Anything

T’s Law of Anticipated Events: The more you prepare for a certain situation, the less likely it is to occur.

The above is gleaned from my brother’s wisdom and DAMN if it doesn’t hold true. Case in point: neither woman involved in last week’s situation showed up for class. My make-up, my plans to take one of their seats; all for nothing. WONderful! My words drip sarcasm. Ye, Gods!

Not doing well with other people. Keep thinking of the old adage ‘I don’t suffer fools well’ – except I’ve translated it to Dutch. Don’t know if that’s an actual saying in Dutch. Not everything translates, that’s for sure. Watched a gnome film last night (my bro’s choice): Sherlock Gnome. Sherlock’s famous ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ was translated to ‘That’s evident, Watson’. Not the same. Don’t even get started on ‘the game’s afoot’, a line I had to explain to my brother because he stubbornly refuses to understand the meaning of ‘afoot’. His autism bugs me; he wants/needs everything to be literal. He always heard it as ‘The game is a foot’ and he didn’t understand why a game was a foot and not a hand or a head. This is not the first time I’ve had this conversation with him. He has zero poetry in his soul. The moon orbits the Earth, that’s it, and that’s all you’d ever get from him. He’ll never say the moon sails across the sky, or that the moon and Earth are locked in a lover’s clasp and dance around the sun together for all time. Nope. And I have an abundance of this poetic feel, like he got none and I got both my portion AND his. I find it discouraging to have to explain stuff to him. Especially when it seems he can’t remember any of the next day.

Class was the reason I kept coming back to that saying. Good Goddess! Same shit, different digs. The poor pronunciation, the inability to remember any lesson from one week to the next, the total non-movement of the class as a whole has GOT to be as disheartening to my teachers as it is to me. Add into that the arrogance of these people! Oh, geez! There’s one who insists on ‘correcting’ other people’s pronunciation even tho she can’t read for shit. Others are so eager to prove that they know the answers that they shout things out loud out of turn. Sat down during the break at a table far away from everyone else and took out my book to read. Didn’t get far before I was joined by a new student. Ugh. I should know that by now: read in a public place and EVERYONE bugs you! If I’d just sat there staring into space I would have been left alone. I was in no mood for it. I put aside my book reluctantly and honestly, I guess I’d just had it at that point. The new student asked why I wasn’t sitting with everyone else and I just came out with it: they only talk about their husbands and their kids and I don’t have a husband or kids, so I have nothing to add to their conversation. I then received a long and tearful (yeah, a tear fell from her eye!) story in very bad Dutch about her life and how nothing was her choice. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have empathy for her and how she grew up. But I bridled at the ‘I didn’t have any choice’, which she kept repeating over and over to me. Said nothing, but there’s always a choice. Maybe not a nice one, maybe it’s one you’d never really consider, but don’t tell me there isn’t a choice! There ALWAYS is. Between her awful pronunciation, the ambient noise of the room and her mumbling, I didn’t get the specifics. Then again, I didn’t ask for the specifics. I straight up said ‘I’m a writer, I discuss things other than husbands and kids’, and she told me her life story. I didn’t ask to know her struggle over discovering she was pregnant with her third child. I didn’t want to know she only wanted two kids. I didn’t want to see her cry when she remembered how much she regretted being pregnant once again. Yes, the writer in my listened. But the me in me just sat there thinking ‘Wow. This is a lot of very personal info and I don’t even know your name.’ She monopolized the conversation the entire break.

And, dude -! Had to run into everyone who just got in my way. It happened so often yesterday that by evening time when I ran downstairs to buy more bottled water I just stopped dead in my tracks when I saw one coming my way. Make them make a decision and move first; if I try to anticipate them, they’ll mirror my movements and get in my way no matter what. One of those low level irritants that just sets me over the edge.

Fat food. Can’t leave without saying that yes, I bought fat food. I went shopping with the intention of buying fat food. I even put in on my list. I know it’s not good for me. I know it may even make my irritation with other people worse. I don’t care. According to current information the world as we know it is going to end in just over a decade, so who the fuck cares? Besides, my focus right now is on moving, not losing weight. That comes later. So if a special treat makes me feel better in the moment AND gives me an extra reason to walk, fine. I can accept that. As luck would have it, I bought something so good that it boggles the mind. I mean…if you’re gonna eat fat food, make it really good fat food. Not crap; why waste the cheat on cheap shit? Go for the gold.

Feel kinda empty. I actually think that’s okay. Empty means no anticipation. And no anticipation means all options are on the table. lol! If my brother’s statement holds true, the opposite must also hold true. No anticipation means anything can happen.

Anything.

I’ll figure it out later

2 a.m. recording. I was just drifting into some real deep zzz’s when my alarm went off. Sat up, still half asleep, pulled some socks on, came out to the living room. It took over an hour to do all the lines and make sure I had a decent input level that didn’t break on each cue. Do not like Garage Band for that; the read-out is different when you record to when you’re done. Cut that shit out! If I hit the yellow mark on my input, I expect to see a big jump in the wave. That’s what’s fucking happening. Does it show that? Kinda. But it’s not in relation to their recording head room on the track and frankly, I find it pretty shitty for this use. If I break the track, the recorded track should look like I broke it. It doesn’t. It just sits there like a small worm, looking innocent. That is, until you play it and hear the distortion on the top end of my voice where the computer is automatically trying to compress it in. Ugh! I know most people can’t hear that. I’ve heard the damned recordings people put out: you can’t hear shit, can you? Distorted tracks left and right because the input level was too high. I also know there’s a lot of people out there asking why I’m working so hard on the input levels. Again: I can hear it. I can hear the difference, I know what that difference means once I take it into editing, and I’m a much better sound producer than that.

Bloody deaf humans, walking around telling ME about sound when they can’t hear shit…

Got notice in from the library that my book is coming due. Will have to check it out again. Tried to keep up with the page count. Tried. Just couldn’t. I was torn between reading fast and reading well, and I chose reading well.

Today is just lazing around. Maybe I’ll get those raw files out of GarageBand and take them over to Sound Editor. Sound Editor is one of those old, super fantastic programs that works on older systems. It’s got everything – and I mean everything! – you want to handle sound. But, you gotta know how to work with sound in the first place. It’s not a bunch of dancing gnomes; no doubt, that’s a problem for people. The program I have sits on a now almost vintage Mac computer. It takes over 30 seconds for this thing to wake up and give you the sign in page. I’ve many a long hour in front of that thing. Wait while it works, wait while it saves, wait. But I’ll get the quality I want.

One week to my b-day. An old acquaintance of mine just celebrated her b-day. I sent her a small note on FB, to which she responded in full Dutch. Ugh! This is one of those people from my past whom I feel has sought me out over the years just to use me as someone to whom they can pour out all their great accomplishments. I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular acquaintance went to a damned professor to get the correct translation just to ‘look good’ on FB. She’s that type of person. Why do I attract these people? Is that a reaction to my work pace? Is it because people feel jealous over what I do so they have to tell me about all their stuff? I don’t shove my work in people’s faces. I blog, I post updates, I hand out flyers. But I have made it a point in the last several years to be very vague about what I’m doing. I don’t announce to everyone on FB that I’m now a playwright, or that my work is being premiered on both sides of the Atlantic this year. There was a time when I would have, but now… Now I don’t really care if you know. The people that matter know, and that’s good enough for me. Ach! Maybe they’re all stuck back where I was, with that need to keep popping up and saying ‘Look at me! Look at what I’m doing! Tell me I’m good!’

One can hope. Maybe they’ll grow out of it.

Want/need some serious downtime in what’s left of my weekend. I’m beat. Filming, rehearsals, on the computer, keep up with everyone’s requests to do this or send them that. I think I’m gonna cut out early from class tomorrow. Act 1 is on the chop block for Monday and I’m supposed to be off script. I really gotta learn it, too, ’cause this is the scene I re-wrote. I don’t know my new lines.

My right knee gave me some real gip yesterday in the cold. That’s the knee that’s had water on it two or three times, and the one worse affected when I tore the cartilage in both of knees. Pull and pain with every movement. Damn. My bro ran down and got me some strong smoke, which helped. But then I went off into my music for a while, listening to the tracks I laid down almost 4 years ago. Still gotta finish that. I’m finally past my ga-ga love for it, and know how I want to edit it. Slash a few lines, use these effects. Had to shake myself out of music contemplation. No way I want to go there right now!

Wrote a poem. Been a few years. My writing has been focused on other areas, and I’ve just let poetry slip. *sigh* And now, for whatever reason, I’m writing in tight rhyming sequences. Always said I hated that type of poetry. I preferred free verse. But now that I can write my narratives the way I really want, I don’t need to try and get that stuff out via my poetry, and the poetry can just be those rhyming schemes. Either that, or I’ve just totally lost it.

…I’ll figure it out later.

Cut through fear

Fear. Sometimes I think it’s the only defining characteristic of humanity. It’s what made us learn how to control fire. It brought us out of caves and into shelters we fashioned out of other material. It drives us like no other emotion, not even love. Fear is what gets us there. Not nobility, not “bigness of spirit”. Fear.

This morning an unspoken fear of my own woke me up. It’s an idea my head’s danced around for a bit now, but not put into words. And like any fire lit under your ass, it got me up and out of bed.

I’m afraid that yes, my test will show something wrong with my kidneys and the doctors’ response will be to fuck around with my RA meds.

There. Managed to put it into words without making it sound bleeding horrible. My head isn’t doing very well. I know behind my innocuous words lies days and nights of pain. Pain beyond where you think you can go with pain. Pain that consumes you, absolutely, without let up or release.

I’ve been down this road before, and it’s not  pleasant one. I don’t want to travel it again. Especially now that I have my special shoes and I finally feel good enough to get out and do a few things.

I’m not gonna let them torture me again. If the worst case scenario my brain refuses to let go of actually happens, that’s it. I’m camping out at the hospital, screaming my agony as loud as I can until someone does something for me. I don’t care if that something is knocking me out cold with a punch; that’s precisely where I’ve been before, begging my brother to hit me hard enough to do just that.

Goddess! I hate this shit…

My pocket of alone time last night was actually quiet. Rather than allowing myself to wallow in pacing and talking aloud to myself, I put my shoes on and went out for a walk around the neighborhood. Without my ipod. My steps were slow and measured, and my ears were focused on the Dutch words that were blasting out from the children and mothers alike on the square. One small person passed me; he must have been 4 or 5. As he did, I realized that I could understand what he was saying. That brought a crazy grin to my face: I suspected my Dutch was somewhere around the level of a small child and I felt that short encounter proved it. After a nano-moment of embarrassment, I realized I’d reached that level after less than one year of study.

That means in three to four years ain’t nobody gonna be able to say nothin’ without me understanding it.

Watch out, world. When I can rattle off my arguments bilingually you’ll all be in trouble.

There’s a lot of errand running I’ve been putting off all week. Now it’s Friday, and I’ll try the impossible: to cram it all in in one day. Maybe luck will be with me; it DOES happen once in a while. Occasional days come when every task takes 1/10th the time it generally does. I find what I need immediately and there’s no queues at the check-out. That would be cool. But experience has taught me that I can’t predict or count on those days, they just happen. So I’m not counting on it. I’m not counting on anything right now, actually. Just that things will happen today. THAT is a given.

My bro’s been doing what it seems he’s always doing lately: compiling numbers about our music. My one techno song has gone viral, thanks to the film it’s in (shlock tho it is). I keep hearing numbers that five years ago would have floored me but I just can’t get excited over it. It’s like … too little, too late. Gimme the money. I’m beyond wanting fame anymore. In the past you could have bought me off with 10 minutes of fame. Now…pay me, motherfucker. Or get out of my face. I’m not doing anything I haven’t done before. I’m not interested in your adulation. What I’m interested in is currency. Give me enough so I don’t feel guilty every time I get my hair done at the salon. Give me enough so I can send money out to my friends who I KNOW need it. Give me enough so window shopping and shopping in general can be a pastime and a joy, not an exercise in self restraint that only winds up making me feel bad.

I don’t want gold plated fixtures, just clothes that don’t have holes in them. And having just done laundry – including 97% of my clothes that DON’T have holes in them – I know just how FEW un-holey clothes I have.

As for my do-I-don’t-I call over my test results, I’m wimping out and heading over there to talk to someone face to face. At least I know I WILL talk to someone and not just get lost in some telephone menu that leads me to making excuses to a proctologist because I didn’t understand the directions and hit the wrong number.

The joys of navigating a foreign language!

…Been sitting at the end of this post for 15 minutes, trying to figure out how to finish it off. What else can I say? I’m afraid. That same old universal thing that we all feel. I’m afraid of my RA, I’m afraid of the language, I’m afraid of just fading away and being forgotten. None of this is new.

And none of this is going to stop me. Not now, not today.

I heard from a young woman I knew as a teenager. She helped me in Ireland when I ran my charity. You know what she’s doing? Charity work. Charity work that’s doing a poetry fest, just like I did. And I’m pleased to see the poets I worked with now working with her.

She’s not my daughter. I don’t feel I spent much time with her while I was over there. But I can’t help but feel that I was an inspiration. Something sparked in her while I was on my manic charity frenzy. Something that said yes, I want to do this. If I die today, she’s one legacy I’m very, very proud of.

And that, dear people, cuts through fear like nothing else.

Fuck Fear

Finally! Up, coffee made, J rolled. Took half an hour to get here today.

Anytime I deviate from my routine I get turned around. Sometimes I don’t even know if disturbing my routine is worth it. I immensely enjoy these forays into different lives for short periods. Immensely. Reminds me of a time when I didn’t have to stick to such a fucking routine. But it takes more than 24 hours for me to get back on track.

You would have been proud of me on Friday. Anyone would have. At the last minute I was told that yes, if I really wanted to go to the poetry festival I’d be doing it ALONE. Solo. On my own, no one to hold my hand or to talk to during breaks so I didn’t feel so fucking awkward. I calmly finished my tasks to get ready, and walked out the door. The apprehension that kept wanting to gobble me up whole and dissolve me in the stomach acids of anxiety was kept at bay through a non-stop mental cheerleading session, you can do this, you can DO this.

The day was gorgeous and I as left the metro downtown and began to look for the theatre where the fest was being held, I felt a moment of spine shivering freedom, that thrill that runs up and down my back when I realize that I’m out on my own, with full freedom to do whatever the hell I please. No one to fidget by my side, no one to complain later if they don’t like what I decide to do or how much time I want to spend somewhere.

Oh, what fun I had!

The festival itself was quite interesting. Timed my visit so that I had half English and half Dutch. I was engaged, my mind was taking it all in, and had I stayed longer I may have worked up the courage to begin really talking to other attendees. As it was I got more Dutch than I was ready for and felt a right CHILD sitting in the audience, listening hard and having a joke pass me by, evidenced by the laughter rippling through the people around me. And like a child, I was pleased when I understood a phrase or sentence the grown-ups were using. So pleased that I popped a whole five quid down (special price) on the magazine of the fest to support the organization and challenge myself in reading. Now my reading ability just has to catch up to the ‘zine…

An evening meal out on the sidewalk, enjoying the air, followed up by a toke of a truly Chong-length joint (aptly named a ‘Party Mix’ joint by the coffeeshop that sells it) and suddenly I had all the energy in the world. Back home, telly to calm down. Midnight, and I’m still going. My brother toddled off to bed before me. My brother – Mr. All Night I’ll Stay Up Later Than You No Matter What guy.

The entire incident underscored for me (again) something I’ve been saying for a while now: I’m bored. Goddamn! I’m fucking bored. When an afternoon of poetry becomes a social highlight for me, I’m bored (sorry poets; I write, too, but I don’t like hearing about it). And when such limited social contact sends my energy levels into high orbit, I think it shows that I’m just bloody starved for real connections in my life.

Not surprising.

Summer is a bad time; bad for my RA and bad for my head. I spend too much time indoors, between aches and pains and my fears over sun damage. So does my brother. All day, almost every day, we hide from 10 a.m to 3 p.m., avoiding the worst of the sun. In this very, very small space. We’re starting to fight more, getting on each other’s nerves for no reason.

And tra-la-la, people. Sometime soon I’ll be going off line for 2 weeks. A disc is stuck in my computer and I’m gonna take it in rather than risk fucking up the system. They say my baby will be gone for up to two weeks. Half a bloody month. I’ll go fucking insane. I’m sure it’s the waiting line for service rather than the service itself that will take so long. Can’t they ring me a few days before the job just before my computer is done and I’ll bring it down then, giving me as much time as I can get before they do whatever they’re gonna do to it?!? Bloody hell. They’re gonna take away my writing center, my game center, my iPod center, my learning center for TWO GODDAMN WEEKS?!?

I don’t know WHAT I’m gonna do.

Other than get the hell out of the apartment.

Honestly, it feels like the Universe is setting me up. My spidey senses are tingling. Or maybe that’s just my early warning disaster alarm sounding off. For me, heat + small space + me and my brother – games to entertain and distract = disaster. Goddess help us both.

Alright. *grumble, grumble* There’s always the library.

Still have Tuesday’s GP visit on my mind. Still feeling silly to go in over feeling dehydrated. Still reminding myself my aunt died of kidney failure, and I need to get in and be sure.

Joy.

For the record, I’ve been up and down. Mostly up lately, and the downs I have experienced I’ve been working my ASS off not to get too upset over. Which is, of course, why I don’t want my computer gone or anything too far outside the norm right now: I’m hanging on. Doing well as far as it goes, but I DO hang at times and I’m afraid that if anything gets changed I won’t be able to handle it.

It all comes back to fear. Fear over losing my temper, fear over fighting with my bro, fear over my physical condition. Even fear over change.

Well. My small life has lead me to this: fear over the tiniest change in my routine.

Fuck fear.

Sling-shot Maneuver

Yesterday was unique. I stuck to my plan to give myself a day puttering with sound. And I refused to limit or restrict myself. Ergo, I began over a dozen “songs” that got erased before completion. I also scribbled down new lyrics. Most of all, though, I talked aloud to myself.

I know it’s a sign of insanity. Or so they say. But for me, talking aloud to myself is a calming, relaxing experience. It’s important for me to hear me say the words. To take everything in, from my ears right down to the inner most atom in my body. I don’t want to be interrupted and I sure as hell don’t want to be listened to by anyone else. The planets had that rare alignment yesterday; my brother was gone for most of the afternoon, and I paced and talked and listened to myself for most of that time.

Talking yourself down from the edge of paranoia and panic isn’t easy. For me, it takes repeating hard, absolute facts over and over. It’s not happening today. Nothing will happen at the drop of a hat. I’ve got time to change this. I drill those ideas into my brain like learning a new word in Dutch. It grounds me. It also manages – at least yesterday – to stuff the pooka of paranoia back in its box.

As for what came out of me musically, I can only say it’s ambitious. Big. Everything I tried to write yesterday strayed out of my psychedelic trance genre and into I don’t know what. Pop, probably. I keep writing these damned three minute pop songs that aren’t for my voice. What I’ve got right now is fuzzy – undefined music and unfinished lyrics. Not surprising considering how much work got canned before I even gave it a chance to breathe. While I find that somewhat frustrating – I’m FAR too used to banging something out in one day – I’m letting it stand. Lyrically and musically I wanted to move, move, move. Fast. It’ll probably be a great little piece if I can manage to get it down out of the ether.

Cutting back on smoking is going as you might expect. I’m clock watching. Counting down the minutes before I can roll and smoke again. Reaching and taking a hit is just a habit I need to break. A repetitious pattern I’m used to making when I don’t know what else to do.

Maybe I should buy some gum.

My bro keeps telling me how much he wants me to go to this International Poetry Fest coming up. Ach! Performance poetry is something I did for a rather short stint. I haven’t performed live with it for years now. Yet it obviously had an impact. Most people think it’s the best thing I’ve done. It combines poetry (um, MY version of poetry, which academia thinks sucks), music (ditto, probably), and theatre performance (haven’t been dissed for THAT yet). I like doing it, too. It’s just hard to find a venue. And an audience. And people to help me. *rolls eyes* Anyway, I’ll be going to the poetry fest. I want to see and hear what’s going down here. Maybe someone will be doing what I do. Probably not. That’s good for me; I’ve pulled in more people who dislike poetry readings than any other artist I know (listen to me! geez! some part of me must agree that yes, this is one of them most powerful things I do).

Decisions. Don’t want to make them, don’t want to be cornered into one thing in life. The more people hold onto a one dimensional definition of me, the more erratic I’ll act.

Don’t. limit me.

!!! Okay. Even I didn’t expect THAT to come out of me this morning.

Hm. I guess this is what comes of not talking to myself on a regular basis and then having a whole afternoon DUMP on myself.

Fuck.

I’d like nothing better than to trip off to the Mountains of Kong. That’s an impossibility; the Mountains of Kong don’t exist. Look it up.

Yes, I’m having fun bouncing off every surface in the room. Wouldn’t you? What do you expect? I swam this morning.

..And while I was gone for a mo there a killer song came on The Chill Lounge. Did not get my ass up fast enough to find out what it was…

Gotta find a focus point for this energy this morning. My eyes stray to my musical notes…a ready made project. It’s gonna take massive planning to map this out. Just the kind of fussy, engrossing thing I need right now. HA! Who am I kidding? I’ll jump into it head first. Just start making sound, and HOPE that I can tie everything together in the end. Oh, mania. I have to laugh at you sometimes.

Well. I’m not gonna hurt anyone or anything by going insane on the equipment again. And who knows? Maybe I’ll capture another song. That’s always cool.

There’s crap to do. Always. Dishes. Picking shit up. Errands. All that stuff that gets in the way of and yet is, somehow, life. I don’t want to neglect that side of things. Not too long. Another rotation of the planet won’t mean the end of the world, though.

Pretty obvious I’m still zooming around. I’m at that point of just saying fuck it, fly with it. Go, baby, go. Can’t move fast enough for me right now. No idea where I’ll end up. Probably out by Pluto or beyond. Free flying, out of my orbit. The question is: have I built up enough speed to carry me through the black?

I know it’s a long shot. Still. I’m making that sling-shot maneuver.

 

The Blue Flame of Passion

I just poured out a torrid comment on passion. I guess I be feelin’ it today.

My passion…that consuming part of me that pushes me to rant, pushes the pedantic part of me to the fore…Would I give it up? I guess I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately. I’m facing the prospect of making another appointment, this time to REALLY assess whether or not I’m suffering bipolar (and whatever else they want to throw in the mix). And while I want to stop the up and down roller coaster, the thought of perhaps losing my passion along the way frightens me….

I may be the only one afraid of me losing it. I imagine it can look scary from the outside. I’ve been told I can be scary.

Can I lose that scary edge and still be passionate? Still feel that flame deep within me?

The logical part of my brain knows the only reason I began writing poetry was because I was emotionally torn and unable to talk about it. I liked using metaphors to reveal what I felt. It was easier than just speaking the words. And I got hell for speaking the words. I was berated. I hid my poetry from my family, but I readily shared it with teachers. And got PRAISED. They LIKED it. I had one teacher take extra time with me between and after classes; she was a poet herself. So my early artistic efforts brought what I felt I lacked: attention. Praise.

You know, if all artists begin art to express what they emotionally feel but can’t verbally express, I suppose in a weird way I owe my mother a thanks. She certainly set me up for this shit.

I both envy and pity non-artists. I envy what I perceive to be their lives; the routine, the safety in repetition and compliance. Certainly I envy the financial stability. I also pity it: the lack of variety and everything I think is meaningful to LIFE. The FIRE.

The fire. My brother told me for years I work in fire. I do, too. Get an idea and pound away, hour after hour. It becomes an obsession, an all consuming passion. The results have been as passionate as the process. And while they’ve served to release things in me, they’ve not left me feeling all that good about the final projects. I nitpick. I hear all the flaws, all the things I did WRONG. Not the millions of things I did well so that that ONE damned flaw sticks out.

…..You know, I guess I’m still working with fire, but I changed the flame. Before, the fire was red. Hot burning red and orange with licks of yellow. An unconfined fire, burning everywhere and everything. Now when I see the fire, it’s blue, like a gas flame. Narrow. Tight. Controlled. In my head it’s become a tool, not a force of destruction. I use it but I’m not letting it consume me.

I don’t know HOW this happened. I can tell you WHEN it happened; it was autumn 2014. Began in September, as I was going cold turkey off my anti depressants and the world was full of tears. I scrambled for something to occupy me, something to keep me from crying for just an hour or two. I turned to making music. And I saw the blue flame for the first time. For the first time, I reached out and USED that flame to begin fashioning sound. I wrote an entire release’s worth of new club techno. And maybe for the first time in my life I’ve written a few songs that have reached perfection. Utter. Perfection. I’ve been listening to my studio roughs for at least 6 months now. Got some changes to do on 3 songs. But the rest are sublime. My bro has compared my latest work to Sven Vaeth, whom I worship as a DJ. And for the first time, I feel like I can agree with my brother. It’s REAL good.

….I guess, now that I know I have that image of the blue flame of passion so strong in my mind, I need to learn how to use that in other areas of my life. Outside of music. Keep the fire in that narrow, tight, controlled mode. For some reason, now that I’ve got that image in my head it seems much easier to do. Maybe that’s just the mania talking right now; can’t ever discount what may or may not be a manic episode..Bleh. I really do need to get some sort of label attached, I guess. I keep reaching for labels but I don’t know if they fit. Kind of feels like going to the damned store and trying to find a pair of pants that fit. Yeesh! But maybe I don’t need to jump on the mediation bandwagon immediately. Maybe I can talk to whomever I see and tell them how I feel (now that I’ve sorted it out for myself!).

OH! And the self disparaging side of me wants to add ‘and maybe pigs will fly’.

I guess I just need to stand up for myself. Make up my own mind on what’s best for me right now. My GP told me I wouldn’t be forced to take any medications. I can’t be hospitalized without my consent. Doesn’t happen here. So I can move forward at my own pace.

*sigh* Knowing I tend to procrastinate and be lazy when I just don’t want to be bothered doesn’t help THAT thought.

I’ve been SO caught between a rock and a hard place! Told my bro I reposted a blog from a doctor. Told him how I was so amazed to see so many patients come in with anxiety and or depression complaints. He said ‘I’ve been telling you you’re not alone for a long time’. It’s true. He has. And I realized even THAT can be a trigger for me: I have a horrible memory of my sister screaming at me and telling me I wasn’t special or different, that I liked to PRETEND I felt different from everyone else but I was just faking it because EVERYONE felt and goes through exactly what I feel and go through.

*shudder* That memory is strong. It was repeated. A lot.

But I believe, somewhere BETWEEN my rock and hard place, somewhere BETWEEN the self degradation and grandiose thoughts lies the calm, blue flame. And I will keep reaching for that flame. Over and over again.

Compromise is Ok

It’s official. I now spend more time here on my anonymous blog than I do on all the social accounts where I’m known. I’m making more posts and more comments out here. I’m actually engaging in little back and forth conversations on some comments. Did not think I’d be doing this. Of course, I didn’t think blogging would help me at all, and it has. Doesn’t make me feel better but it does help me organize my thoughts and feelings. And since I live in ambiguity, oftentimes without being able to pin down one clean and clear emotion I feel, organization of the mess in my brain and body is very important to me.

Been moving ahead with my music. Should be able to record the piece I’ve been working on. Music is putsy; especially in the production stage. Whenever I’m here I’m reminded of the fact that Quincy Jones took over a year to produce Michael Jackson’s Thriller. A year. 365 days. Yes, Jones probably took time off – weekends and stuff – and he wasn’t working at it like you could go and work at a desk job. Production burns you out faster than you realize. Your ears become biased. Hearing things over and over again while you EQ or adjust volume levels doesn’t make things easier – it makes it harder. Truth is, you can only do about a max of 4 hours production in any one day if you want to keep things sounding good. So it’s tough: I get into the work, I want to keep going, but I have to shut down everyday and give my ears time to readjust. My brother plays my conscience these days: he keeps coming out to tell me I’ve done enough and I COULD go on, but then he reminds me of my goals and suggests relaxing and taking it up again the following day. Not easy medicine to swallow. But the song is entering that sublime stage…

Spent about 40 minutes talking aloud to myself last night. My brother had taken a bike ride and was out of the apartment. I’m embarrassed to talk aloud to myself when he’s in the house. That’s silly; he KNOWS I talk aloud to myself, and he does it himself. Still, I’m embarrassed and tend not to do it while he’s home. Anyway, I sat down in the living room (softly lit with colored lights), fired up my last joint for the night, and had a good old talk with me. I had a decision to make. I enjoy participating in a monthly open mic night here in the city, and it’s coming up again in a few weeks. Had to decide what I was going to do (and this SO mimics my life in general it bears telling). I’ve got 3 completely different things I can do on these nights: read aloud from my novel, do performance poetry, or perform some of my music. I’ve been reading from my novel at the last few events. Great reception for my work, even sold some books. Have some people looking forward to the next reading installment. But…the open mic night happens in a bar, and I’m not an idiot. Musical guests are received much better than literature reading guests. So I’ve been sorely tempted to bring my groove box and lay down some of my new techno. There’s also NO ONE there doing anything like what I do in my performance poetry, so I’d like to do that, too.

So analogous of my life! Three equally valid ideas: I’m a good performer, and can pull all three off well. I’m a competent writer, so each idea is as strong as the next. The only way for me to choose is by going with either (a) what I want to do at the moment or (b) what I think will resonate best with the audience. I don’t have a straight out, this is obviously my best choice idea. My brother thinks my performance poetry is the best of all three: there’s validity to his argument, too. I’ve never seen anyone do what I do with performance poetry. I don’t want to sound like I’m on a manic jag here, I’m not. Maybe there are other poets out there who combine music, poetry, and theatre into one thing. If so, I haven’t seen them and most of my audiences haven’t, either. What I do know is I can really pack a punch with what I do. I’ve heard it time and time again after a performance from people coming up to talk to me. So my brother’s right: whatever I’m doing with my poetry performances, it’s powerful stuff. It’s also the most scary to perform: I’m solo up there and it’s my ass hanging out. There’s no one to prompt me if I forget one of my own lines.

*sigh* Truth is, I’m not ready to do that yet. I’m not ready to put myself out there that FAR yet. It’s not that I don’t think I can do it: I KNOW I can do it. I’m not ready for the fall-out from it, tho. I’m not ready for newbie fans coming up to me and pumping me up with mania. I’m not ready for the seductive and heady feelings of success. I’m not ready to fly like that again….not yet. I want to find my anchor, something to keep me grounded and remembering who and what I am before I head off into that world again. Being such a people pleaser, I can head out and turn chameleon, changing colors and patterns so swiftly no one – including me – knows who I am. I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to go out into that world and remain who I am. I want to be able to interact well with people and enjoy social situations but not lose myself in the process. Trust me, some of the feedback I got just from reading my novel was turning my head around. Anymore and my head will twist off if I’m not prepared.

So for the moment, I’m choosing to go with some new music this month. Easier to do, easier to hide. I WILL discuss my needs for doing the performance poetry thing with the hosts this month. So I’ve compromised with myself: take a step closer to what’s really scaring me while remaining safely hidden a little while longer. And that’s ok.