On Being One's Own Best Friend

If I were my own best friend I would try to be genuinely helpful to myself.

I would give myself advice but try not to be a nag.

I would get me out of the house when I was in a funk.

I would urge myself to get professional help when we reached the limits of our friendship.

I would explain to myself that me did not mean what he said.

I would stay and keep me company and send someone else for help.

I would proofread for me since I can’t do it for myself.  That includes double checking schedules and calendars, which are confusing charts full of imaginary plurals like "days" as if there is ever more than one. 

I would remind me of good ideas I had already thought of but not acted on.

I would have a theoretical discussion with myself about the limits of friendship. I would steer the conversation away from my ideas about group selection versus kin selection in evolution.

I would applaud my better piano solos.

I would ask myself hard questions without expecting an answer.

I would be more patient with myself than I am with me.

I would just sit and be quiet with me when talking would not help.

I would fight fair with myself, and not beat myself up for losing.

I would probably take myself for granted.

Written by C.B. Davis or his best friend at some undisclosed "point" in time.

What I Have Been Doing: Writing About Being Bipolar

     When I first thought of an autobiographical project, I had in mind a book of amusing stories, just my best stories about interesting people I have been privileged to meet in my life and unusual things I have witnessed and done. Confronting my past was not really needed for that project, I had already been telling many of the stories in “classical versions.” Soon stories I had forgotten about started flooding into my consciousness too, and I began to draw some of them as little comics. But like many creative projects, this one has now turned into something else, a task which DOES involve digging into and facing my past.                    
      It started when, out of desperation at being unemployed for so long, I read a self-help book in which the author suggested that the key to your success might be the very thing you think is your problem. Ok, turn a negative into a positive, I know, but how? Market your apparent eccentricity, since you don’t seem to fit into any of the available slots? Ok, maybe.  Then the cliché hit me with an idea I didn’t see coming: “Write about being bipolar.” Instead of hiding or de-emphasizing it, actually use it to attract publishers. My Bipolar Disorder is not an entirely negative thing in my life, but it was causing problems long before I was diagnosed. On the positive side, I think the highs gave me confidence to do things I might not have done on a more even keel, and that I gained sensitivity and empathy from the lows. Medication and cognitive therapy have greatly improved my life, but I still have to monitor my moods and try to stay physically healthy to support treatment.Why I was NOT diagnosed for so long is not much of a mystery really, although the details might prove interesting. Here are some reasons why I was not diagnosed sooner:
1.      I am Bipolar II, which is harder to diagnose and was not even classified when it first started happening to me. If you watch Homeland, the character Clare Danes plays is Bipolar II, and it is the most sensitive and accurate portrayal I have seen. She has extremely productive manias and hides during her self-doubting depressions.

2.      I found things to do in my life that were adaptable to my mood swings. Creative people are often bipolar to some degree (yes there are degrees), and I think it goes both ways, i.e. I pursued creative artistic activities in response to the way my mind and emotions worked. Writing and drawing allowed me to hide during depressions, and the manic side gave me the confidence to do things I might not have done on a more even keel, like directing plays and playing jazz with people a lot better than me.
3.      I grew up in the 60’s and 70's in northern California. My first few hitch-hiking trips as a teenager and my cross-country pilgrimage to Walden Pond were not that unusual in restless counter-culture. However, I was clearly running hypomanic on some of those “run-away-from-home” scenarios. I was confident that someone would give me a ride and that I would be safe.
4.      Self-medication


5.      I and other people assumed that what they did see of my manias and depressions were either  (1)just part of my volatile creative personality (which they are, in many ways) or  (2) me just being habitually melancholy and often whiney (depression) or (3) somewhat egotistical, short-tempered and obsessed with whatever I was enthusiastic about (mania). I thought that it was normal for me to vacillate between over-confidence and crippling self-doubt. I thought the Attention Deficit-like symptoms of hypomania were just my lack of discipline or concentration. Luckily hypomania also gives you the (usually false) confidence that you can finish the multiple activities you start, working a little, then shifting to a completely different task for another relatively short period. Thus, I shifted between playing the piano, writing, doing research, drawing or other hobbies, etc. etc. including whatever I am really supposed to be doing, like writing a long paper or reading student papers or paying attention to someone for an entire lunch. I didn’t realize that this was a symptom, I just thought I was interested in too many things and couldn’t let go of any of them for long. I learned improvisation and wrote mostly poetry because those art forms both fit with the immediacy I needed to stay interested and keep coming back.
6.      I was born into a loving middle class family that supported me in my creative pursuits. My parents paid for me to take private acting lessons and music lessons (organ and guitar). By the time I started having cycles, I had multiple creative outlets to channel mania into and to generate better brain chemistry when I was depressed.
7.      Periods of relatively stable "normality."
            I have had a lot of therapy, but even I haven’t had enough to connect all the dots between my bi-polar swings and my pre-diagnosis behavior. The idea of writing about being bi-polar sounded not only emotionally torturous but tedious until I realized that I would have to fictionalize it. Because this is a subjective memoir and not an autobiographical history, I must fictionalize it in order to avoid liability for any possible misrepresentation of people, incidents or of “Bipolarness” itself. Unlike writing history, fictionalizing also gives me the freedom to use framing devices, avoid the tedious details and create “composite” people and incidents that will be easier to tame into story.

Any behavior has multiple causes, even when we think we are in control and fully willing to do what we are doing.  That alone is enough to complicate “connecting the dots,” but there is also the subjectivity factor. Before diagnosis, before I knew I was bipolar, I completely identified with the emotions I felt, all the time. Now I know mania-from-depression-from-“normal”, but can I look objectively enough at my past to see when behavior I am ashamed of or embarrassed about was the result of being bi-polar? What if I was just young and an asshole in that instance? My mood swings would have explained a lot to me had I known what they were, but is it too late to sort the “normal” mistakes from bad judgment and grandiosity during mania or fear and insecurity during depression?       In addition to things I “heard all my life" that should have been clues, there was my own observation. I knew that “something was wrong.” In fact, that is the only way I could explain my first depression, which happened when I was about 14 years old, the summer before starting high school. Another story starts here, but for some reason I have a feeling that not only will I be able to finish this project, but that it will be publishable and sell. So you can read the fictionalized version later on. Now I have to shift my attention to more difficult things like actually confronting my past.

The Copying Experiment

     Today I am going to describe an experiment I did periodically with some of my college classes over the years. I did it enough times that I think I got a good sample, at least for my purposes. At any rate, I saw a lot of variation in how the students did the exercises.

     First, I drew a made-up symbol on a card, something scribbly, but not so complex that it couldn’t be remembered at all. I showed one student the card with this mark on it for three seconds, then I asked him to try to copy it from memory.  I then took the card the first student had drawn on to another and repeated the instructions.  When the symbol had been sufficiently mutated but was still recognizable I put the cards on the chalk ledge of the blackboard, but not in order. I asked someone not involved yet to try and place them in the order in which they were done.  Most of the time, the students were quickly accurate in their ordering of the series.

      The next part of the exercise is meant to make them realize something in connection with the first part. I drew a casual pentagram on the board and asked everyone to copy “Exactly what they saw” before I erased it. When they had all "copied" my star, I took several of the cards from a random selection of students and displayed them.  Everyone’s star was different, but they were all recognizable as stars. No one had tried to draw my star exactly, but instead they all relied on their previously installed memes for “how to make a pentagram.”  Except for one, who relied on her previously installed meme for drawing a Star of David. Very carefully, I asked the woman who drew it if she had thought consciously about drawing a six pointed star, or if she had even noticed that my star was five-pointed. She thought for a minute and said, “I just drew a star after I saw you had drawn one, just like everyone else. Mine just came out the way I always draw them.”

     This was the only time that happened, but of course this was not the only time that a Jewish student participated in the exercise.  Significant to the evaluation of this variation was the age of the woman, who was in her early fifties, in contrast with most of the undergraduates who were twenty-somethings. I think we could say that she had a different meme for “drawing a star” than anyone else in class. This inspired me to look closer at all the ways the kids “wrote” their pentagrams.  Another time I asked several students to go to the board and make a star without thinking about it. We watched for similarities and differences in the way they did it. Everyone started at the top and drew the first line down to the left, even the left-handers.  The stars all looked a bit different, but in the way that everyone’s cursive letters look a little different.  The “instructions for making a star” meme had become an unconscious motion for them, in the same way that we don’t have to think of each word as we speak, even though we had to “learn” each word at some point in the past.

     There are several points demonstrated in this exercise. Our ingrained cultural habits become unconscious and influence the way we see and remember. Shapes that we learned through “instructions” are more stable, and the resulting uniformity makes them easier to copy. Left-handers learn to do some things the right-handed way. The order in which slight variations appear between “generations” of copying can be reconstructed.

     Now, students, you tell me: What does all this have to do with the study of history? 

Talking with Beethoven (and Dr. Ira Progoff)

    Today's improvisation is a memory. For several years in my 20s, I took workshops in depth psychologist Ira Progoff’s “Intensive Journal Method,” and kept a journal accordingly. What I got from this practice and my brief interactions with Dr. Progoff himself was a more flexible perspective on time in life, and an understanding that “selves” or "identities" are stories that we tell ourselves. One of the basic tasks of this journal method is to periodically draw up a list of major life events in order to divide a life into periods.  As you return to repeat the exercise over time, your markers of major periods will change with your changing perspective on your past. These lists of “Stepping Stones” as Dr. Progoff called them, become revealing in comparison, providing yet another perspective viewpoint especially after many years have passed.

My interests in drama and history led me to focus on the Dialogic aspects of the Intensive Journal.  Writing out someone else’s “stepping stones” is the first step in having a dialogue with someone who is dead or no longer present. With the exception of considering an “entire lifetime”, this exercise was almost identical to one I had done in actor training as a Drama student, and I was keen on learning what I could from it. When Dr. Progoff came to the west coast to lead a workshop on writing dialogues with historical figures I somehow enrolled and showed up despite my general flakiness at the time. The historical figure I chose, Beethoven, had overcome a serious handicap to produce his greatest works, and this seemed an inspiring choice. In preparation for the workshop I read the standard biographies and a LOT of other books about Beethoven. At the workshop itself, I constructed a narrative of my subject’s life before trying to enter into imaginary dialogue with him. Everyone at the workshop was in the same stage of the process with their chosen figure. There is something uniquely serene about the atmosphere created when forty or fifty people are writing and meditating quietly in the same room with similar purpose.

At lunch there was a "silent table" where you could eat if you didn’t want to talk to anyone before returning to the work. I sat there one day across from a bright-eyed elderly woman. I was in my 20s so I don’t really know how old she was, probably my age now! She acknowledged me and though we both kept silent, I felt that I had not been alone at lunch. The next day I saw her at a “talking table” and sat near her. She had heard me read aloud from my dialogues with Ludwig, but I didn’t know who her subject was.

     “Saint Dominic.” She answered. “I’m a Dominican nun. I need to talk to him about some things.”  I laughed and knew I had found a friend at the workshop.

Later that day, one of Dr. Progoff’s assistants asked me if I was interested in becoming a workshop leader. I said, “I think so, I’m not sure.” She told me that Dr. Progoff would meet with me for a talk and stroll in the garden at a certain time and that I could ask him whatever questions I had. The workshop was held in a Catholic Retreat center on the peninsula, in Redwood City. Redwood City has an archway over its “downtown entrance” that reads “CLIMATE BEST BY GOVERNMENT TEST.” It was true. Dr. Progoff and I walked through an idyllic garden in glorious weather. He said I had a “flair” for the work. I said “I have a care for it,” trying to be clever and modest and just feeling awkward and phony as soon as I said it.  Luckily, he was wise and dismissed it as nervousness. We talked about my Beethoven project, and I asked him about being a workshop leader in an official status and admitted that I was not sure I was mature enough  yet to do it. He said, “Well, that tells me that you probably are.” I didn’t go on to lead any Intensive Journal workshops, but I felt I had achieved something by being asked.

My dialogues with Beethoven felt real in many ways- --first, in that he was reticent and resisted talking with me at all. When I asked him questions about his relationship with his sister-in-law and her son Karl, his nephew, he lost his temper with me. Beethoven accused me of judging him when I had no real knowledge of the situation. I apologized and asked him about how he overcame his depression when he knew he would soon be deaf.  The answers that I wrote for him were things I had learned by reading his “Helinginstadt Testament,” essentially a suicide note in which he talks himself out of committing suicide.  I thought that I chose Beethoven because I admired the music that he created despite his deafness, but what I learned from the workshop was that his life had more to teach me than I could absorb in a few days of intensive writing and meditating. I didn't consciously realize it at the time, but I was looking for a way to be productive despite my own depression, which when I felt normal or hypomanic was something I tended to compartmentalize and deny.  Beethoven was forced to confront the loss of his reason for living when he went deaf.  He would miss performing and it would be frustrating trying to teach others to correctly play the music he would write. Then it occurred to him that not hearing the noise of the outside world (or bad music) might be liberating, and more importantly that “the music he would write” would not exist at all if he did not live to complete it.  My dialogue with Beethoven produced a wealth of insights that continue to this day, not the least of which is the importance of finding the work that wouldn’t be done if you didn’t do it.

Everyday Life- Between the Landlords and the Gophers

Between the Landlords and the Gophers

      Recently, the conflict between nature and civilization placed me in the middle of a dispute between my landlords and an unknown quantity of gophers. The gophers were digging tunnels and throwing large mounds of dirt and rock up onto the grass. This is apparently what gophers do. I felt intimidated by the ability of such small animals to move so much earth so quickly. The condition of the yard was also deteriorating because the landlords have their own substandard gardener whose method of dealing with the gophers was to throw more sand and rock on top of their holes. The gophers simply made fresh holes elsewhere in the yard.  The landlords wanted the gophers gone and left me a pitiful but torturous trap to use. I shuddered and hoped I never had to spring such a medieval device on a living creature.     

     At the time we moved in   to the house the gophers were only digging in the back yard. When the landlords cut down two of the three trees in the back, it seemed to scare the gophers away for a couple of weeks. When they returned, it was in the front yard. The gophers were making bigger mounds more quickly, as if exacting revenge for the day the earth above them shook with the violence of chainsaw and woodchipper. In their fresh new front yard digs the gophers chewed up the lawn and the flower beds from underneath. They were making use of the tunnels along which ran the sprinkler lines, so they didn’t need to dig more. They were just pissed. By this time so was I. The predator pee was too expensive and “iffy.” So, I tried drowning them out, hoping they would hate it and move to another yard or back into the field behind the house. I would find the freshest mound and dig until I found a hole. I put the hose right into the hole and turned on the water. The first time I tried it water shot out of another hole about 3 yards away. The next morning I went out and found newly built mounds of freshly dug earth. The gophers just moved over and made new little dirt volcanoes erupting out of the calm grass. My friend Jake, a former student from Georgia who was visiting looked at the yard and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It looked like a miniature of a trampled on mine-field.

     Finally, after saturating the ground and running up the water bill, I gave up and went to the hardware store to see if I could find a humane solution. Poison and kill-traps were all they had. I bought what seemed like a strong, quick-killing trap and as the cashier rang it up she said, “A lot of people have been buying these lately.” I felt a little better about what I had to do thinking that there must be a local gopher epidemic. I still hesitated for days, hoping that if I stopped chasing them they would stop chewing up the yard. Finally, I had to dig between two recently made holes and plant the trap in the tunnel. This trap was concealed under a molded black plastic hood, which kept the light and dirt off the catch and made it appear to be part of the dark tunnel.  The instructions said that if you hadn’t caught one in three days you should move the trap. Instead I waited three days to dig it up. There was a gopher, smaller than I remembered them being, dead in the trap. I felt terrible. I wished that I hadn't done this, and hoped this was the only gopher.

Unfortunately, the largest mound so far was built-up on a new hole the next morning. I hesitated for a couple of days, and then planted the trap again. This time I couldn’t make myself dig it up for almost a week. When my wife threatened to do it, I went out immediately and "took care of it." This gopher was bigger than the first one.  Luckily, there have been no new holes since then, and the yard and flower beds are looking green again, if still pock-marked and uneven.  I don’t know what to do with my feelings of guilt about killing an innocent but destructive creature. I am confused because I feel a kinship with all life and yet I know that territorial matters in nature are often matters of life and death.  I am becoming a more conscientious omnivore. I did not kill these gophers for food directly, but the landlords threatened us with damages if we didn’t “USE THE TRAP! NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK. WE’VE TRIED!” We need money for food, unlike gophers.

I really am sorry, gophers. In the human world people “own” land, as strange as that must seem to you who work it.  This isn't my land either.