Hell-oh all. I use this salutation (which it really isn’t) because turned around it decribes my mood experience yesterday except the explicatives usually get much stronger than oh hell.
So to start from the beginning. Tuesday (last post day) was exceptional on all fronts. Great energy, mood, etc. So like any good little bipolar I felt I needed to take 150% advantage of it. I won’t bore with details but suffice it to say a lot got done. I ended up the day at a late hour (for me) and plopped into bed but didn’t sleep well. I woke up Wednesday on the tired, draggy mentally off side of the bed but meditated and went to qi quong anyway. As I often say the tapestry of my life seemed to start it’s unraveling process (i.e mood implosion) which continued throughout the day.
My first reaction is often fear and a sense of panic that I might be sinking into a “big one”. However, I saw this very harmful mental process and checked it with a newly developing paradigm for me. I told myself that it is just depression and that it is probably the result of over fatigue and that the best thing to do would be to eat a good meal (going easy on the carbs and sugar) and get to bed asap. It felt very helpful and empowering rather than acquiesing to my diminished mental state. It speaks very strongly to the power of meditation which is a process of training the mind so the stories that arise don’t ride herd over us and carry us into a world of suffering and hell (all based on illusion I might add).
So there is a very simple meditation technique that I will share. Sit with the back as upright as possible either on a meditation cushion or in a chair. Concentrate on the nostrils (breathing through the nose only) and begin to sense the air as it comes into the nose sliently noting to yourself “in” on the inhalation and “out” on the exhalation. It’s guananteed that thoughts will arise (rapidly, often, ad nausea) but gently bring the concentration back (that’s why they call it practice) to the nose and the passage of air. Strart with a manageable amount of time for you (maybe 5-15 minutes) and make it part of your daily routine as you would brushing your teeth, playing horse shoes, picking your nose in traffic, etc. etc.
Mood dips still frighten my but yesterday I saw it as an opportunity to test the wellness tools that I am now employing in my life on a daily routinized basis and the results were very gratifying. Today I awoke very early meditated went and had a great workout at the gym and feel absoutely wonderful (grounded, energetic and frisky).
Blessing to you all and remember in/out. Any feedback as always is welcomed.
Archive for category Stream of Consciousness
bipolar
Jul 28
The World’s Mental Illness
Apr 20
Today I just want to reach out and hug the whole world in joy and where are you? See this is at least half the problem. It isn’t me, mental illness, or even depression. This is the problem. We all hide in our homes and our little sheltered lives. We don’t talk to each other. We alienate. I’m not blaming any body this time. I feel like I walk around inside a tube watching everybody. It is like a dream going by in front of me but I can’t slow it down so I just watch through a filtered experience. What the hell is wrong with everybody? New York City was brutal because no one looked at each other. Truly a mystery. This is it, this my theory. The whole world has a mental illness. Why else do crazy rednecks try to run you off the road with their monster trucks. Why else do Christians spit on homeless people? Why else do CEO’s make 100 million a year while I can’t find a job with my college degree. Why are wars waged on the innocent – women and children and the elderly? The sky is gray and seems to never end, dragging on to the edge of darkness – past the glimmer of hope that shined in your eyes just yesterday, that moment of inspiration when the fear and anger left you for a moment.
But back to being supersized at McDonalds and the buffet at Golden Corral with its fifty pounds of bacon and forty three pounds of french fries and the Christians need to line up at the slaughterhouse to watch the suffering and then tell me we are here to rule with dominion over the animals – yes Jesus would be a vegetarian, he told me in a dream.
There is something very, very wrong with this country when did it become so cool not to care I swear God is in many things the Buddhists were right.
What a pretty blue bird outside my window.
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November – the gunpowder, treason and plot. I can think of no reason, the fifth of November should ever be forgot.”
“Beneath this Mask there is an Idea, Mr. Creedy. And ideas are bulletproof…” V
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqi8m4CEEY
I feel like dying, I feel like flying away back across the skies from where I came into the blackness can’t take this agony of living without you all I need us to be together forever – the only thing that makes the pain bearable. But more than that – open up your third eye whether by mushrooms or intellect or heart or tragedy or revelation or Art or MUSIC just SHOOT IT SHOOT IT DEEPER DEEPER INSIDE OF YOU NEVER TO LEAVE this shock wave carries with it the memory of all things good and true.
GOD IS IN THE RAIN
The Happiness Factory
Feb 2
The winter. Ah, shit – it seems to just drag on so long as I get older. Not all of us can be in MEXICO this February so we must resort to new and improved methods of finding seratonin, dopamine, and all those other goodies locked in our brains that control happiness. So what do I do, sitting here all alone on a dreary, overcast Tuesday with only my precious cockapoo Gigi to keep me company? Where do I look for inspiration and creativity when my initial reaction is to go back to bed and dream about a tropical island?
I’m very frustrated at the AMA med letdown I’m going through. Nothing is working and they’ve left me out here in the land of the living all alone and still waiting for that miracle drug that may never come. Where are you, Mr. Wonka? But somehow – I’m up, writing, even rejoicing in the simple things today. Love and hope and all those good things have come from some place and holy shit – I feel good! Are the meds bullshit? Are they lying to me about this whole bipolar thing? Maybe I’ve succombed to being a rat in their experiment, accepting a label of “ill” since so many have called me it. But who isn’t a little bipolar in some way? Aren’t we members of the emotional human race that feel so many things in one day our mind can hardly keep up with them all? Now they say I’ve got ADHD as well. Christ, it never ends. But I’m starting to really doubt them all, to break free, to run into the waves near Cancun and say “the hell with it all…”
Okay, calming down. Man I wish I was sitting on the beach in Mexico. Now that would be a cure for bipolar depression. Yes, the environment makes a huge difference no matter what they say, no matter how much I adore Eckhart Tolle’ I do believe in the power of the immediate environment and the beach at Mexico is of superior quality to the leafless trees of Tennessee and the cold, unending winter days.
So that’s it. I’m buying a ticket and going to meet Jaime, Adam and John. I’m leaving today. Maybe if I like it I’ll never return. I’m just looking for happiness afterall.
“There is no life I Know – to compare to pure Imagination. Living there you’ll be free if you truly wish to be…”
The Field
Jan 20
“When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.”
Robert Pirsig
If I had a hundred million dollars I’d be on the first plane first class to the Hawaiin islands.
If I had a lifetime of free sushi I’d feel guilty about the rape of the ocean but I’d eat it four times a week anyway.
If I had superman’s powers I would eliminate money from America and party my ass off.
If I was God I’d destroy the world and start over.
A chimpanzee could get a driver’s license in TN if he showed up on time and sober.
“Look in my face, look in my soul – I begin to Stupify…”
Jesus was the ultimate liberal.
When we die our souls must pass through what I call THE FIELD and in that arena all things that are not of God are stripped away. Every trace of fear, anger, hatred, evil are shredded from you quickly and the more good you have done in life, the less it hurts. No negativity is allowed in the true Kingdom of God and this field is the temporary price we pay for committing acts that hurt others and ourselves. Hitler and Stalin’s souls have a lot to be taken away from so their stay in THE FIELD is more painful and some souls chose to go the other way when they see the light of God’s goodness. But all are offered this chance of forgiveness in THE FIELD. It serves two main functions. One is justice but with forgiveness. The other is it cleanses the land of Paradise from the infected and rotting spirits that inhabit all of us in some way from our time on this insane asylum called Earth.
Male orgasms are hilarious in terms of how dramatic and physical they are. Pornography is at least as humorous as it is arousing. “Ooooooooooh Godddddddd I’m gonna’ cum!” as if it she didn’t know that already by your carnivorous convulsions and loud moaning and sped up hand movements.
David Sedaris is hilarious.
I see Angels around me all the time. I see the invisible world that lives in front and around us all the time. This is not mental illness. It is real, trust me.
I’m scared to think of how much feces the state of Tennessee produces in one hour.
I don’t feel Steven Tyler has any business judging American Idol.
If I came back as an animal I’d be an aardvark simply because I like to say the world aardvark.
I would make a fantastic rich and famous person and be great on talk shows. Hollywood needs me desperately they just simply don’t FUCKING know it.
“When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.” Merlin – Excalibur
That makes me a murderer, what about you?
I lust and look and lie and wonder WHY on high God said goodbye and let us run this place without him oh welcome aboard Bipolar Express John Swart hope I got that last name right have a cold one for me down in Mexico (if you drink which you probably don’t) and I keep thinking about the connection between thought and words and imagination and masturbation make make make create and laugh a little more cause’ it is truly the medicine we need to make it through and build up strength and stop -
and enter the field.
Golden Days
Dec 23
If you can use transcendental meditation we could fly away from this place out to the February Sea so cold so dark daring dragons leap to find us but keep going further farther further farther to the place where the clouds are breaking and children are playing in the summer sun son of God laughs in Heaven trying to reach him in vanity so move sit still move now faster faster I can feel your love climbing to the rooftops of the world shouting inspiration to those lonely valleys where dogs bark and tires screech in the distance hold on a minute…
What is the whisper you’re giving in my ear? “Hold on, hope is coming…”
The Unseen Jungle
Dec 19
This is a call to be Urban Shaman’s for all you living in mediocrity and dreaming of adventure. That your life itself is quite possibly a dream – as layers of reality unfold to this magical place of knowing that all perspectives are a little different – well, let us drink to that and say a prayer for the dying. As I down my meaty, juicy soy product saturated in sugary tomato gravy I can’t help but wonder what the movers and shakers are doing right now – jet setting to Fiji to attend a seminar on the art of “oneness” while sipping Margarita’s by the Sea of Tasman. Fuck, wish I was with them we’d reuptake our SSRI”s till they juiced Ecstasy out of our brains into a sea of eternal happiness – no more pills or praying required just keep dancing the Tequila is pure agave and the sun is coming on strong while the fools drown in therapy and the mystics might make men yet of wasted warriors become the land the open air the perfume is resting on the serpent’s back ready for all to inhale.
I bet a dose of insanity is more pure than the fine art perfection.
Can you feel me I still have life inside the drums are shaking the party is starting but far off in the leafless field of trees the violence reigns down from the relentlesss sky and God sits idly on while a dog shivers in the cold and a heartless owner will not let him free. There is no pure way to say it is all to much to take in.
Lets grab this moment in all its pure agony and beauty and call it love and set it free then rush back to the madness and watch it unravel under our feet in sickening soft actions we take to push and pull and rip the meat from the bone and savor the finest Pinot and cry in that scene that means so much to you.
“We are such stuff as Dreams are Made are our little life is rounded with a sleep…”
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.
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.
Across our galaxy a star just exploded and all of God’s knowledge bursts forth to claim new territory. I use to ask Christians if they thought that Jesus knew everything. I mean does he have absolute power of the universe and if so, can Jesus tell me right now what Black Hole is where and what star it will devour next and on the bottom of our ocean, does Jesus know what giant squids just ate for dinner and what was it President Obama had for lunch and if a sunspot erupts does he know how hot it is? Does he know about hemorrhoid cream and the absurdity of putting testicles on the outside of men’s bodies? What the fuck is that about?
“Of course he knows. He’s God.” my piglety little Christian friend says without taking his eyes away from the King James i.e. most inaccurate goddamn Bible ten bucks can buy. “Please watch your profanity.”
“From hemorrhoids to your testicles, only he knows why and when, on EVERYTHING,” he adds smugly. “And watch your profanity.”
I am tripping on mescaline in a church bookstore at the time. Hallucinogens are frowned upon in the Christian faith.
“I don’t think so. I think pandemonium is everywhere and chaos is more than true and God loves it that way. He likes the rawness of it all. He likes profanity and earthquakes and supernovas and child slave trading and freewill and eighty-thousand dollar blue fin tuna and Stephen Hawking being forced to use a breathing machine to move and communicate and skyscrapers falling and one child being born to look like George Clooney and the other no arms and a wave in an Alaskan bay five-hundred feet tall from an ice-shelf breaking and carrying a fishing boat a mile inward but they somehow lived what a fucking ride that must have been as some power is making an ACORN into a GIANT REDWOOD and Matrix Neo begins to see what has been right in front of him his whole life for the first time sorta’ like how I’m feeling right now HOLY SHIT this is coming on strong there is some energy field circling around watching and waiting and creating and we grab ideas from it when we can and inspiration and music and love and it gets bigger if you can hang on as we fly through the universe and Don Juan told me to be “less available as a WARRIOR.” So here I am, getting less available.”
I take a deep breath.
“That felt right to say. Are you getting any of this?”
“Are you on something?” he asks. “You are starting to scare me.”
I pull out a flask of bourbon and take a swig. “I’m done with your fucking church. I need some answers.”
“You sholdn’t be driving a car!” he yells.
“Say a prayer, then…” I retort. “Say a prayer to protect me.”
I cut with screaming agony into the sacred temple and a child’s soul inside a man’s body.
Flesh.
The knife is dull doesn’t want to pierce the skin I close my eyes press harder digging in screaming into the mirror some last call of fear trying to hold me back the knife inside now I slice downward watching the blue veins cocoon to red drippings look in the mirror pinching harder trying to push blood out push life away the satanic voice of absolute fear digs the blade deeper no turning back now the warm fluid falls like wax onto the floor I run the tub with hot water lay back waiting to die looking at the tendons I slice through them like white strings I faintly smile knowing the pain is almost over thirty-one years of mistakes of living by fear of giving up too easily of cheating of lying of excess of laziness of shame of jealousy of just a little doubt in the promise of eternity and fuck it this life kicked my ass maybe there is a Heaven.
I’ll know soon enough…
But you wouldn’t take me, God. Why the fuck wouldn’t you take me?
Bare it out a day becomes a week and then a few more months my hand still healing but the wounds vanishing over time my broken spirit starting to feel hope again started out subtle and hard to explain but joy grew and love became all new and I gave a little life away and it started coming back a thousand fold my spirit finally saw the spirit of God’s goodness healing a wounded child a madman a defeated demon inside me still struggles to come out and sometimes he does and yet I want to give you something because I am still alive I am free yeah’ I breathe in the ocean air listen to the gulls and look in the eyes of my girl smiling she looks so beautiful and I started this new way of life I call art-form personality life love is an action yeah’ take it up a notch and throw the spirit of your “child inside” to the whirlwind of this madness watch it clarify your thought the extreme energy of the treasure of oneness and in the dreams of the creative the shattered remnants of this Earth the home we destroy decadence the place is dying they were right but hey can you change from the “inside out?” cause’ I’ve licked evil off my skin after it soaked me alive and I hope this gets through to just one of you, cause’ I was spared death and not in vain I must give something away to pay it back.
Some call it insanity or psychosis, others call it Bipolar disorder. The label means little to me. It is simply the life I was given, the man and soul and mind that define me for better or worse. I do not belong to this world and I stay in this life with my heart and passion shooting out to the starry night above. We could go there together if you’d leave this painful place with me as the warm breeze catches all good dreams and brings them to life. Time has no place here, not in God’s Kingdom. There is no hiding and no decision left to be made, no regret and worry. We are alive, together, forever and I know that the greatest things are yet to come. I say a prayer for all who will never know there is another way and smile in gratitude.
ON A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN NORTH CAROLINA
The Angels are with me now.
