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| (Words & Photo: Chris Fletcher) |
(Matchbox Twenty ~ 3 am)
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Artists Collide ~ Christian Dalbec Photography & Pink Floyd…
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty…" ~ Keats
Christian Dalbec is a
photographer living in Two Harbors, Minnesota ~ he has been taking some
stunningly beautiful photographs of the North Shore of Minnesota. Check out his
Facebook page Christian Dalbec Photography and follow his photographic journey!
I have put together some of Christians’ photographs with
Pink Floyd – enjoy the show!
(Photography: Christian Dalbec -- Music: Pink Floyd ~ Brain Damage -- Video: Chris Fletcher)
Unknown ~ Gift to Sisyphus...
Breathing
Filling of lungs
So complex in simplicity
Crying
Leaking of salt
Déjà vu of originality
Smiling
Contortion of pleasure
Sunshine painted on lips
Three lines
Three verses
Three signs
Of an unknown life worth living
Words Randomly Chosen...
True
Days and days
Moving in time
Mornings are capriciously new
Ebb and flow
Slipping around carelessly
Dry Your Eyes...
(Video: Chris Fletcher -- Music: Neil Diamond ~ Dry Your Eyes -- Images: Chris Fletcher & Internet)
Friday, August 24, 2012
Shine Like Stars...
“Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky…”
~
Paul of Tarsus
“We’ll shine like
stars in the summer’s night ~ we’ll shine like stars in the winter’s night ~
one heart ~ one hope ~ one love…”
~ Paul of Dublin
(U2: With Or Without You ~ Rattle and Hum)
“And so we are left with a great battle, not between good
and evil, but between really living and just pretending.”
~ Thomas Moore
Apologia Peripeteia...
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we
ourselves receive from God.”
~ The
Apostle Paul
(Coldplay ~ Yellow)
You ask my thoughts
Through the long
night
I spent listening
To the heavy rain
Beating against the
windows
~ Izumi Shikibu
“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity,
of the seriousness of your suffering, except by your death. So long as you are
alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”
~
Albert Camus, The Fall
What is at issue with me is not doing too little in life or
being stuck or stagnant in a chronic way – acutely yes, I have experienced paralysis
of being periodically over the last three years but not chronically.
Rather what is at issue is doing and trying to do too much.
And now I have finally had enough and have to stop and breathe and my
depression is evidence of, in William Styron’s words in his memoir, Darkness Visible,
the “exquisite fragility” involved in living life.
I sketched out highlights of the last three years or so as a
reminder to me of what has happened and to ponder the stress and triggers
involved in my depressive episodes.
March 2009 ~ Full time job terminated due to economic turn down
Memorial Day 2009 ~ found out my wife was having an affair
Fall 2009 ~ wife and I begin separation
Spring 2010 ~ graduated with my B.A.
Summer/Fall ~ started bar church, went through bankruptcy
I see our children
I see you
I weep
How did we fuck
things up so bad?
Was it really that
horrible between us?
Why do I grieve still?
Why do I love you
still?
This is all so crazy
How did we get here?
How did I become your
bête noir?
I want to rewind
Go back in time
And do it all again
Take it all in slower
God
Help
Me
Fall 2010 ~ started grad school part-time
Winter 2011 ~ house foreclosed on, went away and traveled
for six weeks to London, Australia, France, Ireland and visited my brothers
Spring/Summer 2011 ~ worked three jobs ~ EMT on an ambulance
service, Job Coach for developmentally disabled adults and a bartender.
Fall 2011 ~ travelled to London, Italy, Ireland
Winter 2012 ~ continued with grad school, moved and worked
Spring 2012 ~ grad school, work, homeless, and divorced
Summer 2012 ~ depressive episode, emotional collapse, leave
of absence from work and grad school, went to parents, tired
I certainly did not stop participating in life; if anything
I did more living. If I am aware, awake, self-reflective and conscious it is
not to be criticized or maligned but praised. Only the unaware, asleep, unconscious
and incapable of reflection would not recognize what the journey of becoming
human looks like. On this journey I by necessity must go through the darkness
of depression and no one can set the times and seasons of a dark night of the
soul, it simply must be lived.
Richard Rohr writes in his book Falling Up writes, “A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return
to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new
start….A dark night is like Dante getting sleepy, wandering from his path,
mindlessly slipping into a cave. It is like Alice looking at the mirror and
then going through it. It is like Odysseus being tossed by stormy waves and
Tristan adrift without an oar. You don’t choose a dark night for yourself. It
is given to you. Your job is to get close to it and sift it for its gold.”
Going into the desert whether literally or symbolically (there
is not much difference in the two) means doing nothing while there. Jesus did
nothing, St. Anthony nothing, Paul nothing – nothing in the perspective of a
world which understands doing nothing as sin or sloth or laziness. But nothing
in the desert means doing everything urgent and important – wrestling with the
darkness and yourself. Jesus forty days
and nights, Paul three years, St. Anthony twenty years before being able to
engage powerfully with life beyond the desert.
I cannot think of any fully alive person who has not
followed this path in some way or another although some have perished in the
desert, along the way or shortly after walking out. But the duration is not
significant, it is not the goal, nor is longevity of life but rather the
experience of transformation. Yes, some die on the journey but do we not all
die on this journey – why die empty and unable to feel.
It is in the engagement with the totality of the life
experience when we as humans become human, our true selves and no longer remain
what we never truly were.
So many winding and
meandering paths
Lost on the warm
sands of the desert
Chasing mirages
Where did I turn in
the wrong direction?
Is there even such a
thing?
(a wrong direction in
a desert)
Rivers flow
Clocks tick
Sand blows
People huddle in the
space
Between the
disconcerting night
And the break of dawn
We pray for someday
to arrive in Her yellow splendor
To wash away the
anguish of the years
The dust of travel
From between our toes
Until then
We live with the
debilitating ache of soul vertigo
Quelled by the touch of
friends
With loves’ silent
smile
Knowing She will come
in her tangerine beauty
To warm cold bodies
In the east Her eyes
will shine over the horizon
Slicing the darkness
like a knife
Wielding her glory
To breathe life anew
into deaths dark night
Mortals born once
more to journey onward
In Her radiance
Albert Camus in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus postulates, “There
is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging
whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental
question of philosophy.”
I believe this is true and on the problem hangs all of life.
I have come to a preliminary consideration to the problem – a reason to remain
alive and not end a life. The one reason being the unknown – I mean this idea
of the unknown in two senses.
The first sense being the unknown in this life now, what is
now within my epistemological and existential capabilities to experience.
Concretely this means all which is occurring or may or may not yet occur while
I am alive – to be rather than not to be. For example, to be: with my children,
my family, friends, to sit at a U2 concert, to watch a sunset or sunrise, to
smell a flower, hold a baby, enjoy music, art, literature, poetry, a river,
countries, a walk with my dog, coffee, tea, a beer, a shot of whiskey, making
love, seeing beauty, holding a hand, giving a hug, writing, healing, loving, conversations,
creating poetic memories, and all that still may come which is unknown in both
its beauty and horror.
The second sense being after this life, what is not now
epistemologically or existentially experienced but only fathomed in
possibilities and conjecture. Yet, the unknowability is in itself reason enough
to remain fully alive on this side of knowing. There may be more – then great!
There may not be – then live now! In the Christian tradition there is the hope
of the resurrection and that is a wonderful hope which promises a continuation
of this life we now have. If this is true, is there any reason to think what
has not been ameliorated now would not yet have to be? So really escape of
complications is an illusion – heaven is not up but through.
So to Camus’s problem I have but one answer – the unknown.
Hence, the great courage it takes to live and persevere through darkness and
pain for even in the desire to live for the unknown there is the capitulation
of dancing with a shadow.
The Fury of Rain Storms ~ Anne Sexton
The rain drums down like red ants,
Each bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain
And they cry out as they hit
As if their little legs were only
Stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
So humble, so willing to be beat upon
With its awful lettering and
The body lying underneath
Without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think
And I would do better to make
Some soup and light up the cave.
Whether dancing with a shadow, walking through a desert or
watching rain like red ants, depression is as Sexton writes, boring. It would
be, “…better to make/Some soup and light up the cave” but that is oh so excruciatingly
hard as Susan Horwitch has described it, “…sheer undiluted slog…” for a person
in the grips of depression. Something, as Andrew Solomon in his book The
Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression writes, “Depression is a condition that
is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not known it.” This makes it very difficult
to find words, metaphors or symbols to express its debilitating force on a person.
Anne Sexton succumbed to as many have in the desert of despondency and
unmitigated pain. As much as we may want soup and a lit up cave which may
happen many times along the way and then it may not happen one time and that
time is the end.
I am profoundly struck with the awareness of the path I am
on and the pain and joy I have endured and rejoiced in. Also, I am now able to
more easily live with the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in the journey of
my soul becoming alive and precious. It is still arduous to comprehend the
reality of, “Those things that speak to the soul may or may not make sense to
the practical world" (Moore). But to give in to the practical world, my own self
doubt, the critics, or the presumptuous ones who believe they have answers and
yet have never lived would be for me to die, a still birth in the womb of life.
It is not in doing more or less or being something you are
not but in being authentically you and in all the darkness and the light. Also,
it is coming to accept depression really never goes away, it may hide for
awhile, go into remission, yet it is always in you somewhere and may return at
anytime. Solomon writes, “Living with depression is like trying to keep your
balance while you dance with a goat— it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner
with a better sense of balance.”
The journey is a delicate balancing act and the need for new
oases to be discovered along the way, “… to counter your heaviness without
denying it or even escaping it. You don’t want to neutralize your sadness, but
you want to find ways not to succumb to it. This is a fine but crucial line to
walk (Moore). I am now endeavoring to walk that precarious line with respites at
refreshing oases so as to be able to walk out of the desert fully alive.
“And so we are left
with a great battle, not between good and evil, but between really living and
just pretending.”
~ Thomas Moore
(U2 ~ Yellow/Moment of Surrender)
Thursday, August 23, 2012
What is Depression? Read...
"The argument I put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne."
~ William Styron
William Styron writes:
This general unawareness of what depression is really like
was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian
writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of sixty-seven, hurled himself
down a stairwell in Turin in 1987.
Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more
than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read
an account in The New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work
held at New York University, I was fascinated but, finally, appalled. For,
according to the article, many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars,
seemed mystified by Levi’s suicide, mystified and disappointed. It was as if
this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at
the hands of the Nazis—a man of exemplary resilience and courage—had by his
suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to
accept. In the face of a terrible absolute—self-destruction—their reaction was
helplessness and (the reader could not avoid it) a touch of shame.
My annoyance over all this was so intense that I was
prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I
put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite
unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances
because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides
will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature
of this pain. Through the healing process of time—and through medical
intervention or hospitalization in many cases—most people survive depression,
which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to
destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims
of terminal cancer…. Depression is much too complex in its cause, its symptoms
and its treatment for unqualified conclusions to be drawn from the experience
of a single individual. Although as an illness depression manifests certain
unvarying characteristics, it also allows for many idiosyncrasies; I’ve been
amazed at some of the freakish phenomena—not reported by other patients—that it
has wrought amid the twistings of my mind’s labyrinth.
Depression afflicts millions directly, and millions more who
are relatives or friends of victims. It has been estimated that as many as one
in ten Americans will suffer from the illness. As assertively democratic as a
Norman Rockwell poster, it strikes indiscriminately at all ages, races, creeds
and classes, though women are at considerably higher risk than men.
The occupational list (dressmakers, barge captains, sushi
chefs, cabinet members) of its patients is too long and tedious to give here;
it is enough to say that very few people escape being a potential victim of the
disease, at least in its milder form.
Despite depression’s
eclectic reach, it has been demonstrated with fair convincingness that artistic
types (especially poets) are particularly vulnerable to the disorder—which, in
its graver, clinical manifestation takes upward of twenty percent of its
victims by way of suicide. Just a few of these fallen artists, all modern, make
up a sad but scintillant roll call: Hart Crane, Vincent van Gogh, Virginia
Woolf, Arshile Gorky, Cesare Pavese, Romain Gary, Vachel Lindsay, Sylvia Plath,
Henry de Montherlant, Mark Rothko, John Berryman, Jack London, Ernest
Hemingway, William Inge, Diane Arbus, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Anne
Sexton, Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky—the list goes on. (The Russian poet
Mayakovsky was harshly critical of his great contemporary Esenin’s suicide a
few years before, which should stand as a caveat for all who are judgmental
about self-destruction.) When one thinks of these doomed and splendidly
creative men and women, one is drawn to contemplate their childhoods, where, to
the best of anyone’s knowledge, the seeds of the illness take strong root;
could any of them have had a hint, then, of the psyche’s perishability, its
exquisite fragility? And why were they destroyed, while others—similarly
stricken—struggled through?
~ William Styron , Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
Andrew Solomon in his book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depressions
writes:
“It’s so hard to regulate your life, sleep, diet, exercise, under any circumstances,” comments Norman Rosenthal of the NIMH. “Think how hard it is when you’re depressed! You need a therapist as a sort of coach, to keep you at it. Depression is an illness, not a life choice, and you have to be helped through it.”
Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance
while you dance with a goat— it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a
better sense of balance.
Depression is not just a lot of pain; but too much pain can compost itself into depression. Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory.
Saint Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said you could tell by how you felt after they had departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence; when a devil left, you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth.
Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled.
Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull
color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the
effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed— but you can
get through all that. Not happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has
ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but
when you get there, there’s not much mistaking it.
Illness of the mind is real illness. It can have severe effects on the body.
Depression is a condition that is almost unimaginable to
anyone who has not known it.
Not so much has changed since Antonio in The Merchant of Venice complained:
It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it,
found it, or came by it
What stuff’tis made of, whereof it is born I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.
People around depressives expect them to get themselves
together: our society has little room in it for moping. Spouses, parents,
children, and friends are all subject to being brought down themselves, and
they do not want to be close to measureless pain.
Three Poems by Three Others...
You ask my thoughts
Through the long night
I spent listening
To the heavy rain
Beating against the windows
~ Izumi Shikibu
Where they touch you, create
Small inhabited islands
Soon you will be
All earth: a known
Land, a country
~ Margaret Atwood
The rain drums down like red ants,
Each bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain
And they cry out as they hit
As if their little legs were only
Stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
So humble, so willing to be beat upon
With its awful lettering and
The body lying underneath
Without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think
And I would do better to make
Some soup and light up the cave.
~ Anne Sexton
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Ode to the Hypocritical Smile...
Today I received this comment on a blog post about the book
of Job:
“Wonder what would happen if you applied a different
strategy to your healing? You've explored dwelling in pain and suffering--for
much longer than anyone should. Perhaps you might consider taking the gratitude
approach? Read: The Happiness Advantage, The Seven Principles of Positive
Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work. Completely applicable to
daily life. Start dwelling in what is good with life. What is beautiful. Focus
on passages of the bible that embrace the grace of happiness, books that focus
on the true beauty of life--not the ugly side of humanity. Take baby steps
toward making small improvements in your daily life. More walks with the dog.
Volunteer. Find employment (part-time or whatever) that will give you a sense
of accomplishment at the end of the day. If you want it bad enough you will
find a way, it IS that simple regardless of what you might be leading yourself
to believe. And, yes, this comes from someone who has dealt with depression,
who has pulled themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps and made it happen.
It can be done, but YOU have to WANT IT.” ~ Anonymous
It IS so simple – WOW – I never knew good using ALL CAPS makes me feel - better than Wellbutrin and Tequila!
I was so inspired I wrote a poem about it –hope you all like
it – the new ME on my way with my baby steps to nirvana just like Curt Cobain
(oops – bad example) – anyway here it is:
Ode to the Hypocritical Smile
I am sanguine
I am bliss
I am happiness
I am sunshine
I like fluffy bunnies
I am immune to pain I only get a sprain
I don’t read the Psalms
I wish David had Prosaic he was depressed way to long
I am smiles and grins and ice cream cones
I breathe levity
I am light and bright
I grin and giggle
I am sunshine on a cloudy day
I am your happiness
I am grateful for unicorns and clowns
I am credulity and believe everything happens per God’s plan
I give thanks in darkness
I have the answers
I don’t ask questions
I never doubt
I am certain of certainty
I am pop psychology ~ Jung’s a fraud
I am Job’s best friend
I smile while the stake burns
I discount Dostoevsky
I am literal
I see only the trees
I am right
I am strong
I am pulling myself up by my proverbial bootstraps for there
is nothing wrong with me ~ I WANT IT!
I am a cup cake with strawberry frosting
I read only jolly rhyming poems ~ roses are red ~ violets
are blue ~ I see only you…
I am for jelly beans
I am a rainbow tied with tinsel
I ignore the dark and it can’t see me
I am a disciple of Pangloss
I am the best in the best of all possible worlds
I am me ~ delightful and free #sixwords
I am happy feet when I cross the street
I am so many funny things
In my own little world
In delusions and illusions
In cosmic cannonballs
I am pink and never blue
I am true kitsch
Goodbye
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