Again

Found a beautiful poem by Tino Villanueva in the wonderful poetry book, Living in Storms: contemporary poetry and the moods of manic-depression edited by Thom Schramm. This book was suggested to me by my amazing and lovely poetry teacher Sam Green. (Everyone should check out his poems as well). But for now, read this and feel revived:

Again

So I depend again upon myself.
I've taught this part of me
to go unruined
through all enormous lessons
on defeat.
I've taught this part of me
to thrive among despair,
to be imperative
among chaotic numbers.
Though I may fall away from time to time
like draggled weeds in winter,
breathing thick stern air
in some back shadows of the walk,
I spring again from me,
from the dead quiet of my roots--
listen to me move.

By dawn
I am presence fixed
in the eyes of men.

decided to give myself a break

now the next question is, what should I do first?
a bath? a book? yoga? meditation?
what about yoga, bath/book, meditation.
sometimes its good to let yourself just be...

On the way to Joyce's Martello Tower

Everything is Everything

I just read an article by John Frow called "A pebble, a camera, a man" on "Thing Theory" where he talks about the concept that "things, too, embody human will". He speaks about the fact that the speed bump is not merely a thing in the road, but something that gives an "instruction, on behalf of the police or some traffic control authority, to slow down on this stretch of the road". He explains that to call the speed bump "non-human" is to "ignore all the ways in which human will is translated into things and in which things in turn work as delegates which relay back to us these configurations of human will". In reading this it reminded me of my favorite phrase: "everything is everything".

When I begin talking about my belief that "everything is everything", (that everything either already is or eventually becomes connected in some way, that life always seems to find a way to circle back around, that everything has an intense interdependence upon everything else, and that every piece of this world is equally important and present within every other piece,) I am always told that I must be getting manic. I always have to laugh because though I may be going a little too far thinking that the number eleven is extremely telling in my life (because I seem to see an increase and reoccurrence before a major event), or in thinking that "rabbits are my power animal", I am certainly not the only one who sees the patterns in the world. I have even been told that people who are bipolar, or "mentally ill", see patterns more often. This may be true, and though this may make me see things a little more connected then they might actually be sometimes, I can't help but know in my soul that it's true: Everything is Everything...

"But we consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table of evolution as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives." -Hesse-

Advice from Dr. Manhattan...

Given that I have been continuously trying to calm down through my techniques of self-care (yoga, lake-sitting, etc.), I am frustrated that I still find myself freaking out about my future. I find that I build up so much worry and anxiety that everything seems to spin around me making it impossible to even grasp onto a calming impulse.

Last night I had a conversation about the human ability to forget what is important and distance ourselves from the very things that keep us alive. I find that I am constantly thinking about what to do with my future, or how to be more accomplished, or how to do things better and more efficiently, but I forget what I really am, or what life is really about. I am constantly trying to be "good-enough" when I don't even know what that means or what that entails.

And then I remembered reading the Alan Moore's Watchmen and I thought about Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan is this brilliant scientist who became stuck in an "Intrinsic Field subtractor" where he was disintegrated, allowing him to return as a super-human being. Manhattan eventually becomes so disconnected from earth and human beings that he decides to live on Mars where he can find more meaning in the movements and developments of the lifeless planet. Eventually however, after speaking to his ex-girlfriend about the amazing fact that she exists in the first place, he changes his mind and decides human life is a miracle after all.

He tells her that he has discovered a "Thermodynamic miracle", in the fact that, "in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds against countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that precise daughter...until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged, to distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold..."

And I realize what I should always remember: the mere fact that we are alive in the first place is worth everything. That makes us good enough. The fact that we are alive is so amazing that we don't need to do anything or be anything to make us any more important than we already are.

So thanks Dr. Manhattan. I need to keep remembering that.

Creation and the Lamictal High

Sleepwalkers

-Barbara Einzig-

The moon rises, a vengeance on anguish,

on my own arrogant privacy.

The hands of sleepwalkers,

of their own accord, rise, follow.

The ponderability of daily fatigue-

on wings consciousness runs wild,

transparent creations are flying,

they've heard the reflection of the moon.

It flickers cold, stingy,

not promising anything,

draws out of me distant art,

demands my agreement.

Can the torture and charm of its omens

be fought down, overcome,

can I make out of moonlight

a heavy, tangible object?

Having taken my pills, (a very high dosage of Lamictal, trileptal, and a normal dose of bcp,) and settled myself down to bed, I did the things I normally try to do to calm myself down after another day of breathing, I meditated and read a poem. This day was especially difficult because I was attempting to recover from a horrible cold, and I was also extremely worn down after having been at school for like 12 hours. So, as I was meditating my mind wasn't really slowing down, but instead fluttering more and more. When I finally stopped after about twenty minutes I realized that I should have taken my medicine until after the meditation process because I was really loopy and felt as though I had just had a night of heavy drinking. It was in this mix of exhaustion, frustration, and lack of mind coordination that I began having an amazing drive towards creativity and some form of inspiration. This however was not working out because I could hardly pull myself out of bed let alone make sense, so I went on with the night process and opened my current poetry book to a random page where I found none other then Ms. Einzig's Sleepwalkers.

Now, I don't know if I was just really loopy and read it one way and can never read it differently again, but all I can think about is creativity and inspiration, and how they always seem to come when I can't handle them, or can't do much of anything with them. I read it thinking "can I make out of moonlight a heavy, tangible object?" I was thinking why, why does creativity come when you don't want it? When all you want to do is go to sleep after a really freaking long day, or when all you are allowed to do is the never ending pile of work before you? I feel like it goes by the same rules as finding a lover: people whine and complain and go out to bars trying to pick someone up, but everybody knows that as soon as you stop looking you'll find them. Bam. Here's the perfect man you've been looking for. I suppose I could go even further and say that when I really didn't want a boyfriend I happened to realize that the man of my dreams was not only interested in me, but also moving half way across the country from me. But we all know how that ended up, Happily Ever After. (Thanks Josh.) So now maybe me and my creativity/inspiration will settle our differences and produce beautiful little creations. And maybe next time I will leave my computer next to my pillow to write that great poem, or play, or ideal piece of literature that I have been harboring deep down in some cavernous hole in my psyche only to be exposed through meditation and lots and lots of lamictal. I'll let you know what happens.

this and that

i find it amazing how i tend to break things into sides. as i have been told all my life, i am very "black and white." i find this interesting considering my being defined as bipolar. is my tendency to break things into good and evil, happy and sad, beautiful and ugly something that follows these newly defined brain patterns, or is it my natural disposition? could i have instead simply been influenced by the fact that i was raised by someone who is also said to be "black and white." i find it interesting how our social labels and categories are always used as a way to explain and excuse are natural tendencies. i tend to feel that my pull towards duality has a little to do with everything. i have always been a person that is entranced by beauty, and i have always felt that what we see as beautiful or ugly are only truly complimented by seeing both sides. you can never know how bright it is until you have been in the dark. you never know how slow you are going until you have transitioned from the freeway to a small side street, or vice versa. there are always two sides and i feel that without both there is no way to truly see the beauty in the ugliness. now, i have been told that i am full of shit when it comes to this topic, but this is how i feel and this is what i will stick to.

in my life i have seen both sides. i constantly move from what i see as "the good girl" to the "troublemaker," the bad girl. i always felt strangled at one end and guilty at the other. things are always hot or cold, right or wrong, happy or sad, everything or nothing at all. These are things i need to reconcile. these are things that do need to find a happy median, and while i do love to see both sides and compare one to the other, it is not always healthy and appropriate for certain situations.

i was taking a class where we read sense and sensibility. at the end of the class we were supposed to write a paper and i remember having such a hard time because i couldn't stop thinking about what i saw as the two vastly different sides. there was the romantic world of beauty and art and religion and the enlightenment world of science and reason. i had such a hard time because i wanted both and i felt both but i couldn't find a way to bring them together. after completely panicking as to why i could not see the middle i had a conversation with my boyfriend josh. now, while most people think their partners are wonderful and perfect, josh is truly the most amazing person i have ever met. he talked me down off my cliff and explained that he can't see it in any other way. he can't separate the two because he feels that they are so perfectly connected. at first hearing this i kind of wanted to punch him; here i was trying to figure something out and he comes along and says that he already figured it out. but then i realized that that wasn't what he was saying at all. he demonstrated to me that he is just the opposite. he just works differently than i do. his world is always connected and he seems to have the opposite problem.

this is beautiful because i stopped being upset and angry at myself for not seeing it in a certain way and realized that that is how i am. i am a person that tends to see things as dualities. it is not my fault that i see it one way or his fault that he sees it the other, it is just how we are. so today i work on finding the gray area in important life struggles that need a bit more stability, struggles that don't do well when you totter from side to side. today i also allow myself the ability to be okay with comparisons. i allow myself the ability to see both sides and find the beauty in one and then the other. but even that is about balance. it is a balance of finding the right time to use my new skills and the right time to allow my natural tendency for "black and white" to come out.