I started seeing a new therapist this year, and it has been life-changing. He is smart, funny, sensitive, and has done his own time with depression. I feel such a strong connection that I’m hoping he’ll want to be my friend once ethics allow.

Last week over Zoom, I told him about an essay I read, primarily a take-down of Viktor Frankl. We discussed the sacrosanct regard for Frankl, as a Holocaust survivor, and the viability of Primo Levi’s work, since he ended up jumping out a window.

The essay takes Frankl to task for a bunch of things, but most pertinently for his insistence on finding the positive in even the most horrible experience. It’s not exactly like finding the silver lining of concentration camps…but it comes close.

Frankl maintains that we always have a chance to exert our will, to make choices even when all seems lost. If you’re in a camp and you have a piece of bread crust, you can choose to share it, for example.

Anyway, it was a really good, thought provoking essay. The part I wanted to talk about with the therapist was the false notion that suffering brings you closer to god, or that suffering has any point at all. The bible teaches (apparently) that god imposes suffering on you for a reason. Suffering in this life is a preparation for heaven. Maybe you’re supposed to be grateful, for all I know.

Here’s the paragraph that struck a chord for me:

Because infant and childhood deaths were so common it is not surprising that the rabbis of the Talmud tried to inject a glimmer of metaphysical hope into this most tragic of tragedies. Rabbi Yochanan had lost no fewer than ten children, and his colleagues attempted to console him with the promise of a reward to come: “If one engages in Torah and acts of charity and buries his sons, all his transgressions are forgiven.” That might have consoled Yochanan the Rabbi, but it did not console Yochanan the grieving father. Rabbi Yochanan rejected the very notion that suffering -of any sort-was worth a reward. “I want neither this suffering nor its reward.”

What a powerful statement for those of us who are beyond consolation.

Suffering leads to nowhere good, and teaches you nothing. You might be more  compassionate to your fellow man, but surely at a preposterous price. Trying to find value in suffering seems so American to me, but I guess it’s actually religious dogma. I used to listen to Joel Osteen in the car, and we would snicker at his promises to his deluded followers: “Your wife has incurable cancer and your dog died? Cheer up! God is just biding his time, preparing to send you a spiritual check in the mail!”

Haha, there is no check! Not to mention god. Here’s what came up when I googled “suffering is”:

Never for nothing, eh?

I love Rabbi Yochanan’s quote so much that it might be my next tattoo. It looks good in Hebrew:

So then, I don’t remember how we got there, but my therapist and I talked about guilt and how it was okay to just go to bed in the middle of the day if that’s what you need. He said ice cream would be okay too, a form of self-care. Somehow, maybe we were talking about our mutual dispositions, and he said, “Being sensitive and intense isn’t a bad thing, right?”

I disagreed, and said that the pain of being that way is only valuable if you channel it into art. If it’s just suffering that doesn’t produce anything, it’s like an oyster without a pearl. Then, it’s just suffering; there is no pearl.

“Like the Holocaust,” he observed brightly, like the smartest kid in the class. We both started laughing hysterically.

A good therapist always wraps up the session by returning to the beginning, so it comes full circle. UCLA will only cover a certain number of sessions with its doctors, and I’m near the limit with mine. I will miss him terribly!

And this post is the pearl.

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 received a price-list in the mail for a new waxing salon in my neighborhood. As a child of the sixties, I am innocent of the ins and outs of waxing. All I know is that is hurts and I don’t want any.

But this price-list is so captivating! I had to read some of it aloud, just to savor the language.

‘Buttocks strip’ struck me as the funniest, most poignant words I had ever read. It evokes so much…

But then, I noticed ‘Buttocks strip touch-up.’ Hmm.

I also noticed that men are charged more than woman, even for knee waxing. Would anyone actually go to have just their knees waxed? Why? I challenge anyone to explain this.

I love this fucking price-list. It is poetry. It came from ‘Uni K Wax Center’ and you can like them on facebook.