Whitney Robinson's Blog

Mid-term Pensivity

So I'm approaching midterms in my first semester as a graduate student, and I thought I'd take a little time to reflect on what the experience has been like so far (the psychoanalytically oriented might sense a certain desperate displacement of my creative energy into a less academic, and therefore less anxiety-provoking medium ). Possibly the strangest and best thing about the experience is that I have entered the program as a 'normal'—that is, nobody's aware, at this time, of my history or of the book I've written. I haven't withheld this information in an attempt to hide a part of who I am, or where I've come from, but just to prove to myself and to others that I can succeed on the same terms as everyone else. If I were experiencing significant anxiety or a return of symptoms I would, of course, discuss things openly with my professors, but so far it hasn't seemed necessary. Nobody likes to be average, increasingly in the years since my hospitalizations, I've felt the need to define myself based on my achievements instead of my sickness. As proud as I am to have written my memoir, and had it published, I can never escape the fact that its foundation is illness—transformed, yes, but still a sublimation of disease. Arguably this alienation is the foundation of art, or at least, a certain type of art—but it's only now that I'm in graduate school, writing papers and giving presentations and getting to know my cohort that I begin to feel whole as a person, motivated by curiosity and interest in others, rather than as a smoldering, damaged ego trying to repair itself with pretty words.

I've also started to accept the fact that I belong here. Initially I was nervous, thinking myself a kind of imposter—surely someone who's actually been psychotic has no place as a clinician, right? But reading more on the history of psychology, it becomes clear that the field has been full of nutty and eccentric people from the beginning, so it's ridiculous to exclude myself on that basis. Figures no less significant than Rollo May, founder of existential psychology, and C.G. Jung, father of analytic psychology, have suffered fearsome breaks with reality.

I suppose it will happen soon enough, but I can't begin to imagine how my professors and fellow students would react if they knew. Respect? Fear? Disgust? Thus far I've seen all these reactions in people who've read my book [seen my soul], sometimes simultaneously. But whatever happens, I have come to believe in the last few months that I do have the capacity to help others, that I'm not damaged beyond repair, and that I am not as much of an aberration as I once believed. And in the end it's only myself that I will have to turn to for judgment or affirmation, as tempting as it would be to seek it out in the eyes of others. For now, I can only do my best and try to learn—which at the moment, unfortunately, means memorizing the foundations of psychoanalysis, psychodynamic theory, existential psychology, humanistic psychology, Gestalt therapy, exposure therapy, and behaviorism well enough to have something clever to say to my midterm blue-book next Tuesday. eep!

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So it’s the middle of September–how did that happen? I ha...

So it’s the middle of September–how did that happen? I have been M.I.A. for the past month because I’ve just started my Master’s program in Clinical Psychology. I’ll write more about that soon, but for now, here is an article that I wrote for Counselling Resources on the topic of creativity and mental illness:

Filling the Abyss With Words

Aside from that, the only other thing I have to say is that every time I move, it makes me appreciate the value of Zen minimalism. Nothing like hauling boxes of books up two flights of stairs to make me wonder whether I really need to own the entire Harry Potter series or whether a visit to the library would suffice if I ever have a desire to re-read them. At least I bit the bullet and donated most of my CDs to the Salvation Army because everything’s on my iPod now. Of course, while I was there I bought this awesome Charlie the Unicorn t-shirt, a vintage zebra-stripe jacket, and like a million other articles of clothing I don’t need, so the net gain in stuff made that a fairly counterproductive trip–oh well!

So it's the middle of September–how did that happen? I ha...

So it's the middle of September–how did that happen? I have been M.I.A. for the past month because I've just started my Master's program in Clinical Psychology. I'll write more about that soon, but for now, here is an article that I wrote for Counselling Resources on the topic of creativity and mental illness:

Filling the Abyss With Words

Aside from that, the only other thing I have to say is that every time I move, it makes me appreciate the value of Zen minimalism. Nothing like hauling boxes of books up two flights of stairs to make me wonder whether I really need to own the entire Harry Potter series or whether a visit to the library would suffice if I ever have a desire to re-read them. At least I bit the bullet and donated most of my CDs to the Salvation Army because everything's on my iPod now. Of course, while I was there I bought this awesome Charlie the Unicorn t-shirt, a vintage zebra-stripe jacket, and like a million other articles of clothing I don't need, so the net gain in stuff made that a fairly counterproductive trip–oh well!

Arcadia

Arcadia

 

Lessons from the New England woods—

You are never alone, if beetles count; you are not the center of anything.

There is still senseless death in Eden, but it all returns to earth in the end.

Ants build colonies in amber beer bottles, and these become poems,

and eventually the poet is eaten by ants, and a tree grows in that place.

Once the red dust settles, the mind is still.

Owls are: omens of death in some cultures, of birth in others;

people's souls transmigrate into fungi if they should learn patience,

or gnats if impermanence escapes them.

Up close, you can see what hard lives the deer have had,

all ticks and scars. They bound away, and they are once more idyllic

silhouettes in the primordial dawn.

Out here, I am not sick in any way that matters;

everything that has breath in it still, is alive. Nothing is wasted.

 

 

Words words words

A brief post, but: My day started out really sucking. I accomplished almost nothing, and mostly lay around questioning all the things I had previously accomplished. Even things that ought to be unabashedly good–a publisher interested in seeing a revision of my novel, people writing to me about my book, seemed only to pile on the pressure until, if possible, I became even more of an inert blob than before. I decided that I hate writing and would probably never do it again except when absolutely necessary for my survival, e.g. replying to emails, the occasional book review, a Facebook status update or two.

Then I sighed and had a cup of tea and wrote a poem and a new first chapter for my old novel.

That's the problem with being a writer…even if the net effect of your efforts is more stress than catharsis, you just can't stop. It's not surprising to me that many people who identify as writers also have some kind of mental illness or another. There's a morbid, obsessive quality to the act itself; you're compelled to shut yourself away from life for long intervals, you start to see life and people as things to be put in novels rather than as, well, things and people. I'm sure there are happy writers out there, but I haven't met  many of them. It seems to be the process by which neurotic people sublimate their introversion and hypersensitivity into something positive.

There are times when I thought I'd be happier if I stopped writing for creative purposes. In particular, when I started reading more about Buddhism. Meditation is supposedly the best thing ever for personal wellness, and it's kind of the opposite of writing. It's the process of emptying your mind of all thoughts, language, and associations. I've never been able to meditate well, despite a few (okay, not that many) earnest attempts, and I think the reason is because I've relied on language so much to filter my experience. Ever since I was a kid, whenever I've been frightened or overwhelmed by any strong emotion, I've always started up a running third-person commentary in my head…I remember doing it even before I could write.

In fact, one of my earliest memories is of me at dinner with my parents and I'm translating the whole experience into prose in my mind, e.g., "She waited impatiently for her drink, and was bitterly disappointed when the color-change bendy straw proved to be orange, rather than the blue that would complete her collection." Okay, so I'm embellishing a little, but you get the picture. I'm not sure if it's because I was read to so much as a kid or what, but I was always hyper-lexical, although I was fairly shy so most people didn't it. Actually, I think it's one of the reasons I was shy…try using the word 'obsequious' in a sentence when you're six years old and see how many friends that makes you on the playground!

But in any case, I think the tendency to process an experience through descriptive language is a mixed blessing. When you're always observing yourself, there's a gap between you and any emotional reaction. This can be protective, but also isolating, because you later tend to use words instead of people as comfort, and even start to feel that you've lost some kind of authenticity. Growing up, I envied people who just reacted to things instead of deciding how they ought to react based on their observations of other people's behavior or whatever. It's really only in the past few years that I feel I've been more aware of genuine, unfiltered emotions, and I begin to see why people find them so overwhelming as to buffer them in the first place!

But as they say, it's all a process, and in reflecting on this I realize how ridiculous it is for me to say that I'd stop writing or playing with words in my head; I'd just as soon stop breathing or eating. It might be cleansing for like a minute or a day, but as a long-term solution to my inner chaos? Not so much. Case in point: About five paragraphs ago, I said this would be a 'brief' post, and that's honestly what I had intended…

Books and Lives We’ve Yet to Live

The other day I received a box of advance copies of my book. Actually, I was startled to see it because I didn’t check the return address and I was expecting a pair of trail running shoes that I ordered online, but that’s another story. In any case, the box contained several dozen copies of Demons in the Age of Light, and as I held a copy of the book in my hands for the first time, it struck me  that this little rectangle of paper and words was the culmination of not only a year of hard writing and two subsequent ones of intensive revision, but of my life as I’ve lived it up to this point. That’s the peculiar thing about a memoir—how do you capture a life, even with a narrow-angle lens, even stylized and Photoshopped as all works of autobiography are, in 85,000 words? Obviously, the book isn’t ‘me’, but it’s the only way in which many people will ever know ‘me’, and in a way, that rough sketch of me will become more real, in some ways, than ‘I’ am as a living person. It’s weird to think about. It’s one thing when characters take on a life of their own, but it’s altogether more surreal when that character is yourself.

All in all, I’m happy with the book, but it’s interesting to look at it and realize how, even in the few months that have passed since the print was finalized, my ideas about the world have been shaped by the books and news stories I’ve read, the people I’ve talked to, and heck, even the food I’ve eaten.  The simple act of moving through time has made me into a subtly yet fundamentally different person than I was in June—or five years ago, when much of Demons is set. On a physiological level, most people know that the majority of cells in their body are replaced in a fairly short period of time. I think it’s something like two weeks for skin cells, four months for red blood cells, and ten years for our skeleton to contain an entirely different set of atoms than it started with. But we view our personalities as something stable and perhaps incapable of radical change. Our opinions evolve, our fashion sense and tastes in music hopefully improve with age, but this process is so slow and mercurial that even we, as conscious entities, are often not aware that it’s happening.

Eastern philosophy is more attuned to this idea of impermanence, and I’ve studied it a bit, but it’s hard to stay aware of the fact as I go about my daily life. So much of our ‘success’ from a cultural standpoint is predicated on our stability, on the development of a solid ego that shapes our every perception and interaction with the world. Even more than we limit ourselves, we are held in check by others. Certainly everyone knows certain people who drag us right back into old behavior patterns, ones that we sincerely thought we’d outgrown. Welcome to the world of the social animal, right? In a way it was easier for me not to conform to expectations when I was sick, because I was so trapped in my solipsist thinking that I simply didn’t notice or care what other people thought of me. I’ve come to realize that one of the ‘taxes’ of being well is that pressure from the outside moves conveniently in to fill the gap. In theory, I should be getting on my knees and thanking God every day that I don’t have hallucinations, that I can enjoy being around other people, that my health problems are getting better, that I find moments of serenity between periods of depression that are intrinsic to my nature. And I do, but I also begin to care too much about things that didn’t trouble me before, simply because my mind is conditioned to be troubled about SOMETHING.

My life is a thousand percent better than it was when I was eighteen, but seeing Demons in print has made me realize how much farther I still have to go. Like, what will the book of the next five years of my life contain? Or the next fifty, if that’s what’s in the cards. What will the cover look like, who will the characters be, and will it have a happy ending? More importantly, will it be a bestseller? ^.^ It’s both liberating and terrifying to realize: I am writing that book right now. Some of the events will be beyond my control, but many of them, far more than I’d like to think, are entirely up to me. We’re all authors—maybe we don’t get to choose the outcome or anticipate the plot twists, but the genre at least is up to us, because it’s all in the telling. Right now, I’m thinking a futuristic literary psychological thriller time travel romance with film noir and magical realist overtones would be cool. But that may change with time!

Books and Lives We've Yet to Live

The other day I received a box of advance copies of my book. Actually, I was startled to see it because I didn't check the return address and I was expecting a pair of trail running shoes that I ordered online, but that's another story. In any case, the box contained several dozen copies of Demons in the Age of Light, and as I held a copy of the book in my hands for the first time, it struck me  that this little rectangle of paper and words was the culmination of not only a year of hard writing and two subsequent ones of intensive revision, but of my life as I've lived it up to this point. That's the peculiar thing about a memoir—how do you capture a life, even with a narrow-angle lens, even stylized and Photoshopped as all works of autobiography are, in 85,000 words? Obviously, the book isn't 'me', but it's the only way in which many people will ever know 'me', and in a way, that rough sketch of me will become more real, in some ways, than 'I' am as a living person. It's weird to think about. It's one thing when characters take on a life of their own, but it's altogether more surreal when that character is yourself.

All in all, I'm happy with the book, but it's interesting to look at it and realize how, even in the few months that have passed since the print was finalized, my ideas about the world have been shaped by the books and news stories I've read, the people I've talked to, and heck, even the food I've eaten.  The simple act of moving through time has made me into a subtly yet fundamentally different person than I was in June—or five years ago, when much of Demons is set. On a physiological level, most people know that the majority of cells in their body are replaced in a fairly short period of time. I think it's something like two weeks for skin cells, four months for red blood cells, and ten years for our skeleton to contain an entirely different set of atoms than it started with. But we view our personalities as something stable and perhaps incapable of radical change. Our opinions evolve, our fashion sense and tastes in music hopefully improve with age, but this process is so slow and mercurial that even we, as conscious entities, are often not aware that it's happening.

Eastern philosophy is more attuned to this idea of impermanence, and I've studied it a bit, but it's hard to stay aware of the fact as I go about my daily life. So much of our 'success' from a cultural standpoint is predicated on our stability, on the development of a solid ego that shapes our every perception and interaction with the world. Even more than we limit ourselves, we are held in check by others. Certainly everyone knows certain people who drag us right back into old behavior patterns, ones that we sincerely thought we'd outgrown. Welcome to the world of the social animal, right? In a way it was easier for me not to conform to expectations when I was sick, because I was so trapped in my solipsist thinking that I simply didn't notice or care what other people thought of me. I've come to realize that one of the 'taxes' of being well is that pressure from the outside moves conveniently in to fill the gap. In theory, I should be getting on my knees and thanking God every day that I don't have hallucinations, that I can enjoy being around other people, that my health problems are getting better, that I find moments of serenity between periods of depression that are intrinsic to my nature. And I do, but I also begin to care too much about things that didn't trouble me before, simply because my mind is conditioned to be troubled about SOMETHING.

My life is a thousand percent better than it was when I was eighteen, but seeing Demons in print has made me realize how much farther I still have to go. Like, what will the book of the next five years of my life contain? Or the next fifty, if that's what's in the cards. What will the cover look like, who will the characters be, and will it have a happy ending? More importantly, will it be a bestseller? ^.^ It's both liberating and terrifying to realize: I am writing that book right now. Some of the events will be beyond my control, but many of them, far more than I'd like to think, are entirely up to me. We're all authors—maybe we don't get to choose the outcome or anticipate the plot twists, but the genre at least is up to us, because it's all in the telling. Right now, I'm thinking a futuristic literary psychological thriller time travel romance with film noir and magical realist overtones would be cool. But that may change with time!

Some Poems

Mendel's Dominant

 

C binds to G, A binds to T

rope binds to hands.

 

Only make this journey

if you think free will a parlor trick of the starry-eyed philosophers;

like ethics, appealing, but ultimately useless.

 

If you breach the cytoplasm,

draw your sword to stave marauding lysosomes;

with fortitude, and gifts of simple sugars

you may survive to reach the citadel

wherein the double helix wears her crown.

 

Supplicate,

and beg the question:

Am I tall or dark or fair or

programmed to self-destruct?

May I eat this raspberry cheesecake, flaunt it in the face

of myocardial infarction? Or will you send

clots of avenging erythrocytes to bring me to my knees?

 

These are the questions that haunt

scientists grown pale from existing under a fluorescent sun.

Will my children bear my blue eyes?

Will they be stronger, brighter,

less prone to nervous attacks and brittle nails?

 

The scientists are up too late again,

eating things that do not exist in nature

from vending machines,

while chemical revolutions surge on chocolate agar slides.

With no other deity so visible, we unravel genomes

like pig entrails cast across the snow;

prognosticate,

tell me my destiny.

 

 

Psychostasy

 

Lay your heart upon the scales, says the jackal god.

The accused was once an attorney,

but now his mute meat fails to elocute.

In the secrecy of his mind he wonders

if the autopsy room doctors felt a draft

a sharp agitation of wingbeats rising

when sternum or skull was laid open.

Aloud he says, my heart is an organ,

a vivid lump of flesh

shot through with tiny neuropeptide receptors

to make me feel.

He looks down and sees it already in his hands,

streaked white

like a poor cut of beef.

He says I tried, I tried to order the salad

but it was so tasteless.

Remembering his circumstance,

he says to the black-faced jackal:

Return to myth, I have no use for you.

and the god says once more,

Lay your heart upon the scales.

Choice is beyond him now, if ever it wasn't…

he would far rather entrust it to cold steel,

but the scales are gold, the feather

from some bird of dreams.

What's the balance of a soul denied?

As the scales tip and the heart shatters into nothing

an autopsy room doctor looks up

alight with wonder, a child once more

as white feathers rain down like nuclear snow

with weight to crush the world.

 

 

 

Worldview #1

 

We are God's dice

Snake-eyed and probabilistic

principled in our uncertainty

and free as white rabbits on holiday from the lab

set loose in the forest

to play.

We are fallen images who lack the grace to shatter on contact

with solid ground.

Obtuse to metaphor,

at right angles with every toppled idol

we must now do our taxes and quietly die of truth.

We have put corn in everything but we are far from the earth

and who among us would deny

that the saddest day of our lives

is when we look in the mirror and know our own eyes.

We like ghost stories about zombie cats

and math poems about everchanging light

but we cling to our chains like a child on a playground swing

who cannot make the leap

and trust that gravity will not betray the arc,

defect to chaos and leave him weightless forever.

Like insects in honey we have no desire

to cross that golden sticking point of noncontradiction

but neuroplastics make it possible to see the eternal truth

that everything begins and ends in Copenhagen.

musicophilia

A friend once hypothesized to me that it's possible to know the essential content of somebody's soul if you know their ten favorite songs. I'm thinking it would provide at least as valid an estimation as say, the Myers-Briggs or the MMPI.

And since blogging is all about revealing the sordid contents of one's innermost psyche to random strangers in unknown places (or, you know, sharing pie recipes, same difference)…

P.S. my apologies for the lack of real MVs that correspond to all the songs, hence the generic album cover/fan photo vids.

1. Nine Inch Nails: Right Where It Belongs

More like 'everything NIN ever wrote', but if I had to pick just one, this is it. It somehow manages to sum up all of existential philosophy in 4 ½ hauntingly beautiful minutes.

2. Sara Barielles: Gravity

I first heard this song on "So You Think You Can Dance", during the incredible Mia Michaels routine while I was in the process of revising DEMONS IN THE AGE OF LIGHT, and it seemed to sum up my whole experience better than any song I've yet heard. Yet the genius of it is that it can apply to nearly anyone's situation, being essentially about the loss of power to a force greater than oneself, which all of us can relate to in some way.

3. The Smashing Pumpkins: Disarm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhOs-z...

I was minorly obsessed with this song for a time.

4. Bush: Body

There is something so viscerally sexy about this song. Maybe it's the use of the word 'visceral', which is undoubtedly a sexy word.

5. Seconds to Mars: Attack

Need at least one compulsory 'angry song' here, & there's no such thing as too much Jared Leto.

6. Chevelle: Shameful Metaphors

Gorgeous song, gorgeous singer.

7. A Perfect Circle: The Noose

Hauntingly beautiful and sinister

8. Nirvana: Drain You

As with NIN, it's actually impossible to pick my 'favorite' Nirvana song. It's like trying to pick your 'favorite' molecule of oxygen, you know? But this one is a good representative.

9. Radiohead: Creep

Who can't relate to this one…

10. Flyleaf: Fully Alive

Flyleaf is a great example of a band that manages to be both Christian and awesome at the same time.

11.Agnes Vanilla: Csak egy éjszaka volt

Sometimes it doesn't matter whether you can understand the lyrics.

12. Kyo: Sarah

Best French pop/rock band ever! When I'm listening to them, it always creates the odd illusion that I can understand French, which is certainly not true. As they say, music transcends language.

13. PJ Harvey: Is This Desire?

Gotta love Ms. Polly Jean, if not the fan made clip vid.

[I know that was thirteen, non ten, but I simply could not pare the list down any further without losing some essential part of my subconscious anatomy. And thirteen is such a totally cooler number than ten ].

This is by no means a comprehensive list of music-I-like, but I think it's a pretty good representative sample!

Book Review: Starving Hearts

A reader of this blog was kind enough to send me a copy of her own novel, Starving Hearts. The book is set in the 1950s, and is about a woman in college who is struggling with an eating disorder, which was virtually unheard of at the time. I've read several memoirs and novels on the topic of eating disorders, but this one was particularly interesting because it takes place in a cultural era that is foreign to me. My parents were kids in the 1950s, but they've never told many stories about their childhoods. However, I know it was a time of great social change—a significant increase in the standard of living in the middle class meant that many families who'd been poor, or even starving during the Great Depression were now quite affluent.

But excess creates its own diseases, and I would venture to guess that the 1950s were the era in which eating disorders became more pervasive, if not more publicized. Categories of mental illness were  quite different at that point, still very much  under the influence of Freudian psychodynamic theory, and eating disorders were not a concept that existed in the public lexicon. Susan Talberg, the protagonist in Starving Hearts, feels like she is the only person she knows who has such a messed-up attitude toward food, but anorexia and bulimia were probably far more common than most people realized at the time.

Additionally, the culture was a weird mixture of modern conveniences and outdated social norms. Women had achieved a somewhat increased status in society by the 1950s, but there was still a lot of sexism and inequality in the work force and the academic environment. Most women were under pressure to marry young, and therefore to be as attractive as possible, often while working and/or going to school. Many were forced into hasty and ultimately not very happy marriages, resulting in a family that was materially comfortable but emotionally starved, as is the case in Lynn Ruth Miller's book. Family meals are the only context in which Susan feels she can connect with her mother, which leads to a pervasive pattern of disrupted eating that she struggles with for years as she finishes college and enters a marriage that eerily mimics her own parents' dysfunction. Starving Hearts is well worth a read for anyone who's interested in eating disorders, mid-century Americana, or just plain family dynamics.