San Clemente Pier
Posted on March 21, 2009 in Photos Travels - So Cal Video
We really need to get out more. I took this a couple of weeks ago when we went down to the pier at San Clemente. Richard Nixon used to live a couple of miles south of here. We walked to the end of the dock and then loitered beneath the restaurant, taking pictures of the surf and wooden scaffolding that upheld the structure. Lynn oggled a girl bravely wearing a bikini. She hasn’t put her pictures up yet.
I also took this video showing the Amtrak Surfliner coming into town:
Check Paths of Light for more pictures from this and other trips.
Grace and Illness
Posted on March 19, 2009 in Depression Journals & Notebooks Writing/Darkness
Energetic gloom — the kind you get when you try to pummel your low temperament — poses a threat to life when it rises to anger. It’s tough to be graceful when you charge against lethargy with your head dropped like an angry bull. Plus you can end up with a broken neck. There’s no dancing except moshing — is it strange that I find heavy metal music depressing in the sense that it batters my heart and smashes my cranium with every twang of the guitars? Those voices — made to sound as if they came out of the throats of reanimated corpses – don’t frighten or enervate me: they bounce off me with all the pleasure of that water gets ricocheting off a hot frying pan. Depression smoulders. Spirit tries to get you moving, but for all the beating of the drums you don’t move again until the blessed morning when the music is silent and the spot where your spinal column meets your skull doesn’t sag from the weight of your scarred brain. How can you be graceful under such conditions? The body lacks a head, the head is at odds with the body ((This is one of those things literally at odds with itself that makes perfect sense when you are in the mood.)) . There’s an argument going on. The two sides are too busy thudding around that you can’t congeal into anything more detailed than a hot fog.
This is an exercise from [amazonify]1587613190::text::::Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen[/amazonify]
The Hardest Part
Posted on March 19, 2009 in Mania Writing/Darkness
The hardest part of mania is the grandiosity, the overconfidence in your brilliance. Of course, it doesn’t feel so bad at the time. When you have the insight that is going to change the 21st century, your sense of worth increases exponentially. Others must acknowledge you as a prophet, the One whose advice and observations they must closely study. There’s a sense of urgency in everything you do or say as if you’ve just taken a match to the Earth’s last remaining reserves of natural gas. Clearly that is something people need to get a move on for! But for some reason you can’t fathom, they aren’t impressed. They sit complacently in their chairs and don’t rise to seize torches and bear the flames for the enlightenment of the species. There’s a fire burning inside of you – can’t they see that? Can’t they at least smell the smoke? Are they frogs adrift in a pot of water that is being slowly brought to a boil and are they going to die because they won’t jump while they can? You have an ember – yea more than an ember, a flame – yet they cannot be ignited any more than the sandstone that surrounds the coal. What is wrong with them, why don’t they see? You do what you can: you write poems & deliver them, you declaim your thoughts in groups, and you blog about them — everything in the expectation that what you have discovered will make our world a star that they will see on planets orbiting the farthest stars of Orion. Their indifference is like wet kelp thrown on a beach fire. You end up fuming — a lobster cooked to fury, a clam roasted until it opens its jaw to scream, a potato baked until it explodes. Why don’t they listen? And why, when it is all over, do they run away?
This is an exercise from [amazonify]1587613190::text::::Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen[/amazonify]
Lost Rock
Posted on March 18, 2009 in Photos Travels - So Cal
Lost Rock, originally uploaded by EmperorNorton47.
One of a set of pictures that I took along Rattlesnake Highway in the Cleveland National Forest just a few weeks ago. This marks my initiation into the world of Flickr. Note that my Paths of Light is still up and running.
Go to the Flickr site for more photos from this trip.
If you have a Flickr account, my screen name is EmperorNorton47. Love to hear from you.
Falling
Posted on March 17, 2009 in Class Journals & Notebooks Mania Spirituality and Being Writing Exercises
More from my writing-practice book.
It is the exhilaration not the crash, the rush of wind not the ground or the stone. Though doomed to catastrophe you’re not dead yet. Mania is a long fall, sometimes so high it’s an orbit. I don’t think I’ve ever lost my sense of being tied to the earth completely. In fact, my relationship to the soil has been one of hostility towards it. Ground causes pain and boredom. Is it a wonder that I resent being buried in it? What an ugly phrase – “being well-grounded”. Sounds to me like being properly and permanently interred. I never liked well-grounded people because they often turned out to be accountants, a profession that I was obliquely pressured to join. Listen to the sound of numbers was the theme of my childhood & adolescence. No sense in my adolescence. The theme of the tears. Everyone having to form neat rows, phalanxes of values. If you couldn’t be assigned a number of some kind especially a salary, you were a nonperson, an invisible man. March ye figures into the zeroes, but always have a standard a head of you. And let that standard be an integer or more because that is who you are. So was it in the age of the Yuppie. You were because you had a well-paying job. I learned that the earning of money was spiritual. I tried to find the zeal for that religion but it only came to me in insufficient spurts. I never advanced so I felt rejected by Mammon and Moloch. They bore plenty on their warty, hirsute backs but I was not one of them.
(I honestly wonder what I would be if I hadn’t been blocked in my desires. I always wanted to be a prophet but in the Age of the Yuppie prophets had to have clean, well-tailored suits and a portfolio.)
Narrow Paths
Posted on March 17, 2009 in Bipolar Disorder Journals & Notebooks
This is an excerpt from my writing practice-book.
The narrow path works both ways it seems to me. The way of the med is a narrow throughway — you have to take the right-doses at the right time of the day. You have to keep taking them so you don’t lose your mind. You lose your sense of insight, the mad thoughts that others celebrate for their wit & their brilliance. There’s no more dancing on the point of a pin, so you don’t get jabbed by your recklessness. On the other hand, it can mean a lot of plodding to stay to the agenda which is often set for you by others. The thud thud thud of simply medicinal recovery. I hunger for, I hope to savor my own feelings of accomplishment, the realizations of a living heart without allowing that heart to thunder itself in the final stillness. I, don’t want the narrow path to be a synonym for dead or heavily sedated. I couldn’t live with myself as a ever-dying toad. I need to feel better than I do on the day after I miss a dose of my Effexor. I need to affirm that I walk in meadows and forests without losing my way. This — not the narrow path of either variety — is what recovery is all about.
Challenge Winning Video
Posted on March 11, 2009 in Silicon Valley Video
12challenge: Tell us something we didn’t know about you. on 12seconds.tv
This won the 12 Seconds Challenge. You can read more about my journey at MIRacles.
Another Therapyland Folly
Posted on March 11, 2009 in Bipolar Disorder Psycho-bunk
I got chided for calling myself a “bipolar survivor” on Twitter. This is another one of those therapy conventions that is supposed to “do something for me”, in this case prevent me from “seeing myself as a victim”. Excuse me, but survivor is someone who has weathered the worst and gotten through it thanks to her/his personal strength. Calling myself a survivor is a compliment. It states that I can stand up even when things are at their worse.
And what am I to say about my suicide attempt? Deny that it happened or that it had anything to do with the affliction? Despite the disease, I got through it.
I’ll keep calling myself a survivor. I will take credit for my accomplishment. The folks who say that it reduces me to a victim are lost in therapyland.
The Rabbit-Hole Library
Posted on March 10, 2009 in Mania Poems Writing/Darkness
Books fly off the shelf
And I have to read each one
Synchronous to the others.
So I parse and I parse
With book jackets flapping
Retaining nothing.
I haven’t written poetry in three or so years. This is in answer to an exercise calling on me to develop imagery surrounding my depression. I flipped the assignment and described mania, instead.
This is an exercise from [amazonify]1587613190::text::::Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen[/amazonify]
Obama Puzzle
Posted on March 7, 2009 in Citizenship Wastes of Time
Though not even 50 days have passed since our president Barack Obama (oh it sounds good to say it doesn’t it?) took office, the right wing spin machines have already been trying to tell people that he is washed up. Just the other day, a dittohead tried to tell me that I was ashamed of him! Fat chance! Have some fun at their expense and put the pieces together to show that he’s as together as he always was.
Excessive Cheerfulness
Posted on March 6, 2009 in Body Language Mania Partnership
Every time I confess my limitations, I worry. There are the people who, when we get in a fight, lash out by saying that ~I~ am the one “losing it”. Mental illness is an instant defeat in their book. It can, if you look too narrowly, appear as if you are losing the respect of the whole world. The truth is that when people know you, they care for you and cut you breaks.
Last week I needed a few hits on my asthma inhaler. Consequently, my mood ramped up so high that on Saturday night people on Twitter complained about my excessive cheerfulness and loquaciousness. Early Sunday morning I ran a scan to see how fast I was going: during the first one and a half hours of March, I discovered, I had tweeted 148 times, just missing tripping the governor that stops you at 100 tweets an hour. I had set this off earlier in the week. I had not known that such a control existed ((I do not call for removing it. Some of us need a warning of that type. I wish I could set my speed – for example, asking it to stop me after 75 tweets instead of 100 so that I get an earlier warning of my manic outbursts.)) .
Later I woke my poor wife up at 3 in the morning to read something that I had written in response to a comment. I knew then that I was running hot and might make a mistake in judgment such as calling my opponent some foul name or accusing my antagonist of a dark purpose that existed, quite possibly, in my mind alone. No remorse accompanied my actions: I felt great. That is why I needed checking. I laughed at my barbs but removed them at Lynn’s suggestion before I published it.
My now former therapist might have questioned why I needed to respond in the first place, but I scoffed at the idea of silence. She might have questioned why I needed Lynn to check my work. For someone who claimed to have experience tending people who have mood disorders, she showed great ignorance of the disease and the need to monitor one’s behavior at all times. She thought it demeaning to me, for example, to place our financial affairs in Lynn’s hands – as if my wife were going to rob me or strip me of my dignity. We do the bill thing as partners. I can look anytime at the financial records if I choose. But I know that it is better that I don’t and by not doing so, I preserve my self-respect by not plunging the household into financial chaos brought on by my grand designs and panics.
I see this as a practical answer to the problem of my lapses into freespending. Looking at the money matters of our household upsets me and pushes me towards episodes. I run the risk of either thinking we have money to spend (when there is actually a large amount that had already been budgeted) or that we are on the verge of financial collapse. I can be induced either to pay out large amounts on worthless items or go on a binge of parsimony in which I starve myself. My therapists didn’t get these clear and present dangers and the importance of keeping to certain habits even if you are feeling well. Keeping them always makes me less likely to break them in times of crisis, you see.
Lynn has certain plans in place just in case I go over the top. For example, she can report my credit card lost or stolen if it seems that I am going into a manic phase. There’s not a lot she can do when I am feeling sad – force me to spend against my will She’s left with the recourse of spending the money herself. This is why I have her pay the bills. I have been known to think I am too poor and withhold money because I believe I am running out of it. No spending on food, clothing, rent, etc. all because of this belief that afflicts me. These things are always there, stalking my peace of mind. You never get cured of this disease. You must always be on your guard. That is what my last therapist – with all her years of experience – didn’t seem to get. Some therapists say to themselves “I can cure this poor man of his delusions”. But they keep coming back just when I think things will be fine — if only I can do something about the wheezing in my chest….
One maddening thing that keeps happening in the wake of last Saturday night’s event is that people keep asking me “Are you OK? Are you OK?” as if I am ready to doff my clothes and go hitchhiking nude down the freeway. One fellow who I knew in Partial Hospitalization told me that he was on the phone one night laughing at some jokes his friend was telling. His father hovered just around the corner. “Are you all right? Are you all right, son?” “Dad,” he told him. “I’m allowed to laugh.”
I Do Not Swap My Spouse
Posted on March 3, 2009 in Partnership
Today I received an email from an associate producer of the ABC “reality” program Wife Swap inviting me to take part in the show. They thought that my now marginal interest in cemeteries might bring a few hoots from their television audience. I told said producer to go fuck herself — in so many words.
I take my marriage very seriously. At our wedding [[Quaker_wedding|under the care of Palo Alto Friends Meeting]], we promised to be loving and faithful partners to one another until death did us part. I took that declaration as more than mere words but as the mandate for my life with Lynn.
Taking part in a [[reality television]] show founded on the premise of exchanging spouses is not consistent with that promise. I love Lynn, respect her for her intelligence and her beauty to me. Through some very hard times in my life, she stuck by me, honoring me in my turn. Our marriage is not open season for ridicule or figurative prostitution.
Likewise, I cannot in good conscience put another couple in the position of dishonoring their vows to one another. I do not want the least association wiith people who would sell the dignity of their marriage for primetime coverage. I believe in marriage as the partnership of friends, as the choosing of family. I do my choosing for myself and I will not be a whore. I have spent my life battling for self-respect. It is not a cheap commodity. Nor is the love I share with Lynn.
The best answer to this request is plain speaking. Again, Amanda Gershkowitz, you and your whole meretricious organization can go fuck yourselves.
