Finally Winter

Winter, in all it’s glory, is finally here.  We’ve already had some nice snow accumulation and I have been feeling a little safer than I have been throughout the fall.  The hated digital photography class has FINALLY ended.  I am SO thankful.  It and the rest of my courses really took it out of me this last semester.  I have been feeling so good just knowing that I have no projects due any longer.  I am beginning to even get into the Christmas spirit too; buying gifts and making my cards out.  Last year I sent out cards that I did myself but this year I just bought a package of Hallmark cards that looked kind of modern and funky. (They look kind of like they were drawn by Dr. Suess.)  They’re just offbeat enough for me to like them thoroughly.  I’m completely happy with this time of year and it’s thorough lack of responsibility.  I don’t even have any solid appointments with my shrinks- their offices just said “call us in the new year”.  Cool- no real obligations to have hovering over me!  I really hate too many obligations.  I wonder just how normal people balance it all.  It all just seems so overwhelming to me. How in the hell do they manage to multi-task?  Just who thought up multi-tasking and tried to sell the idea as a good thing?  Sounds like the worst idea since Hitler’s dad said to Hitler’s mom; “Gee Inga, maybe we should try to have some more children…”   Anyone out there actually LIKE multi-tasking?  I think the whole idea is thoroughly bad; give your divided attention to disparate tasks and make sure they’re all done in a half-assed manner.

I’m Ready for Winter

When the hell is the world going to look like this again?  I need my little frozen wonderland to superimpose some cheap magic over this wet and dismal wreckage of an autumn.  I’m rather sick of the wet and want to just get on with it.  I honestly can’t remember a fall that took more out of me.  I wouldn’t be surprised if under it’s mantle of artificial color, my hair isn’t turning a further shade of white.  This has been the most stressful time that I can honestly recall, what with all of the shenanigans of my ex-wife, my courses and my rapid and unpredictable cycles.   I feel like I’m on bipolar fire, like Richard Pryor; running down the street aflame with the nuanced afflictions of my disorder.  I wish for what I think is the first time, that I were if not normal, I were at least a few shades closer to it.

Looking Forward to Christmas

A bit of a rainy weekend, excepting Sunday, which was glorious. The rain seems to have left the trees, in their full glory when the rains began, denuded and the sidewalks covered in leaves. I liked walks in the rain when I was married/dating but now they just seem this side of depressing.  I really cannot wait for Christmas. I need the sparkle and the twinkle of the brightly lighted streets and all the beautiful colors.  I’ve already made my mental Christmas lists for everyone and cannot wait to commence with my shopping excursions.  I’m in a very generous mood lately.  I think I’m starting to feel the mania the season usually brings with it. I’m really feeling fairly on edge lately about the upcoming season and my nerves are sort of raw.  I have made peace with my ex wife and am doing helpful things for her.

Falling Down

This fall has been really something where it comes to my mental health. (It has really taken a bruising!)  I’m feeling the severe stress of school, where I’m always behind because of the damned photography course. (When is it EVER going to END?) I’m feeling the stress of taking my little man Ben out to new and interesting places and keeping him entertained.  I’m worried about the stories I sent off to The Paris Review- are they going to accept them?  I haven’t heard anything since the initial letter saying they’re retaining them for review.  I’ve also lately been having some car issues that are causing me to worry. To top it all off I should probably let my loyal readers in on the rescue call I got from my severely paranoid ex-wife.  My ex-wife had a problem and of course who does she call but me, knowing that I’ll actually come and rescue her, pay the bill or do whatever is needed to restore her little world to that state that passes for normalcy.  She called this past Saturday from a soccer party that I thankfully had avoided being invited to.  She had lost her set of keys and was locked out of her big police cruiser-sized car . (It’s a hideous-looking car.)   I went to the house as she asked me to do and looked in vain for the keys.  She showed up about five minutes later and helped to look for the keys which were apparently not there. (They turned out to be in her purse-locked in the car all the time.)

Et in Arcadia ego

For some odd reason I’m feeling decidedly unapologetic about nearly everything lately.  I seem to be walking around with a chip upon my shoulder, daring providence to touch it. Maybe it’s just the unauthorized med change but lately I feel the sort of fearlessness that I used to feel in youth. I had an inkling then, even back then, after reading Brideshead Revisited at school, that I’d somehow end up like the Charles Ryder character.  How does he describe himself at the end?  -homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless (?).  It went something like that anyway- I misplaced the book years ago.  Like him in the end, I’ve been feeling somewhat at peace with the world lately and I can’t really attribute it to any single life event.  I don’t mind things I suppose, and maybe that’s the secret; stay calm-in the end it just doesn’t matter anyway.

Odd Auditory Hallucination

I had an unusual auditory hallucination today.  I thought I heard my mother, several states away, calling my name. It took me aback because I had been doing so well with keeping touch with reality, or at least my little version of it.  I’m beginning to wonder just what percentage of life is “real” and just what is imaginary.  I suppose I’ll find out in the fulness of time.

A Great Day with My Little Man

Spent a great Sunday with my little guy today.  It seems to have made up for a lot of the bad feelings I’ve been having toward his mother. We spent most of the day at a bookstore, reading him all of the new Halloween offerings.  He loves to be read to. I think we spent several hours in all.  He’s a real treasure and I am in awe of how much I am learning about the power of love and it’s role in a healthy life.  I worry very little about very much other than how my mental health and it’s attendant troubles impact him.  I feel like I need to focus upon both recovery and cleaning up my perceptions of my ex, which need it badly.  I really don’t know just who I am without the little man.

Looking at the World Differently

This fall is just getting more and more confusing and unsettled. I am beginning to realize just how foolishly blind I have been to the ways of the world.  This mainly is because of my apparent myopia to the treachery of my ex wife.  Just what the hell was I thinking buying her flowers and giving her money?  I just recently learned that early last year, just days before I was admitted to the hospital for bipolar psychosis, she had tried to have me charged with domestic abuse !  This was at a time when I was so depressed that I could barely move or even communicate.  The complaint was dismissed thankfully , with the notation that there was “no reasonable cause to believe that abuse had occurred”.  -But the very idea!-ME!-  A sensitive writer and artist who has never struck anyone in anger ever!  Absolutely amazing!  (I never even raise my voice to anyone.) But the idea that she actually had the audacity to lie in order to try to get me removed from my home!  It’s become crystal clear that she’s a complete liar and a schemer and I don’t know just how naive I could have been to think that she was anything but.  I’m like Saul on the road to Damascus; I’m finally understanding things for what they are and it’s really heartbreaking. I really wish I hadn’t found out and remained ignorant of just how dark the heart of evil can be.  I wish that I could be at peace with the world again, or at least the part of it that she occupies.  I am going to do my very best to try to be civil and not let on that I have learned about this. I think it’s the best way, really. I’d like to forgive and hopefully forget.  Enough about that; it makes my head hurt just to think about it.  

Narrowly Escaping the Blues

I did this portrait of Clifford Brown a little while ago.  I never get tired of painting with a palette knife- no brushes to wash!  I’m in a jazz/ blues sort of mood with the changing of the guard from summer to fall. I want to be in love.  I associate the fall with long hand-in hand walks over cobblestones and bricks, falling leaves and feeling the euphoria of the changing of the climate.  I suppose that for this fall I’ll just have to learn to live with my disappointment. No love on the horizon.  I’m feeling much better after my mother’s visit though.  She has a way of elevating even my darkest moods.  Before her appearance, I had been dwelling  upon some developments in my life that are a little unsettling. The irony of it is that they’re mostly positive changes, but I am feeling really unhinged after an extended period of cyclical suicidal ideation.  I think it was mostly just the blight of self-pity that brought about the suicidal thoughts.  I don’t remember just who paraphrased Oscar Wilde’s famous quote on hatred to have it read that self-pity destroys everything around it but itself, but I can hear a ring of truth in it.  I have been on a sustained binge of a diet of self-pity when I think about how my life, once secure (though mad), solvent (excepting the splurging) and filled with love (though tinged with an unseen penchant for emotional abuse of those closest to me) has degenerated into a trough of insecurity, depression and loneliness.  I think most of my best days are behind me, and that is a dangerous worldview for anyone to have, let alone someone with manic depression. 

School’s Open

I’m so glad to be in school once again. Structure is comforting.  Though now I’m a little worried over a digital photography class I have taken. I was hoping it would be a breeze, but it turns out to be more work and far more reading than I can comfortably do.  My only consolation is that I do have all of the programs he’s using, so I can do a dry run before we do it in class. I suppose it’ll work out. The mountains look blue now- that’s a great sign- there’s a nice fall nip in the morning air that lends itself to optimism. You could say that besides shuttling my daughter back and forth to school, I am halfway free of care.  Why is it that I feel that I am better able to write now that the weather is turning to fall?  There’s something thoughtful about the fall, I suppose.  (I wonder how anything ever gets written in Hawaii or in southern California?)  I suppose it’s all part of my cycling. I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the seizure/ panic attack (whichever) that I had that landed me in the ER.  I even got a free ride in an ambulance- how can you beat that?  I don’t know just what triggered it or just why it happened, but happen it did.  I honestly felt like I was dying, otherwise I would never have the balls to call 911.  It seems so dramatic, you know?