Noise in the Attic

I made it through my first week without destroying anything! I feel better about this now.

My schedule has been rough, as I have been having to cover both day and evening shifts. That will ease up once the new Evening Reference Librarian is completely trained. She is making excellent progress, and I anticipate reverting to my normal schedule on Wednesday. That will quite a relief. The caffeine overdoses and lack of sleep are taking a toll on my old body.

I don’t know whether it is the combination of caffeine and adrenaline or what, but I am feeling a lot better mentally. Almost hypomanic. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. This is far better than depression. I just have to keep the impulsiveness under control. That is something I can handle.

Welcome to 2010! May it be a great year for all of us.

Just thought I’d pop in and wish everyone a happy and safe New Year.

New Year’s Day is traditionally a time to reflect on the year just past and the year yet to come. In my case, my thoughts are eaten up with anticipation.

While 2009 was not a particularly bad year, it was also not outstandingly great. Pretty much middle-of-the-road as these things go. 2010, on the other hand, promises to be exciting. I hope it is exciting in a good way.

Monday is my first day. I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Two weeks from today I start my new job. I look forward to great responsibility and even greater opportunities.

I spent 2 days shadowing (and interrogating) the current Librarian, and I feel somewhat less nervous about things. There are still some things that I won’t know about until they come up, I am sure. Those things will work themselves out when the time comes. I just hope the time is not January 2010. I already have too much to do for that month.

The new Evening Reference Librarian starts on January 4, as well. I think we got us a good one. She is certainly enthusiastic about the job, which counts for a lot, in my book. I am making some plans for the Library that will need that kind of energy.

On the old job, I am down to about 4 working days, by the time we get around all the holidays and our third furlough day. I think I’m going to make it. I made good progress on a lot of fronts today, and that makes me hopeful that I can get out of there without leaving very much hanging.

For more good news, check today’s date. Happy Winter Solstice, everyone! Things will get brighter from here on.

I am on furlough today as a result of state budget woes. This is the second of three furlough days this quarter. We will “get” another on December 31.

I am also starting to get a little nervous. I realized over the weekend how close January has gotten. With the day off today and holidays Thursday and Friday (on Friday we celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday, if you can believe that. It’s an official holiday in Georgia), all of a sudden I will be in December with a lot of stuff to do to get ready for my transfer and more days off at the end of the month. Maybe nervous energy will carry me through.

I don’t think I have mentioned my impending transfer here. I am going to be the Librarian at another campus closer to home. 10 miles rather than 30. a 15-minute commute as opposed to close to an hour. And I will be the head honcho. A little scary, but I am looking forward to it.

January 4th will be my first day in my new position. I will be getting off to an interesting start as I train both myself and a new Evening Reference Librarian at the same time. I am not used to 14-hour days anymore. I guess I better get used to them, though. That’s part of the price of being a boss.

We will be interviewing applicants for the Evening Reference Librarian position next Friday. I am hoping for at least one good candidate. It’s so hard to tell from applications, cover letters, and resumes. Personality is all-important for people working in close proximity in a small library. Fingers crossed.

I have spent some time today re-writing a short story. I am pleased to discover how much fun I have had doing that. I always get very worried when I am down. The possibility of losing interest in writing completely scares me. It’s something that is an important part of my life, and I really don’t want to lose it.

All-in-all a good day. I need more of these. Here’s hoping…

Anybody who was checking the blog over the last few days would have noticed some pretty weird happenings over here. I had a little trouble with DNS settings and a previous version of things.

But I’m feeling much better now.

I did get some good news last week. I am transferring to the local campus to be the Librarian there. That will save me about 30 minutes commute each way and a ton of gas. I am really looking forward to that.

The depression is still hanging on, but that news helps take a little of the bite out of it. Something else to be hopeful about.

And I’m trying to get up the nerve and energy to try to write something new. You never know. It might turn out to be something other than shit. We’ll see.

I don’t have anything much to say, so here is a little bit of madness to occupy your time. This is a story from long ago that I have both loved and loathed. I hope somebody enjoys it. If it stirs any emotions at all, I will deem it acceptable.

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In the Hands of an Angry God

By Carter Nipper

She stares, wide-eyed, wild-eyed, but never speaks. Her stare follows me, haunts me. Even when I leave the room, she sees, she watches. If she would just speak, if she would even blink, but no. She sits. She stares.

Don’t look! Don’t look! But I can’t help it. Her face is dark and swollen, her mouth hangs open, her tongue sticks out like a purple pickle, and her voice shrieks, telling, accusing, demanding.

She knows me better than anyone else. She should, we’ve been married for seventeen years. She knows what I must do; I know what she needs.

Forgiveness. There is no forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t love me, this I know. Not now. She won’t forgive me. I can’t forgive myself.

My hands feel her skin again, friendly, encouraging me to give her what she needs. I feel the rush of rage, the squeezing, the shaking, the need to make her be quiet, shut up, stop, don’t, the triumph as she squirmed and kicked. The rage, where did it come from? Sudden, overwhelming, a deluge of fire and brimstone. Where did it come from? Where did it go?

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it–I admit it. When she finally stopped, I looked deep into her eyes and felt a joy unlike any I ever knew before. Even when I realized what I had done, I was glad. But she stares; she shrieks. Jesus doesn’t love me. It hurts; it burns.

Atonement. I must atone. For all have sinned, for I have sinned and fallen short. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. Blood and fire. The only way. A sacrifice, a burnt offering, that’s the only way. She knows. Her eyes tell me. She speaks harshly in the ancient tongue and demands blood and fire.

God is angry and must be appeased. Blood for blood, fire to carry my guilt up to God and lay my plea before the Mercy Seat, a sacrifice that will be pleasing unto God. I must atone.

Her voice is a psychic itch, a mental tickle. My fingers twitch and writhe in an agony of unrelievable sympathy. I must get away, run, hide, but her voice distracts me, its constant wail a confusion, leading me astray. I ran into the wall. I sat on the floor, comforting my bleeding nose, and I cried. She stared without sympathy. I must help her; please help me.

There’s blood on my hands. There’s blood in my hands, and it won’t come out. Out, damned spot! It won’t come out to play today. I got a knife and searched for it, but it ran up my arm and hid. I chased it through my wrist, my forearm, my elbow, but it hid. Olly, olly, oxen free! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Please come play with me.

How can there be a sacrifice without blood? Blood and fire make Godly prayers. But the blood won’t come out. It won’t come off. God help me. God won’t help me–I have no blood to give. She demands my blood. She demands fire. She demands, and I have nothing to give.

I can’t hear myself think. Her voice hums and chants and sings and shouts, and I shout against her, with her, through her, but she only gets louder. I feel the blood pounding in my head. So that’s where it is! I’ll sneak up on it. I’ll start right here below my ear. I’ll cut deeply and quickly; it won’t be able to get away. Burn the bridges–my bridges–my bridges over the depths of Hell.

Fire! I need fire. There’s no other way. I must have fire so the smoke will carry my prayers to Heaven and I can be forgiven. Pleasing to God! Please, God, make her be quiet!

Oh God, forgive me! I have sinned! I have fallen short of Your Glory! I will atone! Here is my sacrifice, O God, let it be pleasing in Thy sight!

The matches, good. Newspapers. There, a good blaze. Fire. Now blood. Quick and deep. It can’t escape. Forgive…

END

Lynn brought up an interesting point in a comment on my last post. Does the longing I feel for my lost childhood home and the urge I feel to move back there play into my current depression? They are certainly not causative factors, but they do aggravate and intensify the condition.

Bipolar disorder is primarily a physical condition, in which the brain’s neurotransmitters get out of whack, unregulated, so they flip-flop between too much and not enough (an incredibly over-simplified analysis). At either end of the spectrum, psychological factors act as magnifiers to intensify the condition.

Therapy helps, and I do get that, but medication ultimately helps more. The talk therapy I get helps me understand the way that bipolar disorder and my many psychological issues reinforce each other and helps helps me deal with that, at least on an intellectual level. Unfortunately, that does not help with the physical manifestations of BPD. The only help for that is patience and medication adjustments.

Thanks for the comments, Lynn and everyone else! The good thoughts remind me that there are people out there who care, and that is a great life-preserver to hang onto. This will turn around. It always has, and it always will. In, the meantime, I just have to keep that hope alive.

Writing? What’s that?

I am not writing right now in terms of creating new stories. I am, though, reviewing some of my existing work (which I do find is pretty good, mostly), polishing here and there, and submitting select pieces. I hope that my mental processes will have turned the corner by the time the rejections start coming back. Though I am certainly used to rejections by now, they can still have a negative impact when I am like this.

Thank you all for the well-wishes. It helps to know there are so many caring people out there.

My depression is proving somewhat resistant to treatment this time. The bad news is it’s not getting better. The good news is it’s not getting worse. I am just stuck on struggling through each day. With the dark of the year coming on, I can look forward to more of the same for a while, I suspect.

Maybe Spring will bring a new hope. I have to hope. It’s about all I have right now.

I have today off from work (Columbus Day), which also helps. I took advantage of the three-day weekend to tend to some unfinished writing business. I withdrew three stories which had been in submission for a very long time with no response, which cleared my decks. It was weird not having anything submitted for a couple of days.

Today, I submitted two stories: “What Dreams May Come” to Chzine, and “Worse Than Death” to Shock Totem. I don’t expect to have much luck with these, as these are professional markets, and I probably don’t yet have enough of a reputation to break into them, but then hope is all I have.

I spent a long time in despair over my writing. I had come to the conclusion that everything was shit, and that I was wasting my time and energy to no good purpose. It’s a good thing I know by now that these times are not the best for making unalterable decisions, so I did not delete everything.

My belief in my writing is still not strong, yet, but it is coming back. Some re-reading and a little polishing have gone a long way toward re-affirming my faith in that area. Now, if I could just have another story idea… That may be asking too much. Maybe later.

Here’s hoping everyone else is well. I will be back upon occasion, though probably infrequently for now.

I am having a very tough time with bipolar depression right now. I will return after things turn around in my head. One thing about bipolar disorder is that things do turn around — sometimes too much. It’s just a matter of surviving until then.

See you and thank you for all the support.

A couple of weeks ago, my father, one of my brothers, and I drove up to Pennington Gap, in Southwest Virginia. The nearest town of any size is Big Stone Gap, which may give you an idea about just how far back in the mountains Pennington Gap is.

We moved to Pennington Gap when I was three months old and left four years later, almost to the day. My father was the preacher at First Christian Church there. They invited him back to preach at their 100th Anniversary service. That’s quite an honor, and I am glad I got to share that with him.

Everyone tells me that a person does not remember much, if anything, about their first four years. That may be so. I don’t have many conscious memories and the few that I do have are really fuzzy. What I do have is a big hole in my soul.

Having no conscious memories of a place does not mean that it never existed for you. The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing that retains a lot more information than just what is on the surface. I may remember little and indistinctly, but I feel the lack of a place I can really truly call home.

That may seem strange, considering that I have lived here for some 48 years now, but there is just something missing that keeps me feeling like a stranger in my hometown. Rootless. Two weeks ago, I found out what.

A four-year-old is not supposed to remember, but he does. He remembers the feeling of being ripped from the only home he has ever known and thrown in among strangers. He remembers feeling like an outsider in his own home town. He remembers feeling left out and alone among his friends and family. I remember — now more than ever.

I remember mountains that block out the sky. I remember wild places and towering trees. I remember coal trains and snowy afternoons. I remember people tough as nails that would give you their coat on a frigid day, if you needed one. I remember sheep on green hillsides and weathered shacks that had been home to generations.

I know now what I have always missed, where my roots were, where they are still. Those mountains, those people, that place, cry out to me on a visceral level. They belong in my heart, where I have kept them hidden so many years. I miss them. I want them back.

Yet there remains much doubt in my mind.

That part of Appalachia is a hard and unforgiving place, a place that cares nothing about people and their works. It is a place where people scratch to survive. It is a good place to be born in, to grow up in, to move away from. Life is hard in those mountains and money does not flow easily.

Could I make the transition from relative comfort to relative poverty? Could I live with snow and ice and sudden thunderstorms so violent they threaten to blow houses right off the mountainside? Could I live so far from my family and friends? Do I dare disturb the Universe?

My heart looks to what was for comfort and peace. My mind looks to what is. Reasons, excuses to stay are easy to find. Reasons to move are hard. Nebulous. Difficult to explain. I am uncomfortable here, a stranger in a strange land. Yet, how far am I willing to go on a hunch, a whim, a feeling? Would I be more comfortable far from everything and everybody I have known for so long?

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Mr. Lincoln said. I am divided. I am at war with myself. How long can I stand?