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| april 2002 |
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| Wander | 1:23am tuesday, 30th april |
I have been where the stones
speak in tones too ancient to perceive,
where the wind blows in rhythm
to the stride of the hart, where
time circles back and meets itself
at the end that is the beginning.
I have been where the dream
is yet unfolding, still wondering itself
into being, still becoming the
tomorrow that never will be, still
shaking off the yesterday that never
was. It has no where to it, it was
all here, it was anywhere. I still
remember what the angel said,
what all angels say when you meet
them at the first: "Be not afraid."
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| Feelings | 2:20am monday, 29th april |
The fear sometimes returns. The feeling, "What have I done to myself?", that I have perhaps sinned too greatly in my life. The imagination that I am forever damned, with no recourse for salvation. I conceive the paranoia that I am like Hitler before he rose to power. No one knew, then, how evil he was; he was just a man like any other man. Only when he was given power did he prove to be a madman in the worst possible sense, and I half believe that I am like that. That I have killed myself, spiritually, along the way, or that I will in the future. I have spoken about this before.
The Yiddish proverb comes to me, "He that can't endure the bad will not live to see the good." The paranoia is strong. Sometimes it fades on its own, sometimes the only thing that will dissipate it is if I bow my head and pray. God has a plan for me, like He has a plan for everyone, really. It's just the question of what exactly that might be. Up or down, it's not really up to me. Sometimes I feel helpless, a leaf in the wind. I wonder what the future holds. Perhaps I was right here. And there are good times, along the way, when I feel okay — about myself and the world in general.
But maybe this is it, and this would be the hardest thing to believe, wouldn't it?: the best is yet to come. Maybe this is the bad, right now, and the good — I will live to see it, after all.
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| Poem, Very Old | 9:19am saturday, 27th april |
I wrote this back when I was on the farm (here), and I just rediscovered this while looking through some old files. I mark it as the first decent poem I ever wrote.
"An Aside"
...stillness. The moment balances atop a keenest
silence, wavers, and falls
a tiny raindrop through the empty vast
(what desperate indifference is a heart in need of
purpose). A slight tap...
then two...
Man, this little number brings back memories. The farm, during my break from the madness, my aspirations to be a writer or something, how the thing came to me in pieces, how I wished it were longer. Wow. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
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| Graffiti | 4:12am friday, 26th april |
I remember a sign on a wall on the street where I used to live in San Francisco. It was painted by some students or something, something legitimate but looking like some nice, colorful graffiti; it said, "It is... I just feel like something wonderful is about to happen!" I think of that because that feeling just breezed through me. It wasn't huge, but it was like this ball of hope rolled through me. Ever get those? I dunno. Maybe something wonderful (though perhaps small) will happen. Maybe soon.
Hope is one of those things you can never have too much of. Even if it's stupid. Unless, of course, you're hoping that someone'll die or something. It's all about kindness, after all. I remember reading somewhere that that is the most noble of human aspirations, that one, small thing: simple kindness. Hm. Hope and kindness — if you put those together, if you can aspire truly to these two ordinary ideals (if you can hope when times are hopeless, if you can show kindness when all around you is cruelty) — if you can do them to the utmost, these two things become extraordinary. I think they have a name for people like that. I think they call them saints.
I'm no saint, and you probably aren't one either, huh? This is my own graffiti, though, for those who will peruse:
Something amazing is happening to someone right now.
You just might be next.
Yeah. Sometimes life is good, after all.
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| Morning Gray | 4:07am thursday, 25th april |
Shadows shift as I wake — what I dreamed ebbs out of my grasp.
Sunlight moves in, crowding out the sleep from between my tired eyes.
To work, to beat the dull drum: life is short and the day is long.
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| The Fisherman | 12:02am wednesday, 24th april |
In an old land far off, a salty sea churned beyond the shores. There was a man who fished the waters out in that sea. Every day he woke before dawn, in darkness setting out, out into that broad expanse, casting his nets all day, and when he waited (between the time when he let the nets out and pulled them back in), he dreamed. He dreamed with his eyes wide open, understanding that they were only dreams and nothing but the air of his mind. He dreamed of never having to wake before dawn to set out to the ocean, never to need to cast his nets out and pull them in, that he lived far inland in a great mansion and that every need he had all he needed do was snap his fingers and they were done. He dreamed this every day.
The man had a wife, and he had a son, and he never talked to them about the dream he had. Time passed, he grew older, and his son grew up enough to bring out with him to fish. When he did this, the man had no time to dream his dream, because whenever he looked as if his eyes were drifting off, his son would ask him what he was thinking of. Embarrassed, he would always say that he was thinking of the boy’s mother. Then he would change the subject, and he and the boy would talk of this and that. As the days and weeks passed, the man felt a change come over him. He didn’t mind so much waking before dawn, going out to fish, because he had his son with him, and whenever he was about to float off into his dream, the boy would bring him back down, and they would talk of this thing and that.
One night he had a dream, but not that old one. That old dream had faded away by now. He dreamed he was out in the ocean with his son, and they were fishing. When his eyes started to drift away, his son asked him what he was thinking, and then they talked about this and that. And the fisherman couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or he was awake.
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| Tired | 2:51am tuesday, 23rd april |
Yesterday I imagined I saw an unnamed darkness within me. I felt as if I could succumb to it, to give into it, and leave myself with only bitterness. I didn't, though — strangely enough, I was influenced enough by the darkness for it to seem that nothing was worth doing at all, not even embracing the black. I went to sleep early, instead — that after waking up at 6 pm. Yeah, I've been doing that recently, since I started my new job. I sleep all weekend, or at least all day Saturday. This weekend, both days I slept till 6 in the evening. But anyway, the darkness: perhaps what I imagined was just an illusion. Or perhaps it is the darkness that each of us possess within us, that we've fed through all the wrong we've done, and perhaps... perhaps it is not so dark, and not so deep as it would seem.
I have been weary of late — again, the new job. Waking up early and getting home twelve hours later. I feel like I've been fighting a long time, now, and this, too, contributes to the drain of my psyche. Fighting for sanity, and against the imaginary forces of evil in my head. Sanity is mine, usually, but sometimes the visions creep in. I white knuckle some small episodes wherein paranoia crystallizes some sort of delusion; I hold onto what I know is true. The little cartoons in my head — I must defeat the Hitler and the Satan cartoons, listen to the Saint Michael and Saint Joan of Arc cartoons if I can. And sometimes I must.
I am tired. All I hope, all I can hope, I think, is that I have done good enough — good enough for now. Let things lie a spell. Really, though, don't worry about me. Like all things that have ever been on earth, this shall pass. And perhaps I shall be the better for it.
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| Best Of 2 | 1:47am monday, 22nd april |
These are, perhaps, the best of the entries from November 2001 through January 2002. My favorites, in any case. Putting these together in this fashion does quite bring back some memories. I won't be doing this again for at least another month, so enjoy.
A heart - The meaning of a candle.
A poem - "Out of Madness", a poem about emerging out of psychosis.
Rapture - Regarding the phrase "God is love".
Hope - The unasked question.
Yearsbook - An idea I had about my own gravestone.
30 Seconds - Inhibitors, and lacks thereof.
Madness? - What madness is, and sanity, too.
I Will - The things I need keep, if I am to be me.
Doors - Not the band, but about running into them, going through them.
Once - Another poem, a sort of summary.
Inspired - Regarding VvG (Vincent van Gogh), and his Starry Night.
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| Drawn in Madness | 2:21am saturday, 20th april |
Drawn during my last "episode", a page of various things.
Interesting note about "crow feather": during this time, when I was imagining various deities, the Native American "Great Spirit" gave me a name. That was it: "Crow Feather" or "Crowfeather". My friends all think it fits me quite well.
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| Breathe | 4:27am thursday, 18th april |
Breathe. Let me not keep you.
You have many places to go,
you move from page to page
quicker than a hummingbird.
There is nothing here you
have not seen — just words.
Breathe. If you like, this poem
will end where it began; or
even if you don't like. Sometimes,
we forget ourselves, by intent
or by slip of mind. Sometimes,
we are hectic and in need
of a landing place. Somewhere
we can stop doing everything
but the one necessary. Breathe.
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| Thoughts Drift | 4:55am wednesday, 17th april |
I don't know when was the last time I let my thoughts really drift. Drift and not end up being twisted, turn into a voice from a cartoon in my head or a delusion that I am somehow the evil of evils. Drift, and maybe think of a cloud that had a certain shape, or a tune from long ago that I almost forgot. I still do a lot of wrestling with my unconscious. I don't remember what that's like, I don't think, the freedom to let down your guard (mentally speaking) for more than five minutes, without having to do perpetual psychic housekeeping lest the floor of your imagination sprout weirdness after weirdness. I can dream, though.
It's part of that general wondering, I think, wondering how it would be like if I were normal — just normal, that's all. Run of the mill. Your average joe. With a brain that's not scattered through the astral plane. I guess, though, that I should count my blessings — that I'm not constantly drooling or anything. I think maybe some normal people wonder how it would be like to be mad, but not really. Just for an hour, just for a day, and then they want to snap out of it. Usually doesn't work that way, of course. Madness is a serious commitment to the you you never wanted to meet. Day after day.... Yeah, I been there. I done that.
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| Talk | 4:33am tuesday, 16th april |
I'm amazed by people who talk a lot. Some, I listen carefully at what they say, and the content of their speech is meager — and yet, they stretch it out into paragraphs or more. Really, I find that amazing. Back when I had just recovered from my first madness, I started writing poetry and short stories. More poetry than prose, but when I did write narratives, I had the opposite problem. People who knew literature told me that I wrote intense imagery, but then I moved on to write another one right after that; what I should have done was to primp the first one, instead. I was packed with content — it was all too much. What I was lacking, fascinatingly enough, was filler.
Poetry has come easier to me than prose, and that's why you find it so prevalent here at H13. Essay I explore in various fashions on this site, and that's half and half; some comes naturally, some comes only with force. If I think of it, I think perhaps — back when — that I had experienced something so striking, I wanted others to feel (like so many of us do) the ferocity of experience that I had had. Madness, you know — not a lot of filler in that. Even the filler is intense filler. Everything is magnified, and I guess that's all that would come through from me to you. I think that I still have to tone things down, that I try too hard to impress. All I hope is that some small part gets through. That may be why I pound the anvil, sometimes — so that some piece of the sound may get through.
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| Best Of | 11:31pm sunday, 14th april |
The following are some of my favorite entries from the first three months of this site. I will get to later months in a later post. This will be good for those who have been with me from the beginning as a recap on where we've traveled from, and to new visitors this will offer some familiarity with what I'm about. Cheers.
10/7/88 - The time that Infinity saved my life.
Black Iron Prison - When I found myself not on earth, but before my madness.
BIP 2 - How I was released from the Black Iron Prison.
Gnosticism - My own Gnostic myth, written during my madness.
Rosanna Arquette? - A dip into my last, recent madness.
Crossroads? - Words that Jesus in my head gave me, during my last madness.
A thought - A paragraph about birds.
Trust - About an experience I had in Korea with a bird in the forest.
Another clip - A drawing from within my older madness.
Recent - A drawing from my more recent madness.
I'm okay - My breakthrough from my last madness.
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| Pages | 7:03am saturday, 13th april |
There are pages unwritten within my soul, turned daily.
What we scribble down just to remember is sometimes immortal.
We often stare at a blank page, frozen by its potential.
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| Dream Traveler | 4:24am friday, 12th april |
How far have you traveled in dreams? Are you a local dreamer, who dreams of people he knows, places he's been, or do you dream far? Do you dream of places you've never been, and of purple people? Have you dreamed a place so alien you didn't believe you were on earth? So fantastic, so different, you didn't know if you were floating in air or ether? How far have you gone? Myself, I have had some strange dreams in my madness. I have traveled briefly through Hell and Heaven — not in the same dream, and not for long at all. They were glimpses, only, a Heaven of pure light, and a Hell of pure darkness — but only a slight tint of either.
I have told you about the Black Iron Prison. That was an acid trip, but it was quite like dreaming while still awake. Mentally, delusionally, I have traveled much. My dreams have been such that I have imagined different planes of existence where, as if looking into this world as something like a prison, I have seen myself trapped in this life. The more intense dreams wake me up during their courses, and I think I will never forget them, but I do. It happens when you dream as many strange dreams as I: even distinct episodes blur together. I still like to dream, and to remember my dreams. I still like to dream far, and though I think I always shall, perhaps that feeling is just of this moment — that that will pass, too, like all those dreams I thought I would never forget.
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| Nothing | 4:17am wednesday, 10th april |
I don't think it is possible to imagine nothing — nothing, as in, the absence of all things. Just like I don't think you can truly imagine infinity. The closest one might possibly get is a space filled with black, but that's not it. You've still got space, and let's not forget, you still have time. Nothing would have neither of those, and that's really what makes it pretty near impossible to imagine. How does one extricate one's mind from thinking in terms of space-time? Nothing is a mind-boggling concept, if you really consider it. It deserves some respect, I think.
I remember in my madness that nothing would be yellow, for some reason. Not sure why. I once thought, too, that oblivion would be not black, not white, but the grayest gray imaginable. Really, both thoughts are without foundation. The closest thing I have come to truly comprehending nothing was when I thought about the creation of angels, who in my mind would have been blinked into existence fully formed of mind and body. I imagined that their previous nonexistence would be remembered by them like one may comprehend that which is out of our field of vision. Being created would be like suddenly being able to see. Outside sight, there is no color, there is no space, there is no time — it just isn't. That, I think, would very much be like nothing.
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| Unpoem | 5:27am tuesday, 9th april |
Delight my pen of rhythmic phrase,
Delight my poetry of days;
I dream of life and life dreams me,
And in my years my dreams to free.
Hello, I start, and stop again.
Ahem, that is, and then... and then?
Many words and none will fit —
Where's the clever? Where's the wit?
I think my poem circles 'round.
It stands and walks, and won't sit down.
Delight that I have naught to say,
Just do it pretty, not blasé.
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| Love Is | 12:01am monday, 8th april |
I have imagined that love is like many things, and like nothing else, too. I have seen that it seems paradoxical in many ways, like strange and familiar at the same time. My current thought is that love is like a dream, or is like dreaming, while you're awake. If I remember correctly, I think it is just like that: eyes far away, a blissful smile on your lips, the feeling of floating.... I have previously concluded this about love, and this, but what do I know? If I call something a word a lot of times, the thing won't change, but the meaning of the word might, to fit what that word was referring to — so I'd be correct, but in a kind of lame way. So maybe what I'm calling love is not love at all.
I have called madness a sort of waking dream; is love like a madness? The romantic might imagine that it has some elements of it, but I think not. Love, I think, is sanity itself, in my understanding of it. It is hatred that is the madness. Hm. What is love? Silly me, I thought I had answered that simple, infinite question. I've just gone in a circle, I think, concluding, "Love is love." Though that is something — at least I did not think that love is not love. For all the ways that the word can be stretched, I think that that would be quite incorrect. And maybe love is a paradox, after all, that you know it least when you know it most. Well? That kinda makes sense. Yes, I think love is like that.
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| Gaga | 5:27am saturday, 6th april |
I don't remember the last time I was really gaga over a girl. I guess that would be "woman", now, actually, now that I'm over thirty, but when I was younger, I was always getting impossible crushes on the fairer sex. The pretty ones, of course, the ones that wouldn't give me the time of day. I claimed, though it was a stretch, that I had had a crush on this one girl — we could call her Jane, I suppose — from fourth through twelfth grade. Lots of guys did, I think; she was a beauty. I didn't really though; I believe Jane kinda left my fancy at about eighth grade. But still. Four years. And I never really made a move on her at all — it was all at a distance.
Then, I had another intense infatuation that started when I was eighteen and in my freshman year in college. Let's call her Kit. And that one, wow. I do admit that I got to third base with her, but man. Kit lasted (on and off) all through my madness, ending with a big dumporama only three years ago. She visited me here in San Francisco, and I asked if there was a chance for anything, and she was quite distinct in her "No". I finally had to let go of her. Kit was all wrong for me, if I really thought about it. But when I kissed her, really kissed her for the first time back when I was nineteen, it was like what S. Morgenstern described in The Princess Bride: "Since the invention of the kiss, there had been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind."
Hm. I hope I haven't grown out of it. Those kinds of kisses, by their very nature, don't happen every day — but let there be one, just one more.
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| More Notes | 4:15am friday, 5th april |
These are some more notes, though after I was out of the mental institution (here):
The top sentence says, "You have had visions of fame." Along the left, "Enlightenment is sight." x2. Along the right, there is "Lampstand" and a diagram of what would happen to me if I were one of the two witnesses of Revelation (one of the two "lampstands" of Revelation 11): after death, ascension after 3 1/2 days into life eternal (the infinity sign). The little squiggle was just testing a pen to see if it wrote.
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| True Meaning | 6:11am wednesday, 3rd april |
I think sometimes meaning won't stay — you have to weld it on.
And even then, it can be fragile: two arguments shake it loose.
Better that I speak plainly, not imbuing flavor to dust.
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| Dollar | 5:20am tuesday, 2nd april |
Unfold me: I am a dollar bill with a thousand creases, a thousand times spent. I have been passed from prince to pauper and back again. And I am liquid. I have been pieces of dreams, and I have been horrors bought. I cannot tell which is which, between the innocent fantasies and the tortures I have been used for; the man who stares from the front is a blind man — all money is blind, didn't you know? If we weren't, I would imagine that every dollar bill through the world would be wearing a look of shock. We've all been there; don't let any other bill tell you different.
I think I dream of being saved. Stored for years in a child's piggy bank, the kind of kid that doesn't cheat and squeezes money out two days after he puts it in. We get worn easily sometimes, when we are thrown around.
Fold me in half: I am a dollar bill. I might some day save your life. But sometimes, the cash value of your life is less than the desire of me.
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| Snowflakes | 12:07am monday, 1st april |
I walk where thousands have walked. I walk where no one walks. I am as a snowflake: the reason why there are no two alike, do you know? It is because a snowflake is a recorded history of its own drift down to earth. That where they go makes them absorb a crystalline structure in a certain way, and since no two ever occupy the same space at the same time, they will always be unique. It is that way with me, and it is that way with you — we go where others have gone, but not exactly where they have gone and when. Our histories will play never the same as the history of another. We are each as unique as a snowflake is to other snowflakes.
We are unlike snowflakes, though, in ways important. If we want, we can follow in the footsteps of others, try and absorb some of the things that they absorbed. And a snowflake never dreamed. A snowflake never desired. We do not helplessly drift to the earth, though we may feel like it sometimes. We, whom some see as only faces among the masses, we in our histories are even more genuinely unique, and it is ours to choose at least sometimes where we go. We have the capability, too, not to merely absorb, but to shape others' histories as well as our own. Snowflakes, no.
It is perhaps that snowflakes wear all they are on the outside. I think because most of what is special of us we carry within ourselves that we are not constantly astonished when we look at each other. Nor, that because, do we have such wonder when we look around the crowds of folk as we do when we, as children, gaze so upon the beauty of a snowflake.
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