Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

"Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again..."
Sounds of Silence, written by Paul Simon


"He's here!"
Legolas, speaking of the mind of Sauron, from LOTR: The Two Towers, the movie adapted by Phillippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Peter Jackson



Early every year, generally during Lent, I have a huge mood crash.

I heard the Chinese gong of tinnitus in my right Meniere's ear earlier. I have four separate tones and timbres of tinnitus that I hear bilaterally, every day, 24/7. The Chinese gong sound is not one of them. A full-blown Meniere's attack is coming.

In the last three or four years I've developed mood crashes in association with Migraine attacks too. Full moon next week, Tuesday I believe, the Worm Moon as this one is called. Full moons always trigger Migraine attacks.

This year, the absolutely perfect alignment, and my old friend has come.

Death. Impending world-wide disaster (be under no illusion, I've dreamt it in the last week and saw it--it's coming). Loneliness even, and that's an odd thing to trouble me. I relish solitude and silence, cannot get enough. A week from tomorrow will be 18 years since the last time I was with my ex-husband. I'm a sworn celibate since my divorce. It's...tough.

Longing for God that cannot, and I mean cannot be expressed. It's a soul thing, souls that have no five senses to process information. How does a person talk about an event that doesn't come into the mind through one of the five senses? How does a person continue to live like this? St. Teresa of Jesus tried to talk about it. Once she said that she died because she could not die. I understand.

It hurts, to want like this. To want God so utterly inexpressibly, to want that which by everything I hold to be right would be completely wrong, to want to be already past the coming purgation, to want to adjust time and erase the last two years completely from all remembrance. I smolder without being consumed for the future, that which for me may forever remain just beyond the tips of my sparkling fingers. The pain is...exquisite.

Darkness, my old friend, is never far away.

It's 3:00AM.


"....'Take my arms that I might reach you,'
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the wells of silence.
The Sounds of Silence, written by Paul Simon


"No one knows what it's like to feel these feelings,
Like I do.
And I blame you."
Behind Blue Eyes, written by Pete Townshend of The Who



Copyright 2007-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, The Carmelite's Habit, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Announcing December 2008 Headache Blog Carnival

First anniversary of Diana Lee's Headache Blog Carnival! (link also on left)

Quote from Diana Lee:

Entries for the December 2008 Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival on the theme of "Maximizing Your Enjoyment of the Holiday Season" are due by the end of the day on Friday, December 5th.

Posts may be submitted through the form on the carnival website or directly to me by e-mail.

The December carnival will be posted on Monday, December 8th at right here at Somebody Heal Me.

Teaser: My submission will have a holiday recipe, too. :D

Full-moon mead, or "Primarily, you can never be too clean or too oxygenated."

Wanna know how much better crystals and Donna Eden's energy exercises have made me feel?

Look what I did today!

Two batches of mead, made today on the full moon so that the yeast would be as active and healthy as possible. This is enough to last me for an entire year at the slow rate I drink it.

The one on the left has a whole orange cut into eighths and the one on the right is just the zest of an orange removed with a vegetable peeler and the orange supremes. And juice from said dissecting of oranges.

The one on the left has whole cloves, a whole allspice, a cinnamon stick, and a chunk of whole nutmeg. The one on the right has all that plus 1/3 of a vanilla bean.

Ooooo what a fine meading time will be had by all come Christmas!

My mother crocheted that tablecloth. I'd love to do a whole special on my mother's crochet work and quilts. They're amazing, to me at least.

One down side to the full moon is that without fail, I get a migraine. Right now, migraine aura lights are flashing like camera bulbs in my field of vision. I've got a dull ache that will only escalate unless I do something.

Here is a poem I wrote last April before my father died in May. Nothing special about this one. XD

This is What Life's Meant to Be

Beloved:
Migraine’s blowing up my head,
Throwing up inside the bed,
Daddy’s dying way downstairs,
Migraine does not give a care.

I have Job’s friends for my own,
Never miss a zinger known.
They’re impatient for my doom,
Eying things inside my room.

I can’t even reach a drink,
Medicine’s beside the sink,
No more covers on the bed,
Now my face is turning red.

“May I take your picture dear?”
Can’t believe that’s what I hear,
Mother wants the world to see,
What her daughter’s come to be.

No more reason left to live,
No more love in me to give,
Let me die, just let me be
This is what life’s meant to be.

Lover:
Darling, Daddy’s very old,
He’s got cancer, truth be told,
I will change your bedclothes now,
See? Bed’s all fresh from stern to bow.

You have ditched your evil friend,
Water’s gone around the bend,
Here’s a glass of nice cool drink,
Will you need an ice pack, think?

Here’s your medicine and mask,
Closed the blinds before you asked,
By the way, the mail is here,
Disability’s been cleared.

Soon I’ll lay you down with me,
Then we’ll see what love can be,
Close your eyes and smile for me,
This is what life’s meant to be.

Genealogy in the South, or Why I Hang Out in Cemeteries

The American Civil War was a bloody, demoralizing, family-destroying event in United States history. After the war was over, in the Southern states there were rumors that those who fought would be prosecuted as war criminals and their families denied war pensions. How did a few choose to address these rumors?

Courthouses that contained census records were burned to the ground, that's how. Even copies of census records kept in Washington were destroyed. The only census records for the year 1890 that still exist nationwide are a fragment from Perry County Alabama and a few tiny bits and pieces from here and there. So what's an enterprising Southern genealogist to do for information? Go cemetery-hopping!

Cemetery headstones and old church records contain the only collated information available about deaths and burials, other than whatever someone's Aunt Harriet might have written down at the bedside of an ancient relic who was about to pass on.

Cemetery headstones frequently contain not only birth and death dates, but parental information too. And you might find that individual's parents' graves nearby, and their parents' too, and their children, and so on.

One sad note about the graves of many of our fallen Civil War veterans: their graves are often unmarked. For the same reason that today's genealogists look to gravestones for information, there were fears after the War that the same information would be used to identify and prosecute war criminals and their families. So, many graves simply went unmarked and remain so to this day.

One big issue with gravestone information is that occasionally, it is significantly wrong! I've got this problem in my family, and we're wrangling about who is going to fork over the money to solve it and get the name corrected. So, always make a note that your source for the information you collect is a gravestone from Serene Cemetery off Highway 261 near Eastville, or wherever you happen to be. Remember that a picture of the offending gravestone is worth a thousand notes too.

Some churches have burial records that are more than a hundred of years old. I have a set of transcribed minutes for a Presbyterian church that kept burial records since 1827. A phone call to the church office, or a letter to the pastor if the small church doesn't have an office, many times will open a jewelry box of information that will only require searching for the names and dates you need.

If you're really on your genteel Southern manners, you might be able to get a referral from the pastor to an elderly church member who may already have long lists of old genealogical information compiled by his or her ancestors that might be the motherlode of information you've been searching for.

Come November through March, nothing excites me more than spending a whole Saturday in a new cemetery. Some of them are way, way back in the woods and haven't been kept up for more than a century. Need long pants and bug spray for those forays because the ticks are as big as muskedines. Some cemeteries are so huge it takes many Saturdays to explore them completely. Some are just a few graves that were placed on the grounds of a homestead now long gone.

I'm on a quest to photograph every headstone for every ancestor of mine that I can find. That will take me the rest of my life, I reckon. I figure I'm related to nearly a third of the state of Alabama, if their families have been here more than a hundred years. I know of one Civil War veteran uncle buried in Chicago where he died of dysentery in a POW camp. I know the plot number and everything, and someday I'll get up there to photograph his headstone too.

My father always goes with me in my cemetery wanderings. And he always takes his best friend 'Roscoe.' Can't be too careful.

If you decide to make a trip, always carry a notebook and pencil, water, cell phone, and most importantly tell someone exactly where you're going and when you're coming back. Give them the address of the cemetery and the name of the church, if one is associated with it.

And be respectful of the dead. Don't take things that aren't yours, because all states have laws against removing things from graveyards under 'grave robbing' statutes. Don't take your metal detectors either, because they're covered under the same 'grave robbing' statues. Don't leave trash, don't have a picnic on the graves themselves–be decent, folks.

Mostly, be ready to be awed and filled with reverence. Cemeteries are peaceful, restful places and I love to be in them. Weird as this may sound, I would buy property next to a cemetery and build a house (if I had any money!) because I haven't found many cemeteries in central Alabama that don't contain graves of my ancestors. I feel near to the past when I'm in a cemetery. The past, history, is my love, and I love my ancestors. We've been in Alabama since 1796. This ground where my ancestors rest is truly my home.

Meniere's and Migraine Madness
Another blog written long before today! I write these things on the fly, as I find clear minutes. Sometimes I feel better at, say, 2:45AM for 25 minutes. I write like crazy until I give out. I pick up again next time I have a few clear minutes, and that's how I get these things written.

I've discovered that this cognitive dysfunction I'm suffering from has had a rather interesting effect on my brain. I can be creative, but not cogitative. I can write music or a story or a blog or draw or sing--but ask me to fill out a form, or read and understand instructions for something like the disability paperwork I'm struggling with right now--cannot do it.

I cannot get rid of this migraine. The pain just goes on and on. As long as I hold my head perfectly still and try not to think, the pounding lessens. But I do have to get up every now and then, and that's when trouble hits.

Meniere's ear pressure is still there in both ears. The tinnitus is still loud. I was trying a tinnitus masking technique of listening to ambient music through headphones and actually heard the hearing in my left ear gradually fluctuate downward until I could barely hear at all.

I'm going back to bed now. When I'm flat on my back, it doesn't matter how many dizzy spells I have, or how bad my head hurts. I pray, and God listens, and sometimes He says 'yes' to my prayers and sometimes He doesn't. But He always listens.