Bipolar Express – The Show

Bipolar Express is a webisode written and created by a man living with Bipolar disorder. This web series will educate and entertain you about bipolar disorder (Manic depressive disorder), bringing to light what it is like to live with this disease.

Archive for category Redefining Bipolar

The Violent World of OZ and Cindy Sampson’s Loneliness

Jun 20

Posted by Nathaniel in Redefining Bipolar, Stream of Consciousness, Uncategorized | No Comments

Sitting here watching Broken Flowers thinkin’ bout’ all the trillion trillion things happening right now as I write this the joy the suffering the way Obama looks at himself in the mirror shaving wonder how the hell he sleeps at night might we dance together today under the sunny skies of North Carolina my heart is singing and the thought of the thought of the thought of happiness of good friends of “Golden Days, Golden Days”  then you know it’s up to me to take you away for a moment why don’t we do that…

A young woman walks into a Midwestern bar out of loneliness and a break from her smelly apartment.  As she enters – the eighteen drunk, insensitive males look her up and down as if they were inspecting meat at a factory.  The grunting can be heard a mile away and Cindy ponders the notion that his  really big  cock just got a little bit harder looking at her – is both repelling and enticing in the worst of ways.  She can feel it, being subjected to this carnivore delight, the animalistic and primitive way guys rip the soul out of women and reduce them to ass and tits.  They down another Bud and strut with the simple pride of being part of the man-clan.   ” Fuck you if you don’t want in...”

“I believed in fairy tales,” she thinks to herself and goes to the bar to order a beer.  Goddamit, a spider is on my back. And that spider knows what is coming.  It bites her on the shoulder as a reminder of life’s pain, the unending cruelty of physical sensation going either direction, pleasure or agony.

“I believed in true love, a Prince to rescue me, God, everything.”  The lustful eyes are saturating her, fucking her from the imaginations of lonely men just three feet away.  Jesus, am I the only girl in here?  FUCKING SPIDER!

The tattoo infested bartender looks up – terrified as what unfolds.  The old red roof of Fred’s Beer Barn begins to rip apart as a distraction that simple men cannot fathom ignites upon the Nebraska night, carrying in its funnel a hundred corn plants and one pathetic scarecrow.  The wind of the F-3 Tornado is like ten freight trains off the track and headed for a cliff,  sucking up wood and steel and drunk, horny, overweight men into the night sky of Omaha.  These “men” become boys quickly and shriek in terror as two of the regulars, Frank Simmons and Ted Slavinsky  – are sucked up for a ride into oblivion they have only had nightmares of, despite holding onto wooden posts and their beer bottles, like a sacred ornament they will die to defend.  Their overweight, beer and meat filled bodies are ripped to pieces as they see their wasted lives pass in front of their eyes in one American instant.  Ted once had a thought that was truly original he believed, and the moment before the cyclone devours him, he realizes how stupid a thought it really was – to serve Beer in vending machines.   It was a fuckin’ good idea at the time… He ponders quickly as the two hundred and fifty mile an hour wind rips his  fat, worthless body to bloody pieces, smashing him repeatedly on the pavement in front of two schoolgirls.  They no longer believe in Fairy Tales either.

And Cindy Sampson keeps drinking,  taking in the shock and horror on a night she really just wanted to be held on.  The men who moments ago were plotting ways to defile her body in unmentionable ways are taken away to certain death,  and she thinks to herself that this tornado may make her a true believer  in the Almighty after all.  The bar area is miraculously not hit by the funnel and she looks and looks at the chaos and looks again, holding tight to her St. Pauli Girl and the notion that to die by a tornado is a glorious death and should be savored.   This “Finger of God” may take us away to some other world, she thinks, a world no man could ever give me.

Maybe I should jump in the eye and see where it takes me – away from this mediocre life where the most exciting that that happens to me is ordering extra sour cream on my bean burrito at Taco Bell.    I’m Cindy Sampson and I want a goddamn adventure!

Though it was not Cindy’s night to die, the singing goes on from cloud to cloud as the harmonies of Mozart and Mr. Vivaldi open up the glittering passageway to that far off place, but so close that you could whisper and infinite souls hear you through the madness.  The voices of Cindy’s ancestors who followed the road of truth and fell short are waiting with all she ever thought, felt, dreamt, hoped for, and loved   The twister is gone and people have gone with it.  Fred’s Beer Barn has no roof now.   The weather looks nice on the horizon.  Cindy can now see a meteor shower light up the June skies over Tornado Alley.

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I hate to be so SERIOUS, but I just watched ZEITGEIST Addendum

Jun 18

Posted by Nathaniel in Redefining Bipolar, Spirituality, Uncategorized | No Comments

Wow.  I mean holy shit, fucking, unreal – as in I WAS SAYING WE NEED TO GET BEYOND MONEY FOR YEARS. (it’s all about ME, don’t you know that yet!) Looks like these guys are ahead of me and propose a RESOURCED-BASED ECONOMY instead.  This is the cool part if you haven’t watched ZEITGEIST – which you should because they say let’s combine all the good parts of our technology and combine them with our Planet to live in what some would cynically say is idealistic Utopia.  I think we need some serious idealism after watching this last oil spill.   Replacing boring, monotonous factory and assembly line, spirit-killing jobs would be robots that could do them faster and not get exhausted.   Zeitgeist, which means “The Spirit of the time or of the ages,” is a two-hour documentary that covers everything from 9/11 and explosions in the towers to religion, thousand mile per hour mag-lev trains,  to the evolution of our banking system in America and its power over the world.    Okay, this isn’t one to watch stoned with your beer-buddies or a date.   There aren’t a lot of “lough out loud” moments going on here, although they did hire Tony Danza to play Jesus which was an odd casting choice as he is far too buff to be my messiah.

Part of the film goes into the above mentioned ideas which branch off into THE VENUS PROJECT,  the child of Jacque Fresco, a 90-something architect who has devoted his life to that idea that we can live on the beautiful world without the neurotic need to possess land and control others and define ourselves by our checking account balance.   He talks about ideas that are more Christian than any one I have ever heard in church, although proposing all men were thongs on Thursdays is one I think we should vote on, as well as his obsession with asparagus and ostrich racing.  Just kidding.  I’m thinking that mental illnesses might begin to disappear in a world like this because I’d have nothing to bitch about any more and that would be a huge problem.   Where would we go, what would we do…

A new spirituality would arise out of a greater community and new freedoms of time, health, and creativity.   I never thought I’d say this, but maybe science and technology could be the genesis of finally, finally discovering God on Earth.

(You can watch all two hours sometimes without having to reload)

And check out this site:

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

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Bipolar and Make Believe Friends

Feb 9

Posted by Nathaniel in Redefining Bipolar, Stream of Consciousness, Uncategorized | No Comments

This day unfolds and I  “create” what I can out of it.  Up and around me lies the pretty hills of Marin and Fairfax.  The sun came out today and for a moment, I felt the impulse to walk on those hills, sober and alone, creating joy if possible.  But will joy follow me there, or the sinking feeling in me that loneliness will have a greater say in the matter – and the reality of needing to share life with others is too strong for any philosophy to overcome.   I am hurting today.   A kind man just complimented me on my open-mic acting show last night.  I did Gollum and Bipolar Hamlet.  He said it was fantastic and honestly that strange man, who’s name eludes me, may be my only social outlet this Tuesday, this wretchedly lonely February day.  The cursed Nazarene I believed in for so many years has decided he has better things to do than grace me with his presence.  In his absence, I have befriended a ghost named Rod, who was outcast like Satan but asked to “rejoin” Heaven last month and was allowed entry, but on a probationary trial run which I know he’s going to blow, being drunk most of the time and causing trouble.

Rod and I clicked right away, with his obsession with Pesto, Liza Minnelli, and Hydroplanes.  It is our desire to combine the three and fly above the water with the infamous daughter of Dorothy.   Rod is a hell of a conversationalist.

“Rod, why do we spend our lives basically within our own minds, projecting things onto other people and seeing oureslves in them?  Why am I trapped in loneliness and eternal longing to connect but always coming up short?”

“Oh, that’s easy.  You’re an outcast.”
“What?”

“You heard me.  You are an outcast.  Always will be.”

“Well that’s fucking great!  Couldn’t you lie at least and tell me everything will be okay?”

He flies ahead to the next tree and perches himself about ten feet up.

“Get down, Rod.   This is serious.  Why am I an outcast?”

“Because in the spirit world you did something bad to God.  So did I, I was an outcast too.  Could be worse.  You could live in Haiti or Africa.  At least you’re an outcast in Marin county.  So shut the fuck up and quit whining.  I need a drink.”

We head back down the trail and Rod follows me to a bipolar support group.

“You going to tell me what I did to God?”

He smiles and laughs.  “Sure, you ate all of his fish and chips one night and lied about it.”

“Fish and chips?”

“Don’t laugh.  Fish and chips are serious subjects in the afterlife.  You’re lucky to be here at all.”

I stop for a moment to ponder this absurd and painful truth, that all of my suffering and struggles are because of fish and chips.  I shake my head as Rod and I turn the corner and head for the Golden Gate Bridge.  Sickly enough, he likes to watch people jump from it.  Maybe I need a new ghost to hang with.

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Freedom from Mental Illness and Beyond

Jan 22

Posted by Nathaniel in Mental Illness, Redefining Bipolar, Spirituality, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Spiritual teachings and healthy living can have a strong positive affect on mental illness.  The labeling of bipolar and other terms like it is abused and overdone and instigates the “mentally ill mentality,” of believing everything one reads and hears.  “You will do this.  You will feel that.  When you do, take more pills.”  It is  a cycle that keeps true healing out and profits for drug companies in.  Where is the growth in this unending cycle?  How do people begin to heal and change when they are constantly told how sick they are and what new medication they should be taking.  We need a much larger definition for mental illness as well as open discussion of the reasons it manifests differently in people and why they become trapped in it without real change.  Too many doctors want to have a person visit for thirty minutes and then label them as BIPOLAR1 and break out the Lamitcal.  Drugs like that can have pretty serious side effects like skin rash and weight gain.

I went to a bipolar support group and honestly, the people were so doped up on meds they could hardly keep their eyes open during the meeting, let alone form an intelligent thought to share.  It frustrated me as everyone went around the group making comments that gave more and more power to bipolar and emotions – as if they both were some demon that was waiting to plague their lives.  I tried to share in the group how applying Eckhart Tolle’s teachings and changing my PERCEPTION has helped me to recognize emotions for what they are and arent, as well as calm down from my usual mania.   I have learned how to come out of myself and see my connection to other people and the world, not just  a whirlwind of emotions flying through my mind.  The group conversation always went back to a new medicine or how horrible everything is because we have bipolar and the world “doesn’t understand.”   Some of the group had that look in their eyes like they had given up long ago.  They talked about themselves as if having bipolar was their identity, and not in a good way – as if they were a victim, fighting this terrible beast.

I’m not disputing that mental illness is real.  I know it is real.   But we have much more power and choices that we realize.  Just to wake up one day and say to yourself, “I am going to send love out today to people I come in contact with” can have an amazing effect on your entire day.  You may feel fear or isolation initially, but keep doing it anyway and you may be shocked at the results.  Try feeling connected and see yourself as a part of all this crazy, wonderful beauty around us.  You may call it Buddhism, Christianity, or Taoism if you like.   The love and truth in all of them can begin to set y0u free.   If you don’t believe in God, I hope you can try to believe in love.   These words I write – mental illness, God, love, change, hope, are all ones that need to be redefined and expanded through our progress and discovery.

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Bipolar Rapid Cycling and the Joys of Christmas

Dec 26

Posted by Nathaniel in Mental Illness, Redefining Bipolar, Spirituality | No Comments

I don’t know what happened.  Three days ago I was having my hair cut and excited about seeing my family in Tennessee on Christmas.  I was singing Goo Goo Dolls and sober and feeling, well, happy.   Then last night before driving back to Asheville the fucking goddamn insanity or darkness I don’t know the word anymore I guess “cycling down” will do- it began.  I didn’t talk during the family party.  I just grunted and barely ate and stared away.   They are all wondering “why the hell is not talking?”  I just sit on the couch, staring at the tv screen as my nephew plays video games.   So my dad died this day in 1980.  So what?  Get over it who gives a fuck?  You baby, you weak, pathetic person.

I can’t sleep.  My heart is racing.  I feel like giving up, like dying, if only to push out the voices and the things I see at night.  I call them “angels” but they won’t leave me alone.  They shoot energy through the air into my body, initially through my wounded and scarred left wrist.  I’m hesitant to write this but fuck, whatever.  I guess as long as I don’t hurt anyone they won’t lock me up.  I’m in no space today to be happy or write about hope and not giving up .  I dragged myself out of bed somehow, although I can’t sleep but I feel safe in the bed.

There is something happening to me that I can’t define.  It is beyond a textbook answer.  I went to a medical doctor and he had no clue.   I went to a Carmelite Priest and he had little to say.  I’ve been to Shamans and other types of healers.  One woman told me I perhaps was more blessed than I realize.  I hope she is right.  I don’t feel blessed today.  The lithium is doing nothing.  My doctor suggested Depakote and I’m sure that would knock me out to the point of being a zombie but a zombie may be a better choice.  The less I sleep the worse it gets – the fear and paranoia and darkness and shaking and God please, just make it stop.  I must have done something really horrible in the spirit world before returning this time.  Maybe I stole money from Apollo or took Zeus’s horse out without asking.  Whatever it was – fuck, how much is enough punishment?

CAN YOU HEAR ME GOD?    I’m not asking why anymore.   I’m still alive.  Please don’t leave me.

There’s that song playing.  And sometimes a song is enough to pull me back out into the land of the living and joyous.  Sometimes a Shakespeare line or a scene from a movie – even a good memory or a smell.

I’m waiting to come back.  It hurts too much to sit and wonder why.

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Bipolar Disorder, Being There, U2 and Happiness.

Dec 21

Posted by Nathaniel in Mental Illness, Redefining Bipolar, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness | No Comments

being-there

Life, is a state of mind...

A song is playing on the stereo (okay, it’s With or Without You) and Bono’s voice takes me over and back to 1987 we were dancing on Matthew’s deck a little drunk and our parents out of town I had a bit of hope flowin’ cause U2 was saying “And we scorch the Earth, set fire to the sky. And you steep so low, to reach so high…” (that one’s for you, Chang) I love you my brothers and sisters wherever you are whatever you’re doing I don’t forget – I will never forget.

I’m watching those beautiful flakes come down here in Asheville and listening to Sarah Brightman’s “Deliver Me.” Now she is an ANGEL on Earth. (Check out Sarah Brightman on Youtube)  She can almost break GLASS with her voice!

I am running free in the land of Paradise where they say the sun always shines but I say in Heaven a little bit of snow still exists because every “flake is a little bit different” and the scientists can’t answer why that is nor can they explain how there’s more information in one strand of DNA than all the computers in the world but I know why because God showed me in a dream and the snow keeps falling blanketing the land with that silent beauty the enrapture of time “standing still” let’s walk across the fields until the WARDROBE opens hey Mr. Lewis I feel you writing this cause’ your spirit is still with me in this land of confusion and I’m SO TIRED OF THE DOOM AND GLOOM of bipolar I don’t subscribe to the doctor’s point of view HAPPINESS is right there I see it in the falling snow in the children playing before all we cared about was money or THINGS or TIME or our fucking GOALS so I say this to all of you thinking if life is worth living please take it from someone who has cut life from themselves with a knife and God let me stay here for some reason.

IT IS WORTH IT – I promise you can find that happiness don’t you see it isn’t a place or a person or a thing but a SPIRIT that lives in you that made all those raindrops keep pouring down that made our Earth move around the sun (Thanks STING for that line I stole it) and just breathe in and MAKE A CHANGE cause’ I swear to God if you have BIPOLAR – you have more power than you think over this “disease.”   Why don’t we let God perform a miracle and step out of the way?

Thanks Mr. Sellers.  You are not forgotten.

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Zen and the Art of becoming “less intelligent.”

Dec 21

Posted by Nathaniel in Redefining Bipolar, Stream of Consciousness | No Comments

CockapooSitting next to me on this frigid (when I say frigid I mean 28 or so which those in Barrow, Alaska would call “balmy”) early December morning is a twenty-pound or so little furry creature so far removed from her wolf-ancestors that she gets depressed when it rains and demands a muscle relaxer with a loud “whimper.” She’s a “Cockapoo” and it makes me pose the question, what happens when they cross a Chiuhauha with a Rottweiler? Some disturbed soul has done it like a mad scientist playing with doggies and God.   I love dogs and more than that, I love animals in general and often I believe that they are life at one of its purest forms, like nature.   I’m not comparing Gigi here to the Grand Tetons, but I am saying that nature and animals generally don’t THINK like we humans do.  (Oceans may worry more than I realize but that’s another subject)  No worries, no regret, no neurosis, and no voices in their heads with the relentless Sound of Music soundtrack running over and over again. I hate it when that one comes.

They just act. They exist and let life flow through them. Why do you think that children love animals from the beginning? It is because they’re cute and cuddly? Some are.

My point is that we intellectualize too much, try to say too many clever things and more than that, mistake thought for intelligence. I want to think less. I want to live more. I want to be more like Gigi, prancing through Yellowstone while the wolves chase her. She wouldn’t last 30 minutes out there, but at least she isn’t worried about her insurance premiums, her relationship, or her “feelings” about the environment and how she was picked on as a puppy.

Sometimes my mind is the most beautiful place in the world but the whirlwind of it exhausts me. I just looked at Gigi and she’s sleeping peacefully on the chair, probably dreaming about Fiji apple trees. She loves apples. A simple dog and her simple life. I envy the animals and the ocean as I seek to just be more and think less. I’m sick of solving problems and worry. I just want to live. I think I’ll let Gigi out now.

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The Confusing Definition of Mental Illness

Dec 19

Posted by Nathaniel in Mental Illness, Redefining Bipolar, Stream of Consciousness | No Comments

Hello and Welcome hope you are well.
If there’s one thing that needs to be said right now it is that everyone has a little mental illness in them, I believe. Like Eckhart Tolle’ says – “of course you’re insane. You live on Planet Earth.” and that’s paraphrasing of course. Too much of everything – a thousand things to stimulate us every minute. I can be walking on a beautiful day in the country and thinking “no madness here – I’ve escaped it” and then a truck of crazy rednecks pulls up and my God, they are so PISSED OFF! They don’t notice the pretty stream and could give a shit about the way the sun is setting on the trees cause’ deer-hunting season ends tomorrow and only six hours left to kill one. And they almost ran me over to kill those deer and I bet the driver hasn’t been diagnosed as insane although he’s drunk behind the wheel of a 5,320 lb. truck. But his actions ARE insane. They even screamed some obscenity at me because my shirt looks like what a “hippie” would wear, I guess.
“Get off the road, ya’ faggot.”
But really guys. I’m not gay.  I just write poetry and movies that don’t deal with explosions and kicking ass.

In another world we may have been friends, me and those guys in the truck. And I may have been friends with so many different people if this crazy culture hadn’t separated us so much.   All these things that divide us make me more “mentally ill” because I don’t understand it – it hurts me when the coldness is so obvious.  I don’t know why I don’t know my neighbors name and I live in these beautiful mountains and feel so cut off and that makes me crazier.

So, more later cause’ I’m going out it is a beautiful day in Asheville and the sun is FINALLY OUT!

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