal.
Really solid point here: "I do want out of the trap, but I’m not here to disappear." On a lighter note, I'm reminded of Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry," and the riff on going soft, when a character struggling with depression or anxiety would literally start to blur on the screen. When you're really depressed, it's not actually funny -- you do feel out of focus, like you're vanishing. Leslie Marmon Silko's character Tayo refers to himself in the third person, like Coates, during his time in the veterans hospital, where he claims that he has become "white smoke."
I wonder if there is ever a permanent "recovered." But I take your point that the perpetual "recovering" trope feels unnecessary and even flimsy.
Love that closing image -- evocative and unresolved. Way to let it finish in the reader.
Good ponder Josh. Can we truly be recovered? I do think so--from things--from moments--from old stories and habits. Living in this world as humans we are constantly in recovery from something until we die. It is a never ending process of letting go and beginning again. At least I hope so.
I love this nuanced take on the word recovery and how recovered is an often fleeting state that’s not sustainable, if we ever get there to begin with. That can leave us feeling hopeless or like we need to constantly have our guard up so the thing—whatever it may be—that we’re trying to recover from doesn’t tear its ugly head again, which is also unsustainable. Instead, aiming to be present and calmly facing the challenge is a more healthy, realistic approach for the long term.
I found your Substack after attending the SF meetup last week and really loved reading this.
"My belief is that some of what feels like depression is always a version of I can’t work like this. It’s a retreat that encodes a plea for change, and I’m forced to admit that I already know what some of those changes need to be. "
“Another second and I would have been destroyed. But another second—and it was over.”
I love this quote by Oates that you referenced. It speaks to a moment in time that each of us come up against--each in our own way. For those of us that have been to the darkness, we must understand that this too shall pass if we allow it to.
Way to piece together a beautiful essay about your ongoing recovery 🙏
PS you might enjoy this documentary on Oates https://www.amazon.com/Joyce-Carol-Oates-Body-Service/dp/B0CC5H2YJ1
Cheers Dee--and for your help with this the other day. For me though, that ongoing thing... it's not "recovery," it's just living ;)
It is 💯 living brother. I’m just fucking wit ya
There’s that resistance popping up again. You should work on that 🤭
Hahahaha
Many people find that some diseases or addictions there is no recovery from but only a kind of stasis. if they take out your spleen then there is no "recovery" only a new normal. The same can be said of addictions, there is no recovery only a new normal.