Bipolar Express – Living life with Bipolar "Disorder"

Bipolar Express is a soon to be a feature film written and created by a man living with Bipolar disorder. This film will educate and entertain you about bipolar disorder (Manic depressive disorder), bringing to light what it is like to live with this disease and perhaps challenge you to recognize what is "normal".

Archive for category Stream of Consciousness

Delusions of Grandeur

Dec 21

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

My Mom told me that when she first saw Stonehenge she just knew she had been there before. I felt the same way about Biltmore Estate.

Not Biltmore perhaps, but I believe I was Royalty. I don’t think it. I can feel it. I was reincarnated from a Prince into this life of mediocrity. I see the rich and famous and tv and say “for hatred’s sake, I spit at thee…” Yes, I want wealth. Yes, a mansion. Yes, unlimited freedom to do what I want and whenever the fuck.

I’m in and out for the experience.  No lesson required.

Look at this place in that lovely picture. I was there in the tallest spire – sipping red wine and howling to the fuckin’ moon under Bavarian skies. The huge fire was glowing while my dogs sat next to it and we played a game of chess.

And I do believe I won…

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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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What do Organized Religion and Fantasy Films have in common?

Dec 21

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

“And thus it was, that the Third Age of this world and The Fellowship of the Ring – that were eternally bound by friendship and love, was ended.” Frodo Baggins

I was so into the Lord of the Rings when it came out it sort of knocked me over. I rarely watch them any more. I’ve become angry at them – well at Star Wars as well. I feel like they lied to me – as if idealistic fantasy films like that take advantage of dreamers like me and millions others – much like highly emotional church services that leave you crying and singing loudly “Yes, Lord – I DO feel you!” as the congregation sings together in a comically over-hyped infestation of what my brother calls “God emotionalism.” I use to argue with him but I admit now that he is onto something. You leave the sacred church walls pumped up on Jesus and the Holy Spirit and thinking how many “brothers and sisters you have in Christ.”  Funny how they never seem to have anytime to be true friends.  I never understand that about Christians – even though in my heart I know I am one in a much larger, redefined scope of God’s Kingdom from Toltec Mysticism and Wiccan and Buddhism and well, something like that makes sense to me.

What do you think?

And the true Balrog appears and his name is American Society and sadness and disease and getting older and American consumerism and coldness and war and knowing I live in a world where Hannah Montana is worth hundreds of millions of dollars while grandparents have to be “greeters” at Walmart for seven an hour and there’s an iceberg the size of Rhode Island floating towards Austalia due to our global warming. I want to know – where is Gandalf and Luke Skywalker? Where is your precious Jesus and when the FUCK is he coming back? You may find Gollum in some ally shooting up heroin or at the work place carrying his Book of Mormon to the bathroom (they really do this) like some Utah-Worhsipping Junkie who holds it close to him like venom to bite “non-believers.” And you find out that your “brothers in Christ” retreat to their West-Knoxville megahomes driving a new 5 series Beemer and a thousand-dollar mountain bike proudly attached above like a proper “outdoorsie, affluent, American Christian” who spends six dollars a day at Starbucks and watches shows like CSI-Miami. If you are looking for love and compassion you can be assured that was left in the sanctuary -with the cheesy lyrics and espresso machine in the church lobby and your pissed-on hopes and delusions of community.    The last “christian” friend I had brushed me off when he thought I was “straying from Jesus” too far I guess. In reality I admitted to masturbation and a fettish for questioning the compassion and purpose of hell.   What a bunch of horseshit I believed – not about God. I know God is real and I feel him or her flowing through me every day. I just don’t know why the Church is the last place you’ll find him. I really don’t understand.

Wow, that feels good to unload. “Thanks for sharing. No, thank YOU for listening!”

I can’t live escaping into make believe movies and religions anymore. It hurts too much to want them to be true and then walk out into the cold winter with its gray skies and dead spirited people racing to outrun time and avoid eye contact and saying insane things like, “you know, Jesus is enough. He’s all I need.” What does that mean? Are you out of your fucking mind?  I need sex, food, a  job, ostrich-riding lessons and an Idiot’s Guide to Having a Cockatoo.  That, and seared Albacore Tuna from that place in Southshore Lake Tahoe.  What’s their name?

I can forgive J.R.R. Tolkien. He just wrote a story – he never expected that we’d dive into it like some alter-ego of hope that we ingest like Ecstasy to feel good for a few hours.  I can even forgive George Lucas.  It’s not like Star Wars was an original story arc.  Let’s put King Arthur in Space. Fine. Hallelujah!

Honestly I think Fellowship of the Ring and A New Hope are both Masterpieces in filmmaking please know that – just venting here.

A little, helpless bunny rabbit is walking across my backyard. No one will ever notice him but me at this exact second, unless a hawk gets him. He won’t save the world or do anything newsworthy. He’s just looking for food in a place that is probably so horrifying to him that being hit by a car is an act of mercy. It’s raining and cold and I hope he has somewhere to get warm. And there are millions more like that rabbit, desolate, hungry, weak and outcast. I hope all their suffering is not in vain. I hope they are not forgotten, Lord.

“I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope…”

Red – The Shawshank Redemption

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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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