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09:27:14 AM,
Saturday 17 July 2010
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There are also things from journals pre-mania that I might start sharing. Those I'll mark with a #.
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08:27:41 AM,
Saturday 17 July 2010
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Koan: If you would wear moon boots, watch the reverberations of your footfalls in unknown universes. ~
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(3)
08:23:37 AM,
Saturday 17 July 2010
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Traditional Zen koan: What was your original face before your parents were born?
Student: A seven headed hydra with a million eyes.
Chorus: **suddenly drops everything and stares**.
Student: What. Why are you all looking at me like that?
~
(This was written while I was still home).
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(2)
10:31:41 PM,
Friday 16 July 2010
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I'm back from my accidental double backflip bungee jump out of reality. Hi. Hope everything was well where you all were.
I kept a journal. I think I'll write out some of the things from it, just because. I'll put a ~ at the end of entries that are manic gibberish, just so you all know that I'm not like that just now. The things are... evocotive, but not necessarily actually interesting.
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10:27:45 PM,
Friday 16 July 2010
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07:07:35 PM, Wednesday 7 July 2010
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06:56:37 PM, Wednesday 7 July 2010
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I feel cold: not chills, but cold, despite the heat. I'm sick to my stomach, too. I can't tell if the illness is more physical or more mental. I'm screwed up in the head, 'cause I'm noticing stuff like the Food Pyramid on my Ak Mak Armenian crackerbreads being like the Panopticon pyramid on the dollar bill. Tinfoil hat stuff, for sure, but I'm not falling for it. I don't know if that makes me not crazy. Probably not. I am working on trying to feel the temperature as it actually is, if that makes any sense. But maybe it's ok to feel cold when it's hot. After all, I feel overwhelmed and dizzy and tired when everyone else is just like hey it's cool it's a highway it's a disco it's just television, what's your problem?
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(3)
04:21:16 PM,
Wednesday 7 July 2010
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If I watch the little desk fan for a while, there's a jagged pinwheel pattern moving slowly and unevenly, backwards from the direction of the fan, more colorful than its blades. If I squint towards a sunbeam through my eyelashes and glasses, I can see wavy rainbow patterns that change if I move my head or my eye ever so slightly.
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(2)
01:49:49 PM,
Sunday 4 July 2010
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No way, dude, this is not a nacho at all.
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01:44:01 PM,
Thursday 1 July 2010
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The previous owner of our house cut the fence here so she could feed the dog owned by the previous owner of the house next door.
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09:58:51 AM, Wednesday 30 June 2010
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"It looked like they were talking about goats, which is rather like dancing about architecture."
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06:55:30 PM,
Monday 28 June 2010
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03:47:13 PM, Saturday 26 June 2010
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Looking up Justin Bieber's video to find out who the hell he is (listening to the track alone made it clear he was a video star): you are doomed, kid. DOOMED! All set up on the altar of American pop culture, like a little baa'ing lamb. Good luck, kid.
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(4)
10:28:47 AM,
Tuesday 22 June 2010
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Why don't I like Pixar movies? What magic effect do they have on other people that they don't have on me? Towards the end of Toy Story 3, I realized that if I were going to enjoy it, I would have enjoyed it already. I didn't. Tim claimed he could see me fuming from around minute 5. I don't know if I was fuming; I was not enjoying it though. I dodged almost every grab for my heartstrings. I groaned at most of the jokes (the Barbie political theory joke was great though). Later, when I was going on about why I didn't like it, Tim handed me some straws. I was grasping at straws, indeed. I don't know what it is about Pixar that bugs me.
Many of my attempts at explanation do not pass the Fantastic Mr. Fox test. Wes Anderson's foray into children's entertainment was not a great film, but I enjoyed it. After watching Toy Story 3 I wanted to say "it was trite, it was childish, it was sexist..." but none of those boilerplate complaints actually hold up, since The Fantastic Mr. Fox was worse on all these counts, much worse in fact, plus it didn't even hold its plot together and was visually ugly, but I enjoyed it. It was annoying but charming, in that Wes Anderson way. Toy Story 3 was annoying but charming but in the end annoying, in that Pixar way.
Is it possible to pin down what I don't like about Pixar? Pixar has the craftsmanship down, I'll give it that. Nothing is out of place, the plot ties together, the visual details (like the paper chain on the daycare center wall) are excellent. But whatever it is that makes a Pixar film a Pixar film grates on me: something about the Pixar style, the Pixar personality, the Pixar sense of humor. It's worse than Garrison Keillor.
I enjoyed the short at the beginning, for a moment, and then it had the cute cloud people go (in pantomime) "oooh, girls! I like girls heh heh heh.". And then I was like, oh, yeah, right, this is not something I like, it's Pixar. I would say it's a feminist complaint, that I don't like the implication that it's cute to ogle and we should all accept ogling as wonderful and natural and fun. That's the immediate justification that springs to mind for the sick feeling I get. But I give Woody Allen a lot of leeway to play almost the same joke as part of his usual shtick, and maybe there's a reason that I see it differently, but when I try to say what that difference is it quickly goes circular: Woody Allen charms me because he charms me, Pixar doesn't charm me because it doesn't. And in my favorite film of all time, women appear only to wail as their men go into battle. Yeah, not exactly passing the Bechdel Test. So I'm afraid it's not actually feminism. It's more personal than that, more of a gut reaction. The movie is winking and prancing and joking and wants me to be fond of it and cry when it does, and I see that and resist it every step of the way.
Tim thinks it might have to do with nostalgia. This, anyway, is a difference between us. He's always liked nostalgic things, like the Connells and Flaubert's A Simple Heart, and I've always found them claustrophobic. Maybe the average person has a higher tolerance for it than I do. Specifically with this movie, I don't want to remember the 80's. The past isn't golden. There's nothing wrong with it, I just don't have any need to return to it. I have nothing against kids' movies, but somehow if I regress I want to go out of this world, like in Miyazaki, not get my own old toys out of dusty memory drawers. They can sit.
In summary, I recommend this movie to anyone who isn't me, unless you also have a known Pixar aversion. Statistically speaking, you'll like it.
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(20)
07:59:29 PM,
Sunday 20 June 2010
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OoCQotD: "Do you know why the skeletons spawn so far forward? Is it just bad luck?"
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(2)
08:03:42 PM,
Wednesday 16 June 2010
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When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities _
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11:00:02 AM, Friday 11 June 2010
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Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say, "Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!" Even to writers of market letters, telling us (but not telling us) which securities are promising, we can say, "Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!"Strunk and White, Elements of Style _
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12:15:55 PM, Wednesday 9 June 2010
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The syllable "no" must not merely be pronounced, but repeated as often as necessary. For a lifelong Guesser, this is important but difficult to learn. If the first "no" isn't taken for an answer, I start to feel seriously harried. But a confirmed Asker doesn't think there's any problem with seeing if it's really final.
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(1)
08:42:29 PM,
Tuesday 8 June 2010
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Someone I "know" from an internet forum just died, maybe. Made me realize I don't actually know this person at all, not even his name. It's stupid. I don't believe he died. I don't believe he didn't. This forum in general was flaming out due, as far as I could tell, to a lack of basic trust that people generally mean well and are who they present themselves as. And here I don't trust the news that someone died, of course I don't, I would be stupid to. Maybe internet forums are not the right place for... anything.
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(1)
01:39:46 PM,
Saturday 5 June 2010
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Congratulations, cat. No, you can't come in here with a live chipmunk in your mouth. You can deal with it. Really.
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08:14:03 PM,
Wednesday 2 June 2010
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I am confused. I am confused by the sheer irrationality, ambiguity, and abundance of things coming into being at all. I am confused by having been born into a world from which I will be ejected at death. I am confused as to who or why I am. I am confused by the labyrinth of choices I face. I don't know what to do.Buddhism without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, pg. 67. _This confusion is not a state of darkness in which I fail to see anything. It is partial blindness rather than sightlessness. By not seeing well, I misconstrue things: like entering the pottery shed in the yard to discover a snake in one corner. My heart accelerates and I am frozen with fear. Only when my eyes get used to the light do I realize it is a coil of hose.
Might a similar confusion color my experience of life as a whole: a confusion that not only blinds me to what is happening but at the same time anxiously construes a fictional world that seems utterly real? I have a strange sense of inhabiting a reality in which I do not quite seem to fit. I suspect that I keep getting tangled up in things not because I fail to see them but because I imagine myself to be configured other than I am. I think of myself as a round peg trying to fit into a round hole, while unaware that I have become a square peg.
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01:42:01 PM, Monday 24 May 2010
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It's been a two nap afternoon.
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(1)
05:51:28 PM,
Thursday 13 May 2010
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04:19:25 PM, Thursday 6 May 2010
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E: The brain needs histamines. This is actually well known.
T: Only if you want it to function.
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(6)
11:49:31 AM,
Wednesday 5 May 2010
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"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it."
- Anthony de Mello
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(4)
11:21:06 AM,
Wednesday 5 May 2010
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This quote nearly says something good, but it is weaker than it could be. Let me start where it starts and finish it in my own words:
Minds are not brains. Please note that I do not intend anything non-materialistic by this remark; minds are not some ethereal spiritual stuff, but the concepts "mind" and "brain" are entirely separate, and that difference is important. The brain is a bodily organ, an anatomical fact. The mind is that aspect of a person that we can expect to access and influence through words and symbols, reason and emotion. A current theory popular among the thinking classes is that the brain underlies the mind, that for every state of mind there is also a state of brain. That is a fine theory, and I know of nothing that contradicts it. But it does not in any respect mean that we can throw out the whole idea of mind and simply talk about brains. The attempt causes disastrous and unnecessary confusion.
I am perfectly aware of the contents of my mind. As an ordinary person, I am well qualified to speak my mind. Despite spending a summer slicing rat brains in a neuroscience lab, I am not at all well qualified to speak about my brain, or anyone else's brain. Although I know a little about the parts of the brain, and what neurotransmitters are, and which are thought to do what, I can't tell you a thing about what my brain is up to at any given moment. I can't poke it, or measure it, or test what chemicals are in it. What humanity knows about the brain comes from poking and measuring done by scientists in labs, far off from ordinary life. Although my brain is as much a part of me as my mind, I am completely dependent on others for any knowledge of it, and that knowledge is for the most part general to humanity, and not particular to my own situation.
Although I have heard that my brain will change under the influence of various drugs and meditation techniques, that even learning a musical instrument can cause changes in the brain which are perceptible using the latest scientific imaging methods, I can't determine for myself when my brain changes, or how. I can look at the outside perspective (I can play an instrument) or an inside perspective (I can remember how to play it, even if it's not there), but there is no brain perspective that I have access to. My brain, although inside me, is an external object, accessible to science, but not to me.
Technically all experience occurs within the mind, but some experiences, like the continuously chattering voice of the self, are not directly shared with others, and this is how the internal experience of mind is distinguished from external, shared experience. It should not be surprising that this inner experience is part of the real world and leaves traces that can be picked up by scientific instruments. I say it should not be surprising, but it is surprising to almost everyone, including neuroscientists and philosophers, who do not seem to tire of endless multi-colored proofs by brain scan. There are two worlds, this world of data, involving brain scans and biochemistry, and the world of the mind. There are good reasons to think that these worlds are intimately connected, but there is no good reason to think that the understanding of the brain (especially in its current, primitive form) should somehow replace or subsume the understanding of the mind, or that data from the brain can ever replace the direct experience of the mind, or that the two concepts "brain" and "mind" can ever merge, except in moments of muddle-headedness. They are both perfectly good words, and they denote different things. Minds are not brains, forever and ever, as science marches on in all its mud and glory. The end.
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(6)
12:11:14 AM,
Saturday 1 May 2010
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Whitaker's book deconstructs psychiatric medication on its own terms. Psychiatric drugging simply doesn't do what it says it does. It doesn't cure madness. It doesn't save lives. That's simple, but it's not simple, because there is a actually a lot more going on. Everyone involved may deny that meaning is important, we may say we just want the facts. But we don't just want the facts. There is a meaning, there is a dynamic that is going on, there are reasons why a pill is the thing, why a pill that doesn't work is accepted as a cure when a prayer for instance wouldn't be, when other types of therapies that work at least as well as the pill aren't accepted as cures.
The physical, the material is legitimate. I have a chemical illness, it needs a chemical cure: who could argue with that? The mental, the emotional, the spiritual is not legitimate, is not accessible. This is the fundamental problem.
It's odd how although you find confused statements like "mental illness is not a mental health problem", indicating support of the biological illness idea of mental illness, the fact that the entire body is involved in "mental" illness is still neglected by psychiatry. People who present depression primarily as a matter of headaches or bodily pains (and whole cultures who treat depression in this manner) are said to be "somatizing", as if depression did not really cause physical pain. In fact it does, of course it does! Depression is a state of the whole body. It is thought to have its primary causal seat in the brain, but it creates a state which involves many body systems. Disturbance of eating and sleeping, slowness in movement and speech, all of these cardinal symptoms of major depression are visible and somatic, not taking place in some inaccesible realm of the inside of someone's head but simply in the body. It's odd that this particular aspect of depression should be neglected or denigrated at the same time as depression is thought to be entirely a somatic disorder of the brain. So the symptoms thought most directly related to the brain are emphasized: the thoughts and emotions. It is still seen as primarily about thoughts and emotions, even though the theory that fixing thoughts and emotions can cure it has been mostly discarded.
Right now I'm not depressed, I'm pissed.
I need to deal with that. Everything I do, everything I say on this matter is affected by this ship of hate, this death star hanging just above and behind my head, a pile of black bricks held together with stinking tar. I hate, and so I try to deny what is (and that is clear to others even if they are wrong about which part of what I'm saying is denial, or what I mean to direct my hate at). I hate, so I fight when I should be working harder to understand. I am pissed off, so I unfurl a flag of righteousness, I charge into battle, I say truth! truth! and try to beat people over the head with it.
Just because something is true does not mean that beating people over the head with it is right. If I become a crusader for Whitaker's book, I miss what is really important to me. Me, I don't care that much whether meds work or not. I'm very happy I have the legal right not to take them. I think the system stinks. But to me the meds are merely an expression of a system that isn't working in a lot of ways, not just not working to fix symptoms of mental illness. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what human beings are, it's a premature discarding of the old wisdom when the new wisdom has not ripened. It's why the symbolism of the pills works and makes sense to people, that's the level that needs to be faced up to. The fact that the current understanding has internal contradictions is interesting, it's nice. I like the idea that meds don't work, that they are almost never good for anyone as they are currently encouraged to be used. I like that quite a bit more than I should. I am gleeful at the downfall of this paradigm, which Whitaker's book effectively completes for me, and might effectively begin for society in general. But then I can look at it and say, ok, that paradigm doesn't work, but Whitaker doesn't provide another one, oh he has his "solutions" chapter, but there is a lot more work that needs to be done in creating a new paradigm, and Whitaker's not the one to do it.
I'm not the one to do it, either. Or, here is what I am not: "stand up for your rights, fellow patients! Let us stand together for human rights and victory over abuse!"
That's work that has to be done, and I'm happy to let someone else do it. The Whitaker book is part of that work, even if it's a non-patient perspective. I don't give a damn about solidarity with other patients. I'm sorry but I don't. I want solidarity with other human beings who want to be human beings. That's the only solidarity I'm interested in.
Here is what I might be: "Let's try to understand what has been denied and repressed and locked up, not just individual human beings, but feelings and ideas, hopes and dreams and plans. If we release some of these assumptions, like some of these ideas about mental illness, not just the facts but the whole structure of how it is thought about, what is valued, what is good and bad, then what? If we're really careful, if we try not just to react but to do better, to observe what's really going on, not just in mental hospitals but in the world in general, what do we find? What are the underlying conflicts? How can we connect to each other, and how do those connections chafe? How can we make improvements that are really improvements, and not faked up mindless newness? What's the difference between planting a garden and letting a field go to seed? What the difference between a grungy gas station and a decent one? What is the difference between a comfortable city neighborhood and the projects? It is impossible to set everything right. Where do we start setting something right in a way that matters?"
It's complicated. It's complicated doesn't mean that everyone is a little bit right, or that there are not simple things that are not well understood. But it is indeed complicated.
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(4)
11:50:18 AM,
Thursday 29 April 2010
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A good interview with Whitaker
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03:16:20 PM,
Wednesday 28 April 2010
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I keep trying to write a review of Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker, but I don't know where to start (the "Erika" in the Amazon reviews is me, so I suppose I did manage it once... just go there). If you have anything to do with psychiatric drugs, if you are a patient, if you could be a patient (and you could), if you know a patient (and you do), or especially if you are involved in mental health work in any way, read this book cover to cover. It explains the whole thing better than I could, and if I try to summarize it, it will just sound nutty, but it's not nutty at all, it's completely rational. The guy is not a kook, just a good old fashioned muck-raking journalist who wants to break a huge scandal and get famous. I hope he succeeds (it is now beating out the DSM for the #1 spot in the Amazon rankings for psychiatry! Yay!). It is possible that we've been getting this whole thing wrong, that even the terms of the debate are wrong. Just read it.
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(1)
03:15:27 PM,
Wednesday 28 April 2010
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Goodbye, Blackberry and Frodo. Live well. Frodo, don't beat up on Blackberry too much, and remember to use the cute attack on people, not claws. More effective. Blackberry, may your world conquest be successful. Cole and Pippin are up next for a planned cat-napping.
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(2)
03:15:33 PM,
Thursday 22 April 2010
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"As part of the systematic chaos reduction process, kittens are inserted in laundry baskets."
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(4)
03:38:51 PM,
Monday 19 April 2010
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