Desolate decay

There is something within me that really loves things that are falling apart.

Sometimes decay can be so beautiful.

New Friends

 

Met a very friendly monster in New Brunswick

Please don't touch the flowers...

 

Boston, sitting in this little upstairs Vegan restaurant was the greatest sign taped to the window:

"Please do not touch the flowers. They're real.

Thank you" 

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-

tree

I haven't written in a while because I have been swiftly falling towards finals week. And now, its here. So, I can't write but I will leave you with this tree.

sometimes i feel...

like I'm in Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth

like mother like daughter and other things...

It has certainly been a while since I posted anything. I am nearing the end of finals, and prior to this have been busy writing, editing, and rewriting everything from poems to long non-fiction essays to articles for some teaching magazine. I have one class left for the quarter so I'm beginning to feel a little less pressure. Tonight I have been glueing, folding, and sewing chapbooks which has been fun. I find it nice to make something visually artistic to go along with the words I write.

Tomorrow I head off to a conference on Washington's Hood Canal. It is at quite an amazing hotel on the water. Sometimes I feel spoiled traveling to all these hotels to speak, I hope that it is making some sort of difference worthy of all this luxury. I am looking forward to speaking at this one because I was lucky enough to accompany my mom last year as a guest, and I know a lot of the people putting it on, so it will be amazing to present to them! The picture was taken out of my hotel room last year.

It is really weird when I think about what I am actually doing. I mean, ever since I can remember I have gone to conferences with my mom. I remember coloring in the back of the room, playing "my little ponies" in the lobby, swimming with my dad in the pool. I always tagged along, meeting all kinds of amazing and important people. And now I present to them. It's really funny how sometimes life seems to put you in the last place you expected but the one you feel the most comfortable in. I can't even remember how many people have said, "the last time I say you you were this high..." Its an interesting position to be in, on one level I of course feel natural and comfortable because I have seen my mom do it so many times, and because I know so many of the people, or kind of people, listening. On the other hand I can't help but feeling like a child. Like the child that is still tagging along, just three feet taller.

It's really funny how life puts us in these positions. I never thought I would want to speak at conferences. I never thought I would want to do anything other than play music. Even when I was first diagnosed I never wanted to talk about bipolar, let alone become somewhat of a spokesperson for it. But now I am. And I am going all over the country talking about my illness and the need to help other people learn how to take care of themselves and maybe eventually speak to others as I am.

I don't know where I'm going with any of this, I think I'm just rambling because I'm still in finals mode and a little out of my head. Just thought I would drop a line to say hello. And tell you I'm not dead. I will write more from now on, hopefully when my brain is a little clearer. Goodnight.

Phil's Electronics

What do we choose to broadcast? What do we choose to take in? How do we negotiate our media as both individuals and a country. I often find myself having a hard time moving from the tvs in front of me, feeling like a child blinded and enthralled by so many moving pictures. Sometimes I just can't sleep.

(art by Chris Applehands)

sometimes i feel...

like I'm in a Francis Bacon painting.

sometimes i feel...

like i'm tank girl, jet girl, and sub girl all in the same bathtub; all of my personalities encompassed in one expanse of bubbles and water.

movement

Sometimes I miss the movement and noise of Chicago. The brightness of night. The invisible noise of darkness when not a person is seen but you can feel their ghosts shuffling around you. I miss falling asleep to the cacophony of no one.

A constant chatter as the city breathes for itself.

that terrible T word

television.

i have a confession to make: i have been worrying alot about the current season of 90210. now you see i am not a tv fan, and this is what bothers me. you see i happened to watch one or two episodes late at night when i was alone and had nothing better to do but eat some fatty food and be a closet television fiend and ever since then i have been worrying about them. there is this girl who is a drug addict who is now pregnant, and this other family who had this guy pop up and say he was a long lost son. its just all so hard sometimes.

so heres the dilemma: football seasons almost over which means the tv is going back in the closet. that is where it lives during the off season and i think after this whole conversion box thing it will live their indefinitely. so what do i do? do i admit my 90210 problem to josh and keep it out so that i can check on that pregnant chic? or should i just purge myself of the addiction and say goodbye to those cliche ever problematic children?

i don't know. its hard thing to do, but the first step is always to admit your problem. and in the long run, theres always the internet...

my fish axel...

i liked what people used to do in the old days when they took pictures of the dead, so when my dear beloved axel passed i felt it right to preserve his memory through one last portrait.

Six Random Things...

I was tagged for the meme- 6 random things about me by: The Safety of Madness

I'm not sure what a meme is, but thought I would give it a try. I am supposed to post the rules, but given that I am not going to follow them exactly, I will just tell you that I am supposed to write six random things about myself and then pass it on to six more people.

I am not going to send this to six people, so I hope I don't get something like "fifty years bad luck" or whatever it is you get when you don't forward emails. Anyways, here are my random facts:

1) I have one sister who is 8 years older then me. I often forget to tell people she is my half sister because I don't ever think about it and find it irrelevant because she is just my sister, no half about it. This is never an issue until I say something about her "other" family and people get confused. For example: "my sister's dad designed the boats for two James Bond movies." This is true and people always get really confused. "your sisters dad? isn't he the same as yours???" Look him up: Doug Riddle. Riddle Marine Boats. yep yep.

2) I am six feet tall. For some reason people only feel that this is justified when you are a super athlete or a model. I wanted to do both but quickly decided that that was not the life for me. I would rather be tall and myself. That should be justification enough.

3) I am bipolar. This wasn't discovered until I was 19 and had a total meltdown. In my life I have been hospitalized for a total of 28 days.  I am now working to fight stigma and have now been stable for about two years. My mom and I are writing a book and we now have a website. We are also presenting at conferences around the country and working to publish in numerous magazines.

4) I once had a goldfish named axel. His name was not meant to come from Axel Rose, I just thought it was a good name for a goldfish. That or Thor which I will someday name a dog. Axel was a manicly depressed fighting fish. One day he decided that he didn't want to fight anymore and he sank to the bottom of his bowl. I waited for him to revive himself, but he only floated to the top. I gave him a funeral at Lake Michigan where we said our goodbyes and threw both him and his bowl into the water. Right as I was releasing the bowl he came back to life. But then died again. Maybe he is still living in Lake Michigan.

5)I am afraid of the downy bear, pretend easter bunnies and santas, and stuffed animals that come to life on television. Sometimes when the snuggles comes on tv I have to leave the room.

6) When I sleep I take over the entire bed. I sleep sideways and as my boyfriend says, like a triangle. I used to sleep with my feet in my sisters stomach, but those were the days when I was vicki vale and slept with "batman," an old backpack stuffed with junk with a cape tied to it. Now I sleep so wildly that I had to buy a satin pillow case just to keep my hair from being so matted when I wake up.

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.

why the bunny years?

well, these are the years in which i am plagued with symbols. when i went into my "cave" i did not see a penguin as the narrator of Fight Club did; i instead saw a bunny. and then they followed me, popping up whenever life was ripe with meaning: the last night i was in chicago, drinking forties in the park with the man who saved my life, the first time i went to look for apartments with a boy, the first time meditation really found me...

we've arrived

the move from Chicago to Seattle went well, now it's time to live with my parents until we find our own home...

love and couches

I often find myself seeing the world as I will remember it and not as it currently is. Because I so often go back to memories for writing or even just to put together the pieces, I now find myself trying to see things before they happen. Preparing for the next article, book, life. I find myself viewing the world as if it is not me that is living it, but me that is directing it, painting it, acting it.  Take this moment. Josh is at work and I just cleaned the apartment. Five hours ago there were piles upon piles of my papers and books and clothes. My stuff everywhere. But now it is clean and I sit here in my green chair next to the window by the plants and purple curtains and I look at how big it looks when it’s clean. I think about how much space there is and how beautiful the hard wood floors look when there is nothing on them. I always wanted hard wood floors, and now they are here. In my suddenly clean apartment. But anyways, what made me think of this is the fact that I was looking at the pictures on the wall above the couch and they made me think of Jamie, my last roommate, and my old place in the loop in chicago. They are in the same order, over the couch, and I think about how I remember that apartment and I think about the memories that were there. I think about memories a lot. I think about the movement of objects a lot. This chair for instance. I think about all the places that it has been with me and all the places that it may have been in the past. Its like that movie The Red Violin. I don’t remember very much, but I have been thinking about that concept my whole life. I used to think about the fact that if I moved to a new room or location I would have to make sure that I changed it, so it looked different, and I think somehow, with the help of my parents I was able to do that until I was about nineteen. Then I ran out of money and the furniture in my home became the furniture in my home, no matter where that home was. This chair is my chair and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have to keep it. It is my friend. And everything else around here, in this apartment, with a few exceptions, is a constant. The brown couch. I think about it sitting in the apartment in the loop. I think about it sitting in the house I bought it from. I think about its lives, and what happened on it. I think about who all slept on it. Who made love on it. Who cried, laughed, sang on it. I don’t know where this is going, but I wonder what I will think of when I remember this place. When I see the couch again, with the same pictures above it, will I think of this apartment, or will I think about my last apartment. I will really miss this place, and I am afraid that I will continue to miss its shape and form as I miss the one on Broadway in Seattle. Why do I make apartments into living beings? Doesn’t that seem a little strange? I miss them like old friends. I don’t want to leave. This place especially. I want to bring it with me. It didn’t do me any harm. I love it like the Broadway apartment, but I have better memories. At least I have josh to create new memories with. He will be there in the next home we create, and probably even the next.