Moving Smartly Along

I'm happy. Things are getting done and dusted. Spoke to J and he will be here to visit me and Mexico soon. He and I have known one another since I was 20 and he was 27. I hope he moves here to keep me, and of course him, company in our old age. He likes animals.

Spoke to P who gave me a 70%-30% ratio of his odds of coming here. He's 80 plus now but I can't bear the thought of never seeing him face to face again. I'm the chick who'd be like the done in woman thrusting herself over the casket should he leave me. He was the, he is the, love of my life. The one man who got it all.

There is nothing more precious than being understood, seen and valued. All at the same time. I have his art near, a self portrait in particular, and glancing at it gives me comfort.

J! J my dear friend J just published her first book. A self published one. All I can say about it, and my readers know nothing about how I know J, is that finally I am reading a gorgeous, I mean gorgeous steam of consciousness story, that finally reveals her inner struggles. It's absolutely a brilliant piece of work. I have to talk to her first, run things by her, to see if she is comfortable having me promote her here. She's has inspired me as well to write what I never say. My memoirs.

I've been a lucky woman in my life. I once heared a baptist sermon given in Massachusetts. The preacher said: all those times you felt low. All those times you felt punched in the gut. All those times you felt you couldn't get up, it was God who took the death blow. I could have been an assortment of crazy, but I'm not. God took the death blow.

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Something Bigger Than Thomas: A Native Son

There was a moment in time when I witnessed my father vulnerable. He had rented a car and parked it outside my apartment in Brooklyn. He was not feeling well and had asked to stay with me and my then boyfriend, Eric. He slept for days on end and I really don't have any recollection of talking to him while he was with us. This is important to this narrative because I have always lamented the fact that I seem to have spent relatively little time with my father. I have snapshot memories of being with him - here and there, here and there. I am a teenager and he drives me into San Francisco, hands me money while he waits in the car, and I go in and buy some shoes. There are the times we drove the few blocks necessary to get to Baskin Robbins for ice cream over on University Avenue a few blocks up from his home in Palo Alto. There were lots of family reunions but I don't have any memories of being alone with my father, having a conversation or discussing anything. He did however ca...

Diane Tose 1942-2020

In part, Diane’s passing marks the end of an era. The end of a time in history when the work in HIV research was experimental and run by mavericks. Diane was a ‘maverick’ in the truest sense of the word. We all were no matter the discipline we worked in. We were trailblazers. Diane was a complex woman. If you didn’t come to know her she was just a tall British woman who put the fear of God in you. She was pragmatic, demanding, and proudly British, even though she confided in me that she felt much more American than British. Diane liked things just so. An inch either way would be enough for her to voice a strong opinion. Opinionated women can often be alarming, but in Diane I found a heroine. I admired and looked up to Diane. She was no-nonsense. I can remember her calling patients into her office for pelvic examinations with a loudly overheard: Let’s have a look-see, or a get those feet up in the stirrups. I am sure that had she been a man she’d have been reported into oblivion, ...

Consider This

This post was inspired by my dear friend Sue, a psychoanalyst on the west coast of the US. It was a conversation we recently had where she asked me how I control or deal with being bipolar. She said that my experience was important and that I should write about it. So here we go. I’ve been in therapy on and off for 50 years. Periodically I return to therapy when I need to tease something out that is going on with me where I want a second voice. In another conversation with Sue I asked her if someone could be given a diagnosis at one time and with therapy work through and out of that diagnosis into either another diagnosis or to more awareness, self reflection and control over the things that led you to therapy in the first place. She responded with an emphatic: Yes. Think of it this way: A diagnosis helps to focus your awareness to go further towards your healing and self awareness; gathering self respect along the way. Your awareness expands within the diagnosis and with that exp...

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