It’s a cliche that cliches are often based on truth, but the biggest cliches are easy to forget, like the ones about beauty. Beauty isn’t truth, but it elevates the soul just as much as garbage debases it. I keep forgetting to look for beauty in my search for relief. By relief, I mean relief from my own thoughts, which are my own worst enemy (not counting my trolls of course.)

Last night I went to see Van Morrison, and was reminded of the healing power of communal joy. Normally, I don’t want to make the effort to do things that involve any commitment of time and energy. A Van Morrison concert requires buying tickets, a strategy to get across town, a timetable to keep, packing snacks to eat, putting together an outfit that’s comfortable but reflective of my superior style, and so on. Thanks to my husband, I gathered myself to go.

Beauty is probably everywhere for all I know but I’m finding I need to search for it and cling to it. I wish this would become a habit, like checking the New York Times to see what new travesty is afoot. All my habits are bad but I know it’s possible to form new ones, better ones. Smoking weed is a relatively new habit that’s improved my life immensely. Same with Chai Latte.

Music used to a big part of my life before smartphones. Driving and listening to the mixes Max made me was always so pleasurable.  A house full of musicians was something I took for granted. The empty nest is quieter, and there is a joy that can’t be replaced but there is still joy to be had. I might need some mechanism to remind me: A rubber band, an alarm clock, a mnemonic acronym like MOEB (Music Or Else Bummer)?

I wish I could follow Van Morrison around the world and see every show. I wish I could rouse myself to get out and see more art. It’s a first-world problem but a life or death one for the severely depressed. (See Schopenhauer.) The crack is not where the light comes in, it’s where the vessel will break under pressure.

What form of beauty do you turn to for consolation? Tips, anyone? Here is a video that my friend Andra sent to me, an excursion into undersea beauty that left me weak with religious ecstasy.

And here’s some sparks of joy for you synesthetes.

1. Demi Moore isn’t blaming Ashton Kutcher for the threesomes they had during their marriage but it was his idea, not that she’s blaming him.

2. Brad Pitt has realized that it’s not the roles that matter. What he really wants is to live an interesting life.

3. Tavi Gevinson picks at her face when she’s anxious and has let her assistant take care of her Instagram posts.

4. Rap artists with gang affiliations have to check in with the local gang when they arrive in a new city, or some bad shit will go down.

5. Demi Lovato wants you to accept her cellulite.

All these things are true, according to the Internet. I know them because I clicked on them. I clicked on them because at the time, each one seemed less stupid, pointless, or distressing than the other suggestions thrown up by my cellphone or the New York Times.

I’ve never clicked on anything about improving my habits at work or at home, about fitness or food, about what successful people do to manage their lives or about relationships. I’ve never clicked on anything to do with finances, careers, credit scores, parenting, or shortcuts to anything.

Every day, I’m confronted by a thousand ways to lose myself and avoid being present, so I’m learning to skip things that will make me go back to bed. It’s a process, okay? I still make mistakes. I just clicked on the thing about a grandparent in Florida who gave her disabled adult grandchild an overdose of something, because she was worried about dying and leaving him alone. There’s a whole website somewhere that lists the people who were killed this way, in order to honor their truncated lives. This is exactly the type of thing I am drawn to like a moth and must learn to ignore.

Who started the fucking Five Things lists? Why five? Is it because ten is too many for most people to handle? Five is a reasonable number, if there were things I wanted to know on the fly.

I don’t want to know five things though. I read stuff about philosophy, depression, addiction, autism, nursing homes, refugees, writers, murderers, artists, and Donald Trump. Ivanka, too. I want to know everything on these subjects. As little kids, my sister and I liked to dig deep holes at the beach, hoping to reach China. I still want to reach China, pretty much. The dream is alive.

Is there something I’m missing in my pursuit of knowledge and distraction? Let’s hear the five things you click on, or refuse to click.

Has everyone heard about toska, a Russian word for a type of misery with no English equivalent? It’s one of those words that make language nerds feel superior, sort of like how “schadenfreude” makes dumb people feel when they hear it on TV and congratulate themselves for knowing it.

People seem to revel in the nebulous kind of misery that toska defines. It’s so uniquely Russian, according to some. Here’s how Nobokov describes it:

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

Now I’m no Russian but some of my  ancestors were. And I experience toska all the time. I think that “miserable,” in the Morrissey sense of miserable, covers all those nuances perfectly well.

When we were teenagers, we used to call this feeling The Pain of Existence, facetiously but sincerely at the same time. What’s the word for THAT, wordists?

Here’s a ridiculous chart someone made while expounding on the ineffableness of the word toska.

Someone else says that Americans are too emotion-averse to experience toska, or to admit feeling it even if they could. I disagree, obviously. It probably depends on your particular social circle. I wouldn’t even want to be friends with anyone who didn’t suffer from  existential malaise or depression at least some of the time.

What do you guys think? Is toska overrated? Is it as good as weltschmerz? What words would you like to hear more of?

It’s fitting that toska reminds me of Tosca, the opera, because my mother loved Puccini and went around the house singing arias. As much as my sister and I begged her to shut up, she persisted. She actually had a beautiful voice. And god knows she was miserable.

Here, enjoy Maria Callas, who exemplifies misery at it’s most exquisitely miserable.

I wasn’t looking forward to Mother’s Day since no children were going to honor me and my own mother is long gone. My plan was to just suck it up and go out for an omelette. I forgot to factor in my newsletters.

I get so many newsletters even though I’m always cancelling them. The one’s I really should cancel are the suicide alliance newsletter and the one for parents of adult children who hate them. They mean well and at times they have been mildly comforting. They aren’t as bad as the one from Compassionate Friends, which has a lot of butterflies.

So they each sent out a special thing about mother’s day, offering platitudes that make everything so much worse.

The suicide one offered poems from mothers, sharing their Journeys, along the lines of

I remember my shock and how numb I felt
and how I cried
and sobbed
and how I couldn’t get out of bed and
wanted to die
and how I sat in his room
and sobbed some more….

This isn’t verbatim, the poems were actually more upsetting and alarming. Not a Journey I wish to take since my own Journey is quite enough even though I’m not on one.

The Adult Kids Who Hate You newsletter had some advice on how to answer  questions from nosy friends about what you’re doing on Mother’s Day. Stuff like, “My daughter is very independent so she’s off doing her thing.”

Haha, jesus christ, how about a nice “Fuck you, mind your own business”?

Tips on how to handle shame and guilt must be good for somebody and there must be market for them. Me, I’m not ashamed or guilty. My kids can go read about shame and guilt since they’re the ones who left the world or Can’t Stand Mommy.

Instead of the omelette, I cooked a chicken for my mother-in-law and brought it over to her. I make a damn good chicken, as many people already know, and she cleaned her plate. Her own daughter had  elected to celebrate mothers day by going to Las Vegas and not even calling.

Mothers and children of mothers, it’s a hard road being a human being even if you aren’t in Yemen eating dirt. The only thing to do is cancel your newsletters and carry on.

photo – Denis Dailleux, Mother and Son 2009

I watched Lock-Up Extended Stay the other night for the first time in years, having dismissed it as too voyeuristic and depressing.

Now, it seems to be full of existential wisdom.

You can view the prison as a metaphor for Life, with each convict choosing a method of coping

One prisoner doesn’t dwell on the sordid past and seems unduly optimistic about what lies ahead. One prisoner admits his terrible crimes but feels at peace with himself. Another blames everything on someone else, never taking ownership of any choice or action.

One prisoner, Elijah, is my new role model and I will go so far as to call him my Happy Place.

Elijah is waiting to be transferred to the prison where he will serve his sentence for robbery or something. He doesn’t like the jail where he is, and he expresses his displeasure by flooding the toilet in his cell.

At the time we meet him, the jailers are already sick of this. Elijah has also managed to break the cell’s sprinkler system a few times.

He doesn’t like being in general population because he ‘doesn’t fit in.’ He performs in a drag act and has a soft feminine voice with a lisp. At the same time, he is tough, and looks capable of serious violence.

Elijah is moved to a disciplinary cell-block as punishment for flooding the toilet. They take away his socks, which he has used to perform his mischief.

At some point, Elijah admits that he isn’t really protesting cell conditions; he enjoys antagonizing a hostile jailer. “I just don’t like his ath,” he explains.

The warden thinks he’s solved the problem but Elijah sticks his arm down the toilet to make it overflow.

Now the warden is getting pissed. They make Elijah mop up the cell himself, even though is becomes a ridiculously complicated procedure.

Elijah says matter-of-factly that nothing will make him stop flooding the toilet. He’ll keep doing it until he is transferred.

In the Elijah allegory where prison is life, let’s interpret “transferred” as death.

Elijah has chosen a path of resistance, of defiance, of finding satisfaction in annoying his captors (i.e. the forces that be) instead of capitulating to authority. Life will be harder, but it will be a principled life.

I think we should live by our principles, even if they’re stupid. They’re all you’ve got, in the end. They’re the only thing you can control.

On a whole different note, I also learned that you can make eye shadow by mixing crayons with roll-on deodorant.

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Ebola is “vastly” worse than reported. tribal slaughter in Iraq and Syria, Israel vs Gaza,  Nigeria kidnappings, drones on Yemen, Robin Williams.

Let us look to these jeans for salvation. They are the ugliest jeans I’ve ever seen in my whole life, I’m pretty sure. There is something magnificent in such ugliness, you can feel the artistic striving for an indelible statement. A statement that transcends all the horror of current events.

These long-rise One Teaspoon pants have an exaggerated, slouchy fit. Heavy fading adds lived-in charm. Hidden elastic bands cinch the waist and ankles.

Right?

And with open-toe stiletto heeled booties, no less.

Whenever you find yourself filled with existential dread or sorrow, look at these jeans. That is my RX for mankind this evening.

Now what?

I went to see my psychiatrist when he returned from his three week vacation. Before I could make a peremptory statement about my hair, he said brightly: “New Hair!”

He had no idea what I’ve been through, hair-wise. This is the new corrected hair, a desperate follow-up to the horror of the Real Housewives hair. It is so much better, right? But still a shock to my system and a challenge to my identity.

I started to say something about the hair and he continued happily, “It’s a softer look.”

Naturally, I took umbrage and we talked about hair and self-image for the rest of the psychiatric hour.

I don’t want a softer look, first of all, because that implies that my former look was hard, or harsh. I don’t want a softer look because I don’t want to project “softness.” If I have to project anything, I would choose tough. Then he confused me further by calling my former look “forbidding.” I argued that I wasn’t trying to look forbidding but merely “attractive.”

Then we had to define the audience I wanted to appear attractive to. I explained that I wanted to be attractive to the guy in the next lane if I wanted to cut in front of him. If I’m attractive, he will smile and gesture me into his lane. Being attractive is a tool in one’s social arsenal.

We talked about black hair and red lipstick, which I defended as a classic look, citing Snow White, Betty Page, and Veronica in “Archie” comics.  If you have black hair and pale skin, you need to work with what you have. You’re not going to be a California blond, after all. The way I look is pretty consistent with how I looked at eighteen. Clearly, in the eyes of my shrink, I looked like a kooky Goth or maybe a biker/dominatrix.

I had to deconstruct my appearance and think about the message it sends to the world. We are all attempting to project something with our hairstyles and fashion choices. I’d rather not think about it but I discovered that above all I want to look attractive, while still being true to who I think I am. I want to look fuckable and intriguing but I don’t want to look fashionable and I don’t feel comfortable in prints or high heels. I don’t want a Softer Look. I hate change. If I’m not projecting the right Me, I will have to dye my hair black and find a new way to distract myself from the bludgeoning pain of existence. I will also have wasted a fucking ton of money.

Thoughts, confessions, insults?

First of all, that Hermes lady is fucking nuts about her photos. She doesn’t want her photos used to mock her. They are there for praise only! They are there for gloating, not for you internet people to copy and ridicule. I found this picture on flickr, Hermes Lady, so relax.

I wasn’t able to force myself to go through 30something pages of her boasting about her Hermes purchases and the attendant ass-kissing. But I think I got the gist of it.

Here is the situation. Hermes is a symbol of wealth and success. Nothing more or less. A woman who spends a fortune at Hermes and then documents it online is a person desperately in need of love and self-esteem. There isn’t enough Hermes in the whole world to assure her of her intrinsic worth.   It’s a mug’s game.

Consumption at this level is very sad. All shopping is a defense against the knowledge of our mortality. It’s a stupid distraction that exists to enrich corporations and to numb the appetites of the soul.

Look in your closet and think about which outfits would make you happy if a family member died in a car crash. Look at your shoes and then look at this picture.

The Hermes Lady is a picture of insecurity, distorted by money and self-delusion. She is a waste of our time. Turn your eyes away from that lady and her ridiculous merchandise.

You already have everything you need to be happy.

Don’t worry about shoes or handbags. Listen to music, look at some art or have sex instead. You’ll thank me later.

This photo, for me, is the ultimate in street-style douche-girls. Is there a name for female douches? I’m sure she’s a very nice person in real life.   I’m just saying, the thing she projects to me is “Look! I’m a douche.”

Obviously, I’m on a really negative roll. It was nice that others were able to share my existential nausea re those two It Girls. Are you feeling me on this, too?

Looking to cause my self more pain, I kept at it and clicked on some person’s new “girl crush” and found the very special blogger pictured above.

Ombre hair, stupid hat, rosary, too many bracelets, over the knee boots…what’s not to crush on?!