Tag Archives: me

I went on a business trip for 3 days to our corporate office in So. cal. I live in N. Cal. Thankfully a short and sweet plane ride. However, much longer working days than I’m used to as well as having to “perform” in a way. The role at my current job is a bit of a solo gig. Our office is quite small.
The office down south is much busier. A bustling HR department with lots of would be candidates for direct care staff coming and going. Interviews. Applications. Phones ringing off the hook. I can be bipolar bubbly and gregarious when I need to be. I know my game and can speak well when the time comes. I have over 20 years of experience in my field. I carry myself well. But, really. Truly. I’m an introvert. Perfectionist is also in my resume.
So each morning I arrived earlier than needed. Stayed longer than needed. Smiled bigger than needed. I can only work part time these days. 24 hours. My first day with travel was 12 hours and my last day with travel was 12 hours. The in between day was a solid 8 hours. I was buzzing. Running on adrenaline and expectation. On the inside. On the outside I wore my badge. Took notes. Shared information, both personal and professional. Smiled some more.
Today I am home. I slept fairly well last night. Got a great workout in. Cleaned the house a bit. But….about 3pm I crashed. I sent my husband off to a baseball game thinking I needed “me” time. But within me, myself and I, sometimes, is not the place to be. Racing thoughts I didnt present well. Intrusive thoughts of self harm. Some visions. Some voices.
Ya know. I ask myself if I’m trying to be more than I can be? Should I have known it would be too much? Was the trip truly too much? Maybe I just need more rest, less expectations for a few days. Recovery. Allow myself the idea of recovery.
Its okay. I know I did the best that I could. I may have even done better!

That solemnly handing you a paper boat would make everything alright. It is in my mind I am alone and sometimes lonely, but very wary of new people and very nervous about more people. It is in my brain Books were the things that kept me enthralled, awake for whole nights. Books and I, we’ve […]

When I was a lass lad kid, I read as much as possible about ancient and Romano-Britain. In many of the stories, ancient Britons of various tribes would preface thoughtful words with, “it is in my mind…” and you could feel the weight of it. I loved those stories, still do actually. I use those […]

It’s my mother’s birthday and I started to feel miserable and fragmented and jagged yesterday. I’m having some solitude, which is possible because I have two guests till Tuesday. I’d be lousy company anyway and there’s every chance I’d feel agitated and trapped and turn into a (more) grouchy asshole. It feels as though every…

He had a sticker on his bakkie, “drugs are for people who can’t handle reality,” because he couldn’t.

The phone rang and a voice I wasn’t sure of, said a name I use for someone else. I was shocked at the news, whoever owned it, and when it became clear, the shock was harder, sharper. My soul went back, two decades almost exactly. I lived in a room with little in it, he sang when he walked up the stairs towards it. My friend, my heart’s friend, the angel with broken wings. We walked hand in hand and gave plants new names and we shared the moon. On a whim, we would go from the town to the city, to a walled place with guns waiting. The journey was so much slower on the way back, and so much faster too. We were blood brothers, we were safe.

It rained all night last night, all day today and it’ll rain all night tonight. Tears first, fast, then the dull daze of shock returning. My broken man with the name of an angel, Yagharek’s wingless, scarred spine. The man with secrets and sorrows, the man who died alone. I’ll grieve him hard as mountains, desolate. Two decades claw at my neck, hunting the jugular, tearing holes in the sky.

Darling, darling broken angel, dead before he died. I won’t forget your smile, or your hand in mine.

Nothing But Death  (Pablo Neruda)

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I’m not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

Translated by Robert Bly

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish — you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Emily Dickinson

(scheduled post)

I’ve always been far too impatient about hitting the publish button around here. I think I generally blog far too often, with intermittent wide open spaces. Not many this year… Last October was quiet. Ahem. So there’s one benefit of scheduling posts; I don’t drive people nuts with rapid-fire blogging, and there are still posts appearing on the tongue tied days. I started to mark my posts as scheduled a few days ago; the reason for that is also the most beneficial of benefits – you won’t know when I wrote posts. No skullduggery there, however, it just means that I can weep, wail, whine and whinge, without worrying about the people who will worry about me. Still no skullduggery, I appreciate the worriers and warriors who care, but I’m useless at dealing with the concern, especially when I’m all fucked up and fragmented. I start feeling guilty about feeling shitty and then I start agonising over answering simple, kindly queries about my wellbeing.

Overthinking? Me? Hmmm… If you’re one of my bipolar friends you can wipe that snigger out of your larynx; not only do I know you do it too, I can smell the sizzling of grey matter from here. It’s like a bipolar brainbecue.

Bob Dylan – Sweetheart Like You (Infidels, the first freshly released Dylan album I owned, it was 1983. Not a great year for me. My mother loved Dylan a lot and so do I.)

Anonymity is a funny thing. I tend to assume it’s about hiding my name and face and suchlike, but that’s a superficial judgement. Personal data aside, to be truly anonymous, I’d have to avoid connecting with other people, which means avoiding interaction. I’d have to forego empathy (both giving and receiving). Compassion would decrease, loneliness would increase.

Fuck that.

I didn’t start off anonymously anyway, when I started blogging last August. I’d given the url to a few close friends already. Part of starting this blog was, and still is, to find/be found by people like you. You guys either have bipolar, or are understanding and lovely about it. I’d tried a forum beforehand; although it was invaluable in giving support and info then, it wasn’t deep enough. So I shifted here completely and you lot held my hand through the initial shock and horror of my diagnosis. You told me about your issues, your solutions and you told me about problems with no solutions, which makes it all easier to handle. I haven’t said it before, but I’ve crammed you into my remission toolkit, which I keep in a sturdy toolbox. Well of course I do.

Thank fuck for you.

R.E.M. – Make It All Okay (My favourite band since 1986, when the video for Stand on tv held me spellbound. An obsession was born. This song is from Around the Sun, which I bought in Exeter in 2004.)

In other circumstances, I’d be spilling my soul to a therapist, a priest, a family member, a close friend… Whoever I trusted and who had time for looong conversations or emails or whatever. As you know, I’m very fucking verbose; I’d probably need about six listeners. Sometimes I feel as though my mouth has been stitched shut; more often, I feel a strong need to talk. If I can’t puke up the words and be heard, I feel as though I’ve swallowed a tennis ball. Not sure how that’d be possible with my mouth stitched shut. So I blog; I’ve been doing it since the late 90s. This time around, I’m getting the psycheducation and therapy I can’t afford otherwise. It’s important.

Another aspect is that when I blog, I’m not writing in a structured way. I’m either organising my thoughts around whatever I’ve been researching, or I’m just chucking the bread rolls of confusion into the pond of rumination and reaction, waiting for the mallards of enlightenment to come and swallow the confusion and quack some nice, clear conclusions (what a ludicrous metaphor, man that was fun to write). Flannery O’Connor said all of that far more succinctly, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”  ||source|| It works that way for me too, I frequently waffle my way to some semblance of clarity, it’s mah process, peeps.

Leonard Cohen – The Partisan (The first Leonard Cohen song I ever heard was Famous Blue Raincoat. My mother, nextofkin and I shared a whole lot of love for the man and his songs.)

And all of the preceding waffle is a long-winded way of explaining why I need to write and how it helps me. Because of all of that, allowing myself to feel inhibited is nonsense, it detracts from the benefits I get here. I just can’t bring myself to keep spewing the amount of misery that I generally do; I feel self indulgent and guilty about it. So I think that if I want/need some fast help and support, I’ll blog “live”, but otherwise I shall schedule. By the time I read it, emotions will have shifted in one direction or another and I will hopefully have gained some perspective and insight in the meantime.

Plus, anything I do to keep the old brain active, is a good thing.

When I write amusing stuff, it’s for my ego. When I write emotional stuff, it’s for my soul. The linkdumps appease the multitasking magpie of my mind (I am on fire with the mixed and ridiculous metaphors and similes today).

And I think I finally wrote my way to confusion instead of away from it.

Onwards.

Coldplay –  Ink (There are three people inked into the skin of my left arm, the ink means the world to me and Coldplay meant the world to my mother. I like them too, but it’s an embarrassingly mainstream admission to make, so I usually blame it on the dog.)

Got a tattoo and the pain’s alright…

Rodriguez – Sandrevan Lullaby (I’d bought Coming in from Reality for my mother at some point, and we played it daily for the last few weeks of her life. Sixto Rodriguez is part of the South African psyche and my mother was a big fan.)

Hello always ends in goodbye…

{TW: graphic info about Rothko’s suicide.}

This one is a no brainer. R is for Rothko and the reason for that, is a gentle and logical progression from seeing my very first one (Light Red Over Black) at the Tate, and then Georgia O’Keeffe’s comment about his work being like a weaving, in a film at the Hayward.

“Abstract art never interested me; I always painted realistically. My present paintings are realistic.” |Mark Rothko – The Seagram Murals|

*makes like Sophia in the Golden Girls* Picture this, Sicily London, 1993. A young woman scurries from gallery to gallery, looking in vain for her soul, her fortune, or a girlfriend. Her trusty copy of Time Out, newsprint classifieds bleeding into the rain, would get her one of those things in time, but for now, it got her to the Tate Modern. By then she had a homing device tuned to it and a thorough knowledge of which rooms to bypass and which postcards to buy.

The Rothko Room

The Tate has nine of the Seagram, or Four Seasons Murals, I’d read a short blurb saying (more or less) that after being commissioned to paint them for the Four Seasons Restaurant, Mark Rothko threw a serious case of artistic temperament, flung the commission money back and flounced off.

“Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine.”  (Mark Rothko, 1959) |source|

The works I saw at the Tate had been donated by Rothko himself.

On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had sliced his arms with a razor found lying at his side. The autopsy revealed that he had also overdosed on anti-depressants. He was sixty-six years old. The Seagram Murals arrived in London for display at the Tate Gallery on the very day of his suicide. |Late at Tate at Tate Liverpool (22 October 2009): Reflect on Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals in the twilight hours|

There was a skylight, the paintings were subdued and so were the people. I went back on a sunny day and as the paintings brightened a little, the people around me brightened a lot. On the grey day, they slumped quietly on the benches in the centre of the room; on the sunny day, there was a quiet energy and a much, much lighter mood. It’s logical and obvious, writing it down now, but then it felt like a revelation – art epiphany #3.

I didn’t know much at all about the artist or the paintings then, and the work, the visceral experience of it, was enough. No internet, no rapid research fast answers; I read whatever I could find and my life was so freaking peripatetic, that threads and themes were inconsistent. It was like a rich scavenger hunt back then, much later I began to fill in the gaps. Mark Rothko was not love in the ways that Picasso and O’Keeffe were. I didn’t understand him intellectually then and to be honest, I don’t think I do now. I have zero idea how to and I’m not remotely interested in anyone’s technique. Mood, texture … that’s about it really. I love the colour blue (so do 40% of humans, apparently) and it’s tempting to fall in love with Rothko’s, but there’s a small niggle at the back of my mind, that says if I did, I’d have entered ‘does the art match the couch’ territory and then, well it’s all downhill from there, innit?

Almost everyone who enters the room feels an urge to sit down on the benches in the middle of the space. It’s as if the emotional weight of these sombre works instinctively makes you sit, instantly drained by them. Before you even have time to try to compose a rational understanding of them, they have a psychological impact. The Tate’s Mark Rothko exhibit: a room with a view of the subconscious

So I can look at Rothko paintings and fall into their density for a while and feel colour all around, but actual sensible thought? When I attempt that, it all puzzles the fuck out of me. I firmly believe that art is better when it’s independent of all the blather of criticism and interpretation. Everyone, no matter their age or education, who looks at a painting and thinks or says a word or a million words about it, is absolutely, unequivocally right. In the Rothko Room, I probably gazed far more at the other people in the room than I did at the art. And since their reactions were a reflection of those paintings, it was truly fascinating.

Moar Stuffs

“Like many artists, Mark Rothko was many people. He was the European emigre enjoying a better life in America; he was the impoverished adolescent from a political family who met anarchist Emma Goldman; and he was the young anarchist who studied at Yale. He repudiated abstraction and colour field, yet became known as the most famous of abstract artists and colour field painters.” The Strange Life & Stranger Death of Mark Rothko

“In October 2012, Black on Maroon, one of the paintings in the Seagram series, was defaced with writing in black ink while on display at Tate Modern, by a man named Wlodzimierz Umaniec. It was estimated that restoration of the painting might take up to eighteen months to complete. The BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz explained that the ink from Umaniec’s marker pen had bled all the way through the canvas, causing “a deep wound not a superficial graze” and that the vandal had caused “significant damage.”” |bbc news|

“Kate Rothko Prizel is a strong-looking woman with a disarming smile that she switches on and off like a flashlight. You sit opposite her, trying not to be distracted by the subliminal hum of the canvases on the walls – three early Rothkos to the right of me, and one to the left – and you wonder: how did she do it? How did she survive?” The art cheats who betrayed my father

Websites

markrothko.org – A comprehensive resource for information about Mark Rothko paintings, prints, biography and quotes.

Rothko @ MoMA

Rothko @ the Guggenheim