So I guess I had a pretty massive freakout over the past couple of days. It's chronicled on Twitter, more or less. To me it seemed to start with a horrible dream I had Monday morning. In this nightmare I was making a real effort to reconnect with my characters, but I'd gotten the wrong ones, which were more or less the Cure. (Anybody with half an eye can see the Cure's influence on Lost Souls, or so I assume.) They had all gone down to Shell Beach and commandeered barges, a tugboat, and some kind of tanker, with which they were planning a terrorist attack. Samuel L. Jackson was tearing down the Reggio highway in a furious attempt to stop them, but everybody knew it was my fault and hated me, including Chris, who promptly dumped my ass.

Some of my worst dreams are those in which I'm back with one of my exes. I remember Chris and feel the lack of him, but know I have to be with this once-beloved foe instead. It is the hollowest, loneliest feeling I've known in dream. Usually I wake up, become aware of him sleeping beside me, and feel tremendous relief. This time I woke up within the dream and knew I'd really done it, I'd finally fucked up bad enough to lose him (by putting the Cure on terrorist barges in Shell Beach, yes, I see the absurdity of this, but it didn't help at the time). I saw life without him, an endless featureless plain the color of a bruise. I cried and woke myself and him up saying "Chris. Chris. Chris" and babbling about wrong characters on barges, trying to explain this utter incoherence.

The ensuing day did not pass well. Even tranked to the gills, I couldn't seem to stop sobbing and panicking and doomsaying. I could not bathe. I could not even consider leaving the house (this has been a problem lately). I finally called my intermittent shrink and sobbed and babbled some more until she agreed to give me a few, VERY few, barbiturates to help me function over these next few days. I don't stress much about the holidays (we stopped doing gifts years ago, stocked up on stuff and unable to afford it), but my mom and a dear friend are coming to visit, and I would like to be able to act like something resembling a human being around them. Those who were reading back in the dark days of 2005 will remember my adventures with Dr. Jesus and the Great BUTALBITAL. Butalbital has come into my life again, with its idolatrous-sounding name and its extremely short-term help. Short-term because it's addictive as shit and not even slightly appropriate for treating long-term depression, but thank God she heard enough of the fraying in my voice to throw me a quick merciful lifeline (a scant 10 pills to be parceled out carefully over at least 4 days, worryworts) until I can go see her and figure out why my usual shit's not working anymore. Pharmaceuticals, you've nearly killed me and you've saved my life, both many times. Just like a goddamn lover, ain'tcha? ("Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?")

So today my Butalbital and I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the house, and baked a lovely chocolate chip-pecan pie. Tomorrow we'll greet our guests and try to absorb their love through the merciful haze that says so kindly, "No, that bruise color isn't filling your vision, you don't reek of rotting meat, these people love you, they're not counting the hours until they can get away or silently analyzing the stupidity of everything you say."

So that's the story of my big freakout. As ever, I tell it because of my determination to chronicle the life of one writer's journey through loss, depression, addiction, sorrow, joy, and sometimes redemption in the wake of the post-Katrina federal levee failure. I've written no fiction in three years now, so this is really all I have to offer, and I give it to you without shame. There's no reason for shame. I wasn't like this before August 29, 2005. I'd dealt with depression off and on since I was 17, but at the time of the levee failure I was on no psychiatric drugs, writing prolifically, and (I thought) fairly happy. Now I struggle most days just not to be a mess, and there are a hell of a lot of people who are a hell of a lot worse off than I am ... and a hell of a lot more people who survived the levee failure and its aftermath, but not the lives they tried to piece back together afterward. They gave themselves to the Great Subaudible. I tell you these things in part to keep myself from doing the same.

I need privacy the way I need oxygen, books, or love. I look back on all the people I've severed from my life because in one way or another they violated my privacy, and I see a bunch of people who had warnings. I don't make any big secret of it. Approach with caution, courtesy, and respect, and I will afford you the same. Approach with entitlement, rudeness, or lack of welcome, and at best you will no longer exist to me; at worst you will meet my friend Big Steve. (Yeah, and I talk so tough and defend my privacy and my property and then I take to my bed in a three-day swoon. Big fucking man. Also, you ain't no nice guy.)

Obviously, none of this commentary is aimed at anyone here. That I know of.

I'm making a Desolation Casserole, my own invention:

1 layer thinly sliced potatoes
1 layer bacon strips, halved
1 more layer potatoes
Scatter of pickled jalapeno slices to taste

Bake at 375 for 45 minutes. Then scatter about 1 cup of grated cheese (any hard, sharp kind will do, or even Pepper Jack in a pinch) over top and bake for 15 more minutes. If cheese is golden-brown but potatoes don't seem soft enough, cover with foil and bake the crap out of it for a while longer. I can't vouch for this recipe because it isn't done yet, but as long as you don't burn the cheese, I imagine it's pretty hard to overcook.

In case you haven't figured it out, I've been fighting off a bad depression for several weeks, and right now it pretty much has me where it wants me. I look at my neglected LJ and I feel sorry that I have so few words for the people who helped me, literally, through the failure of the federal levees and its aftermath. But words, even enough to make a blog entry, just feel so ... goddamn ... heavy right now. I'm still trying to struggle along with it, give you some content, make myself find something to say. But more often I find myself posting on Twitter, which people I respect have called inane, lazy, grunting. Maybe it is, maybe that's why I still have the energy for it. How much challenge can there be in 140 characters? Even I can handle that. If you miss me, and God knows I miss so many of you, come see me there:

http://twitter.com/docbrite

Twenty days until we get on the plane. Twenty-one until we touch down in the city we've been missing for nine years. Three weeks. 504 hours. But who's counting?

Amsterdam has always represented various types of freedom to me. I first traveled there in 1994, after attending a horror festival in the suburbs of London. Yes, I admit it freely, I went for the pot, and I smoked great sticky green delicious gobs of it ... but I also found a city in which I felt more comfortable than any other besides New Orleans, and that had a lot to offer besides good, (sort of) legal drugs. I can't really tick off a list -- "art, music, flea markets" -- though it has all those things and more. It's the feeling a city either gives you or doesn't, the ability to live in a place for a little while instead of hovering tentatively on its fringes. To use the word the Dutch use, it's gezellig, a word I've seen variously translated as cozy, comfortable, laid-back, easygoing. Amsterdam is all those things, or at least it was just shy of a decade ago. One of my strongest memories of that first trip in '94 isn't of the girls sitting in windows in the Red Light District or the first legal pot I smoked. It's of sitting in my favorite coffeeshop (Goa, on Kloveniersburgval) at the golden hour that sometimes lingers in Amsterdam between winter daylight and full dusk, realizing I was free to be here simply because I wanted to be; I had come here to this city entirely under my own power, earning the trip with my own work and money, and had found a place I loved. (This was also the first time I had traveled on my own, something I urge everyone to do at least once in their lives. It helps you realize what you're capable of.)

I tried to visit at least once a year between 1994 and 2000, sometimes alone, sometimes with Chris. Then money got tight, and my work went in a direction that didn't inspire European publishers who'd previously marketed me as a bleeding-edge horror queen to fly me over on press junkets* anymore. What with one thing and another, nine years passed. And now it's our twentieth anniversary, and we realized there was really nowhere else we could go, nowhere we'd been happier together or laughed more or had purer fun.

Over the last few days, as I started to get excited about the trip (terrified too, but never mind), I realized Amsterdam now represents another kind of freedom to me, seemingly small but very significant when you have chronic pain: the freedom to go anywhere in the city and do anything I like, for as long as I like, without having to worry that pain will drive me back to the hotel. When the pain comes (and it will, as we like to do a lot of walking), all I have to do is duck into one of the coffeeshops that are on every other corner and partake of one of the world's safest, tastiest painkillers.** As long as you avoid big fratty/chavvy tourist joints like The Bulldog, most of the coffeeshops are relaxing places (if not always quiet ones -- though the exposure to young people's music of today will be educational, I guess). It's impossible to overstate how happy this makes me. For once, we won't have to curtail our fun because I'm tired and hurting. I get so sick of that shit. Most of the time, when I try to "go out" and "do something," I can't enjoy myself as much as I want to, and I feel like a killjoy even though Chris would never treat me like one. Long before I'm ready, I stop having fun and start thinking about my everfucking spine and sciatic nerves. That won't have to happen on this trip.

My dear, sweet, honest-to-a-fault mother does not understand our Amsterdam trips. "All you do is sit around and smoke marijuana! You could do that at home!" Yeah, but doing it here can make it hard to do anything else. Also, the difference between even the best available here and the varieties available there is like the difference between your corner-store beer cooler and the world's finest purveyor of liquors and liqueurs, in terms of both variety and potency. In Amsterdam I can (I hope) have something resembling an able-bodied person's vacation. We will walk and look and laugh and eat and go to museums, and I will not have to hurt much or think much about hurting.



*Except my French publisher, Au Diable Vauvert, who has supported the Liquor books wholeheartedly and only wishes I would return to Paris to help promote them. I'm sorry, ADV! Maybe this trip will help me get over my terror of traveling to places I can't immediately get home from.

**In my essay "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (2000), I stated that, as much as I liked pot, it had few or no painkilling properties for me. This, of course, was the result of my being hooked on Vicodin at the time.

Hanging in here. Had a nice weekend with Chris: lakefront, beautiful softshell crabs at R&O by the lake, driving along the lakefront, visiting the (somewhat worse for wear) Mardi Gras Fountain, going to the zoo, laughing a lot. Also, for anyone who didn't catch it on Twitter or chefcdb, The Green Goddess made the front page of Gourmet.com! (The story's no longer on the front page, but still on the site.) Pretty amazing for a restaurant that's only been open three months, but I truly thought Chris could do it if he had a chance to buckle down and do it just the way he wanted. I think this same story will be in Gourmet's print magazine next month.

Pain has been bad, though, so I'm creeping around like a little old crippled man trying to clean up the house for my mom's visit next week, and what problems there are in the garden I'm letting the ladybugs and assassin bugs handle. Harvested three lovely eggplants today. When I'm not doing these things, I'm reading the Dark Tower. Again. Do it please ya. Or not.

Hello, faithful Livejournal. Again, I'm sorry I've been ignoring you, but I am still too injured to sit at my computer, and typing a whole entry on an iPhone hasn't gotten any easier. I'm scared that this latissimus dorsi thing is going to end up being one of those bad strains that pops up now and again for years, like the ankle I twisted while birding in Australia, but much worse because it will affect my gardening ability. Yet I've not been to a doctor because WTF can they do for a muscle strain except tell me to use heat/cold on it, which I already am, and offer me pain prescriptions, which I don't want? I am, however, planning to hit the gym and work the lat machines as soon as it seems reasonably sane to do so.

Oh, and please do check me out on Twitter (@docbrite), because I am rocking that place if I do say so myself. There are a few people I miss from Facebook, though. txtriffidranch, I'm looking at you. Don't you want to become a Twit for me? Yes, it is stupid, but oh so fun (as well as a great marketing tool, supposedly).

Apologies for neglecting this journal since I became a Twit. I understand this is a common side effect of being newly Twitterpated, but I also sustained some sort of hideous back strain while turning compost, and when you're flat on your back on a heating pad, it's one helluva lot easier to type 140 characters on your phone than it is to make a proper journal entry.

So I had to stop taking the Vilify Abilify because it was screwing with my ability to read, or, more specifically, with my concentration on and enjoyment of reading. It would take me half an hour to get past the front page of the newspaper. I was skipping around between books, reading three or four at once, which I almost never do and don't like. I've been worried about this apparently atypical side effect since I first noticed it on June 25, but it came to a head on Sunday when I tested myself by thinking about the new Stephen King book and felt about as much excitement as if I were thinking about a block of wood. Clearly this was not acceptable. I quit taking it the next day. According to my doctor, the drug's half-life means it should clear my system in about a month. I can't wait, because I hate this.

Other than that, I'd say it only worked OK. I think it made me a little speedy. It improved my mood, but conversely, it also gave me a craving for -pams. I don't know how that worked. I don't mean to sound like a Special Flower, but my reactions to medication are not always typical; I was apparently one of three people in the world who didn't experience those very unpleasant-sounding "brain zaps" when I went off Cymbalta for five weeks. Perhaps it confirms the prevailing theory that your correspondent does not, in fact, have a brain.

My latest gardening project is a small, shady grove at the back of the yard -- near the giant tiki head, if you remember the geography from my Flickr photo sets -- whose entrance will be marked by banana trees and Carara ginger. (Yes, I know these plants need sun, and will get it -- they'll be providing part of the shade, that which isn't already provided by the scrubby trees and brush I've left covering the rear quarter of the yard as bird habitat.) I cleared and mulched the whole area, planted asparagus ferns, and arranged lots of container plants -- mostly bromeliads, as well as one tiny jade tree I hope will grow mighty.

The only frustrating thing is that this all happened too fast. I got the idea a few weeks ago and figured I could begin implementing it gradually and lazily, as befits summer gardening. Then I realized I had better go ahead and get those banana trees and gingers in the ground if I wanted them to get a really good head start before winter. I had a burst of energy this week despite pretty bad sciatica, and now, before I know it, the project is practically done. Of course I can keep adding details forever -- I have a broken granite pot that begs for some creeping herb or other, and an empty bracket for a hanging basket, and lots of fence space for art, and eventually I dream of having a stone bench -- but overall it was not the leisurely project I thought it would be. I've always had trouble not throwing myself into things.

[Please note: Because my Assbook is still out of commission and I've kinda gotten used to the witty repartee we enjoyed there, I have temporarily opened this journal to comments from friends. Sorry, I know I have a lot of friends reading who aren't LJ "friends," but I don't feel like dealing with trolls and anyway you can still comment on prime_liquor or one of my other groups. I don't have e-mail notification for comments, so don't go commenting on old entries and expect me to see it. Caveat emptor. Quid pro quo. My name has been Kevin; please enjoy your meal.]

If I didn't know faustfatale and I were destined to be BFF before, I realized it when I found out we had both enthusiastically bought and read the wonderful book Washed Up: The Curious History of Flotsam and Jetsam by Skye Moody, though others scoffed at our "goofy" reading. But right now I use the phrase because I have many little skritty bits of subjects to write about, nothing worth a full entry. Chris and I have booked our 20th anniversary trip to Amsterdam, our second-favorite city in the world, which makes me very happy. We'll be there for our actual anniversary (November 5, Guy Fawkes' Day) and for Museumnacht, a wonderful event we stumbled across on our last trip in 2000.

Gardening goes well; as you know if you read me on Facebook (hey, don't be shy; I'll friend anybody except ex-stalkers), the milkweed I planted attracted a monarch butterfly, the first I've ever seen in my garden! Actually, I made a whole little butterfly garden with purple and white coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne's lace as well as lots of milkweed, a Golden Trumpet esperanza, & three kinds of salvia nearby. I also have a big passionflower vine for the Gulf fritillaries and plenty of parsley and fennel for the black swallowtails. I found a caterpillar on each one, and I'm betting our black swallowtails from this spring came back and laid their eggs here. We got grandworms!

Later this week I must return to my doctor and discuss whether the Vilify Abilify is actually, er, abilifying me any. I have kept a log of possible side effects which I present to you here:

Overall -- increased use of -pams; intermittent twitch in eyelids (though this is something I've had off and on for years)

6/21 -- bug crawling sensations (I did spend a lot of time in the garden that day and once there really was a bug on me)

6/22 -- a weird euphoria in the AM but it went away

6/25 -- could not concentrate on reading; jumped from one book to another unable to settle on one (this virtually never happens to me -- I finally gave up and read some Carson McCullers, as it's almost impossible not to become absorbed in "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe")

6/26 -- major mood crash; feeling of utter futility & hopelessness -- lasted about 12 hours

6/27 -- still no appetite; price of meds is actually raising my stress level

6/27 (11:30 pm) -- sudden dizziness & extreme nausea -- lasted 20-30 minutes (?), then headache

And that is my flotsam and jetsam for today.

So I went to see my doctor about the Cymbalta's troublesome habit of fucking off to the corner bar three or four days a week. I thought she'd increase my dosage, but instead she convinced me to try some new "mood stabilizer" called Abilify (who gets paid to think of these names?). When I picked up the prescription, I learned that, were I to work up to the recommended daily dosage, it would cost $426 a month. CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY if the fact that your crazy pills are costing your family the price of a dinner for two at the French Laundry causes you to experience violent mood swings, feelings of worthlessness, or thoughts of harming yourself. God damn my stupid brain anyway. I am utterly respectful of mental illnesses and emotional disorders in others, but when it comes to myself, I am practically a Scientologist: "There's nothing wrong with you that a good kick in the ass wouldn't cure! Why can't you quit whining? If you just make up your mind that you're going to be OK, you will be. You make me sick, ya big pussy."

Alas, my inner Scientologist has failed to convert me.

Seriously, there is a history of depression in my family and I have certainly struggled with it before, but I wasn't on any psychiatric drugs before the failure of the federal levee system, and I was doing OK. It seems to me that things in my brain should have returned to that level of OK-ness by now, and it pisses me off that they haven't. Can catastrophic events permanently change your brain chemistry?

I hate even talking about this shit, but I decided in 2005 that I would try to maintain a certain level of candor in this journal in order to give readers a realistic picture of one New Orleanian whose life was torn apart by Katrina and its aftermath. Other than some very nice cucumbers and mint currently being served at The Green Goddess, that picture is really all I have to offer the public world right now, so there you go.

Inventory: Cymbalta-failure crazy, check. Agony-inducing catch in the back, check. Garden despair, check. Sciatica flareup, check. Aimless self-weariness, check. Out of cookie-cutter-but-addictive Harlan Coben novels, check. Another New Orleans summer, no more pretending there might be one more nice cool spell, check. H*rr*c*n* season, check.

All this, and I gotta go be on TV tomorrow too. I don't want to, am in no shape to -- I'm as stiff as a board and as tranked as Kathleen Blanco after the levees failed -- but my OLGC peeps need one of the parishioners arrested in the Epiphany raid to go on and talk about the new archbishop. I've been feeling sufficiently useless of late that it is hard to say no to comrades-in-arms who want my help. I'll be on WWL, maybe on the 6:00 or 10:00 broadcast, maybe on Dennis Woltering's Sunday morning show, dunno yet. [Edit: Just learned I'll be live on the 6:00 PM broadcast. Eek!]

Did you catch those three lovely little words in the midst of my whinging? Yes! The new archbishop. Hughes finally officially retired today. So long, Alfie, don't let the door hitya where the good Lord splitya. No, I won't say that on TV. I'll talk about how we are heartened by the fact that Bishop Aymond has already extended an olive branch to us, saying he wants to enter into discussions with parishioners of closed churches, and that he is a native New Orleanian. I try not to be snobby that way, because many great transplants have entered New Orleans' essential heart as fully as any native, but Hughes never seemed to know or care about the rich history and traditions of Catholic New Orleans. Aymond will have grown up steeped in them, which gives us hope.

I still feel a certain aversion to the Internet (nothing in particular caused this; it just happens periodically), but I really do want to get back to reading my LJ friends list soon, as I miss y'all and am apt to wonder at odd moments, just to give a couple of examples, "What's txtriffidranch growing these days?" or "What Cthulhoid horror has greygirlbeast photographed on the beach lately?" My dad gave me a nice, new, comfy, not-yet-clawed-to-death desk chair, so I really have no excuse not to just sit here and catch up once in a while. Well, except for this damn catch in my back that still won't let go, but I'm trying to move around some and work it out.

Oh, and I think I hate growing tomatoes. More on that later.

I have simultaneous Cymbalta failure, garden burnout, bad sciatica, and a catch in my back from bending over to harvest mint that leaves me unable to do much of anything but lie on a heating pad.

All together now:

SUCKS TO BE YOU, DOC!!!

Lying flat on my back on a heating pad posting this on my iPhone.

Sig is home, but can't have the extractions until Monday. In the meantime, I must give him antibiotics and painkillers ... if I can find him.

chefcdb: [Huitlacoche is] one of the most common foods for ignorant ass food bloggers who think they're the person "who will try anything" to go and say a bunch of stupid blather about how it looks and tastes, invariably from canned product (which has usefulness in sauces and mashing up) and get self-righteous about how brave they were in the face of such disgusting goo. Those people crack me up as they never have a clue how to cook anything nor bothered to glean a little cultural info about how the disgusting ingredient actually functions as food in its society.

This is only one of the many, many reasons why I love the guy. I like his description of the flavor, too; it is nothing like truffles, more like hominy in texture, with tones of wild mushroom and corn. The first time I ever had it was at Marisol's Fungus Feast, where I also drank seven or eight kinds of wine and Wild Turkey and tequila. It ended up being an unfortunate night, but that wasn't the huitlacoche's fault.

I feel better today than I did yesterday, but still tired and sore. Last night I happened to recall that I accidentally inhaled a small amount of malathion vapor on Tuesday, and wondered if that could have made me suddenly sick. I avoid pesticides as much as possible, but my pepper seedlings were getting devoured despite applications of diatomaceous earth and habanero oil/soap spray. At any rate, the eggplant seedlings are ready to go into the ground, but I think they're going to have to wait until the weekend.

Oh, and someone (possibly several someones) wanted to know how I managed to get stung on the ass by a buckmoth caterpillar. Well, I was removing the flat tire from my wheelbarrow, and it came off more easily than I expected, and I tipped over backward and my left buttock landed square on the nasty, spiny thing. They are the only creatures I regularly kill in my garden, because they damage the oaks as well as stinging.

Speaking of plant matters, thanks to txtriffidranch for the cool propaganda! Your sticker will be the first one on my new computer.

Dammit. Not swine flu, but a bizarre prelude to a bad pain attack. I had big plans in the garden today -- yesterday I finally got a faucet installed back there, after two years of filling my watering can at the back bathroom sink -- but instead I am in bed with my trusty old heating pad. My major consolation is that, even during these bad spells, I don't find myself longing for opiate painkillers. I know they would only wear off after a few hours and I'd take more and more and eventually make myself sick and I'd still be hurting. It took me eleven years to learn that sometimes the pain is better.