I remember when I was in high school. Growing up, I was always considered that I had a bright mind, that I was an intelligent young man. By the time I went to high school, some people were even using the "g" word (you know, "genius"). But to a great degree, I really didn't know what they were talking about. I imagined that one of those days, I was going to get discovered to be a complete fraud. I was always waiting to be revealed for the nothing that I truly was. But you know, I was an underachiever then — I think it makes sense that I felt as I did. I never did anything worthy of my gifts, and it was obvious that I had been granted them; my denial of what they all said about me just gave me an excuse not to live up to any kind of expectation.
In college, there were all those drugs. People still thought I was a bright guy, but for a bright guy I did a stupid amount of those drugs. I did even less with my gifts, but with the drugs I was doing, I didn't have to think about being a fraud or that I was wasting my life. I didn't have to think of anything at all, really — I just had to be high, and all the time.
When the madness came, I was thinking only strange things. When people called me intelligent, it was more of the memory of what I had been. I remember that the madness made my IQ good and average (the brainpower was fueling the psychosis), and I was there for a long time.
It's taken me this long and all that to understand what those people were talking about, way back in high school. I was given a gift, and even more special than that, a second chance. Not many people get the former, and very, very few get the latter — not like I have. I'm not going to blow it this time. I feel like I am alive for the first time in my life, not just taking up space; I feel like there is life to live. Some people need things taught to them the hard way, and I was definitely one of them. If anyone else out there is just waiting for something to happen to them, all I have to tell you is the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for." The treasure is never what you expect it to be.
RIP
12:08am sunday, 16th june
you belive in God, right?..... i do..or did.. And he listens to your prayers, right?.... Feels like I'm praying from hell, God never listens to me! It's not like I'm prayin for a new car or anythin, just for a life worth livin or a normal life, without all the crap I have to go through! You are very lucky if God listens to your prayers, I have given up.. i think...
Stand
5:02am sunday, 16th june
St. Teresa of Avila said, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
To quote Oscar Wilde, "When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers."
Maybe He doesn't answer them because He has something else in mind? I dunno. I think maybe patience is key, sometimes.
elizabeth
7:15am tuesday, 18th june
so sad.
Strawberry
2:17am monday, 7th march
Michelangelo was once asked what a genius was. He said that genius is patience.
When I was 18 I was seeing a psychiatrist because of depression. He couldn't figure me out so he asked if he could read my diary while he was on vacation. I gave it to him figuring that it would be some fun entertainment for an old man - the way I went on about masterbation, bathtubs, and boyfriends. When the professor (for my psychiatrist happened to be a professor at Yale University) got back from his vacation he first acted all queer and mysterious. Finally when we were seated in private he said to me, "Strawberry, have you ever been called a genius?"
"No! You must be mistaken. If I were a genius then why did I get 1350 on the SATs? I do not have the grades to be accepted to an Ivy League school. And I know what my I.Q. is -it is gifted, but not genius."
"Perhaps" he said, "you were bored when you took the SATs. You were bored in school. And you are not the kind of genius that can be measured by an I.Q. test. You are a creative genius. A creative genius doesn't need to have a high I.Q."
"What is in my diary that makes you think such things?"
"Some of what you write in your diary has been thought of before. You repeat what you have heard. But some of what you write is very original. You do not repeat what you have heard. Sometimes, you know things that you have never been taught."
At 20 I was psychotic and went through a battery of tests in the hospital which all proved that I was flat average. With one acception. In a flexability test I was adept at both changing the rules of the game and precognicient of the shapes on cards before they were turned over. And in in a puzzle test I was so flexible in my concideration of test rules that I forgot that when a puzzle is assembled should resemble something in reality - like a human hand or an elephant! I "solved" puzzles by making interesting abstract shapes, or a neat pile!
Then when I was 30 I was hospitalized for about the sixth time and I was given another long battery of psychiatric tests. I had not been psychotic for years. After testing I was told that given the extensive emotional damage to my brain it was near miraculous that my intellect came through unscathed.
Although no one ever again called me a genius over the years I get called "brilliant" enough to suspect the schizophrenia didn't disable my best gift. What the disease did was to separate me from society. I can't bear much of an emotional tie to other human beings. In some people I create fear. I guess I rather like the distance that fear creates - if you are afraid of me then probably you are meek yet kind and very capable of wasting my time with verbal dribble. The fear makes strange things happen too. I give an art show and the gallery owner posts signs warning children away. My mother and father and one client buy art and then bury it respectively in a safe, draws, and a box. They must possess it but not show it.
Once I took an intro to poetry class at a local collage. One day the professor asked me to stay after class. I had done some great work analysing poems by Emily Dickinson so I expected either the "g" word or the "b" word. Instead he said, "Strawberry, you are scaring my students. Most of these kids have never read a poem before, and if you keep on talking they never will again. If my students can get but one thing out of this class, I just hope that someday they will try to read a poem on thier own. But you are overwhelming them with analysis that they don't understand - so I need you to shut up."
Back to Michelangelo. I understand now that genius is neither a free ride with the emotions of other human beings, nor is it a short cut to quality creation. The will of my mind needs to be bent by me, either to beat an image into relief out of nothingness, or to endure the search while I look for things that are right and true and without precedent in my experience of color and shape. When I create I feel like I am a somebody, but to the eyes of most in society I slumber, I am invisible, and I am a nobody. And in fact, this low place is a good place in which to make art. Sometimes I really, really like being a nobody. Society is not impatient with me because I have nothing with which to feed it's appetites. Not yet.
RIP
elizabeth
Stand