I have imagined at times
that it was just business
involved in all of my pain,
merely that the numbers
worked out that way, and
that I was merely on the
short end of the calculation.
But I do not know. Which
is to be preferred, a universe
that has something personal
against all that you are,
or one that cares not at all,
and randomly smites you?
Perhaps when one sees it
one way, he prefers, naturally,
the opposite: what a horror
it is when the conspiracy
is all around you, and
even the breath you breathe
is a plot of the enemy.
But how is it worse than
a lifetime of suffering
merely because just someone
pulled the wrong lever,
completely innocent,
and you just happened
to be in the wrong place,
at just the wrong time?
The first is madness,
but the second, I think,
would drive you there.
Strawberry
3:31am thursday, 9th june
The Universe cares Stand. It cares. I promise. You are no blunder. You have created on this website something that is unique in the world. I came here tonight for a rest. It is a treat for me to take the time to write a post. I'm writing my lecture for this weekend, tomorrow night is dressed rehersal at home with two friends. The speech has no ending yet! Arg. It's been 11 years since I've spoken in public. I can't improvise, too rusty. I have to have it all written down for safety's sake.
My website is finally up. I mean, I paid my brother to do it. I can barely work email. So now I have broken into the boy's club. I think it's the first schizoprhenic website from a girl. Yeah! If your curious, it is SchizophreniaAndArt.com. It is sooo polically incorrect to use the term "schizophrenic art" but hey, since I'm schizophrenic, why not?
The lecture this weekend is a publicity launch. My fellow calls it "The Karen Show", which means that everything rests upon my shoulders. A success or flop all depends on what comes out of my mouth. I've got one of those headgear microphones that is wireless. At Radio Shack they call it the Madonna Mike. I've got 6 display easels holding 6 pieces of framed artwork that I use to illustrate how the schizoprhenic illness influenced my art over the years. The wireless headgear is broadcast by a kareoki macheine, it was the guy at Radio Shack's brainchild. See, the Kareoki macheine can play a CD of music, so before my lecure and after my lecture I can play classical music! Way cool. And way portable.
Apparently, at the American Museum of Folk Art in NYC the staff is still refering to some of it's holdings as "art of the insane". A psychiatrist attending this lecture has asked me to help convince staff there to reject this term. That's a part of my lecture I haven't written yet. Along with my take on "concrete thinking". Can't leave that out. My fellow will be talking about a co-worker and say, "his ship has arrived" and I say, "why are you now suddenly talking about ships?" Abstract thought doesn't come natural to me, at least not after the onset of my illness. And jokes, I have a terrible time getting the punchline of a joke sometimes......now, this all has something important to do with schizophrenic art......don't yet know how to tie it in.
Insane people can't make art, they are too sick. Delusional people can make art though.
I am tired beyond tired beyond tired, and having an emotional meltdown every other day. My neighbors heard one today, all of our screened windows are open becasue it is hot. I yelled at my fellow "Liar, liar, liar! You don't love me!" (The nice guy was saying he didn't care what i said, he still loved me) and then, "Liar, liar, liar!.....You haven't earned the right to marry me! I'm not going to marry you!" I know that the neighbors heard becasue shortly after I drove by with my car and nobody turned to wave, they must have been too embarrassed to look at me..... everyone waves here. I appologized to my fellow profoundly. But tonight, just to be safe, I'm sleeping on the downstair's couch because I'm so stressed, I don't want to take the chance of snapping at him again. I wonder if he will talk about my behavior at the lecture. That's one of the special features. I talk about what is like to be me, and then he gets to talk about what it is like to live with me!
Bottom line Stand, I'm in a world of suffering right now because I push. I push the envelope, and I suspect, so do you. Nobody, ever, suggested I build a website or do a lecture. I just wanted to try to be a little more than what I already was. I wanted a challenge, an adventure. Take a risk. Many people without schizophrenia can't do these things! So why do we? Because it's in our blood. I suffer because I am trying to climb a mountain. Isn't that really why you too suffer so much? Because you too are creating mountains to scale ...... and its all of our own choice.
Stand
3:44am thursday, 9th june
Hey, good luck with your website and speech! (I made your site a link.)
Reflection
8:50pm friday, 10th june
"Isn't that really why you too suffer so much? Because you too are creating mountains to scale........and its all of our own choice."Wise,very wise, probably wise enough to make God jealous.
Reflection
9:02pm friday, 10th june
Strawberry, I saw some of the art on your website. I like Early Babylon, Roses have thorns, catman, dogwoman. I like how the colors blend.
Reflection
9:15pm friday, 10th june
Try some black and white pictures Strawberry, if you have'nt already.
Strawberry
12:32am saturday, 11th june
No one has ever said that to me Reflection, but I really like the idea of limiting myself to just black & white. I think the abstract painter (Kline?) spent three years only painting in black & white just to improve his sensitivity.... but I don't remember what he was seeking....It's a good challenge... I'm glad you like my work. Early Babylon is so sweet...I say you have a romantic taste, Reflection.
Webster, I have a question for you. It's about that group therapy session where everyone was put on a "hot seat" to reveal the most horrible thing that they had ever done. It was an emotional challenge, what, to trust? The challenge to be honest? The challenge to clearly see yourself at your worst? I've never been in such a group therapy, but then, I am going to guess that the context of that situation was in a drug rehabilitation center.
So now you look back on the experience and you think about the fact that a convincing preformance successfully faked the group out. Do you ever wonder how your memory of that group session would have been different if you had told the truth? The truth being the worst thing you have ever done. Which really can translate into the thing that you feel most guilty about..... because one man's bad is another man's mild.
I know exactly the worst thing I have ever done. There are two. One behavior involving an animal, and one behavior involving a boy. So, knowing what I know, how would it profit me emotionally by telling the story to a group of strangers?
The person I am today would never repeat the behavior. Honestly, if I could write the stories down on a piece of paper, and then fold the paper and place it in a tiny wooden boat, and release the boat on a slow moving stream, and then never have to remember them again...I would. But that would be an act of magic.
Lecture tomorrow! Freak. Freak. Squeal.
Reflection
4:07pm saturday, 11th june
You are too smart Strawberry,you think if you persevere or however they spell it, you will reach a utopia.The utopia is within yourself.I used to paint pictures with alot of anger bright vibriant colors, but a friend of mine showed me some pictures of his work, and they were so relaxed and chilled out.Van Gogh did brilliant work, but to his own demise, trust me there is peace,but its up to you.No matter what God, the devil, the antichrist, jesus, etc, etc. You know yourself.Keep painting, your use of color is amazing.
Reflection
4:16pm saturday, 11th june
Strawberry ,You want so much to be free.I know the feeling.Sometimes I look up in the sky, and I'm embarassed.
Webster
7:06pm saturday, 11th june
Stand, interesting yet painful dilemma that you pose. Am I correct in my paraphrase;"Are the paranoid delusions and perceived persecutions of schizophrenic illness that appear to specifically target you, more painful than the random miseries of life that do not." Regardless, each is painful and it is maddening to know how much misery is just a result of the random chance.
Randomness in life is both blessed if the odds are in your favor, and cruel when they are not. More and more scientists believe now that we are a product of our genetic composition. Genetics is so random and the combinations are endless. If not so, the same two parents would have the same child repeadely. Why one sibling would develop schizophrenia and another not develop it is believed by some to be random. Simply by chance, one inherited the genetic makeup, the other did not. The brain in this person has to unfold according to its genetic predetermination, much the way a flower has to unfold its petals according to its kind. Likewise, a dandelion has no choice to similiarly unfold as does the rose. For the dandelion to wish against its genetic predisposition to blossom into a rose would be futile. Yet each has their glorious place on earth.
The dandelion is known as "The Mother's Flower" because it brings so much joy. I can remeber as a little girl picking handfuls with my friends to present to our mothers. My mother would delight at my show of love and affection and place them in a vase.
Running through fields flowering with dandelions in childhood was synonymous with spring and summer; it would not have been the season without them. Who knew that they were considered weeds.
We all need to blossom whether we are a rose or a dandelion. Nurturing helps if we are in a supportive environment. At other times life randomly mows us down. A flower is forced to blossom wherever it is planted regardless of ideal conditions. People too are forced to survive in hostile circumstances they often cannot control.
Sometimes our genetic makeup combined with our life circumstances and environment can bring great pain and anger. Reflection describes in one of his posts as "being pissed off at God" in spite of having such talent and insight.
Stand, I have always been curious, but too shy to ask you what it is like to be mentally ill in another country. I know there are regional differences in stigma, treatment and acceptance here in the US. Do you speak Korean? What are the psychiatric services like in comparison to the US? Is there community support? Do you live alone or with family? Have friends? Is the attitudes and stigma about mental illness different than in the US? Do you miss living here? Am I asking you too many questions and being too personal?
Strawberry, Congratulations on such a very beautiful web site. I am delighted that you are such an eloquent spokeswoman. Good luck on your speech and tell us all how successful it was. I will answer your questions to me separately.
Stand, I hope that your apparent disheartened state is temporary and you have the resources that you need. I think that the others might be correct in that you expect too much from yourself.
I often feel like the inadequate dandelion when comparing myself to a rose. I have to remind myself that the dandelion is the only "flower" that everyone holds close to them to make a wish. A wish implies hope.
Webster
8:32pm saturday, 11th june
Strawberry, The point of all the exercises were to explore how much of yourself you would allow to trust. The exercises explored different types of trust through different exercises. I remember some of them.
One exercise was to free fall backwards and trust that your assigned group member would catch you. Trust for your safety.
Another exercise was to perform for the group a secret desire; whether to sing, dance, paint, or recite your own poetry etc.
The goal is to trust that others would not laugh and riducule.
Still another exercise was to allow a group member to lead you around blind folded for one hour including outdoors, stairways, and traffic. Again the goal is to trust for your safety.
One exercise was to bring to the group a treasured possession and allow a member of the group to keep it for a week. The goal being to entrust your treasures and trust that they will be returned.
And of course the worst exercise for me was to entrust to the group the worst thing that I had ever done. The goal being that this information could be shared without fear of comdemnation or riducule.
With all of these excercises came self knowlege. I could make a fool of myself with my lack of talent,entrust my safety and valuables, but not my guilt.
One member of the group admitted to beating his mother when he was a teenager while his parents were divorcing. He said that he could no longer stand the terrible things that she said about his father. Another member admitted to spending extended time in jail.
I did not and still do not feel good about faking out the group. I still do not feel I would have derived any benefit or profit emotionally by being honest. I was in a period of self loathing, seething in guilt and felt that if I exposed myself, these feeling would be magnified and exacerbated by everyone in the group. I could not trust them not to loathe me the way I loathed myself.
I too am not the same person and could never again repeat my actions especially having lived with the pain of what I did. An anaylist once told me that guilt is the biggest waste of emotion because it cannot change what has already taken place and drains the soul. I too would like to build a boat and have it all float away, but it never does leave.
I hope that I answered your question.
Strawberry
3:49am sunday, 12th june
(smiles and more smiles), Webster is a girl! A talkative girl like me! Thank you for detailing all those exercises, Webster. It's amazing how some of them felt like children's games - but very important ones! It would be like reconnecting to a child inside who would have felt more free to be trusting and playful. The only exercise which I could never do and still can't was the falling back into the waiting arms of two rows of people. I have no idea why that situation creates so much terror, while the sharing of loathing or guilt would be no trouble.
I like that phrase, "guilt drains the soul". It is true. I have recently been cleaning up my soul by paying back every debt I have ever created. A debt to an old boyfriend who paid for a bit of dentist work, returning library books and paying the fine, and last, making a necklace that I promised years ago to my sister for graduating college. I've been getting rid of clothes I never wear and objects I never use. Keeping track of too many "things" is draining on the soul too. And last, I have been watching what I say. Usually I don't lie, but now I don't even want to make white lies or exaggerations. I don't want to put down myself or others in humor, and, I don't want to use slippry language, language that is just meaningless phrases or swears.
Reflection, I think all white hair looks cool. I have never, ever, thought about utopia to be had here on earth. Perhaps I am a bit of a product of being born and raised in New England. There was always a lot of the "puritain work ethic" in my house, where every blessing must be first earned. That we are here on earth to work and strive and we can only rest after we are dead. This all sounds terribly stark to my own ears, what I have just said, but I think that the message was always being communicated in my house.
I haven't ever hoped much for freedom. When I pray, if I pray, I ask that I may be used as a vessel to serve. I have asked for strength, such as before my lecture, but I only asked for me to be given access to what I already had. The idea of asking for more that what I already have is so very, very difficult. I remember being in a church talk group, and one woman said that she liked to pray for highways with little traffic and good parking spaces. Frankly, I got upset, but I wanted to stay polite. I thought, "you aren't suppose to bother God with trivial requests! And we shouldn't pray for selfish desires either. Prayer is holy, while parking spaces, well, God doesn't care about wether or not you get a good parking space!"
So Reflection, I think that I have been a bit hard on myself.
The lecture went well, it seems now some of the people who heard it want me to do more lectures for other people whom they know. For psychiatrists and neruologists in training, and a group of artists, and a library group. My fellow told me that I did some strange piling up of chunks of my hair on top of my forehead while I talked that was not very attractive, and that I also put my hand on my forehead and left it there for a while, so these bad habits must be stopped. (When I was in high school, on my first debate ever, I was wearing a long necklace and while I was speaking I put it in my mouth and chewed on it. The judge gave a score of zero because he said he couldn't understand a word I said.) Have to polish the speech with smoother transitions between ideas. But, talked for an hour, and everyone said that they wanted to hear more. So I wasn't boring. Good. And the audience had some remarkable questions. People question the world in ways that have never occured to me, and I like it.
Just between friends, I now, after it is all over, feel nausious.
Stand
4:10am sunday, 12th june
Webster, I am pretty much well enough to function on my own, and it is not that much like I am mentally ill in a foreign country. I was, about ten years ago (it's in my story), and it wasn't very fun. As it is, I still don't speak Korean very well, so I blend in up until I have to open my mouth. I live with my aunt, and I usually don't miss that much about the US, having been usually secluded there, anyway, I don't have many friends either there nor here. I speak very little of my mental illness here, for it is much more stigmatized here. Anyway, I am going to write another entry in this journal. Cheers.
Strawberry
Stand
Strawberry