So I was cleaning my bookshelves tonight and as often happens (this is not a good thing if you're seriously trying to get things done) a title caught my eye and I pulled it off my shelf to read.

At the same time, I also remembered that this week (February 4th) is the anniversary of Karen Carpenter's death, which might be a weird thing to recall if hers wasn't the first celebrity passing that truly touched and saddened me.

After she died, so many magazines (both tabloids and ones like People) ran the most scandalously thin pictures of her they could find. It is true that the nature of Karen Carpenter's death raised a much-needed amount of awareness about anorexia, an awareness which also ended up ultimately saving lives and changing the way people, including medical experts, saw eating disorders.

I don't think, though, that good intentions were behind the tabloid photos released in the weeks following her death. I think they were meant to be shocking in a bad way and that unlike, say, Elvis Presley or John Lennon, the singer is first remembered for her disease and then for her beautiful voice.

The pictures I like to see of her are ones such as what follows below, where Karen is spending time with her godchildren. More than anything else in the world, she wanted to be a mother and have a family of her own.

According to close friends, Karen hoped she would someday have one. I like to think of an alternate universe where she fully recovered from her eating disorder, went on to find true love and happiness and today, like her friends and musical counterparts Dionne Warwick and Olivia Newton-John, still records albums with that voice of hers.

from Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt

Sunday papers...

So I'm reading something in The Sunday Times about the beauty of songs that "don't resolve heartbreak's contradictions, but revel in" them. Katie Glass calls Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" the greatest break-up song ever and adds that it's the kind of thing that "triumphs in despair."

There's an entire book about the song has helped people deal with hard times:

http://www.amazon.com/We-Will-Survive-Encouragement-Inspiration-ebook/dp/B00DCX0X40/ref=sr_1_1s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422815514&sr=1-1&keywords=i+will+survive+gloria+gaynor

And even though I think coincidences are just that and nothing more, before I opened the paper I had been reading a short story where the main character (following a devastating break-up) asks herself: "If I could not learn to live with myself and my many faults, what chance would someone else have with me?"

Though she is in a completely different situation, when she says, "We walk forward in life for a reason" it's exactly what I need to hear and one of the reasons I love reading so very much.

Some of the things that plague us will disappear some day (soon, hopefully) and some of those things won't. I can get over not being in a relationship or even knowing I may never find one; I can't, however, get past the fact my parents and I just don't get along very well unless I agree with them on everything...that troubles me a lot.

Still, I love sentences like this from Karen Campbell's "The Butterfly Collector":

“Everything changes now,” a voice within told me. “What you thought was real will fade and what you thought faded will become real.” It was not a moment for the faint-hearted. I know that I have been worn down but that ends now, as the lock turns and the door opens. Today begins the new me...



Also...

in Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section a review for Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind by David J. Linden:

Viking. 261 pp. $28.95

Of all the gifts that a parent can give a child, one of the most important is a simple, loving touch. Babies who are deprived of human touch, such as those who spend their early years in understaffed orphanages, display profound abnormalities. Their growth is stunted, and they’re slow to gain cognitive and motor skills. They display repetitive, self-soothing behaviors, such as rocking endlessly back and forth. They are more likely to develop obesity, diabetes and heart disease, or suffer from mental illnesses ranging from depression to psychosis. But the smallest of interventions — as little as 20 minutes of gentle physical contact a day — can help touch-deprived infants avoid the worst outcomes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-touch-the-science-of-hand-heart-and-mind-by-david-j-linden/2015/01/29/f0161be4-8f8d-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html

Sunday music

Ever since David Lynch mentioned the album Black Roses I have been listening. Escondido definitely makes you think of Mazzy Star as well as Maria McKee and even a little bit of Stevie Nicks. It's a wonderful cd to listen to on a Sunday afternoon.

I saw this on Pinterest and wanted to share it with anyone who needs it.

So far, this year is not off to the great start I wanted it to have.

But I'm not giving up...I'll work harder with my different situations and accept what can never be. And though I don't think love is in my future that doesn't mean I can't find other ways to share with people (if that makes sense.)

Until I can see things through better, I plan on blogging less. I just want to get my life back to where it used to be a long time ago. I want to be peaceful again, if not happy. And I hope anyone else looking for that finds it as well.

Until next time...be safe and warm, no matter the weather. :)

hugs, life without daily human touch, skin hunger, dreams...the intangible is haunting my mind

Today someone accidentally bumped into me and quickly apologized. I said it was okay immediately and then realized it was not only okay, I was almost grateful, since it's so rare I experience human touch unless I hug a good friend or she hugs me.

I joked about it with another friend who was there at the time and she said, perfectly seriously, "There's a name for that."

When I asked her what she meant she told me the term was "skin hunger," which I'd never heard used before:

skin hunger

When you've been without a date for a long, long time, haven't seen your Mom for ages, and no one has hugged you forever and you need someone to touch and hug you, that's skin hunger.

 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=skin+hunger

To complicate things I'd been having the same dream each night this week that someone was hugging me (a pure and simple hug) and that each time I woke from the dream it was almost a physical pain to discover it wasn't real.

My dreams (as I imagine a lot of people's are) often hurt because they feel so real. I sometimes wonder why more people don't talk about them on a regular basis, they're so fascinating...

Sometimes dreams and longing for something you can never have are one and the same...they certainly are both equally elusive.