Internal Forecast: Wallowing or Drowning

Self-fulfilling prophecies, I hate 'em. I've been feeling really flat, low this past week or so, much of what I talked about last time I think. I think I was hoping all this goodness would make me feel better about myself - guess not. I'm living in a fog of apathy with a slight chance of despair. I'm wondering what will it take - more faking till I finally believe? Is this what others do? Is it just that I am giving into the lowness, I'm not trying hard enough? Well, that's a yes because I don't even feel like trying. I think there are many many others who feel like me out there but they're just trying harder, are being braver. I am feeling very cowardly. There I've done it, made myself cry, so maybe I've hit the truth. I have this utter conviction that I am simply incapable, that I am broken beyond repair, that this is when you toss the model out. I am crying now so maybe I've just managed to get inside my own shell, breached my own defences. Did you know you can be your own double agent. I guess it's confusing wondering what side you're on. Edges blur, I still don't know why I cry, sadness, but will it ever stop? I have talked about almost everything I can think of, terrible things that have mostly happened to other people., I just happened to listen to them and try to offer compassion, I guess it was a trade off, they left feeling better (maybe just momentarily) but I took on the horror, the agony. It's emotional agony. I can betray berate myself for anything, even if nothing bad has actually happened. I think it's a way I try to feel powerful, it's so twisted, all I can say that feels like truth is that I just feel numb most of the time and some of the time, I feel very very sad and sometimes I feel happiness, so its possible, but it's just not that often and I really have no clue about where these happy times come from. They feel good, I want them, some people think people like just like being depressed, that I'm wallowing in it, I'm not wallowing I'm drowning. I think it's goo that I'm crying, at minimum it means I exist. I don't think people cry for no reason. But maybe my brain is just so completely miswired that there nothing to reason around it, there no pattern I can discern. i am able to talk, able to write this stream of whatever, but it mostly feels self-indulgent, which I judge as a negative behaviour - but maybe I need to , I need to get this poison out, I feel so toxic and I am making my body more toxic by not looking after my physical self, it seems part of me is bent on self-destruction, like little slices at a time, like it hurts at first then you get used to it and you stop noticing and all the while you're circling the drain.

I finally got my webpage up, I really like it so now I can apply for other submissions to other galleries, and I've got my resume up to snuff I think. Like I said, good stuff.

Wallowing implies will, drowning may not be a person's fault, maybe not so directly. I remember the things that pierced me. The things that feel like losses, the things I haven't found the way to process, integrate. I haven't found the will to move myself into a kinder place - I'm all about the martyring - I know there are many who have experienced, seen far worse than me and I feel ashamed to even to talking like this, like I have not earned the right. Yet I would say to another person that they have losses and that it is important to grieve them, that a person has a right to grieve. Grieving, crying removes those toxins from my system, cause right now I am feeling tired but less apathetic. So writing helps. It doesn't matter if anyone else reads it, these are my thoughts, they may not fit for anyone else, I need to do this for me not for the aim of helping anyone else, although if that happens I am glad.

Elliott Louis Gallery

Check out the Elliott Louis Gallery website

Balance Sucks and Sharp Relief Leaves a Mark

I think I've had a major crash, it's not that I'm feeling sad, just lifeless. No motivation. I think it's all the China excitement and also school finally ending. The bigger the high etc. I guess it will pass but I do want to keep making.

I've spent a great deal of my life attending school, maybe it's a safety net for me, I don't have to be an adult cause my status as a student protects me. This is when I feel so cowardly and immature. Everywhere I look I see people with all of these admirable accomplishments and at earlier ages. I guess it throws my perceived inadequacies (aka failures) into sharp relief.

Not sure what to do with myself today, hopefully I'll workout. I did finally venture into the facebook world, but I don't really know how well/long I'll keep involved. Blah.

The Frog Will Never Get There and Chiclets

Hi. Haven't posted in a long time. Lots of really good things going on in my art world, so this is good. This is Ruth with my Swarm II in Beijing. She's an amazing woman. This is very thrilling!

I didn't take my meds last night (Clonazepam and wellbutrin [ironic name really - I'd like to have the job of naming some of these drugs]). And I guess there was some sleeping because there was plenty dreaming, couple times waking myself up by talking, waking up my partner with my talking.

I read a comment on my artwork - it said "no understanding of life" - I wondered if that was a mistranslation or if that was what the commenter really thought. There are many times when I certainly am baffled by this whole being alive thing. Being alive for the sake of being alive - part of me thinks that there must be a reason for everything, else why have it? But maybe there is no reason - finding a reason for things gives me comfort certainly, then I can exhale with relief and say ohhh, that's why, ok.

I'm weirded out with the good things happening - don't know what to make of it, trying to just be thankful and gracious - but these qualities are not innate to moi. Oh well.

I have decided - aka placed my hopes in - that some day someone will figure out how to undo the hardwiring to the amygdala that happens when a person experiences trauma. There are plenty smart people in the world, someone will do it. Go someone!

I am curious about happiness, are some people happy (as opposed to Meg Tilly's character's belief in The Big Chill)? Is it a conscious effort, a willing oneself to be at peace - is that the real work? I don't think it's possessions for sure - that's silly and external. Yet I believe it vital (as in life-giving, affirming) to witness oneself reflected in the world somehow, that there is a reason I guess. It's hard to see purpose in the many thousands of daily child deaths though - no way to reason around that. reality check.

Questions, discussions that have been ongoing since people became people. I think every being is getting more complex, smarter, more evolved I suppose. The logarithm of learning I guess. All the philosophers have been wrestling with these puzzlers for many millenia. Maybe I should read them more. I don't remember what they were saying when I read them over 18 years ago - sorry Philosophy prof. I wonder why the necessity for the big words, but maybe that just helps people get their thoughts down faster. I suppose it's quicker to write a 15 letter word than an entire sentence of regular-human speak. Just makes me, the dear reader, have to work harder with many interruptions to race to the dictionary. Of course I am a slower learner than I am a retainer so it's kind of like the frog-jumping-half-the-distance-each-time-puzzle: I never get there.

I am so well-defended against criticism - in my mind anyway - I am in a constant state of edit. Kind of a chickenshit (chicletshit!) approach to being in the world. Yet it is an impossible goal, there will always be negative and positive interpretations of me. One day I hope to learn that making mistakes will not kill me - but I remain afraid - not as much though I am pleased to say. And I think the combo of a slightly increased dose of Wellbutrin coupled with all manner of placebo affects and the good circumstances around me are all contributing. Overall I am indeed feeling better and I hope I will really feel and actually be contributing something positive to the world - gotta justify all this taking up space I'm doing!

Take care.

Naive thy name is Hammy

I have been advised that after all my rapturous robin-parenting praise earlier today, that maybe the eggs weren't being cared for, not incubated with warmth of either parent blah. I hope that I had just momentarily scared away the robin, but then there was no dive-bombing by said bird, no berating of said intruder (me).

I will hold out for a positive ending. I can't fathom birds who could abandon their young but then ultimately, it's about survival. She could make more eggs. This is a strange parallel to my own experience 3 yrs ago. My body stopped encouraging my fetus (embryo) to develop, I am guessing my body sensed there would be massive health problems with my baby and just shut down production (lots of contributing factors me being too old having a first child, me taking a cocktail of SSRIs and anti-anxiety meds). Maybe robin mama senses there is something wrong with her eggs - or all of our curiousity left them too human smelly. I hope not for the latter reason, I don't like to kill any living creature. I save spiders and woodbugs (I encounter many in the firewood) and wasps and bees and even those kind of mini-dinosaur-looking earwigs.

It's hard not to think that I was defective when my baby stopped developing. I still grieve this loss so much. I wonder. everywhere I look here are babies, there are mothers walking with their daughters, laughing. It would be so wonderful. But I am afraid. And selfish too I think. Yet I try to be loving to everyone I meet, especially children, to let them know that there is kindness in the world. All I want is kindness.

Why do I hurt so much?

How spears and arrows (but not slings, sorry Hamlet) were discovered

I'm awake again, it's very late or very early - one of those in-between states. Raining hard, windy. Not so windy on as Friday, we had gusts of I believe hurricane magnitude. Lots of trees down, day long power outage. So Saturday was cleanup and also start working on recovering my badly neglected garden. Lots of grass and weeds and very aggressive ground cover with poor boundaries. Lots of pulling, digging, shoveling and I even transplanted a struggling hydrangea, I think it will be much happier in its new home. I love dirt, ate some too, by an accident, I start off wearing gloves but then I just can't stand it, rip them off and start digging and rooting up stuff with my hands. Couple of significant slivers.

What was most impressive were the sticks that the wind had driven into the ground - the ground is soft what with all of the ran, however, they were in there 3 or 4 inches. Got me thinking that #1 - that would leave a mark ; and B) this was how cavepeople discovered a simple weapon. Spears!Then of course advances in killing technology introduced the arrow and its friend the bow - look at us now eh?

The other day we got 4 cords of wood for next winter, but because we were away so much we still had a good cord left in the wood shed. So I moved as much as I could into another area and my husband discovered a robin's nest high up in the back of the shed, no eggs though so we moved it outside. After the storm settled down somewhat we checked the nest and there was an egg in it(!!) and we had our generator all set up in the shed, quasi-noisy exhaust etc. and we were flummoxed because we didn't have a new shelter for the nest. Anyhow, we were saved as the power finally came back on (8pm) and he placed the nest back on top of the wood where he'd found it. Hoping mama would ignore our human smell and come back to roost. Well, she did indeed, yesterday when I was putting my favourite tools away (wheel barrow and assorted digging and cutting devices) I thought I would peak in and see if the egg was still there - well bless my britches there were 2 eggs now! Pretty freaking cool, very inspiring and reassuring- what a great mom. Can't wait for the spring flying school in the backyard.

The nest itself was a wonder of engineering and just trying to imagine the time and number of flights required to gather all of the materials blew my brain. It was soft straw inside, and moss with twiggy bits woven outside with an upper ring of MUD - how the hell do they do that with their little beaks and large weight ratios - its boggles it does. All for its children, how wonderful. So I got to thinking about parenting as humans, and wondering how we compare. I am not a parent, so I cannot really speak to this - but the singular devotion of the robin was very touching.

In many of my digging forays I uncovered worms o'plenty so the robins have plenty to feast upon. They need it. Bless all worms.

My SSRI was increased slightly last week, so far so good.

Hammy