Processing the Blues

   

photo by Allison Huyett

   What is it like to live with bipolar disorder? Time to bring it up.  

   People fear the diagnosis formerly known as manic depression. How does it present itself? Predictably unpredictably. Disassociates self and others. All-encompassing in coping mechanisms.

    Theory: Roller coaster imagery is overrated. Peaks and valleys, sure. Days, weeks, months go by the wayside. Plateaus, plenty. Platitudes, beatitudes, positive/negative attitudes. Take this.  

   Reality: Moods can change in thirty seconds or less. Everything is fine. Wipe away the welling tears! Be all smiles. Cheerful and happy. Next. Muttering things. Not nice. One minute managing to be neat, clear and in order. Followed by: momentary distress. Beautiful mess!  

   Bipolarity is a flickering flame, burning straight and steady, moving gently and softly with the air; then – wildfire! without the wax and wick. Bipolar is impenetrable chilled ice skating rink along with warm and inviting bath-water temperature azure Caribbean seas. Manic is crisp. Normal is aligned. Depressive is torn, snippy. Genuine. False.  

    Bipolar living is futile and productive. Try and counter that one. There is no point to anything, depleted energy coffers. Basic chores, hygeine and maintenance may be left unattended. Then again, you can do anything and everything when strong and determined enough to persist. Middle ground? Fertile crescendo! A kingdom for a graceful undulating pasture for a horse. Master and hack. Competent, too. 

   Its primary colors are black, white, and kaleidoscopic.  It dresses grunge, may be classically tailored to fit. The music it streams goes Sheryl Crow and Miles Davis to Jimmy McGriff to Chopin to twang. Its pictures, Braque and Matisse. Textures: Smooth one minute. Rough the next. The riff-raff and the creme-de-la-creme. The masses. Opiates. Cursing a drinking glass. Volatile cocktail. It’s impossible.  

    Mischannelled moods rub people the wrong way. Effort applied with appropriateness: pleasing to no end! Working hard to meet or exceed expectations. Wanting to be good. Holding it all in. Bending away from the light. Control panel out of whack. Ouch. Checks and balances. What a system!  High cost of lost jobs and relationships. Low self-worth. Shaky.

   Living with bipolar disorder is like seeing the world through the complex eye of a fly, then plunging in and swimming through murky water and, shedding amphibious nature, making a departure for cloud nine on a crystalline day in the unbearable lightness of being. (Exercise has been shown to relieve symptoms of depression.)

  Imagine being in an adventure reality television show. You are the full cast, in one body, going through the trials and tribulations of the whole tribe. (As opposed to a being a body in a full cast.) Put an X in the works well with others box. Drama or theater? 

  Erect a set. In come the stimuli. You sponge-mop, you! Desperately seeking introvert. Must branch out. Centrifugal forces at work. Other-worldly. You are what you plan. He who waits in the wings is lost or prompting to action. All the world’s a stage we’re going through.

   It’s New Year’s Eve. Party to go to. Best wishes for a safe, healthy and happy 2010!

Stunning Nuts

   Today is national bittersweet chocolate with almonds day and that sounds good if you like that sort of thing. There is not a heron to be seen this morning and when George and I meet, we talk cameras and picture taking. He says that a couple of days ago, he went home to fetch his Canon and came back by bicycle just to capture a digital image of a tree he saw growing out of  a rock.

   “Do you have your camera with you?” he asks.

  ”No, I’m sorry to report the lens on my Nikon is dissheveled and a lens error message keeps coming up. George suggests I change the memory card. Taking it to the shop will cost an arm and a leg.

   This morning am well served at the grocery store. I drop the kitties’ water bowl which brings an end to an era. It was one of those glass vintage potato chip bowls with colored twine or string around it. Alas. On to the next thing.

A Great Pumpkin

      

 Edgar Allen Poe and Raven

were taken with this pumpkin

 (see the Oct. 19 post),

 a round straw bale

 fancifully transformed

 into a pumpkin

 to let people know

 about Duncan’s Corn Maze along the Robesonia-Bernville Road.

 Ingenious, honest solution to the problem. Happy Hallowe’en!

Silhouette

    Fasten your seatbelts: Art group Thursday night.  The leader of our meeting, having abstained from work on the theme, Silhouette, instead provides a seasonal picture – a pastel drawing of a rainspotted maple leaf drafted in gentle fall colors. We all ooh and ahh.

    Next: a photo of the oddest and most intriguing kapok-like clouds and silhouetted trees. Somehow the bumps in the sky associate with the rain drops in the previous work. Where is Bette Davis? Can it be going to be a bumpy night?

    A handsome pair of linoleum prints are trotted out: a composition of fall leaves done in black and white and in color. We like these, too, and are interested in the process.

   Another member of the group produces a seasonal, i.e. Hallowe’en, card made with an iris folding technique and  a silhouette theme. Accompanying these, my own little nitwit puzzle, from a tract left by someone at the Y, a dictionary page, and the mental looping of lyrics from A Fine Romance, the fine song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which I like sung by Rosemary Clooney.

   One person provides the piece de resistance, a postage stamp quilt. A showpiece. It is derived from a photograph taken by someone she knows, a factory maintenance worker. The sunset sky is composed of  batik fabric: purple and orange and red and yellow, with an overstitched black tree silhouette. Although the finished product has an authentic Asian look and feel, it is not a tree in a Chinese or Japanese painting, it is a tree crown at the botanical gardens in Allentown.

   The one-inch squares make it measure about 23″ x 17″ plus double-mat and frame. She has sold it, too. We marvel at her gift for turning an idea or a picture into a fabric design and executing it, all in the past six weeks. She receives our highest honors. Here is an artist showing and sharing the power of making wise choices and in making something lovely, beautiful and desirable. It’s like a trip to bountiful that we all want a view to admire.

Where’s Edgar?

Edgar Allan Poe and Raven on location

Designer Nerds

nice spot

Neurons happy: Heron on a dead bough: grandaddy of them all, fishing, waiting. View from the road.
Squirrel pops out of a barrel when I make a deposit of litter.
Sunlit scenery. Walk two miles to the eight marker and back, and find a piece of sycamore near the seven. Add the pick of the litter Wonka Nerds box top and voila, today’s rebus. Nerds + give – v = Designer.
Other than that, it’s quiet. Overheard “Research shows…” Something about running half an hour. Meanwhile work on solving world peace. Whose world? Look for the heron on the way back. Might be there. Man and a woman walk with energetic strides and converse in raucous, excited voices, matching in vigor, kind of like the herons make.
Fishing involves patience and timing. Plus location. Pick your spots.

Wides and the White Squirrel

Pathling for a four day

 

   Top story: The White Squirrel has been spotted. We saw it, that is. It is white, no spots. 

  Camel Wides pack is the pick of the litter.  Green heronspotting at start of walk. And tales from the candy factory from Candelario. That  he worked for a candy manufacturer and his nickname is Candy is one of those astonishing alignments in life. He performed maintenance, was the official soap dispenser (Eight kinds in the factory: each for its designated use.) There were eight janitors when he started and four when he left. He was fired and rehired three times. He processed the peanuts used for candy and now he likes to go to the museum and feed the squirrels peanuts. The birds like them too, he says.

  We walk together and when a pathling presents itself for photographing, he asks Did you lose something?

  Found something. Something found us.

   “We owe you a drawing made with the pen you gave us!” we said. “What would you like?”

   “I like birds,” Candelario says.

   “What kind of birds?”

   “The red ones.”

   “Cardinals?”

  “Yes.”

   Note made: add blue ink drawing of  red bird is to project list.

   The white squirrel runs from the grass up the trunk of a tree with vines and disappears. I stop the car and get out and look for it, hoping for a shot. It looks like something to shoot for in the future.

Fuzzy little green heron

Preserve and Protect

  

 

pathling 8.12.09 bitemyhorse.com

True date synchronicity: Ron has caught and released one sunny and two bass (12) by the time I get to walk. On the rampart of the bridge is a lovely pigeon, a thoroughbred. It wears a blue band.

   “Someone’s racing pigeon, ” says Ron.

   I capture the bird with digital technology. I discover I have lost many previous photos due to operator’s formatting error. This means the baby heron pictures are missing, a sickening thought. Some photos are saved on computer at home. Gone are the monkey pictures and a picture of a landscape painting propped up on the sidewalk in front of a house. Retrieval factor: some chance.

     No sense crying over spilt milk, but I find the loss bothersome. Several days ago I had been eyeing the Cash for Clunkers vehicles around the area, and suddenly the story broke.

   Laura runs by, wearing a tee-shirt that shouts from the back: SHARE THE ROAD with a bicycle image below. A man walks toward me with a sleeveless shirt reading SEX ON THE BEACH with a martini-style glass.

   It’s a three day, for green and wood, so if you ask the question What am I wearing? I wear a green shirt with the motto Preserve and Protect, Twin Falls State Park, West Virginia, with a raccoon (halfway between a bear and a dog, says an old encyclopaedia)  emblem. Photos uploaded today.

Colonial Ad

   Ticket stub, pick of the litter: Colonial AD 000822. Colonial ADULT. Colonial Theater ADULT ticket. Cherish is the word I use to describe.

   Adult ticket and baby heron. 8:14 this morning. First ever sighting of an immature bird. It stands in the grass. It stands about 18″ high. It stands still.

   Because it is a dark and rainy morning following a drenching night, the bird is wet and I have not brought the camera. Of course, when I am unprepared with the camera, this is the time it is most needed.  Back to the car. Here comes a person to jog. Signal intention: there is a young heron up ahead!

   The bird is Oscar if male and Grace if female. It’s a beautiful star and speckled like a hawk and steps with deft, light purpose. It plucks a big fat long worm from the wet grass, a small pond puddle. It waits. I snap. It fishes out another worm, I keep snapping. How does it find them? Another worm. This is why my friend Grumplestiltskin has recommended I take pictures. Productive snapping.

    “But you’re still not professional,”  he tells me. “And I’m a working adult.”

   Along the midsection of the towpath, spot a heron in the water and on the way back, a small snapping turtle attracts attention. We are always alone.

Smarten Up

Water

Rain Barrels: sign at Signature

first trivia question the Zimmerman telegram had to do with the start of which war?

Ron, Red and Butch at bridge. What’s on tap?

Need: a crystal ball.

Heron tip of picnic area island, flew way tall to leafless tree.

A runner made a sound like the heron.

Ruth: Ringo gave me the most trouble. ARTiculate.

Crystal Domino

Denise: are you taking pictures of bugs? Are you a teacher? Shattered knee.

See a lot more getting done quicker.

POOR in fat graffiti letters on a white truck, in black

Domino effect. critical mass. Tipping point.