Jill Domschot

Yesterday, I was hugely depressed. I’m sure that came across in my post. And I’m often so cut off from my emotions that my understanding of why I feel a certain way is terribly lagging. Let that be a lesson for you. Don’t suppress your emotions. Allow yourself to feel them so that you can sort through life changes without having to hit the vodka bottle. The changes I mentioned yesterday are hardly the only ones I’ve experienced in the last half year, but I don’t discuss certain subjects on my blog. Or I try not to. Some of them are neither positive nor negative, but more akin to and than neither/nor. They just are. The ones I didn’t discuss, however, have probably hit me harder than the ones I did.

Through my complete inability to accomplish anything, I was able to catch up on some blogging. Some of the blogs I follow I only see in my email, and those I haven’t gotten to. It was pleasant to just scroll with no time constraints on my WordPress app, though. And some blogs provide good reminders of basic life principles, like this one: Let the Lord Handle It.

The fear of abandonment is very real; many suffer from it due to their experiences with humans they should have been able to rely on. They carry that mistrust to their relationship with God. I have often thought that abandonment sounds lovely; that way I can be left alone. But my basic fear that I don’t matter at all is one deeper than a fear of abandonment. Why would God have ever noticed my existence to begin with? And yet, he has.

At Mass this morning, the homily was on Jesus’ promise that after he went up to heaven to be with his Father, he would leave us with the Holy Spirit, who would not only bring us comfort and peace, but who would literally dwell inside us. Not only does God not abandon us, but he must love us very much to want to dwell in us. We are important to him. Our needs are important to him. The world may never esteem us, but God through his love, grace, and mercy does. This is a powerful reminder. God loves us. God loves me. I wish to dwell in that knowledge and allow it to restructure my life.

Here I am Lord, I Surrender All…. These are beautiful songs I love to sing, and even more so when I believe the words.

…not completely, and certainly not intentionally. The truth is I’ve been doing nothing but going to work. I work for a Catholic church, so the part about Catholicism is certainly still true. But studying languages? Exercising? Writing books? Playing the accordion? No, no, no, and no.

Those who have known for me a long time are probably a little shocked. I’ve always done these things, plus extras such as taking classes here or there towards another degree that feels more and more like a wraith dancing along the horizon.

But here’s the thing. You try getting hit by a semitruck and see if your life just reverts back to normal. It does not. I thought that it would. I thought that I would just rest for a while and then spring back into everything. I expressed this disappointment to the chiropractor I’ve been seeing: The insurance money paid for a new car and part of the new accordion. Why can’t the allotted medical funds fix my back, too? He restated the obvious, that it would take longer than a few weeks to heal, and I would need to find time in my busy schedule to go for treatments more than once a week.

I’ve had an untenable schedule, too. My husband told me not to keep my freelancing work, and I didn’t listen. I kept the books I promised to edit; I kept tutoring. I worked seven days a week, twelve+ hours a day on weekdays. While my weekend work shifts weren’t quite as long, and I often enjoyed taking my computer out to my shed and blasting my music as loud as I wanted to, I was still working, taking time out only to go to the once-a-week chiropractic appointment and to Mass.

The freelancing is now done, and I’ve promised not to take any more work. I don’t know if my husband believes me or not. He’s known me longer than almost anyone (my parents being obvious exceptions); he knows I’m a tenacious workaholic. I really mean not to take more work, though*. Does that mean I will now have the energy to follow all my pursuits once more?

[*I owe a book critique to a friend, and I plan to do that for him. But that is not for pay and doesn’t count. So, he can just go ahead and email me when he’s got something for me to read.]

I honestly don’t know. The exhaustion is partly caused by low-grade chronic pain. My life has gone through a huge restructuring, and I don’t know what the future holds. My nihilistic side keeps whispering taunts in my ears: you were never going to be a good musician or truly speak Spanish, anyway. Your books will never be the visions you thought they were. They are riddled with errors and bad writing and…. I hate that defeatist voice. To be fair, this voice has never managed to stop me from continuing and practicing and learning new material, new songs, etc. But it’s still always there to assure me that I’m a giant screwup that was never meant to be.

I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for this post to be so dark. In fact, I meant the next post I wrote to be about the baile I went to a couple weeks ago. That was great fun. I loved listening to one of my favorite bands live — there were four bands total, and they were all good, but I was there to see Los Huracanes, el grupo con tres acordeonistas. The music was very good, but I’m going to be honest, the concert simply exhausted me further. We left before it was over, at close to 2 AM. My pain was not low-grade that night; it was pulsing and awful because I’d try to do a workout with five-pound weights. Yes, that’s how far I’ve fallen. I can no longer lift even five-pound weights.

The pain and exhaustion also reminded me that I didn’t belong there; it wasn’t my culture. That is always the case, but normally I’m so excited by the music that I don’t care. This time, I was engulfed by a curious sadness watching the couples kicking up dust as they spun and danced. It was a baile, and my husband and I weren’t dancing because, let’s be honest, we didn’t grow up dancing as these people had. I had done a little dancing in my youth, including couple-dancing, but my husband had not. And that was not to mention I wouldn’t have wanted to dance due to pain.

I don’t want to leave this post on a down note. I’m not sure that my life is going poorly, per se. It’s like I said — a great restructuring has occurred, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, what I will pursue as far as writing, classes, hobbies, and even blogging. Blogging is a stress-reliever for me; it always has been. For that reason alone, I won’t give it up yet. I’ll try to be more positive, or at least more reflective and philosophical in the future. Where has my sense of humor gone? Um, actually, it’s still very much there and ready to erupt at the most inappropriate moments…alas, some things never change.

I want to add an image below of my favorite singer. I’ve posted videos of his songs before, but I love this image. I would love to find it on a poster or vinyl album cover that could be hung on the wall in my shed-office for inspiration. I haven’t found one, sadly. Still, it’s a positive note to end with. I like how deadpan his expression is, but that he’s still giving me a thumbs-up. Well, I know, he’s not giving me personally a thumbs-up, but that’s the power of music. It touches the heart in a personal way.

Several years ago, when some friends of ours were walking with us through downtown Roswell, the loud din of the birds sounded as if they were echoing inside an aviary. It was a surreal sound I can’t explain to this day, and a surreal sound I’ve heard at various times since then. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but it’s obvious Roswell is actually inside a bubble the aliens have created for us. In my book Order of the PenTriagon, I call this the Roswell Bubble because obviously I lack naming creativity.

On Catholic radio the other day, which, by the way, is not confined to Roswell, I heard an echo of Protestantism that was mildly annoying. I don’t find all of Protestantism annoying, just certain aspects of it such as their attachment to the Southern Baptist philosophy known as complementarianism. Although I know that Catholicism isn’t hostile to this philosophy, it renders itself unnecessary most of the time and doesn’t have to be beaten like the dead horse that it is. I’m not sure why dead horses must be beaten, but the idiom says they do. Catholicism requires a pushback against feminism at times, or we would have women ordained as priests by now. But in general, the female saints — the greatest being Mary — and Catholicism’s respect of these honorable women as women, provide a necessary salve to the painful desire feminists have to be men.

The echo of complementarianism was particularly annoying (in case you wanted to know, it was on the show Trending with Timmerie) because it unpacked that old saw about men needing respect and women needing love in the context of marriage. But it went farther than I’d heard before. Why not? If you’re going to be complementarian and Catholic at the same time, you might as well take it as far as it will go. In this case, take it all the way to Mary. Don’t go halfway, mind you. Timmerie’s guest informed her audience that men, along with needing respect, need to be active and to do things and to feel accomplished, while women need to be the receivers of male doing. As Mary said, “Let it be done unto me.”

Honestly, are you as floored as I am by this kind of language? I don’t know how many times our Christian culture needs to hear the truth, but I suspect it’s as long as they keep unpacking this jagged saw. Love between a married adult man and woman is meaningless without respect for both parties. In fact, I would venture to say that disrespect could make women wither inside and lose all confidence because they don’t have the high-T confidence men have to withstand a certain amount of disrespect. And by that, I don’t mean men ought to be disrespected, merely that it isn’t as likely to break them. The second part I don’t know what to make of at all. I don’t think there’s a normal healthy male out there who desires a passive wife. Passivity causes depression and moodiness and trips down to the doctor’s office to procure prescriptions for antianxiety meds. Also, let it be known that Mary was being humble before God, a state that great men of the Bible found themselves in. Allowing God to work his will in us is not a feminine trait; it’s right and good, but it’s neither masculine nor feminine. Thus, it was not a general sense of feminine passivity that caused Mary to express that sentiment. Can you imagine what might have happened in the first century AD if a woman were to sit and do nothing all day, be the receiver only of her husband’s accomplishments? All members of poor families had to do in those days, or they would go hungry.

It’s insane that universal human needs and traits are determined to be masculine needs and traits by Christians; I’ve heard it frequently in (nonprogressive) Protestant circles. This was the first I’d heard it on Catholic radio. Very disappointing — but not altogether surprising. I didn’t listen to the rest of the show. After throwing out a statement such as that, I don’t know how a speaker can worm his way out of it. What is he supposed to say, that he didn’t actually mean it? That women obviously should be doers, too, because somebody has to make the dinner, etc.? This silliness is not just, well, silliness. It can be destructive to relationships. It can create codependent marriage partners, in which the male ego is thriving off the helplessness of his female mate. But most men would find a passive bride boring. The reasons are obvious, though perhaps not appropriate for a family-friendly blog if explicitly stated.

The truth is I rarely listen to Catholic radio. Maybe I simply am not aware of their hardcore complementarianism. I put it on in the mornings sometimes because my son doesn’t mind listening to Patrick Madrid on the way to school, but he does mind having to endure Mexican radio. Endure. Bah! I changed over to Mexican radio because my son was no longer in the car. What a relief. Not that Mexican radio doesn’t have its cultural issues, but it isn’t my culture, so why would I complain about the odd song that is obsessed with adultery or barely not-underage females? Most of the songs aren’t. So … I listened to the Mexican radio presenter excessively rolling his r’s for effect because a gran baile was coming to town. Don’t worry, I already bought my tickets, and echoes of the past came booming back yet again, just not in religious ways. I bought the tickets at a fancy boot store with boots at the level of the Tony Lamas I’d bought years ago for a baile. Tooled and elaborate, beautiful and expensive. However, I didn’t plunk down the $300+ for a pair of boots. Rather, I purchased a pair of boot-cut jeans and a western shirt like I used to wear before skinny jeans took over the women’s clothing section. I might pull out the Tony Lamas, too, but they are out of fashion now — they have the pointed toes that were popular some sixteen years ago. By the way, my Tony Lamas have birds on them. Aside from the pointy toes, they are heartbreakingly pretty with pink and turquoise and birds and flowers.

The bootheels are already echoing down the hallway…. Maybe they will echo a song for me inside this lovely globe filled with strange arcs of sunlight. If you would like to know who the headliner of the baile is, I will tell you: Los Huracanes del Norte. They live near here and give local concerts fairly frequently, but somehow until now, I’ve always missed them. They have a few accordion players in the band, one of whom, Jesus “Chuey” Garcia, I quite admire.

It’s unfortunate my impressions of Los Huracanes tunes don’t echo like birdsong. Ah, well, no trilling Snow White for me. I am spotted, anyway.

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” –The Princess Bride (William Goldman)

I’ve about had it up to my eyeballs with those who take great pride in suffering more than others. It’s a pandemic that I ward away with teenage level eye-rolling. But I don’t want to make light of suffering, on the other hand, because it is very real. It is simply not a competition. There are a few universals to humanity — well, I’m sure there are many that could be added to the list — but regarding the big concepts, there are only three: God, love, and suffering.

When people choose to believe they are unique in their suffering, they also choose misery. Suffering is universal; misery in the face of it is not. Self-absorption beyond the age of about three absolutely should not be universal, but it is an unfortunate fad right now. There is an old-fashioned contrary self-absorption in toughness; I wouldn’t like to see that fad return, either (you know what I mean: “if you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you deserve what you get”). Neither of these attitudes is particularly helpful to anyone. Neither are they Christian, albeit one of them goes by the moniker the Protestant work ethic.

I was thinking about the idea of suffering this morning because it’s a universal that’s been put on full display for me lately by people who can’t give up their misery and bitterness. While I’m tempted to be annoyed because this inevitably comes with an inability to recognize they aren’t alone in feeling pain (eye-roll, remember?), it’s uncharitable to feel annoyed. If someone is so caught up in their misery that they can help no one, least of all themselves, then they deserve compassion…if they will accept it. Giving ompassion is better than feeling mocked (see quote above, which was in response to Buttercup’s you mock my pain; this is what it feels like to be around a self-absorbed miserable person. Of course, Wesley isn’t exactly a miserable narcissist, but his quote is still apropos…) Self-absorbed people are hard nuts, after all, and compassion is not always what they are seeking, even if it’s what we should be offering.

I was considering the universal nature of suffering this morning, but I had no intention of writing about it (the subject was too aggravating at that point) until I went to see Fr. Stu in the theater. Wow, what a film. I expected it to be; I had lofty expectations because it has Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson. It did not disappoint. It’s a beautifully done inspirational story that contains more than one theme: forgiveness, grace, sacrifice. Primary among them, however, is also suffering. The eponymous protagonist suffers greatly, more than the average person, and fights through it to find his life purpose. It’s all the more harrowing knowing it’s based on a true story.

There are two types of people in the world. No, you should never believe a smug author like myself who tells you there are only two. For the purpose of this post, there are still only two. Sorry. The two are these: the sufferers who dwell in misery, and the sufferers who choose not to. Choosing not to is not always a physical act; sometimes we really can’t pull ourselves up, not by our bootstraps or anything else. Rather, it’s an attitude. It’s an attitude of sympathy, gratefulness, and faith that surpasses circumstances.

I don’t want to look too askance at the Suffering Olympics. It does give everyone the opportunity to win gold, even if they can’t tumble, ski, or swim. What is necessary is coming alongside these competitors and ensuring they have their basic needs met so they have a chance to find their worth elsewhere, in fulfilling their unique purposes that spring from life’s three universals. That fulfilment is a shiny gold medal that all of us could have waiting for us. I believe that. I honestly do.

Yes, I bought an accordion. I replaced the Hohner with a Gabbanelli. I had wanted to have both someday, but it wasn’t meant to be. I’m not sure if “meant to be” is quite the right way to look at it, though. Maybe I don’t like it because it’s passive and mundane, whereas the pursuit of meaning is active. Are you the type of person who wants to find meaning in everything, like I am? There is meaning in the most mundane; I know there is, but it might not be graspable.

This is one of the biggest draws of the Catholic faith. Things mean things to Catholics. Little things, big things. They matter. This could be translated as nitpicking or excessive rule enforcement, and it frequently is translated that way. However, now that I’m in a position of upholding some of those rules, I’ve come to value and appreciate them. By “upholding rules,” I mean that I’m involved in record keeping and acting as the office delegate, ensuring that frontend protocol in matters such as baptism is kept. For example, I’m a witness to potential godparents signing affidavits attesting to their living godly lives. This is important. It is not to be taken lightly. We are a very lackadaisical culture; we value little. But “it will all be alright” shouldn’t happen when adults are tasked with the faith formation of children in their care. Hence, there is a religious notary process, and baptism certificates act as legal documents.

Speaking of lackadaisical legal dealings, we discovered today that due to sloppiness on the part of a notary republic months ago, we couldn’t be issued the title to our car. Someone should have caught this error long before we purchased the vehicle, and it didn’t happen. Sometimes, you have to sweat over the things that seem small because they are often not. In this case, the notary had crossed out a date and written a new one without initialing it, thereby rendering the power of attorney statement invalid.

While I can’t say what the meaning of specific events in my life is, at least not regarding all of them, I do know that God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called to his purpose. Purpose and meaning are conjoined twins. And for some reason I now have a new instrument. I have to tell you a little about that. The Gabbanelli company is a family-run business, and in some ways, being small means they are extremely lackadaisical (that is the word of the day). For example, although they have a secure online store, they want their customers to send photocopy images of their credit cards and IDs (yes, at the same time with a form that has the security code on it, too!) to them through insecure emails, after they’ve already charged the customers’ cards. They won’t ship the product unless customers are willing to compromise their identities. Hence, we sent them a wire transfer. They don’t take online security seriously.

On the other hand, they take their products seriously, sending a signed certificate with each instrument, stating that it is an official Gabbanelli. The instruments are high quality and unique in design; they don’t want imposters selling cheap knockoffs. For that reason, they also have one single store in Houston, TX. There are no other entities licensed to sell their products.

The oddities of humans and what they are careless about never ceases to surprise me. Whether it’s becoming a godparent or incorrectly issuing legal documents, such as notarized power of attorney statements, they will let it slide. And then they will proceed to dig in their heels at someone who uses the wrong tone of voice or commits a social crime like a malapropism. Well, thankfully, most things we sweat over do indeed work out in the end. Most do. Even malapropisms have an absurd sense of working out their intended meanings.

This musing over meaning was brought to you by my new accordion! I find the accordion meaningful, despite its status as a mere object. It makes beautiful music, and the instrument itself is a work of art. Beauty is inherently meaningful. The life events surrounding it…huh, who can say?

…to forgive divine.” I thought of this quote yesterday, which was written by my historical soulmate, Alexander Pope. I know; perhaps we wouldn’t be soulmates if we met in person. But as that won’t happen on this side of the veil (time travel not being a reality), I can maintain my romantic notion.

This quote comes from his Essay on Criticism, published in 1711. I know this is hard for moderns to wrap their minds around, but essays didn’t used to be the five-paragraph atrocities that are taught in school these days. This particular essay was done as a long-form poem composed of heroic couplets. Can you imagine turning that into a sophomore English class? Education went downhill precipitously over the course of the twentieth and slid right into the garbage heap of the twenty-first century, and I conjecture that part of the problem was the rejection of traditional forms of essays, such as poems. Once these forms and structures are thrown out, what do you have left? I know teachers try to elicit cohesive groups of thoughts from their students, but when the students don’t even know what a heroic couplet is, how can anything cohesive be expected?

Losing traditions was not, however, what this post was about. Losing minds, yes. Well, there is also the loss of minds that comes along with the loss of traditions. But again, that was not the point. The point is that, as much as humans try to dot all their I’s and cross all their T’s, they still make errors because it is human to err, as Pope declared several hundred years ago. I tend to be very hard on myself when I make errors. Generally, I believe I will have to give up my human card and allow the floor to swallow me up when I make them, when the opposite occurs instead. Not that I would like to make them just to keep being a human being. That would be silly.

It’s been a hard few days. It’s been a hard few weeks and months, too. My life has dramatically shifted in so many ways in the last few months, culminating in my traffic accident, which has wrecked my ability (for now) to exercise. And as I haven’t replaced my accordion, it has wrecked my ability to play my instrument. That isn’t to mention writing my books. That is gone from my life for now because I have jobs I need to complete that predate my new fulltime job — and so I am completely strapped for time. I don’t know why I’m obsessive about accomplishing and moving and doing, but remove my long list of pursuits, and I have little ability to cope. I’m not complaining as much as I’m setting the stage for why I was consumed with abject misery yesterday. The cherry on top was that I became a self-martyr because I made a mistake on something I had done at work. Nobody else had said anything; it was all my own self-flagellations I was bleeding over.

And then a voice of reason reached down from heaven and asked me what else I was miserable and fretting over. Huh? Why was God asking me this? By the way, when I say God, it is merely my perception that this was an authoritative voice outside myself — that is, God. But if so, why was he asking me to dwell on further misery? And then he provided the answer: multiple people have made work errors recently that have cost me both time and money. In addition, the traffic accident was not my fault. You aren’t the only one who makes errors, the voice told me. In other words, the world of martyrdom doesn’t revolve around me. Then the Alexander Pope line ran through my head, and I was consoled because it shifted the world back into perspective.

Maybe Pope is my historical soulmate, and he was looking down from heaven and shaking his head. Maybe he did ask God if he could remind me of the line from his poem to aid me in my distress. Yes, I’m still allowed my romantic notions, which aren’t that romantic if you believe in life after death. Pope, you see, was a Catholic, and Catholics are not materialistic believers. They truly believe in life after death. That is why they ask long-dead saints to pray for them. While Alexander Pope has never been bestowed with the capital “S” saint status, he was a small “s” saint — and why can’t a small “s” saint carry our petitions to God?

I’m better now, less despondent. I actually do attribute it to the reminder from one of my favorite poets. I will offer the full stanza below, just so you can get an idea of where this oft quoted line comes from. This particular poem has a number of oft quoted lines, but it’s far too long to provide the whole essay here. You will have to seek it out on your own.

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,

Contending wits become the sport of fools:

But still the worst with most regret commend,

For each ill author is as bad a friend.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways,

Are mortals urg’d through sacred lust of praise!

Ah ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast,

Nor in the critic let the man be lost!

Good nature and good sense must ever join;

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Alexander Pope

Ouch! The entire poem is harsh in this way, and yet apropos and consoling at the same time. Thank you, God, for inspiring Mr. Pope. Let him know he has helped me, if you would.

Oh, so you thought I wouldn’t put up my yearly hate towards daylight savings time? Nah, well, I might have skipped it, and then I read that the Senate wants the entire nation to follow permanent DST This is because they are all demonic jokers. I think it might even be called the “Sunshine Protection Act” and purportedly “will give people more sunlight.” Sen. Rubio is quoted as claiming permanent DST is “backed by science.”

What is wrong with these people? You know what’s backed by science? The actual sun up there in the sky. The ancients understood this science. Why can’t we? As far as “giving people more sunlight” and “curing seasonal affective disorder,” I was just thrown into the depth of despair because it had started getting light at my 6 AM get-up time…until DST. Now it’s dark and miserable again. So much for protecting my sunlight, Big Daddy. It just doesn’t work that way. Because science is real…real science is real, anyway.

Also, from the news: who wants to ally with Putin now that he’s made sanctions against Biden, Clinton, et al? People like to willy-nilly call Putin a psychopath, and maybe he is Machiavellian, but sometimes that’s what a leader must be. I am being mildly sardonic. Seriously, though, he’s absolutely right to make sanctions against these people who are stirring up trouble on the border Russia shares with the Ukraine.

I wish I could be more patriotic than I am, but I don’t like the way we stir up trouble around the world. I’m just astounded at how generally decent actual Americans are — they are the ones I root for — in spite of their leaders. In my current job, I process charitable donations. Even in this little backwater, the people are generous. They are strapped and hurting from increased prices on basic necessities, and yet they gave more this week than last. And my neighbors, for no good reason except that they are kind, delivered dinner to our door. Maybe they noticed my husband working on plumbing. I don’t know. But it makes me weepy how much I appreciate actual Americans.

I’m sure there’s more in the news. A Deltacrom variant or some such nonsense. Bill Gates talking smack about how we’re going to have another pandemic (he would know, right?). I mean, how does he know? His words are what fuels the conspiracy theories! I’ll pass on the vast majority of news. Not only is it useless propaganda, it’s not even interesting on an absurdist note.

Lastly, it’s not really news that my accordion died in a traffic accident. I’m in the market for a Gabbanelli. I’ll just put that out there, in case someone knows someone who needs to sell a Fa or Mi, preferably three registers. Oh, and I should specify, it needs to be a three-row, button diatonic. These are not even available new right now on the Gabbanelli site; now that I actually want to fork out the cash, I can’t find one. These are weird times, indeed. But I’m holding out for the rich tones of a Gabbanelli.

I had a Hohner. Hohners are very good accordions, but they have a brassier sound. That is why you can find them available new and for resale. They are durable instruments (unless hit by semi-trucks going over 75 mph, apparently), and accordionists will often sell up for Gabbanellis. I should clarify; there is like-for-like. The Hohner Anacleto is a $5k-$6k instrument. They have good quality cheaper accordions, though, such as the Corona ll and the Panther. And when students are ready to purchase a more expensive instrument, they often buy a Gabbanelli with its smooth tones. I had planned on having both someday. The best-laid plans….

My God is a God of miracles, and here I am, asking for one!