Mlle Hazelwood

Many people with psychiatric and brain conditions also report gastrointestinal issues. New research indicates problems in the gut may cause problems in the brain, just as a mental ailment, such as anxiety, can upset the stomach.

Stanford’s Dr. Pasricha and colleagues examined this question in the lab by irritating the stomachs of newborn rats. By the time the animals were eight to 10 weeks old, the physical disturbance had healed, but these animals displayed more depressed and anxious behaviors, such as giving up more quickly in a swimming task, than rats whose stomachs weren’t irritated.

A Gut Check for Many Ailments (via blxnblcks)

This explains a lot.

4 months ago Short URL

Antilamentation

structureandstyle:

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

—Dorianne Laux

It’s been quite a while since we posted anything here. I have a feeling it’s because both of us are teaching and writing all at once and those things make for very busy lives. I’ve thought about posting something once or twice, but never quite found exactly what I was looking for, something that would describe how I’ve been feeling these last few weeks. This poem sums it up pretty well.

I love many things about this poem, but what I love most is that it makes me realize that as much as I feel like I’ve failed, everything will be okay. I tend to be a practical person, but sometimes I need to be reminded that life goes on, despite or in spite of whatever I do.

-S

If ever I needed a poem, I need this one. This says so much about what I’m going through right now, and I’m ever so thankful that Savannah posted it—and that Savannah and I are running Structure and Style.

8 months ago Short URL 7 notes

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Love Love Love - Tristan Prettyman

I’ve been in a such funk lately, and it’s really hard to pinpoint what it is. Depression is—as I learned and understood a long time ago in The Bell Jar—sometimes triggered by a series of really small events, each insignificant except for their aggregate power. And that’s what I’m under now. My roommate of the last two years has graduated and moved back to Ohio, and my therapist has moved onto another area—both of whom were some of my biggest day-to-day supporters. My new roommate is great, but we don’t know each other as well and she’s gone on the weekends. Teaching two classes is absolutely overwhelming, especially because I am also a graduate student working on my own writing. Writing itself is both a real joy and a real source of pain, as I seem to be reliving some of the most intense, awful, and embarrassing moments of my life. My thesis advisor wants me to write or revise two essays every two weeks this semester—and I don’t know if that means anything to anyone else, but I struggled to finish just one every two weeks last year. I’m graduating in a year and going into a very uncertain economy with a very “superfluous” MFA in Creative Writing. And mostly, I have been walking around lately feeling like an enormous fool for all of the destructive ways in which I live my life (romantic aspirations included).

There are bright spots, yes: I’m finally enjoying teaching after two semesters of varying misery. My new roommate is very supportive. I have plans to move to New York after I graduate and in the meantime I’m going to both New York and Toronto/Buffalo next month. I’ve been lacing up my tennis shoes and squeezing into a sports bra every night, and for that half hour of time when I walk, I have no other responsibilities and the endorphins flood over me—copious as the sweat—and I feel human again. But I still can’t shake this feeling of something being off in my life.

So, sometimes I sit in my dim room and put “Love Love Love” on repeat. Or much of Journey’s Raised on the Radio. I think I finally understand the value of those cliched lyrics and platitudes we repeat, because when everything is just shitty, you need a chorus of optimistic but misguided voices to tell you this: “I know most definitely it works out the way it’s meant to be.” Because something or somebody has got to be positive. Otherwise, why even bother showering or brushing your teeth?

8 months ago Short URL 4 notes

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Antilamentation