Bland Therapy and a Bird of Paradise

Posted on February 24, 2009 in Bipolar Disorder Journals & Notebooks Originality & Creativity Reflections

Last night I wrote about a practice of happiness, that I rejected the idea of writing as bland therapy – as a theme paper about my daily struggles. But that isn’t such a bad idea on reevaluation in the morning. What was I getting at? I want to work at something that is hard. Writing about the disease fits this criterium. I want to write on it until it becomes easy, until the edginess goes away. I want it to bring me there without being told how to do it by anyone else. I want the right to compose beautiful things that have nothing to do with the illness that I bear. It should be fun, for example, to write about the pines surrounding the fountain while keeping bipolar disorder there but in the background. The disease can inform my perspective but curing it need not be the reason.

Therapists argue for a utilitarian approach which wearies me. Yes, at times it is a chore that I must make myself do, but it always angers me when I hear the same old advice about writing every day at the same time for the same amount of time. I know that is reasonable, but am I a child, an ignorant who just started this yesterday? When I want writing counsel I want to begin at a place beyond where I have been before. I have been places in my discussions of the illness that many have been. I want to see new things about it. That, oddly, may entail writing about the same things over and over again. Yea, it may be painful to write about some things. I don’t look forward to the ache, but getting through it is part of the happiness. Right now the irritation is central. I don’t want to turn into anyone who is a mere drudge at it.

The [[Strelitzia_reginae|bird of paradise]] ((A type of flower native to Hawaii and well-loved here in California)) must bloom. The hummingbird must whirr. The wheels of the train must turn and its whistle blow. If there be a track, let me find it. The image of a wandering locomotive delights me. Where are my rails and what is my ultimate destination? Do I find myself on a rock-strewn plain, in a forest, or mired in a marsh? I want to see a portrait of the moment.

So what am I feeling now? Strangely, a sluggishness or a heaviness along the top of my head. One of the reference librarians talks about schedules. Kids laugh loud. A little girl keeps checking her cell phone to see if it has received any calls. A woman with a long dark ponytails probes the fiction stacks. There’s a lot of noise around me. Now a sports car goes by outside beyond the trees of the patio and the fountain. What is that boy wearing blue doing with that long piece of string? What is his mother telling him?

I have a fear of answering these questions because I do not want to bestow my own thoughts on the scene. Who am I to dare? And what would it do to me to invent fictions to exist in the bodies of the people out there? The beyond ((Look at how I characterize this element. There used to be a television series called “[[Alcoa_Presents:_One_Step_Beyond|One Step Beyond]]” in the spirit of [[The Twilight Zone]] and [[The Outer Limits]]. Terror. My social anxiety crops up even when I try to imagine how others are thinking. Very interesting! But this is one thing that I am investigating in my writing now.)) is a wicked thing that takes me out of the immediate. The right here. I’ve lightened up listening and looking at the beyond, though. It’s made me feel better. It beats being in the middle of my own nothingness. Reaching out to touch makes me feel better about living with this disease, whose warps make things interesting. I want to recover those feelings without succumbing to them. I need not return to being a psycho to know how I once felt. Recovery means many things to me: it means both not being bound by the disease and also having the memory of the world seen through the disease in me, twisted but understood.