Liars and Saints

 For me, a big treat is the cartoons of Jason Adam Katzenstein. I'm pasting three here. JAK takes high-stakes human situations and makes them absurd. A painful breakup? Imagine King Arthur at the table: "It is not you. It is we." Struggling with daily life? Imagine you're a grain product: "You can't be an everything bagel to all people." Risking your finances in a dicey maneuver? Imagine your opponent is Goofy, from Disney World. ("He has a tell.....") JAK's minimalism and his tiny details are delightful to me. A king doesn't use contractions: "It is we." I also like the period--in place of an exclamation point--when a gambler whispers, "He has a tell." Important to "play it cool"--! Katzenstein has one memoir--worth reading--and a series of political cartoons (on race, Elizabeth Warren, and Susan Collins, among other subjects). I look up to this guy.

Jason Adam Katzenstein's account of his struggle with OCD ("Everything Is an Emergency") is brave and touching, and has many memorable scenes: *JAK worries intensely that, having finished his business in a laundromat, he will inflict an overheated dryer on an unsuspecting victim. So he stays by the dryer and repeatedly checks the inside, until he is 100-percent certain that its cool-down is adequate. *JAK cannot toss a penny on the sidewalk, because he believes a child will ingest the penny and die. *Therapy involves forcing oneself to touch one's sneaker, then one's face--and to take note of how Act-Three spontaneous combustion does NOT occur. *A panic attack can happen on a stalled L train--"We plan to remain here in this tunnel for the next eight to nine hours"--but a panic attack can also happen in a much "safer" setting, e.g. when you're alone in bed. *Being a friend of someone with OCD may mean feeling useless....standing ...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Excessive orderliness, perfectionism, attention to details, a need for control. This isn't listed on my shrink bills--I'm always told I have "chronic adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety"--but, to me, OCD seems like it's not quite a stranger. In high school, I would stare at various traffic lights: If the light changed at a time to my liking, this would mean I'd get into the college I wanted. Now, I stare at the annual Christmas tree and dream of rearranging and re-re-arranging and re-re-re-arranging the lights: There is a certain configuration of lights I can see in my head, or almost see, and if I can achieve that configuration, the world will be bearable. If I buy a hard-cover book and create just a tiny dent in the jacket, it's almost like a physical pain. I can't stop staring at the dent. I desperately dream of fixes: If I put, like, a Chiquita banana sticker over the dent, will it stop bothering me so...