Year: 2010
Painful Dormancy
Posted on January 31, 2010 in Activity Body Language Daily Life Depression
The pain in my upper arms from dragging a small backpack from the lowest walkable territory to the highest in the San Diego Wild Animal Park is just one of the streaks that put me in a low place these last few days: Mel Gibson’s face in those commercials for his latest action film is another. I grew up knowing a younger Mel Gibson, one who didn’t have a pair of deep lines falling to each side of his nose like a thin, misplaced Fu Manchu moustache. I’ve been surrounded by ancient visages here at Lawrence Welk Resort, faces that crinkle at a grin, fall from the cheekbones and collect like lava below the chin line. This is Old Age and I am going to be seeing more of it in the years to come. Despite my wishes for youth, I am deteriorating. The life long eruption is that is me is approaching extinction.
I’m too tired to wrestle with my keyboard over this. Good night.
Dream
Posted on January 29, 2010 in Dreams
Several baby turtles — no larger than my thumbnail — appear in the water.
Trail Fever
Posted on January 25, 2010 in Body Language
Saturday’s hike was easy though the way was steep — I didn’t feel the grade cutting me with my shoulder straps as it did yesterday. I knelt to catch my breath several times on the modest uphills and a couple of times on the downhill. Drake, my Boston Terrier, stayed close until we came into sight of my wife. When I came home, I felt my forehead and it was hot. No idea what caused this though I nearly blamed my own psyche for its manufacture.
That’s a tendency best curbed, a relic of the old assume-the-guilt. I know that something was genuinely wrong — how could I explain the ease of Saturday’s walk compared to yesterday’s? From whence came the weakness that I felt from lugging a ten pound pack that had grown lighter because I drank some of the water I’d packed the day before? This was not laziness as the voice of my last therapist in my head suggested. It was real and it brought me down. I wanted to walk bravely up the slopes of the Santiago Trail, but couldn’t. None of the explanations — exhaustion, lethargy, laxity — were congruent with my experience. I could only assume that I was sick, so I told my inner therapist to just shut up.
This Blog is a Top Ten
Posted on January 24, 2010 in Bipolar Disorder Site News
I really need to check my incoming links more often. This blog was mentioned as one of the Top Ten Bipolar Blogs of 2009 by psychcentral.com. I didn’t expect it because as my readers know I am all over the board content-wise — I see myself as a person with bipolar who happens to write a blog. Thanks for the honor and welcome to everyone who has found me through the link.
I’ll have new photos and new material in the days to come.
Hole
Posted on January 12, 2010 in Childhood Strange
There was this house that faced Baseline in San Bernardino. One of those white gothics whose paint faded from all the years of baking in the California sun. It had a porch and on this porch sat an old man rocking in his chair, watching the traffic go by. This old man had a face that was both doughy and skeletal as was typical of a certain phase in the gaining of decrepitude. His frame suggested that he, like many of the retired of San Bernardino in that age, had been a railroad man. Most striking about him was the hole where his nose should have been. At some time, surgeons or accident had removed his schnozz down to the bone and left an opening into the convolutions of his pink sinuses. As children passed in their parents’ cars, he would lift his right hand and point to the cavity.
“See,” my mother used to say. “That is what happens when you pick your nose.”
