Why Do You Ask?

Do you have a bottled-up (or not) rant about ritual questions asked by people who don’t want to know, and the social tyranny which obliges phony answers even when they are the opposite of the truth? Then here’s a treat for you by the prolific, inimitable, illusionary (about which more later) British poet, Brian Bilston.

As posted by the author on Facebook, January 2, 2024. All rights his.

Brian Bilston is a rising star on the UK poetry scene, with his self-deprecatory, ironic, infinitely various, and frequently hilarious poems. I suspect they are also poetically correct, in the literary sense, though I am unqualified to judge that. After a couple of years of publishing poems daily to social media and accumulating hundreds of thousands of followers, including me, he started live readings a year or so ago. He has been touring tirelessly (or at least, continuously. I don’t know whether he’s tired) ever since.

Is this the publicity photo of an extrovert?

I was afraid his popularity would spoil him, but so far he’s navigated that interesting intersection between introversion and celebrity (about which I have previously written) as brilliantly as he navigates language.

But here’s the thing: His name isn’t really Brian Bilston. And he isn’t a perpetually lovelorn young single guy (or at least, he’s over 50 and married). I was taken aback when I first learned his writing identity was not a person but a persona. However, I soon began to appreciate the doubled creativity of inventing the author as well as the poems, and thereby insulating himself from self-exposure twice over, all the while writing nonstop about vulnerable emotional states. Pure introvert genius!

As for responses to “How are you” asked by people who don’t care and won’t listen if you actually tell them, I suppose replying “Why do you ask?” could be perceived as snarky by some, but considering that I really want to say “None of your business!,” those some should consider themselves getting off lightly. I don’t say that, of course. I do my best to balance authenticity with social convention, a perpetual challenge, which may explain why I AM tired.

Happy World Introvert Day!

Happy World Introvert Day

Subjectivity: A review of The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I wrote this review in 2016, intending to publish it in a different venue, then forgot about it. I’ve added references to two films that came out after I wrote it.

As I discuss, it’s debatable whether The Vegetarian really qualifies as a feminist novel. It’s about people who have retreated so entirely into their wishful fantasy lives that they are incapable of accurately perceiving the world around them – or themselves. In our third year of COVID, this is more apropos than ever.

Fear It Self

In a previous post (Isms), I mentioned in passing that I’ve evolved my own beliefs about the meaning/purpose of life in the meta sense, but did not elaborate upon what they were.

Om I/God

Here’s what I think is going on, to the best of my scrawny human brain’s capacity to understand such things.

The Nature of Words

Since I didn’t discover I was an HSP until I was over 50, I’ve got a lot of personal backstory that I’ve never revisited through the lens of personality type. Sometimes things drop suddenly from the overflowing attic of my past to unveil themselves in a new light.

The Words of Nature

Certain writers evoke transcendent experiences of the natural world. In my 20s, when I was introduced to Mary Oliver’s poetry, I began to think of them as nature ecstatics. Strangely, this is not necessarily what others noticed about their writing, but as for me, I could relate.

Mary Oliver wasn’t my first nature ecstatic – the first was probably Sara Teasdale. An author gave me a book of her poems for children when I was in elementary school. Soon after, I encountered Lucy Maude Montgomery (best known for her prose, but definitely a nature ecstatic). I found Yeats’ Lake Isle of Innisfree when I was in high school. Somehow, I made it all the way to my 30s before I heard of Rumi.

Much later, I came to understand I was an HSP. It didn’t take long to notice that all of my favorite, nature ecstatic poets were decidedly HSP-ish too. Or, as L.M. Montgomery would call them, kindred spirits. 

ADHD Pleads Guilty

As I continue to learn about ADHD, previously unsuspected associations between ADHD and lifelong quirks and struggles arise every day. Sometimes depression and/or personality are also factors, but identifying ADHD as an additional suspect finally illuminates why it has been so effing hard to get a handle on some of these things, no matter how long or how hard I tried. I’m simply outnumbered!

Here are a few of them:

Chatty Isn’t Lonely

I had a light bulb moment recently, when a friend made a passing reference to a mutual acquaintance who “seemed lonely.” I was puzzled for a moment, since I had never thought so. Then I realized she was interpreting the acquaintance’s chattiness as social neediness.

This little pebble of insight dropped into my own history and rippled out into waves of new understanding. People have been making the same assumption about me, for the same reason, all my life.

My soliloquies aren’t usually as dire as this one.

BUT IT ISN’T TRUE.

The Unconvinceables

COVID Year Two was more of a challenge than COVID Year One.

It wasn’t that I expected the pandemic to end, as many apparently did. I did not, having some awareness of real world logistics, the speed of science, and the tendency of those who have made bad decisions to double down rather than repent.

And I’m not chafing at restrictions upon my usual activities. My life hasn’t changed much, except for wondering whether I am carrying home a fatal illness with my groceries.

No, the biggest, buzziest COVIDfly in the ointment of my life is

Frames

As previously discussed in several posts, I’ve been trying to understand – and resolve – my constant struggle to get stuff done. I’m happy to report that I think I’ve figured out what’s going on.

Spring, 2021

After I adjusted the nutraceuticals I use to manage my depression without success (see Isms), I decided to try a more direct approach, and researched non-prescription options for “low motivation.” I didn’t find anything that sounded promising, but I couldn’t help noticing that many of the results that came up were in articles about managing ADHD.

Hmm.

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Summer, 2021

I’ve thought I might have some degree of ADHD for many years, but never really followed up on that thought. It didn’t seem to be affecting me much. But I decided to read a book about it. Many quotes from adults with ADHD resonated unexpectedly.

Hmm.

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Fall, 2021

I found some podcasts by people living with ADHD. Issues with energy and initiative cycles, motivation, and timeliness are everywhere. Methinks I have found the answer to the mystery of my procrastination – not a lingering depression symptom at all.

The discovery is liberally sprinkled with karma, as I’ve told more than one lover/colleague/friend with ADHD that it appeared to be affecting them a lot more than they believed (but nobody ever said the same to me, I swear).

This new insight hasn’t resulted in overnight solutions, but it explains a LOT, including why I keep overlooking things in plain sight. It’s shown me a community grappling with similar issues. And I’m reassessing my capacities, my expectations, and my notion of what is “normal for me.”

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That’s Odd

The more I read/heard about ADHD, the more some very familiar terms cropped up. “Highly sensitive,” for example. Also “overwhelm.” This from people who never mentioned Sensory Processing Sensitivity, and as far as I could tell, had never even heard of it.

Mortality

I learned last night that a singer who was important to me once has died. She died several months ago, as it turns out, but it was news to me. Or perhaps not. I had been thinking of her off and on over the past few weeks, or rather of her music, as first one of her songs, and then another drifted into and out of my mind for a few days. Somehow, I knew, so seeing the past tense in the search results did not shock or surprise me, as it so often has in recent years. Maybe I caught a fleeting glimpse of a headline awhile back, and put it away out of consciousness until I was ready for it to surface.

For a moment, when I saw the singer’s age, I thought, oh well, she was getting up there. Then I remembered my own age, which I often forget, and which is not much less than hers.

Savage Breast

Music meant a lot to me during my depressed years