That has certainly turned out to be true. A couple of years ago I went with Francis to an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History called Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest. After looking at the first few displays, I thought to myself, "Oh wow, I have to get the catalog to send to Daddy." Francis noticed me missing and came back to find me sitting on a bench, crying. For a moment I'd forgotten my father was dead, and then suddenly the knowledge of his death came rushing over me there in the museum. I know he'd have loved the exhibit; it was beautiful, and so well-curated, and about parts of the Southwest that he'd loved and known well.

He's been on my mind a lot lately, too. The anniversary of his death came while I was in Berlin, at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress. I spoke twice at the congress, once on geek culture and once on the history of guerrilla knitting (though I wish I'd called the talk "the guerrilla history of knitting" or "the history of (guerrilla) knitting" -- it's especially postmodern if there are parentheses in the title of your talk, right?). I had a wonderful time, and the talks were well-received, especially the second one, but one thing was extremely dissatisfying for me: I couldn't manage to explain to my mom what I was doing in Germany in a way that made any sense to her. She understood that I was giving talks, and she told me she was proud of me, and of course she is proud of me -- I don't mean to discount that. I think maybe she thinks I was teaching knitting; it's hard to say. When I was talking to her, though, I kept thinking to myself, Daddy would get it. He'd love this. It's just his sort of thing.

And then a couple of weeks later I found myself standing in a Radio Shack, looking at a rack of soldering irons, and a blur of memories came to me, of being a little girl tagging along after my daddy, fooling with packets with indecipherable labels while he bought whatever he needed for The Machine. Of course I was with him, because I was always with him. Any time he said he was going out to run an errand I begged to go along "for a ride in the car". When I was little he talked to me all the time, about the machine he was building, about what I'd read in his newspaper, about what I had done in school.

When I was six or seven years old he tried to convince me that I wanted a remote-controlled car from Radio Shack. He told me over and over how cool it was, and all the things it could do, and showed it to me when we were in the store. I eventually told him that I didn't want one, but maybe he should get one for himself. He laughed and laughed and told my mother what I'd said when we got home. I understood that I'd said something incredibly funny, but I didn't really get the joke.

I never really understood the machine, either, although Daddy had given me Isaac Asimov's introductory books on physics and electricity to read. I knew it was an engine, and that it ran on magnets, and that it took a little bit of electricity to start it but that then it would run forever. I understood enough of what I'd read in the Asimov books to ask my father about the 2nd law of thermodynamics but I didn't understand his explanation about why the machine wasn't breaking it. At the time I assumed that I just wasn't bright enough to understand, and that when I got older and learned more it would make sense.

The real mistrust between us didn't come until later, though, and it was my fault.

One day I forced the situation, hanging around asking questions when I knew he didn't really want me there. I was a sensitive kid, overly sensitive as only the child of a crazy mother can be sensitive, and I knew I wasn't wanted. But I wanted him to say so. I asked if he'd teach me how to change the oil in the car. I started talking too fast and explaining that it would be really good for me to know, because I'd be driving really soon now, and it would save money, and I could practice, and.... And he told me No. He told me my bosom would get in the way. He told me to go see if my mother needed any help cooking dinner. I think I was twelve.

I never learned to change the oil in a car. I did eventually learn more about physics and electricity, and I'm pretty sure his "engine" was a perpetual motion machine, even though he had a very convoluted explanation for why he wasn't quite claiming that it was. We grew apart, slowly at first and then dramatically; when I moved in with a boyfriend in college he didn't speak to me for nine months.

Last month I stood in the Radio Shack, thinking about assembling my own electronics-hacking kit, and I wondered if it would have made a difference if I'd let my father buy me the remote-controlled car. If I'd tried harder to like all the things he liked, instead of only almost all the things he liked. I read his newspaper and his Mother Earth News and his Popular Science and all the books he gave me. I watched football and basketball with him. When I was five I told him I wanted to work in the oil refinery with him; when I was ten I told him I wanted to be a journalist like he'd been when he was young. When I was fifteen I told him I wanted to learn to fly a plane like he had in the navy. He was never very happy about any of those declarations. But what if I'd tried harder? What would have happened? What if we'd had projects we were really working on together, would that have made a difference? I wept as I walked to the Q train to meet my friend for my first electronics lesson.

There was once a time when I thought I'd stopped wanting to please my father, but understand now that I never have. He's my interlocutor from the grave. It's nice now, though. When I imagine telling him what I'm doing now, he's always pleased. We don't talk about the parts he wouldn't like, my love affairs and hippie friends and activism. I imagine telling him about thousands of people hacking at the congress and all the wonderful things they were doing; and telling him that I know people who write for Popular Science; and I imagine giving him MAKE and thinking up some project we could work on together, showing up in his workshop with my own soldering iron, an LSU basketball game playing on the radio in the background.

Right this minute I'm sitting in the couch between Todd and Francis, who are singing along to Jesus Christ Superstar; I don't really understand their abiding love of the show, but it's intensely amusing to me, and happymaking, to have my husband and my oldest friend having their strange and lovely bonding moment.

Debby and I've been cooking since yesterday, and we're good at cooking together. Dinner is all under control, and will be splendid, and we've taken good care of the vegetarian/vegan folks (the mushroom turnover are going to be amazing!). Since the weather is oddly warm, we're grilling the turkey, which is a Thing of Beauty.

This year is just like all the last few in that it's held lots of emotional and relationship upheaval, since I insist on following my own crazy path through the wilderness. Following my own path is more trouble, it is true, but the joy in my life is immeasurable, and worth every bit of pain I've had on the way.

I'm being called into the kitchen! So, quickly: Much love to my scattered peeps, in San Francisco, New York, Boston, and a few here and there all 'round the planet. Wish I could have everyone with me all in a bunch: People need to get on that whole instantaneous matter transport thing. I have Francis with me here, and my East Coast chosen family, but I want Byron and my West Coast chosen family with me too. I will be there soon, though, and will be just as thankful for them in December as I am today and every day.

Life is so fucking good.

[ETA: I've mentioned neurological problems here and there, and here is a good place to say out loud that I DON'T HAVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS YAY YAY YAY! That was in the running, and my doctor and I were both worried, but I went to a fancypants neurologist at Columbia who ordered a super-comprehensive set of MRIs on my head and neck and thoracic spine, and there were no demyelinated spots that would have suggested MS. We think it's probably pinched nerves. I was about to say "just" pinched nerves, but that's kind of minimizing the troubles I've been having, which I've been not blogging about because I felt in limbo about what was wrong. That will have to wait, because today is about awesome happiness, and not about complaining about neuro crap.]

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I'm not angry because it's September 11th and therefore I'm mad at the Bad People who blew up the World Trade Center. I'm not angry about how the fabric of our nation was torn asunder, and we lost our collective innocence, and all that blather.

I'm angry about how there's this idea that honoring the anniversary of the event is what should be done, and I'm angry that the media are learning, are CONSTRUCTING, a way to package up the pain and fear and confusion of 9/11/2001 into digestible chunks that we're meant to take once a year as a sort of inoculation to ward off the Bogeyman.

Six years later is but a moment; I don't need help remembering how it felt to walk down Atlantic Avenue with Francis, watching charred scraps of business documents flutter to the sidewalk, or how it smelled for weeks (even to me, with my terrible sense of smell), or how I had to learn to *not* duck when planes flew overhead, or how I felt sitting with our friend and her beautiful, strong, towheaded 2-year-old who suddenly needed a steroid inhaler (like all the other kids in his playgroup). I can rattle that all off the top of my head.

I don't need any reminding about the fragility of life, thank you. And neither should anyone else. We are not safe now; we were not safe then; we are not ever safe. Now is the only moment that matters. It has always been true that our loved ones might not come home at the end of the day. People who pay attention *today*, because it's September 11 again, are like children scaring each other around a dying campfire, or watching Doctor Who from behind the couch; they're like folks who take their horror in two-hour doses on flickering screens in the dark.

Horror is all around us. Risk is everywhere. And while some of that risk comes from violent self-righteous people who want to kill us because "American" has come to mean a lot of stuff I wish it didn't, so much more of that risk comes from the fundamental absurdity and danger of everyday life.

Life is precarious and fragile and precious. If the media maundering today helps anyone realize that, then perhaps it's not a waste. But I think it's much more likely to serve as a an anesthetic, something to muffle the keening wail of loss that is the music of the cosmos.

I realized I was doing all that future running and not paying attention to Right Now, and I let it go. I got back into the moment and felt the cool breeze touching my whole body, naked as I ever am in public, and I felt my heart pounding and sweat soaking my hair. I really saw my surroundings, and I drank them in and let them replenish me. I realized that when I run, I have to run because I love to run In That Moment, not for any future gain or reward. When we train, we don't know if we'll be able to run the future race. Maybe we'll get injured, sure, but maybe there will be insane weather, or a loved one will be sick, or there will be a car accident on the way to the start point, or any number of other disasters. If everything hinges on that race, if we can only be satisfied by running it, then all the other time is just preparation, just effort spent for the future. If we run for right now, if we stay aware and present, then both the current moment and the future one can be perfect. And more perfection, more joy, is all we can hope for in the world. By the time I ran down the little hill at the end of my two-mile loop, I felt fast as the angels and in love with the universe.

I didn't realize how well this attitude would come to serve me, just a couple of weeks after the realization. First of all, that 5K in San Francisco? I didn't get to run it. My stupid neurological problems started acting up the week before the race, and I've spent most of the last two weeks on a cane. (I promise, I will go see the crack neurologist who is supposed to play Dr. House for me.) But I had a wonderful time in SF, and I went out to the race site (by the marina!) and walked most of the 5K holding hands with my new love, and we got to see my friend zoom past us running the “back” part of the “out-and-back,” and the bay was beautiful and the fog was ethereal and the Golden Gate Bridge was Just Over There but invisible behind its shroud and it was a perfect morning. If I'd been too concentrated on running that race, my disappointment might have kept me from enjoying what turned out to be an exhilarating experience.

Secondly, keeping my heart in the now instead of focused on a future goal is helping me negotiate the emotional minefield of a new romance. We don't know how things are going to turn out, and everything is new and a little scary, but we don't need to know how things are going to turn out. We just need to stay in the eternal now. Because now is the perfect moment, and always will be.

I was in a happy mood after leaving work, waiting on a phone call and walking down Sixth Avenue looking for a snack. Saw the Mr. Softie truck and felt that a vanilla soft-serve with rainbow sprinkles would fit the bill. Ordered, and was beaming up bright-eyed at the young man in the truck, who suddenly said, as he handed me my cone, "Your hair is beautiful!"

"Thank you!"

"Are you in love?"

"Umm...I suppose I am! Yes!"

"Ohhh. He's a lucky guy. What's your name"

"I'm Rose. Why did you ask me if I'm in love?"

"Hi, I'm Danny. I asked because I am looking for someone to love. Rose, that's my sister's name. [brief pause while he smiled down at me] Whoever you love is a very lucky man. You have a good night!"

Just before that, as I was walking, there were three guys who *seemed to think* that they were having a discreet conversation. ABOUT DOPE. "Hey, it's 25 bucks a gram, you gonna pay it or not?" (The reason I say they seemed to think no one knew what they were discussing is that they kept using body language that implied secrecy and quiet -- while shouting in broad New York-ish accents about something sold in GRAMS. BWA-HA-HA.)

God I love New York. Of course, at the moment I love everything and everyone in the universe, so New York is but a tiny percentage of what I love.

Am at Tori's, hanging out and knitting at poolside, drinking frozen drinks and chattering with all her boys. It's time to get back in the pool, I'd say. Bye now.

Poem
Neil Gaiman

I am continually disappointed by nudity
decently covered breasts could look like anything when revealed,
the nipples might be eyes or snake heads or flowers glowing gold,
they might be anything, but never are.
And as for the rest of it, the whole between-the-legs business,
when I was a boy, and simply wondered about women, why back then
it was the mystery of mysteries,
and now, grown up
I still think,
I wonder what she keeps hidden, down there, beneath that cloth,
imagining miracles and mysteries and dreams
conjuring secret mouths and lips that smile and sing
craving petals, tentacles and stars,
desiring the unimaginable.

The reality of nakedness
makes me mutter Jesus Christ with delight and awe as well, of course,
but still, the revelation is in its way prosaic.
Just another gentle biped with bumps and flesh and cleft and hair,
always looking just
a little bit more awkward and less interesting
than when she wore clothes.

Give All To Love
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But 'tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
'Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;—
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

There is dignity in a prolonged recovery--but always, I would trade a bushel of sad grace for a peck of resilience. Despair and estrangement are understandable responses to loss. But if mourning lingers, it seems to me that we honor it in part because we must, because our ability to moderate hopelessness is limited. Often, what psychiatrists combat is not difficult emotion but an inability to emerge from it--not emptiness, but endless emptiness. An interval of grief followed by an increasing and finally a full turning toward the world--doesn't this sequence contain nobility enough?

I do feel that my own mood problems have been a catalyst for change and a crucible in which that change has taken place; I've gotten further along my path than I might have expected to at 35. On the other hand, I was an ebullient, confident 20-year-old, as I've recently been reminded--so was a detour through a Swamp of Horror really necessary? As Kramer suggests, perhaps I honor my depression because I have no other choice.

R: So I got a sticker for Rachel that says "happy is the new rich" -- I think she'll really like that.

F: Yeah?

R: Yeah, it's so her philosophy.

F: I hear that and I want to replace the "is" with "are".

R: *pause*

R: Dude, that makes it backwards!

So I’ve been trying to remember what it was like, being crazy, getting well, all of that. “Descent into madness” is how I’ve seen this sort of thing described, but I know my own madness wasn’t so grand as that; things just got harder to bear until eventually I couldn’t cope at all. The way I’ve come to imagine it is thus: Emotionally healthy people have a sort of buffer between themselves and the rest of the world; when the world crashes in on them, they have something that deflects that, that allows them to preserve themselves. When you’re crazy, you’ve lost that entirely, and it’s like walking around with open wounds, and not only world-crashing-in events cause pain, but the mere dust and disorder of everyday life burns and stings.

I reacquired a buffer between myself and the world by finding the appropriate mix of drugs; that’s changed over time, but the mainstay is an antidepressant (I’m currently on Effexor). But I still think my buffer is more permeable than it would be if it weren’t chemically constructed, and so I still have to do all sorts of things to keep myself sane and whole -- and that’s mainly what I’ve been thinking about recently. What have I learned to do to maintain my sanity?

I have also learned that living this way and asking these questions increases my daily satisfaction immeasurably. If I know that I really enjoyed the last meal I ate, that I saw how beautiful the morning glories against the fence are, that I have told the people I love that I love them -- well, I’m not going to step in front of a bus on purpose, but I’ll be at peace, come what may.

Another big component of getting a grip on my sanity was learning that it’s okay to experience feelings. I started out, as we all do, with a really simplistic, rather childlike belief system about emotions. And then I kept it for almost thirty years. I didn’t like to feel strong emotions or have negative thoughts because I felt they would affect the world around me. Pure magical thinking. The clearest example I can think of is that I used to have escape fantasies. And then I would excoriate myself for them as though I’d actually gone through with them. So I’d think, “Wow, I am fucking everything up and my life sucks and everything is terrible and I want to run away and join the navy or drive an eighteen-wheeler or go to a town where no one knows me and work as a waitress.” And then I’d think, “What kind of terrible human being would abandon all her responsibilities to do something like that? Me. I am a terrible person.”

It has taken years to realize that my feelings are simultaneously important, and worth respecting, and transient, and worth ignoring. Getting the balance right is tricky, but I’m working on it.

Feeling anger or sadness or anxiety or fear -- it’s all okay. What I do as a result of that is what matters. And so maybe I write it all down, or I talk to someone, or I think of a way to treat myself well, or I set aside time to figure out how to not be in the situation bringing up all the shit. But I don’t drown it out with mere distractions. And I don’t quit my job and leave my lover and run away to Juneau or Barcelona with no notice (even though quitting a job or leaving a lover or moving somewhere new can all be valid choices). I’ve learned that the feelings themselves can’t kill me, can’t harm anyone else, they just are. And so I lean into them and learn what they can teach me.

The third Really Big Thing I started to learn after my breakdown in 2000 was that I could let my friends be my friends. When I was suicidal, no one knew until after I’d been in the hospital. I was both incredibly ashamed and incredibly relieved -- there was no hiding to be done any longer. So I started, hesitantly, talking to friends about what I was going through, and an amazing transition occurred -- I felt closer and more connected to people than I ever had in my life. I’d thought I would be despised for being so vulnerable, so ridiculous and weak and crazy. And instead I found my friends loved me anyway. Learning to let them was astonishingly hard (and seeing how hard it’s been has been it’s own occasion for rueful tears), but well worth the effort. Over the years I’ve gone from thinking I was uniquely fucked up and unfixable, to recognizing that everyone in my community was a bit broken, to finally beginning to grok our common humanity. I’m just like my friend and just like my mom, just like E.E. Cummings or King Lear or the Buddha. And we all fear death and cherish our lovers and hang on to happiness and try like hell to get through the days. Sharing my inner life, and letting the people I know share theirs, has made my experience of the world rich with meaning. Despite that fancy English degree I got when I was twenty, I’m just now feeling up to understanding all the literature I’ve read over the years.

So. I may not be the very sanest person I know, but I’m far from mad, and that’s some of how I got from there to here. May it be of use.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning—I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade—this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

--turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me ;
But since that I
At the last must part, 'tis best,
Thus to use myself in jest
By feigned deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day ;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way ;
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall ;
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away ;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.

Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill ;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.
But think that we
Are but turn'd aside to sleep.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.