5/4/17

i'm thankful for the panic attack i had when i was seventeen which was the reason i discovered i have a heart defect. i'm thankful that though one of the things you're supposed to tell yourself about a panic attack is that it doesn't mean anything is medically wrong with you, that it's just a false alarm you need to ride out, i've always had trouble believing it since one of my first real bad panic attacks (and my belief that it was a heart attack) led to the revelation that i have a heart defect. i'm thankful for that panic attack, since it's good for me to know that i have the heart defect, safer and more likely to keep me alive in the long term, even though i will also always not be thankful about it, since it felt like a justification of my dark scary panic thoughts, a worry that came true, which since that time has always existed as an undercurrent to my panic, an extra dose of fear. i'm thankful to have stolen that concept from the frank o'hara poem "song," which ends:

i'm thankful for the sad and tender plead of ending, how after what feels like an expansive and hopeful image of love solving all problems, the poem ends abruptly with the exhale of those words, "tell me." i'm thankful to have d, who has comforted me through many times when i was afraid i was going to die and who is the person whose company i want to live to experience. i'm thankful to remember once having a very bad trip and being absolutely sure i was going to die and lying in bed with d spooning me as i quaked with anxiety and her reading me, in a measured and calm and quiet voice, the book hungry monkey. i'm thankful to remember, even though it makes me sad, how i kept stopping her reading the book to ask her to reassure me that i wasn't going to die and i'm thankful that every time she provided that reassurance. i'm thankful more than anything to live in a world where she is possible, even if that also means living in a world where lots of terrible things are possible too.

i'm thankful to have been reminded of that o'hara poem by its presence in yesterday's edition of pome. i'm thankful for tinyletters that share poetry, which i think is my favorite frame for poetry, moreso than a book or magazine or website or app. i'm thankful for other poetry newsletters i subscribe to, which include the breakfast cereal with marshmallow ashberries of precarity octets, the secret poems of abigail welhouse, and the essayistic letters of etch to their own. i'm thankful to once again mention poem.exe, which is the most perfect bot. i'm thankful that though i have never been all that great at reading poetry in a sustained fashion, these bites of poetry allow me opportunities in the flow of my day to stop time and ride the lines to a feeling. i'm thankful to conceive of a poem as being like an art installation, where you may not understand exactly what the space is or how it was constructed or what it's intended to mean or say or references it's alluding to, but you know that by being inside it for a moment you are changed by it, perhaps imperceptibly but still somehow changed—your mood shifts or the rhythm of your breath or a thought appears in your mind from nowhere, a lightbulb turning on in the void.

i'm thankful for the scene in the episode of the leftovers we watched last night where (minor vague spoiler) a husband, sweating and weeping in the midst of a mental breakdown, admits to his wife that he's seeing a dead person all of the time and she's talking to him. i'm thankful for the calmness of his wife as she supports him through the situation and for how that reminded me of the loving care given to me by d in my times of need. i'm thankful that the second season of the leftovers has made a leitmotif of using the song "where is my mind" by the pixies. i'm thankful that the show uses two versions of the song—the original and then a solo piano cover. i'm thankful that every time one of them plays, i go through this strange sequence of emotions: first, laughter at how trite and obvious and fight club it is to repeatedly use this song to soundtrack the metal breakdown of a character, then, as it kicks in more, as if by some kind of magic, a visceral rush of intensity as i let the song wash over me, feeling its power, and then ending in appreciation, both for the song and the fact that the show could make me feel such different feelings. i'm thankful for this very advanced accomplishment. 

i'm thankful that we are going to cover the song in the band, which i think will be really fun. i'm thankful that last night we were doing stupid internet quizzes together, which was a source of such joy. i'm thankful to have learned that i am a bloody mary, a frustrated idealist, paul rudd on friends, and someone with a perfect (ly middlebrow) musical IQ. i'm thankful for these videos (1, 2) of sarah LARPing. i'm thankful that they are very funny but also (especially the second one) touching, especially the part at the end where she talks about not having hobbies or interests besides always being on the internet all the time and how freeing it was to live in an imaginary moment with a group of other people, where violence and pain and death are fake (just numbers shouted into the wind) but camaraderie and care are real. i'm thankful that even in dark times, there are escape routes like this, and i'm thankful to hope that if you don't have one right now, you hold on until another appears. i'm thankful to know it will appear.