So in an effort to keep my brain busy lest it be left to its own obsessive and defeatist tendencies . . . I’m throwing myself into a new book and a couple of sewing projects this week.

The book is bringing me to tears, a little bit, in a good way though. . .

Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: Hyperion 2007

From Goodreads.com:

“Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.

So began Saks’s long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.

In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.”

And the sewing is just good quiet time. . .silencing those sounds that just keep hammering over and over like a timpani inside my head. . and the rhythms of  ”I miss you. . .I miss you. . .”

So back to this fabric for now:

. . .And that repetitive sound the needle makes while I’m sewing.  . . the mindfulness and meditation made that much easier. . .you just keep your eye on the straight seam, peripherally on the edge so that everything flows to the left of it. . .the operative mantra of silence. . .and the comfort of knowing that’s all you need to worry about for now.

Words & music by Paul Simon:
Rene and Georgette Magritte

With their dog after the war

Returned to their hotel suite

And they unlocked the door

Easily losing their evening clothes

They danced by the light of the moon

To the penguins, the moonglows

The orioles, and the five satins

The deep forbidden music

They’d been longing for

Rene and georgette magritte

With their dog after the war