Fungus fucks

You guys, I'm going to lose my shit. Have you heard of these things---fungus gnats? They're similar to fruit flies but seem smaller and more annoying. We don't have an infestation but enough of the little fungus fucks to piss me off. Apparently they feed on house plants. I've put my plants outside for several hours at a time---hoping to freeze the fungus fucks out---to no avail. This weekend Dan poured a dish soap and water solution on them---enough to soak the roots---and we left them outside once again but though there are less of them, the problem has not been entirely eradicated. And I think seeing one or two means that pretty soon they'll get humpin' and there will be more fungus fucks on the way.

I love my houseplants. I love that I have kept them mostly alive. I felt sad watching them through the window, shivering in the cold breeze outside like scolded puppies. But if they have bugs, I'm willing to let them go. (This, I'm certain, is also how I'd handle a child who came home with lice.) My next step is to repot all the plants with fresh soil but I'll admit that I'm a little hesitant to take on this project until the temps break fifty degrees and I get a sunny day. (Once again, I'm wary that this could be a potential parenting technique---my not tending to my kids' needs until the weather gets warm and I see the sun.)

The thing that is so, so aggravating about them is that they are attracted to light so they want to get all up on my computer screen (as if I need another reason to shut my laptop). Also, because apparently fungus fucks are the worst creatures of all and are attracted to sources of carbon dioxide, when they show up, they head for my mouth and nose. For my mouth and nose, you guys! My innocently open mouth and helplessly open nose.

The problem isn't so bad that I'm sitting in a swarm of bugs, the idea of which upsets me to even write. (Mercifully, I've never been swarm-of-bugs depressed. I remember listening to Paula Deen talk about how the lowest point of her depression was when she watched a pile of her pet bird's droppings that had amassed on the floor get carried across the room by a pack of roaches. The image has never left me. I'm sorry to have put it in your head but I heard that story over five years ago and I've really needed to talk about it.) The fungus fucks are not even swarming around one particular plant, which is part of the problem. I can't find "the source," which is what every website tells me I need to locate if I really want to take care of the situation. It's not an infestation (yet), it's just that every twenty minutes or so, one floats in and gets up on my grill and I shake my face and flail my arms and scream, "Get away, fungus fuck!" and then it flies away only to come back and haunt me a few minutes later.

It's making me just crazy enough to need to vent about it here...and maybe move.

Anybody know anything about fungus fucks?

Please pray for my mouth and nose.

Your computers are all broken. I posted this Thursday.

I went to Joyce Maynard’s writing retreat down in Guatemala; did I ever even say that?

Okay, guys, I have to take the story in chunks. One of the things Joyce worked with us on down in Guate was easing into our too-big stories. Finding the “container”---the manageable inch of time, the symbol, the relationship---with which to reveal the greater/bigger/heavier truth.

Por exemplo: Some bloggers might find it daunting to explain how ten days of international travel, female/writer camaraderie and $2 margaritas changed their lives. (They might find it particularly daunting to explain this by an arbitrarily chosen day, such as Thursday.) So, instead of taking on THE WHOLE BIG, GIANT STORY, they might opt to parse out a smaller theme or bit story---one night in a hot tub---to demonstrate the larger truth or just get themselves into the writing. (They might also extend the deadline a smidge.)

Despite spending over a week learning this container lesson over and over, I still felt pretty overwhelmed when it came to writing about the week. So my writer friend Aviva put it to me this way: “Maybe don't try to write the whole motherfucker/megillah.”

(We were fast friends.)

Her suggestions for potential “containers”:

a) what I packed
b) travelling business class
c) toilet paper as behaviour modification (She’s Canadian so she spells things prettier than we do. Even when the sentences are about toilet paper. And, don’t worry, we’ll get to the toilet paper.)

The problem is, I write my way to understanding. So, for instance, I might have a nagging feeling that the toilet paper situation---in Guatemala, where you throw soiled TP into a trash can beside the toilet rather than flushing it---holds emotional/spiritual significance, but I probably won’t understand why this is so unless I fuck around for 10 pages about it.

It’s not an entirely efficient process for a writer. (And it is an entirely inefficient process for a human who would like to live an actual life rather than intellectualize it, but that’s another story. See? So many stories! And we’re still on the toilet paper!)

I have to start somewhere (or not write here for another three months) so I shall return to the teachings of my very first governess, Fraulein Maria who used to say, “Lola Dear, let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.”


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To get myself ready for a ten-day writing retreat in Guatemala, I go to see The Hobbit. Twice. It’s a three-hour movie. There’s lots of sword play. The second time, I endure the 3-D version alone in a theater on a Wednesday afternoon wearing the big plastic glasses. I need an epic tale; I go seeking bravery.

(And with that admission, I hand you my resignation from the Cool Kids’ Table.)

Really, I just need the ten minutes when Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, is asked by Gandalf, the great wizard, to join the dwarves on their journey to reclaim their homeland, currently inhabited by a deadly dragon.

Gandalf says he is looking for someone to go on an adventure and Bilbo refuses saying adventures are “Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!”

When Joyce Maynard sends me an e-mail in January asking me if I’m interested in attending her annual February writing retreat in Guatemala, my mind travels through the hassles of flying in the middle of a New England winter and lands on the thought of sleeping on an airport floor for two days.

Plus, we are a week into January and my Christmas tree is still up. How could I possibly go to Guatemala?

Gandalf calls Bilbo on his shit: “You've been sitting quietly for far too long. Tell me, when did doilies and your mother's dishes become so important to you?”

Dan sends me six e-mails.

Go! Just go!

Do it, baby!

Say yes with abandon!

Do not hesitate!

Go, go, go!

(Am I being pushy?)

His enthusiasm makes me mad at him.

I haven’t traveled by plane since my dad died in April. I was worried my parents’ house would sell while I was gone and I’d miss the opportunity to say good bye. Joyce Maynard’s house in Guatemala may soon be swallowed by the rising of Lake Atitlán. I’ve read about it an article she wrote for The New York Times Magazine. I’ve also studied the picture of the volcanoes rising out of the lake (and read the Commonly Asked Questions and the near-twenty page info packet) on the workshop website several times in the last years.

Dan says it’s meant to be. That I need something like this.

Gandalf says, “I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of elves in the woods. He'd stay out late, come home after dark, trailing mud and twigs and fireflies. A young hobbit who would've liked nothing better than to find out what was beyond the borders of the Shire. The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there.”

This makes me cry underneath my 3D glasses.

I was such a muddy kid. In high school, a war correspondent came to speak to my journalism class and I listened to him talk while imagining myself ducking fire and tucking behind walls of half-collapsed buildings with my reporter’s notebook. It wasn’t the future I necessarily wanted, but I wasn’t afraid to let myself imagine it. It wasn’t outside possible.

Guatemala feels outside possible. For the last couple of years, just getting myself through the lobby and to the darkness of a movie theater has been an act of great daring.

It started before my parents died but has of course gotten worse since then. Two weeks after my mom died, Dan and I went to an indoor farmers’ market. I had to back out of the busyness of the stalls and towering heaps of potatoes and heads of lettuce to the edge of the greenhouse to catch my breath. All the people, all the conversation and exchanging of dollars and bunched carrots---I thought it was going to crush me.

I write Joyce, thanking her for the invitation and telling her why I’m hesitant---that my biggest fear about going is that I’ll wake up and realize I am in Guatemala and not the comfort of my apartment with the shades drawn. She tells me this isn’t a good enough reason not to go.

“Money issues would be an understandable reason. Your best friend's wedding would qualify. So would allergy to sun, water, birds and stars.”

Joyce Maynard knows that both my parents have died. Joyce Maynard knows me. Four years ago I wrote Joyce a letter after reading her memoir to thank her for writing it. I’d never written an author before. I’d never seen such honest writing. I told myself that if I got any kind of response---even a “please don’t send letters to my home”---it would be the universe validating that I was on the right path, that I was supposed to be a writer. She e-mailed a week later and I tacked it to my bulletin board. Two years after that I went to a weeklong writing workshop she hosted on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. I’d been anxious for that too---my mom had been dead nine months and my dad’s tumor had been diagnosed---but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I missed the opportunity. I was only an hour from my apartment for the entire week but I came home feeling like I’d seen the world.

Guatemala is not an hour from home and I’ve lost interest in seeing the world.

I’ve lost interest in seeing the grocery store.

I’ve lost interest in friends. And writing. And eating.

Dan highlights lines from Joyce’s note:

healing place

I take very, very good care of you

things happen to people when they come here

Joyce’s mother died from a brain tumor, the same type as my dad’s. Both her parents were dead by the time she turned 35.

She knows this loss and she thinks I should go. Dan thinks I should go. The therapist, who isn’t supposed to tell me what she thinks, thinks I should go.

My friend Aviva, who I met at the Star Island workshop, thinks I should go too. She’s trying to convince us both to go to Guatemala.

“Why do I associate travel with death?” she writes in an e-mail.

She is afraid of dying on the three-hour van ride along the winding dirt roads to where Joyce lives on the lake. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being a human in a room with other humans.

I write, “It’s probably a sign of a good travel companionship, both of us being terrified and all.”

“Do you think fear + fear might equal bravery?” she asks

“Fear + fear + meds might equal bravery,” I answer.

After my mom died I told myself that I never needed to be scared of anything ever again. I’d knelt in front of her face, looking in her scared blue eyes as she panicked for breath. I had turned up her oxygen and calmed her with my voice--- “Through your nose, my Mama. You’re okay.”

I had already lived through the scariest thing.

Dan sits beside me on the couch while I book my flight to Guatemala City.

My stomach heavy, I quote The Hobbit.

“I’m going on an adventure.”


To be continued...probably. (Not by Thursday.)

Paco told me to write.

And then he tagged this wall. (Photo by Aviva Rubin.)


Um, so...hey.

I like your hair...d’you do something new to it?

No? Well your skin really glows in this January February March gloom.

Plus that color always works so well on you.

Very slimming.

Very slimming.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a tapeworm.

I meant that as a compliment.

So, um, how have you been?

Oh yeah, me too. Soooooooo busy.

Hey, Boo?

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I did that sociopathic break-up thing where I just pretended we weren’t hanging out and getting close these past years and just dropped off.

I’m sorry I’m here saying sorry again.

I just couldn’t get myself to post anything. I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I hope that doesn’t sound rude. I think we know by now that this is my shit. I just felt sort of meh about connecting. Sort of meh about everything really. It was all a little meh in these parts for a while.

And did I want to explain that? Did I want to say meh anymore than I already have?

Nay.

Nay, nay.

And if try to embark on an explanation now, then this will just become another entry I never post. I know this because I wrote most of this two months ago and then as I started getting into it----writing about anxiety, depression and meds, oh my!---I got very holy fucking meh about posting it. So I put it away and then tried again two weeks later. Same thing happened. And then I just kept taking it out and putting it away again and again. (If you are reading this, it means a small battle has been won.)

But I’ve been thinking about you guys this whole time and wishing I could just call and leave you a message (I’ll admit, even in my fantasy I prayed to get your voicemail) so I could say:

Hey. It’s me. I miss you, Baby. I heard “Groovy Kind of Love” on the radio the other day and it made me think of you. I’ll never forget all that you did for me these last three years. All that you mean to me. I value and appreciate you, Boo.

And then, if I was a little buzzed up, I might sing a little.

When I’m feeling blue
all I have to do
is take a look at you
then I’m not so blue.

Really, Phil Collins? Twice you say blue? Twice?

All of this would have still been on your voicemail.

Then you would have heard me weep...or fall...or yell at my phone---Turn off! Turn off, Gadget!---and you would have known I love you.

But, no.

I stayed away. There was too much to say and I thought I wanted to be alone. I did want to be alone. I know how I sound. I understand if you think me a terrible ingrate right now. I felt that way too. When you guys come here, I am a writer whose work is being read and that’s a fucking privilege I don’t take lightly. More than that though, you guys are smart and safe and have been incredibly supportive through the crotch and when I disappear it makes me feel like I’m cheapening our thang.

At the same time, I didn’t want to disrespect you by telling you half-truths. Just the rosy. Next month it’ll be a year since my dad’s death and the last year---both parents being gone, the house on the market, the changed backdrop of life---it’s been, I’ve been, all over the place.

And I didn’t want to put my “all over the place” out there. You’re probably thinking---Oh, The Spew got hacked. All this talk about privacy couldn’t possibly be coming from the same brain of the girl who gave us the play-by-play of her colonoscopy.

Don’t I know it. Sometimes it feels like there are 17 people in my head (one’s named Paco) and they all have different boundaries. Some of them know I’m a better person when I reach for human interaction. Others of them are all, “Bitch, don’t you walk out that apartment door. You know we like our smoothie at the same time every day.”

But last month I went to Guatemala. And it was a fantastic adventure and the best reminder of why I have to fight---fight like a mofo---to be well and rebuild and create a bad-ass life. And I am straining every muscle of my hands and chest and heart to keep hold of that knowledge because depression is always trying to strip it from me. So I want to write something here about the trip.

Let’s give me a week. A little cushion. Today I feel strong. Tomorrow I might not. But I’m walking and trying to get to sleep at the same time every night and doing all that self-care bullshit that makes me feel like I’m eight-years-old, but which I know is always the foundation for any sort of lasting positive change. I should be able to get something post-worthy together by next week. Even if you’re not here---and I really understand and accept that most of you may not be here anymore---I’m going to get something up about my trip by next Thursday. (If nothing else, you'll get a poem.)

But I really want to write about it because:

It feels pretty wrong that I didn’t even tell you I was going, given that you guys were the first ones I told about the dream of taking this trip.

And because:

I don’t think I want to be alone anymore. Not all the time anyway.

Smoothie or no.