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 lonliness.  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?

Waiting for School

I’ve been having a reasonably decent time of things lately. Mental health-wise I’m reasonably stable, except for a touch of hypochondria which I’ve yet to shake,  My car has received an automatic pass of the dreaded emission standards test due to a maintenance problem with the testing facility . The pass is for two years!!  (Hell, the car will be DEAD in two years!)  Here I thought I was going to have to pay a hefty sum of money for a waiver ($450. largely for nothing).  I can’t explain it-I guess that sometimes things just break your way.  I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that my ex wife is somehow, on some level, regretting initiating our divorce.  I base this largely on her recent penchant for familiarity and closeness and the pregnant pauses in our conversations.  I got her her favorite color of roses along with Ben’s ceramics project (A glazed fancy flowerpot.) and some balloons to help  to mark her birthday.  I like to get her flowers for every occasion: Easter, birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas.  I think the sentiments are not totally lost on her. I think it’s a good example for Benjamin as well; someday he’ll treat a woman with similar consideration.  If there is one thing that I have learned as a man, it is to never underestimate the power of flowers with women. I know it makes no logical sense:  why get flowers for a woman who abandoned you while you were helpless and confined in a psychiatric hospital you might ask? Fundamental human decency, largely.  I have a capacity for forgiveness that defies all reason.  I sometimes wonder about just what the limits of it really are, or if there are any at all.

It’s Late July and All Seems Right in the World

I have been having some fairly decent days lately. My kids are around me and I have been focusing upon looking toward school in the fall.  I have been relatively stable for a couple of weeks and have even gotten some creative writing done, which surprises me to no end.  I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of work accomplished where it comes to my novel, and  it is going well, so far anyway.  I don’t know just what is driving me. Perhaps it’s a knowledge of my mortality, perhaps I’m just done with all the demons and they’re done with me.  Something has scared me straight though, and I’m not sure just what it is.  

Kids are Back!

I got my kids back and I’m feeling wonderful about it!  I’ve spent a goodly amount of time with my little man and am happy to finally have my daughter back as well. I am still just so-so on summer, though the real sense of panic and crisis has somewhat passed. I wonder when the snow will fly again and I can feel insulated and safe once more.  The panic that I had been having over the huge void that represents for me the season of summer is still there to some degree.  I need the structure of school to keep me occupied and focused on something other than just my illness and my uncertain future.  My future truly is uncertain, and that troubles me on a number of levels. I have been less than energetic lately and have felt the enthusiasm I had once felt for any online “friendships” waning.  I’m pretty sure that I know my capacity for maintaining correspondence and keeping up with friendly activities.  

Feeling Listless and Blue

  I’m at one hell of a low point in my life just now.  Ben is away for nearly two weeks at the same time as Jessica.  I feel like I’m just so empty now.  I am unable to focus upon anything for any extended period of time, so writing, working on stories or the novel is all but out of the question.  My novel is going badly- the story is dragging anyway.  I feel like a body suddenly deprived of breath and my efforts to regain my life are frantic like a breathless body’s.  I need my kids.  I cannot live without them.  I can see that now.  Sometimes it takes some dramatic event, sometimes cataclysmic, to make us see what is truly important.  I’m giving just cursory thoughts to school and anything else at this point; I just want to get my kids to come back to me.   That’s all that seems important.  My relationship with the Dutch girl is ongoing.  We “meet” every day and she describes me as “sweet”.  It’s good to hear, really.  After feeling so beaten about by life, it’s very good to hear.