Some hearts

The parts are like best are the ones where I'm not thinking at all. We were staying in a hotel room and I couldn't sleep so I went into the bathroom to write. The light above the toilet was also a heater and you put it on a timer, fifteen minutes maximum so I set the time for fifteen and would try to become so lost in the writing, without looking at the time, without thinking about the possibility of the light turning off. Like going to sleep while waking. It took awhile. I was incredibly conscientious of the timer and the possibility of myself being left in the dark. Then it happened. I was writing, and suddenly, it was black.

Sarah McMurray asked us to talk about abudance. And gatherings. This was our homework.

Walking down that neighboly patch on Ogden I came across a box of moisturizers. Night creams, day creams, eye creams, charcoal scrubs, facial tinters etc. etc. I took several bottles and have been using them often. I considered several options: someone recognized the lies of these products and stopped believing they could reduce aging. Someone

If you start talking about "us" and "them" your going to lose me, sorry. I won't listen to you. Whenever you say, it is all "their" fault for "our" problems I won't be able to hear you anymore.
When you say, it's all men. When you blame it on women. When you say it's the 99% or rich people or poor people or smart people or dumb people you lose me. I can't listen to that shit anymore.
We're winking at each other from across the aisles and dissolving our world. We're biding our time to make these casual loyalties real ones. We're talking a lot of shit and losing something.
We can talk about differences but for godsakes, leave "them" alone.

Don't get me wrong. There's some real shit out there, but there's some real shit in here. I've done some shit so my brothers and sisters and they've pulled some real fast ones on me. A goddam I couldn't say that I've never hated a bitch

Got drunk the other night and wrote in my journal
"I adore humans to their fullest extent. To the fullest of their absurdities. To all of them. I adore them."
Just like Kevin, I get downright sentimental when I'm drinking.

Funny thing about me, I don't accept compliments. I just don't believe them. For the same reason I don't give compliments only in true occasions. Compliments feel cheap. I try to honor something I appreciate by spending some time with it without words.

Tony was telling me about the Soviet New Year. He says it's on the thirteenth of January, which I believe, but some sources are pointing to the 14th. This year we'll wear grey working class uniforms, turn off all the heat and electricity and pound vodka.

In my dreams, I'm in Olympia. Neighborhood cafes and so many genuinely likable people.

God is the dream giver.

The medicine path is all our lives, it all the ways we hurt and heal. It is what we put in our bodies, it is what our bodies are made of. It's where our spirits are. It in the balance. The earth, wind, fire and water inside and out.

Jake, Laura, Nico, Ory and I are in the medicine field. Yarrow, mullein,
By the river I ask Jake,
"What is this?"
-Hemlock, he tells me
-It kills you. Sometimes the Natives were called to it.
-What happens when you eat it?
-You die.
-What happens when you die?
-You're heart stops.

I didn't ask, I knew. Why were the Native called to it?
Because it was part of their medicine path.
I wish I could hear them. Hailee brought in her aloe plant to take care of while she's away. (I need to take care of her) I was hoping they would speak to me.

My realization of my medicine path started with mullein. It started with Natty when she walked me through the mullein and sat with them for the first time, her interpreting their song. Then I met yarrow - little white petals, feather bristled leaves.
Seth and Hailee took me to a field of ancient sage.
-The deer live of sage in the winter, Hailee told me. (I wish I could find a medicine to help her with her deep and wild heart break)

In the little garden this summer the sunflowers bent towards the path. The catnip was covered in cat fur from Miso rolling in it. Tomatoes were stunted by the deer eating the blossoms (more on that later). Basil and terrible unsuccessful

Laura was building a fire and I was on the mattress reading to Nico and I asked her,
-What do you need?
-Firewood, she said
-and an hour to massage this woman from Honduras.
What I needed I came there for and was taken care of. Cut off the bandaid they had wrapped around my pinky at the Urgent Care and re-bandage the stitcher wound that made me dizzy to look at.

Derek Sitter has just played the part of the Devil in the play Bobby Gould in Hell, put on through the new  Volcanic Theater Pub. He sits at the edge of the stage, wearing devil horns and a fishing vest as he fields questions from the audience.

I found the play excellent and amusing.  Derek was dynamic and riveting as the devil (he apologizes for the use of curse words). He spent much of the the play chastising Bobby Gould (played by Wayne Newcome), demanding he confess his life's evildoing.  

There's been a question I've been dying to ask Derek to add to the stories in demon zine.  I considered addressing my questions in an e-mail but Derek mentioned his medium of expression is through acting. Asking him while he's on stage, still dressed as the devil could not be more appropriate. 

"You won the Source award for Sexiest Teacher (light laugher) and in the article you mention fighting your demons alone in a motel room. Do you mind expounding on that experience? Sorry to get all Terry Gross on your ass."

Years ago, Derek responds, he was at a Motel 6 in Tallahatchi withdrawing from his medication. It was a long night. He had been afraid of everything. He had jealousy. He was in a three-year depression. Walking through his life asleep. 

"I was either going to die or be a better person." 

Saying to the demons, "You can't kill me. What am I afraid of? Fuck it."

It was a long, terrifying night.

It's difficult to draw a demon out. They move carefully around the bones, between the ribs and under, over, around the organs. They are nearly impossible to pin down.

Derek invited his to surface when he stopped taking his meds. He didn't go to sleep. Let the skin boil and the organs shift.

It took staying up all night.

Joel once told me sometimes you just have to stay up until the sun rises to push past something. And if you want to face your demons like Derek you have to give them the space to show themselves. You have to stay awake and exhaust yourself and be at the brink where you'll either live or die. You can't go to sleep. You can't deny them. You can't bury them. You have to sit there and be ravaged by them until they're done with you. Allowing the demons a space to present themselves. 

Giving them the space and madness to speak. And moving forward, whatever it takes 

But in the morning, something was clearer.

Derek, on stage in his devil horns, pretty wife by his side, says he did it for his family. For his daughter.

Now Derek has his theater.  The Volcanic Theater Pub, a dream of his, where you can drink a beer and the characters move from the stage to the audience. His space is off of Century across the courtyard from Goodlife Brewing. He's taking his meds. 

& he's playing the devil now. 

"I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it." - (From the poem The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer) 

Review for Show & Tell

"Rachel Lee-Carman's comic diary zine is equal parts devastating and joyously life-affirming. Issue nine of Show & Tell is packed heavy with mood as Rachel's drawings and writings swirl together across the page; unlike a lot of diary comics, Rachel's aren't necessarily sequential and don't come in panel form. It's an earthy structure she's using, very much like something growing wild in nature, all tangles and vines and sun-grown intricacy. What you get in issue 9 is a big dose of life--searching, fighting, celebrating, troubled, anguished, worried, humorous, philosophical, patient. Rachel's looking at some hard and sad things in this issue, death and estrangement, growing up and finding your place. But as heavy as it can be, Rachel knows how to showcase the gentle and beautiful things, the good hearts, the parts of life worth loving. You get a well-rounded thing with Rachel's zines, a life (hers) examined from all angles. Reading Show & Tell is like looking at old glass-case biology exhibits or reading pioneer diaries; there's a very comforting, soothing manner about her examinations of everyday living, something young and new but refreshingly timeless. Show & Tell has been a Microcosm favorite since day one and this issue is Rachel's best."

-Microcosm Publishing 2011

"Similar to Nicole Georges or Erin Tobey, Rachel Lee-Carman documents her daily life in thoughtful lines, daily anecdotes, and love. The composition of the pages grabs you and commands that you reflect—if only for a minute—before retreating inside your own skull to reflect on the ways these things ring true in your own life. Operating as a filter for Antoine Saint-Exupery's The Presence of The Little Prince, this zine reflects on feelings, love, and spirituality. Without ever getting dogmatic, she reflects on yoga, Anne Frank, religion, concepts of abundance, relationships, and feeling better through buying yourself roses. This issue is a thinker and will shed many hours of joy upon you. "

-Microcosm Publishing 2011

http://wemakezines.ning.com/video/bling29-1

More nudity

Ironing ideas for the comic

Funny thing happened the other day. Hannah and I were at Elk Lake, killing a six-pack and throwing sticks to Orca, her German Shepard.
"GET DA BABY!" (yelling) DAST IST BABY! GIT! (pretending to speak German)
Came time to jump in the lake so we each tossed a can and swam in after it.

"We have to finish these beers in the water."
Talking a little, drinking, time going by. Dog barking.

Done with beer

Getting out. Laughing (kind of far away looking) distance

This girl came up from behind us while we were drying off on a log, marveling at the day.

Excuse me (meek looking)
I just need you to know... (she was shaking, angry or nervous)
There are children around here...
pause
You should put your top back on.
Yes.
I mean, there are children around here.
Yes.
Pause.

I sometimes forget nudity makes people uncomfortable. Culture is funny. Boobs are funny too.
Thinking about middle eastern women being chastised by women and men for not wearing headscarves. About breast feeding moms being flagged on facebook. I think about the stigma of our private parts.

You could tell that was difficult for her to come over here and say. 

Damn, that would've been the time to pretend I was German. 

I put my top back on. 

I didn't buy the children argument. She was implying that (my) boobs were a moral degradation of children. Moral degrading like watching a person physically assault another person. Morally degrading like chronic neglect. Like non-consesual touching.

These are not the same.

Boobs don't lead to moral degradation. The viewing of boobs does not take away from their innocence.

What takes away from innocence is labeling parts of ourselves as degrading.

The hugest perversion is sexualizing these parts of ourselves. It's sexualizing each others bodies.

Perverting our bodies robs us of having a safe relationship with ourselves. Because of the labels inflicted upon us we can't see what we really are.

Boobs. Penis. Vagina. Head. Lips. Heart. Ears. Hair. 

It's just my body. It makes up who I am. 

Disconnecting from what my body is and only seeing it as something seen by others is straining. It hurts the relationship between myself and my body.

And we set our young to see bodies are stigmatized sexualized objects rather than what they really are.

Chest. Arm. Hand. Neck.

"I thought she was going to tell us to stop yelling & cussing." Hannah says.

I wish she should've said
"I don't like to see your boobs"

Joel's Voicemail

He-ey, Rachel. *ahem* It's Joel. I'm just sweeping and talkin' on the phone. I just had an idea ... of a ... I needed to tell somebody about it. And it was mixing the word hello and howdy. Um. and then it would just be. Hell-Owdy. *snicker* I just thought that was kind of funny. Anyways, um... Hey-Lowdy! Um... so, yeah, anyways, if you're working, I'll give you a call later, bye bye.

Flesh Ether, we'll just call it done.

My secret boyfriend Jack's playing behind the white sheet which serves as a backdrop and Heather is pleased I'm letting her take pictures of my bush.
I remember a being a child, a preteen, at the public swimming pool. Women all around, they were so huge, boobs flopping. I changed in the bathroom wondering how those women could be SO NAKED. I get it now.
I became unselfconscious about nudity the same time I started loving fresh tomatoes.
Incense is burning and I'm smoking on a stool and can't seem to get enough smoke to obscure my face. We want a smoke shot. The cigarettes are slim. It's not my fault.
Heather is taking photographs of me nude and I ask myself, what is she taking pictures of?
Without my clothes, my self is still buried.
Where is my self?
Under the flesh, muscle, is it in the bones? In my brain? My heart? She is not taking pictures of me, she is taking pictures of my epidermal.
"Why does one ask, 'where does the flesh meet the ether?" Cazo said at his art opening at Velvet months ago. Things are so obvious to him.
Before, before, I am trying to get everyone to rapture with me. I even sent out a facebook invite. This idea spawned by reading a few Douglas Coupland books back to back with a similar sentiment. It is page (3) in Player One, the chapter  CUE THE FLAMING ZEPPLIN. Karen is in an airplane musing about the book/movie the Langoliers by Stephen King where a bunch of people suddenly vanish, their clothes and earrings and walkmans and headphones left abandoned where their bodies once took shape. There are some people who wake up to this (something about the pressure). Karen muses, "What does it mean for someone to vanish?" Namely, what is US and what is NOT US.

Ok, wait. So. The Rapture. Let me explain. In it's most simplistic sense the Rapture is the end of the world. In theory the good will rise to heaven, leaving their earthy possessions behind. The bad will stay on earth. A blaze of glory. Floating to heaven. Eyes skyward. Trumpets. A sweet photography project.

The rapture project didn't work out. It was supposed to be a series of photograph shoots. I would take a series of THREE photographs for every person. Locations were random. Wherever you happened to be when the rapture would take place.
FIRST PHOTO: Person, full body, looking skyward. SECOND PHOTO: Same frame, person gone, pile of what is "not of the self" left on a pile on the ground. THIRD PHOTO: Detailed perspective of "not of the self" stuff.
I wanted to make a prototype so I took set up a stool with my camera on it, put it on timer mode and took a picture of me looking at the sky.
Second photo: I took all of my clothes, shoes and hair things and put them together in a way where it looked like my body had just disappeared. Then I realized, wait, wait. I had are that morning and hadn't fully digested my food, so it wasn't part of my body yet. So I placed a cup of maté, some chewed up tortilla chips and my nutritional supplements and set them by my clothes. These things were not me. Then, wait, wait, my fillings, they are not me either. I took slivers of tin foil to replicate fillings and placed them besides my clothes. What about my dead skin? That is no longer apart me.
And staring at all these things and then thinking about what else I needed to include, I realized that my whole body was not me.
 I was made up of the food I had eaten and the water I drank and the air I breathe. It wasn't just these things that supported my life, they literally were a part of me. My bones and blood and everything was just things I had consumed my entire life and the combination of those things, constructed by some divine intelligence made who I was. And I then I realized, I'm not separate from these things. I am, all these things.
If the rapture were to come, I would not rise. I am this earth. I am heavy. I am the universe.
I am one with the universe.
It's not nirvana. It's reality.
I couldn't go any further with my rapture project. It just got to complicated. It was too absurd to try and make an art bit out of a silly myth. It wasn't worth it.
So, what the hell is Heather taking a picture of?
Me? Or the Universe?



Heather said she owed me one for coming over on short notice and I told her this wasn't true. But I asked her to take a picture of me like the one Nelson Algren took of Simone de Beauvoir, doing her hair in the bathroom in heels. Wasn't the same. I'll try again in my forties.


Heather's so cool.

When the questions were asked
a deep breath was taken
creating space
for the answers
& slowly in clues & omens they came
The Universe answers

Depression

I want you to know, I want to live. I want to fight. But there is a part of me that wants to die. And this part of me gets in the way from the wanting to live part. 
Mom asked me the other day if I still think about suicide. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. She told me she read an article that kids who stayed up late were statistically more likely to be suicidal when they grow older. I used to stay up late to work on projects. Write stories. Draw little pictures. Nighttime was when I fely most creative. Still is. 
When my therapist asked me, several months in, if we should start about medication she mentioned there are cultures where depression is normal. I thought of this picture in a sociology textbook which discussed the Amish. In Amish communties depression in males is documented because they do not mask the disorder as alcoholism. Common in my culture. I was told in the French culture no one admits to being depressed but only says, "je fatigue."


I've been depressed for a very long time. I started taking pills more than a year ago. The pills I take are called Citopram. It stimulates my neurotransmitter to release more serotonin. I take 20 mg in the morning with my iron, B12 and Omega something something. 


When you are waiting in the waiting room for your doctor they have you fill out the 


Goldberg's Depression Test. 
It says things like:
I find it hard to concentrate when I read. 
I think I am uglier than most people. 
I feel like a failure. 
I find it hard to do trivial things. 
I find it hard to make decisions. 
I feel I am being punished.


You grade the answers based on your level of agreement. 


I had my dose doubled to 40mg a few months after the initial assessment. The doctor told me I might feel less empathy. 
I'm continuing to take the original dosage. I break them in half. It means I only have to go every 6 months. 


When I told my mom I was on medication she was disappointed. In High School, when I would say i was depressed, she would tell me to say I was sad. 
I was sad when I should have felt happy. Like accomplishing something. Finishing a project. Standing on the mountain top.


I told my brother and sister first. My sister seemed annoyed.  My sister gets upset when I tell her I'm sad. She tells all I need to do things that make me happy. Go on vacation. My Dad tells me my friends or job isn't good and I should get new friends and a new job. 


My brother said the only thing anyone has ever said about the issue which had made any sense, "I have no idea what you're going through, I have no opinion." For Christmas he bought me an inexpensive laser tag game and Memory game. 


My doctor says my hypothalamus is like a raisin, shriveled up because of a lack of serotonin. The medication would help make my hypothalamus become fat and juicy. One day I wouldn't need to be on medication.  


Camus says suicide is the one truly philosophical problem. 


Every once in awhile I will stop taking the pills. Sometimes I forget for periods of time. Sometimes I want to see what happens. The same things happens every time. It takes a couple weeks. My life becomes overwhelming. I feel guilty. I don't feel ok around people, I don't feel ok alone. I don't feel ok at all. I don't want to go to yoga. I feel guilty for not going to yoga. No one likes me. I want to eat all the time. 


There is a deep well of sadness - like an underground lake. Dark blue and cold and beautiful. When I am depressed I am in that place. It is difficult to explain. I feel buried under a thousand feet of scar tissue. When I am here, on the shoreline of this lake, I want to die the most. I hate being here. With all my heart I hate this place. I am all alone here.


Taking pills doesn't mean I'm happy. Taking pills means I don't have to be in that place. When I cry, I cry until I forget, like a baby. I get distracted. I stop crying. I make tea. I cry when I jog alone. I get a few miles from my house and punch a tree and say, "FUCK YOU WORLD!" and cry and cry and keep running. 
To be crying all the time with no tears coming down your face is hell. To be crying and wishing to not be alive anymore is hell. To hate life is hell. To hate the vessel you are in for no reason besides you are breathing is hell. There is no why. It just is. Maybe a bad habit. I don't blame it. I just want to get away. 


The frustration that comes from explaining depression is defending it as not a choice. To pin something that is a feeling or emotion outside of the realm of choice makes people uneasy. From a philosophical basis, it skirts free will and our ability to create ourselves. It makes claim that we are a confluence of circumstances. It skirts responsibility from the individual to make themselves who they are. 
Is taking pills taking a way of taking the responsibility of creating my life? Am I cheating myself? Am I cheating nature?


I find talking about depression is easier when I describe it as a tumor. When I describe the depression as not being a part of me but something that grew and became attached and I can live without. Something that grew and became rather than always was. 


Talking to my therapist a couple months on the pills, she tells me I am still myself. The pills did not change who I am. Being who I am is still my responsibility. 


But I'm afraid. I'm afraid I am cheating. I am afraid I am really supposed to die. That the universe has called me to take my own life and I am cheating. I am being selfish. Killing myself weighs heavier in my thoughts than going on vacation. It is on par with my life options as is getting into a new relationship. Buying a car. Moving to a new city. What right do I have to use modern pharmaceutical technology to extract my responsibility from answering the fundamental philosophical questions, to live or to die? 
It's easier this way. It's easier to help people. It's easier to work on projects. It's easier to feel good about myself when I accomplish something. It's easier to talk about sadness when it's not so deep it hurts to touch. There is still a heaviness in my understanding, having been to a place of sorrow. 


I haven't lost my empathy. I am still me. I want to live. 

Nowhere

Reason #458 why I make a terrible friend
I forget to use code words when talking about drugs in text messages.

This zine was supposed to be about what a dick ex bf James Ryan is but I got lazy and now I just don't have what it takes to tear him up. And now we're friends who don't fuck and get along pretty well. He is such a dick though. Don't ever date him. He'll treat you like a whore and fuck all your friends. Other than that he's awesome.

This sinus infection is the root of all my powers. The sinus infection has disabled the "give-a-fuck" node in my brain making my immune to the pierced arrow of truth. I've debated for sometime to make a doctors appointment so my energy levels can return to normal. If I don't have the sinus infection I will start caring about really dumb things like I used to. I just can't go back to that.

It makes me so sad sometimes to not have anyone to share these hilarious moments with. Watching youtube some documentary about these siamese twin girls in High School who share a body but have two separate heads and hearts. Gaaah I want that SOOOO bad! Have another person who is super similar to me and we could watch funny shit all day and laugh and laugh and laugh. It would be so great.

My spelling has become dogshit lately.