Well?

“How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”

~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

With the night

Apprehension swims into dreams

Stirring my soul

Wondering

Will tomorrow be as good as today?

Will the noonday demon stay sleeping?

 

 

 

Garden...

“God and other artists are always a little obscure”

~ Oscar Wilde.

 

 

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

Art is taking something and transforming it and transformation is not perfection, it is creative passion.

When God painted the Garden of Eden, she said what she painted was good, not perfect. Perfection would preclude living, journeying, and further creating.

The Garden of Eden wasn’t perfect it was good.

Good for growing, becoming, for life – which all gardens are good for – creating and encouraging life.

 

 

So our lives become art, we transform, we create. We are baptized in the river of imperfectability which means we die to who we were yesterday and live in the moments of today, to die yet again, to become yet again tomorrow. For life, like a piece of raku pottery is imperfectly beautiful and perfectly imperfect.

Our lives are our art. How freeing is it to know you can go in any direction, unfettered and not controlled but to be as a poem from a poet’s soul which in its truth releases you to breathe in the brushstrokes of life.

 



(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

Then at the end, just before the last breath, you can say, “I lived.”  What else can be spoken after a lifetime of poetic memories have been created and forged in the fires of the unknown? I lived.

 

 

 

 

 

Awake...

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

 

“For some reason the most important thing to me was actually seeing the baby come out of you yourself and making sure it was yours. I thought if you had to have all that pain anyway you might as well stay awake.” ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

 

 

 

 

 

What is birthed from pain? Can you bear to watch yourself being born? Knowing the pain is the process, the journey, the way you are birthed as a human being – a second birth of transformation. Will you be awake to the possibilities, the experience, the joy?

 

 

Open...

 

Release your thoughts

Let your words be free

 

 

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

 

 

To dance out of your mind

Through your heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onto empty pages

So others can dance with them

 

 

Life Worth Living In The Unknown ~ Happy Accidents...

 

 Falling in love

 Laughing so hard your face hurts

A hot shower

No lines at the supermarket

A special glance

Getting mail

Taking a drive on a pretty road

Hearing your favorite song on the radio

Lying in bed listening to the rain outside

 Hot towels fresh out of the dryer

Chocolate milkshake (vanilla or strawberry)

A bubble bath

Giggling

A good conversation

The beach

Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last winter

 Laughing at yourself

Looking into their eyes and knowing they love you

Midnight phone calls that last for hours

Running through sprinklers

Laughing for absolutely no reason at all

Having someone tell you that you're beautiful

Laughing at an inside joke

Friends

Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you

Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep

Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new partner)

Making new friends or spending time with old ones

Playing with a new puppy

Having someone play with your hair

Sweet dreams

Hot chocolate

 Road trips with friends

Swinging on swings

Making eye contact with a cute stranger

Making chocolate chip cookies

Having your friends send you homemade cookies

Holding hands with someone you care about

Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change

Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much desired present from you

Watching the sunrise

Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day

Knowing that somebody misses you

Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply

Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think

 

Taken from: ISP

 

 

Sylvia...

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

 

The chimes sang

While the sun danced

With the words of Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)


 

Madrid…

 

“You are the poet, you walk inside my dreams...” ~ Anaïs Nin

 

She was anonymous

Till she slipped her hand in mine

Unleashing a torrent

 

Caressing my palm

Feeling my soul

Praying against the pain

 

She told a story

Revealing herself in metaphor

Her roman à clef

 

Mystical moments on steps

Coffee we loved

Coffee we dared

 

Eloquent words from Madrid

Missing her hand in mine

She spoke of a night of tears

 

 

We both tasted darkness

Desperation tinged surrender

From the brink to light

 

On my arm the mark of trust

Symbol of life carved in flesh

Poetic archetype

 

Three times upon me

Three times within me

Three stacked stones

 

Hand on shoulder

Time retreating

She walks in dreams

 

Hmmm she said

While I sighed

I love you…

Depression Notes ~ August 28, 2012...

“Stick with people who bring the best out of you. Avoid the mother fuckers that bring you down”

~ Catherine Barkley

 

I believe Chrissie Hynde in the song I’ll Stand By You eloquently captures the emotion, tenderness and compassion one needs when suffering from the illness of depression.

(The Pretenders ~ I'll Stand By You)

Therese J Borchard writes, “Here are 10 things you definitely DON’T want to say, a collection of the gems that I heard when well-intentioned people opened their mouths and said something really stupid to me the two years I was in sorry shape.”

Read all of the ten things here: Beyond Blue

 

Sandals

 

I wear sandals

No boots

 

Or straps

Nothing to pull up

 

No illusions

No mirages

 

Just dirt on my feet

Sand between my toes

 

The raw earth of living

Tasting and feeling

 

Knowing and believing

What I feel is real

 

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

Therese J Borchard also writes, “The other day I covered 10 things you should not say to a loved one if you don’t want your name to come up in her therapy sessions. It covered a lot of ground, so I get why some folks would say, “Then what the hell CAN I say?” I’ve been thinking about that, and here’s my list.”

Read all of the ten things here: Beyond Blue

 

(Photo: Chris Fletcher)

 

 

Gil Lamphere writes in a piece for the  John Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science that, “Mental illness is physical, like diabetes. And if these disorders are thought of correctly, as physically caused and physically cured, mental illness will be acknowledged as a problem in brain biology. The stigma will melt away. Incidentally, I find this insight most accepted by people younger than 60, and less so by older men who feel that if you’re depressed, you should ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps.’”

Read the full article here: Put Together Again

“Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky, posits that depression is the most damaging disease that you can experience. Right now it is the number four cause of disability in the US and it is becoming more common. Sapolsky states that depression is as real of a biological disease as is diabetes.” ~ Stanford University

 

Watch this full lecture by Professor Sapolsky to learn more about the biological origins of depression:

 

 

From CBS News: “How to show you care?

What do you say to someone who's depressed? All too often, it's the wrong thing.

People still have such a cloudy idea of what mental illness is," says Kathleen Brannon, of Herndon, Va. "Sometimes people will say, 'Oh, you're depressed? Yeah, I've been depressed,' and you realize just the way they say it that, nooo, it's not quite the same thing. It's not just that I'm feeling sad or blue."

With the help of our friends at health.com and the Depression Alliance, we've put together a list of helpful things to tell someone battling depression, followed by what not to say.”

 Read here another: 10 Things Not To Say To Someone Who Is Depressed

Prelude To Listening...

 

Amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore…

 

Life Worth Living in the Unknown...

“Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.”  

~ Claude Bernard

 

From the  The Dish today comes this:

 



 

 

 

 

New Songs...

 

Spent some time chasing the past

Like going up and down the aisles at the grocery store

Looking for something to last

 

Walking backwards with a broken heart

Thinking

Will someone smile at me?

 

Felt I died

Became a ghost

Everything and everyone slipping through me

 

The more I walked less I cared

The ache it grew

Empty like the shelves in the store I once knew

 

How strange it all seemed

To those watching the scene

A crying man at the produce stand

 

From time to time

Distracting myself

While the band played on

 

 Her memory still

Wedged within my ear

Somewhere along aisle #4

 

 Stifled epitaphs

Cosmic cul-de-sacs

Where families play house

 

 

Trapped within a state of gifted circumstance?

 

 

A happy accident

A way to cue

In the checkout line

 

Devoid of items

To express I went

Waltzed right through

 

She had gone

Turning around she smiled

I don’t push buttons here no more

 

 Despondent and deaf

The band had paused forgetting the song

Shelves unstocked

 

 

 My heart ticked like a worn out clock

 

 

Home I strayed

Alone I played

In the sandbox of doubt and excrement

 

 

 Waiting for a hand to reach through the glare of fear

 

Lights went dim the store it closed

In a suspended moment

In neither crib or tomb

 

 On the curb of life

With my thumb out in the wind

Waiting for a passerby to sanctify

 

 My dreams again

To take my soul

On a forgotten road

 

To an empty bed

Draped in crinoline and morning dew

Where…She waits

 

 With poetic eyes

And lyrical lips

Not bought in stores

 

 She sings new songs

The band remembered the tune

We dance

 

 The garden heals

 Candles flickering glow enchanting the night

With hyssop and myrrh

 

 I forget the past

With the wind

It is gone

 

 

 

With Her...

 

With her ~ was not truly myself

With her ~ was not ever accepted  

With her ~ hobbled around awkwardly  

With her ~ love was something earned  

With her ~ doing was above being  

With her ~ sex was a weapon  

With her ~ was slowly dying  

 

 (Counterintuitive disequilibrium moistened with tears)

 

 Without her ~ becoming myself

Without her ~ now accepted

 Without her ~ dance with Grace

Without her ~ love is a gift

Without her ~ being is above doing

Without her ~ sex is something shared

Without her ~ slowly living

 

(Matchbox Twenty ~ Back 2 Good)