i've been away...

but for good reason.

anne and amit came to visit on thanksgiving. they drove out from iowa so anne could begin her new job in great falls. amit ended up getting stranded in gf for an extra day because they got twelve inches of snow!

but their time in missoula was fun. we had an absolute feast on thursday, with a hutterite turkey and *all* the fixins, including desserts from pumpkin to apple to pecan to blueberry. everyone was asleep by 8 o'clock.

on friday night we went out to celebrate, belatedly, anne's 40th birthday. we had a fancy italian dinner (fancy for missoula, anywho), complete with some great wine and after-dinner drinks.

since then, i've been waiting not-too-patiently to hear about a job that i really, really want. the only objectionable aspect of this job is that it's in butte. if i don't get it, i'll console myself with that fact.
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lately i've been feeling very strange. the waves of depression that set in around the end of october have begun to subside. feeling disconnected, having a hard time finding meaning... but i've been meditating and taking a supplement called 'SAM-e' and busy with various tasks, like job applications and editing my friend's grad school personal statement and writing an article for some extra money and planning for the holidays. something about this increase in activity, coupled with the sammy and the reflective sould-searching, has been mood-enhancing. but what's weird about it is that i still feel very shift-y. i'm able to feel excited and pleased in a way that was totally unavailable to me just a few weeks ago, but i still cry easily and have moments of great doubt and sadness. i have energy but still feel the profound depths of my depression fairly regularly. somehow, though, these interactions aren't prolonged and inescapable and unending. instead, they are discrete episodes in which i am very engaged with the feelings.

the other factor that i shouldn't fail to mention is this book recommended to me by my psychologist, victor. victor isn't just a psychologist, though. he is a friend, a peer, a fellow-traveler, and so his advice and insight is remarkably important and meaningful for me. the book is called _care of the soul_, by thomas moore. while every passage and chapter doesn't resonate with me, i take that as a sign it has useful messages -- but ones which are accessible only when you need them. some of the text discusses issues that i don't particularly identify with now, but the whole point is that as our souls mature we take on different shadows at different times. so i read it all allegorically, and i read some of it voraciously, as though he were explicitly describing my self to me. he is helping me with something that victor calls finding 'a container' large enough to contain the paradoxes that are my self. rather than hating some part of myself and closeting her because she doesn't behave they way i ideally would like her to, i try to listen to those parts of myself that seem unpleasant, ugly, mean, amoral. the argument is that if we fail to listen to these selves, if we ignore and avoid them (psychologically-speaking: repress), we will only act them out later, in bigger, uglier, harder-to-understand ways -- which moore calls 'symptoms.'

so, maybe, i'm ever-so-slowly pushing out the boundaries of the container of my Self.