Obsessive Behavior

I was up at 5 and by six I was deep in nit-picking over "Road Tripping." It is 8:22, and I have been on break for about 20 minutes.

I have decided CC needs to get out of the hole she is mired in. It is not enough for me to watch from the sidelines. That is what I used to do, and it is not the right way to treat her. I hate ultimatums, but one needs to be given.

The Feedspot newsletter brought in Voices on Addiction: The Churn by L.L. Kirchner and published by The Rumpus. I would have CC read this, if I were not about to tell her not to come around until she gets some order in her life.

Now I wish I had a car and more money, for I would have liked to see Margo Price. Review: Margo Price rides high at the Vogue from Nuvo is how I knew she was here, and makes missing her sound like a failure on my part

Nobody not close to me – meaning just about anyone reading this – will find this interesting, but this is my place and I will post as I wish. First Thursday at Cornerstone on March 2nd  highlights one of the best things about Muncie: First Thursday. I think this will be one for me to catch – the weather has been a problem as well as transportation.

Cornerstone Center for the Arts, 520 East Main St., again will host local artists in conjunction with Muncie’s First Thursday event March 2 from 5-8 p.m.

Resident Artist Debra Gindhart Dragoo is coordinating this event and has lured several local artists to participate during the past two First Thursday celebrations.

March’s pop-up artist lineup includes Jill Palumbo, Angel Gillette, Tom Stader, Alyssa Carey, Christine Barber Bush, Val Kelley, Elizabeth Reichert, Kat Mesaros, Shannah Mesaros, Taunya Fallon, Melissa Moles, Maria Clifford Walker, Stephen M. Millben, Miranda Quakenbush, Crosby Family Art, Olivia Morrow and Dragoo.

In addition, the Judith Barnes Memorial Gallery will display the works of Eugene Boyd, a noted ceramics artist who teaches at Cornerstone.

Local electronic musician Arttacgo Alexander will provide music.

Not going to find this in Anderson. 

Reading over The Guardian newsletter, two items caught my eyes. The first, For years, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. What made him finally snap in 2022? asked a question I have asked. Here is the short answer:

Indeed, Russian hardliners spent years criticising their leader for not invading sooner. In 2014, the Ukrainian army was hopelessly weak; in Viktor Yanukovych, the Russians had a pro-Russian, democratically elected Ukrainian president; and incidents like the killing of pro-Russian demonstrators in Odesa provided a good pretext for action.

The reason for Putin’s past restraint lies in what was a core part of Russian strategy dating back to the 1990s: trying to wedge more distance between Europe and the United States, and ultimately to create a new security order in Europe with Russia as a full partner and respected power. It was always clear that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy any hope of rapprochement with the western Europeans, driving them for the foreseeable future into the arms of the US. Simultaneously, such a move would leave Russia diplomatically isolated and dangerously dependent on China.

This Russian strategy was correctly seen as an attempt to split the west, and cement a Russian sphere of influence in the states of the former Soviet Union. However, having a European security order with Russia at the table would also have removed the risk of a Russian attack on Nato, the EU, and most likely, Ukraine; and allowed Moscow to exert a looser influence over its neighbours – closer perhaps to the present approach of the US to Central America – rather than gripping them tightly. It was an approach that had roots in Mikhail Gorbachev’s idea – welcomed in the west at the time – of a “common European home”.

Well, Biden put paid to any idea of breaking up NATO, and Putin gets the credit for even expanding it. Good job, Vlad.

The other item was a new story by Margaret Atwood, Widows. Which I started and will come back to later.

Another started and put on hold is The Mind in Pain by James Mumford published by The Plough, time is short, and my story calls to me. Here is what I read and why I want to see where this goes:

am a Christian. I suffer from depression. The relationship between those two realities is hard to write about because I often feel they have no relationship at all. In fact, and I feel a mixture of guilt and queasiness about saying this, the two seem to stand in contradiction. Christianity speaks of the presence of a loving God: one who is close to us, cares for and consoles us even in our darkest hours. But during the most relentless episodes of depression, I don’t “feel his presence” in a consolatory way. Instead, I identify with the question posed by the late-nineteenth-century priest, poet, and depressive, Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Comforter, where, where is your comforting?”

I feel both sheepish and disconcerted by this since I have sometimes expected to experience God in some clear and distinct way when in difficulties. But instead, only silence. I haven’t had an encounter like Saint Paul’s on the road to Damascus: “Suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven …” Or even one like Elijah’s on Mount Horeb: “And after the fire a still small voice …” Which leads me to wonder: Is there a fault with my faith? Is my faith too weak? Are my convictions half-hearted? Or is my sin too great? Does it block my access to God? Here, as elsewhere, depression provides no answers, only questions.

It’s hard to make sense of depression as a Christian because it’s hard to make sense of depression, full stop. No one can tell you what it is “really like” to be profoundly depressed. Writing about depression is necessarily retrospective: recording the experience in medias res is impossible. Depression is too paralysing. It precludes anything as constructive as writing. If you have lost all your mirth, you languish in corners, you mope, and cry (and shout and scream). But you don’t finesse prose. There’s something about depression that defies communication.

Oh, how does all that feel familiar, too familiar. It also makes me realize why I cannot stop with these notes. If I go silent, then the depression may come back full force, and if I keep on talking then I can stay on an even keel, remain a useful person.

Do I spend the next hour on email, or back to “Road Tripping”? I have between an hour and 90 minutes before I need to leave for work.

sch 8:56 am