Tag: Monday Mood

Mood: Monday

Name that mood.

title unknown, circa 2020
street mural in Torremolinos, Spain
©Nesui, urban artist based in Malaga, Spain (on Instagram, he’s nesui.src if you want to see more of his work)

I’m not yet finished with this book, but it’s a much faster read than I’d expected it to be (at 750ish pages). Set in 1969, published in 1971, it captures the mood of a time and generation (or three generations). Based around six characters from around the world, one narrator, and a very large supporting cast, and in that way, there are similarities to the Neverending Saga, though the writing styles are quite different. I feel like I’ve traveled–am still traveling–all over the world (including the Spanish coastal town of Torremolinos, where this art can be found).

I can imagine my character reading it when she was twenty-one, her age at that time roughly corresponding to the six main characters (which is why I decided to read it). She would be reading with very wide eyes.

It’ll have such a tiny mention in her story, but these are the paths I like to take in understanding who I’m writing.

Mood: Monday

Photo previously posted here was of the work Pinecone #7, oil on panel with gold leaf, 2021, by Matthew Hopkins.

I’ve always liked pinecones, and I have several small ones Tom has found on walks through the years. They’re in one of our curio cabinets. The writer (not the actor) Maggie Smith’s book You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir begins with the existence of a pine cone that exposes a betrayal and leads to the disintegration of a relationship and family. It’s painful to read, and that it’s so sparingly, artistically written made it break my heart more.

Other readers might not agree with me, but I rarely like writing only because I identify with it, or I think it’s describing my own experience or that of someone I know or care about. I want to be absorbed into a world that exists in and of itself, for its own self, whether it’s memoir/autobiography, biography, fiction, or poetry. I don’t need to find myself in a work, only to find something authentic.

That being said, once I closed the book and thought about its impact, I did reflect on betrayal. I’ve experienced it a few times (not the way Smith has), to varying degrees, with mixed outcomes, and almost certainly with forgiveness because for me, that’s a vital step in removing its power. A person who’s betrayed me may not remain part of my life, and I don’t forget (because there are lessons in everything), but I’m not a grudge holder, and I’m not vindictive. Again, that’s a way to retake control of my own story from the one who betrayed me.

I also acknowledge there are times in my life when others have felt betrayed by my actions. I hope I was forgiven and think I’m more likely to have been forgotten, whatever outcome was best for them. I wasn’t malicious, just young and/or stupid and/or careless, and sometimes just lost.

“Betrayal” was number two of a topic list I made here on June 7, and I’d posted a photo that included the book filled with Post-it Flags. I’ll flip through it now to see if there are any quotes that, having resonated with me despite my very different story, might resonate with you.

p 169: “I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me.–Lidia Yuknavitch”

p 211, in a chapter titled “About The Body”: “My trigger is stress, so my treatment is perspective.”

p 236: “How I picture it: A scar tells a story about pain, injury, and healing. Years, too, are scars. … The year of Rilke written on a yellow sticky note … referred to daily: ‘Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.’”

Mood: Monday

Here was the saga playlist from late Saturday and then Sunday as I revised the previous two chapters I’d written.


Pink, “Funhouse” and “Can’t Take Me Home”; Pink Floyd, “A Collection of Great Dance Songs”; Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, “Grace Potter and the Nocturnals”; Carol Plunk, “Odds and Ends: 1995-2007.”

Also on Sunday, I colored a page in my coloring journal. Below is the coloring page, and a quote from the facing page. My eye surgery was scheduled for today, and I wanted a distraction and a way to think positively (after all, note the name of the journal, gift of Lynne), and to make note of my anticipation of surgery.

Everything went well today, I think. I have my post-op appointment tomorrow, have instructions for after care, and look forward to the healing and the improvements to my vision. I had a lot of feelings about it, and I’m staying off this computer, so I spent a little time adding a collage to yesterday’s coloring. I guess this is Monday’s mood art. Take from it what you will; my overall feeling is gratitude for so many things represented here.

My next seven days:

Mood: Monday

Forbidden things and kitchen chaos
Artist unknown, from North East England
painting, 1985
available for public use from the Wellcome Collection’s Migraine Art Competition Collection

Joan Didion describes her experience with migraines in this excerpt from The White Album. When I found the above art on line, she was referenced. I’ve read the book but had no memory of the excerpt. I think my compassion for/identification with anyone who suffers migraines is so acute that I try not to hold on to their descriptions.

An online search for art relating to migraines shows a sad wealth of how people experience the illness. I was in ninth grade when I had my first, and it was terrifying, with complete numbness beginning down one side of my face before traveling down that half of my body. I was fifty percent skull-to-toe numb, which made movement challenging. My vision was impaired; I couldn’t string coherent sentences together. Emotionally, I was shaken then scared. I was supposed to be baking a chocolate pound cake, a home ec assignment, and I ceased being able to reason or function. I couldn’t read the recipe or measure out ingredients. My mother, aggravated because I couldn’t make words to explain what was happening, sent me to bed and finished the cake. (I still have and use that recipe from the index cards I used in class to write it down. It’s delicious, and I always think of it as my big fuck-you to migraines.)

I’m not sure when that episode repeated. It struck infrequently, without warning, and I was usually able to mask that anything was happening. It wasn’t like I had a job or had to drive or take care of anyone else. I might complain of a headache when I turned down invitations from friends, but mostly I kept it private. It was the only part of my life that became easier when my parents made me transfer schools. The friends who knew me best didn’t spend every day with me anymore. They weren’t driving yet either, so the most I might get other than an occasional weekend outing, or a sleepover with Lynne, was a visit from Riley, who did have his license because he was a year older. At the new school, I had a single genuine friend (the nephew of my first boyfriend from my other school; though the boyfriend, too, was a year older and could have driven to see me, we were on a break, one of many over several years). Though there were a few students with whom I had semi-friendly relationships, I had no after-school social life my sophomore year. (ETA: Things got… moderately better my last couple of years of high school thanks to the school paper, Color Guard, good teachers, and some new friends.)

I finished high school, went to college. I became more open about my occasional migraines with friends, and I found hit-or-miss ways to deal with them. From my mid-twenties on, they took a new form: a once-monthly event with different pain sensations and no identifiable common triggers. In my early thirties, at a meetup with a friend from junior high in our small town, she told Lynne and me about her migraines, vastly worse than my own. Her doctors tried one treatment after another until they finally gave her a hysterectomy. It was a drastic and not always effective solution, but she had no regrets. She finally had a much higher quality of life with her husband and two young children and a job she enjoyed.

Because of her, I finally recognized the pattern of my migraines, which had become more frequent. They didn’t come every month, but when they happened, they generally fell somewhere in the middle between my monthly cycles. Just being able to latch on to an answer, hormones as a possible cause, afforded me relief. I accepted that I would have four to six days a month in pain. I’d have to avoid driving, sunlight, and noise. If possible, I’d spend as much time as I could in a dark room, avoid television or music, and eat only bland foods. Food with strong smells were torment.

Since I had to be at jobs despite migraines–life doesn’t stop–I learned that if I were surrounded by my favorite coworkers, the ones who made me laugh, pain didn’t go away, but it took a backseat. The vision problems were-are–temporary. By then, Tom and I were married, and unlike a couple of the previous men in my life, he never treated me like I was acting crazy, or faking, or attention seeking. He took care of me in ways that were helpful and otherwise left me alone. He’d known other people with chronic illnesses, and he’s also a self-sufficient human adult. It makes a huge difference.

Post-menopause, the regularity of migraines tapered off. They still happen. They can still rob me of time and energy, but they more often manifest as vision problems without the excruciating headaches. During even the mildest migraine events, I still avoid light. I still can’t stand strong food odors.

This particular painting resonated. I thought of all the times I had to keep functioning no matter how I felt. The simplest tasks would feel overwhelming, my time out of my control, plus migraines involved constant trial and error: what worked or made things worse could change from episode to episode.

I know an artist who donates his time at a hospital leading step-by-step painting sessions as part of a cancer support group. What a wonderful gift he provides. I know people who color, knit, play an instrument, or find other creative ways to work their way through the fear, pain, and anxiety of illness. I couldn’t have written–I still can’t–my way through a migraine. I also can’t bear the eyestrain of reading. I wonder, during my years of adolescence or early adulthood, if some kind of creative outlet, or creative self-expression, might have helped me navigate the pain. I know from other artists’ experiences that it likely couldn’t have eliminated pain, but it might have made those lost days more bearable.

If you read here, or accidentally stumble over this post, I don’t have much wisdom to offer. I hope that when you can’t function, you know that it’s not a failure of character. Sometimes it’s everything you can do to get through a bad day or night. Even when you have good friends, family, healthcare, partners, or roommates, illness can be a lonely place. Please show yourself some grace, some tolerance, some patience, and do what you can to find what works and avoid what doesn’t when you’re going through a health event.

One of my own biggest struggles remains: not reproaching myself or feeling resentful about time and activities lost when I’m sick. I’m an old work in progress.

Monday: Mood

In honor of Memorial Day, this is my 1996 photograph of Glenna Goodacre’s Vietnam Women’s Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Goodacre, who died in April 2020 from the aftereffects of a brain injury, had an illustrious career as a sculptor and painter. A good article about her in the New York Times includes this:

While she was best known for her Vietnam and Irish memorials, she said those pieces, with their serious subject matters, were exceptions to her larger body of work. “I am a very positive person, so most of my work tends to be upbeat, if not downright happy… I don’t do morosely philosophical pieces like some artists. It’s just not in me.”

I’m a pacifist, not inclined to glorify war, but I’m also the descendant of people involved in many U.S. conflicts, including the American Revolution, and the daughter of an Army veteran who saw combat in WWII and served through the Korean and Vietnam wars. I recognize the sacrifices of service members and their families especially on Memorial Day, which commemorates those who gave their lives.

In keeping with the theme of my photo, I researched women who died in service to the U.S.

Ninety percent of women who served in Vietnam were volunteer nurses. Eight American military women were killed in the Vietnam War. Fifty-nine civilian women were killed in the Vietnam War.

Women who served and died in other U.S. military efforts:

Since the attack on America on September 11, 2001, a total of 152 women deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Syria lost their lives in service to America.

In Desert Shield and Desert Storm, although women did not serve in units whose mission involved direct combat with the enemy, some women were subjected to combat. Five Army women were killed in action.

There were some 120,000 women in the United States who were on active duty during the Korean War. Most of the women who served in Korea were nurses. Females also served in support units in Japan and other Far East countries during the war. In all, eighteen women were killed during that conflict.

During World War II, as many as 543 women serving with the armed forces died in war-related incidents, including 16 nurses who were killed by enemy fire.

One hundred and eleven Army Nurses died overseas, and 186 died stateside, all while serving the country in World War I.

Although no nurses were killed in combat in the Spanish-American War, 153 died from diseases during the war (including one, Clara Maass, who perished from yellow fever after volunteering to undergo Army experiments on that disease).

Historians estimate that as many as 1,000 women may have disguised themselves as men and served in the Confederate and Union armies in the American Civil War. Some historical records verify the fact that over sixty women were either wounded or killed at various battles during the war.

There are no records from the American Revolution for women who might have died while in service to the colonies, either near battlefields as camp followers or disguised as males who fought, or serving as spies or informants for the Continental Army. Though women were sometimes killed in battle-related incidents, fatalities were not statistically broken down by men, women, or children.

It’s also notable that many Native American women served the military in various capacities including combat in the Revolution and the War of 1812. My limited search found no records of fatalities. In the past, I’ve done research on the Buffalo Soldiers, Black Americans who fought and died in the American Indian, Spanish–American, Philippine–American, Mexican Border, and World Wars, but Native women in combat on behalf of the U.S. was new information for me.

We recently removed the two light posts we once used at Houndstooth Hall to display the flag on holidays. Tom was able to put our flag in a holder left above our widows by the Hall’s former owner, who was retired military. This is Tom’s Instagram photo, taken today.