Slinking out, an arm entwines/ while in my head a dream unwinds /My vision blurs as visions come/ I feel speech slide off my tongue/ It floats away unheard, unread/ I swim out further, the sea my bed.
Octo-eel emeralds, such glistening fish/ you filet the flesh, I’ll eat, we’ll wish/ Wish to rise on yonder shore/when sirens’ call can drown no more.
Someone I loved floats slowly by/ now I feel that last goodbye/ People are beautiful when they drown/ soft hair floats just like a crown/ glorious flaxen, warmest brown. Their clothes billow/ they sink down.
Turquoise water-clear as conscience/ I see way back in my past/ teaching me your strange science/ my heartstrings lash me to your mast/ we must batten down the hatches for the tide’s receding fast!
My grief runs to blackened sea/ Do you ever think of me?/ I miss you too, more than the last/ Has any other bait been cast? Will my arms endure this battle ? Will this vessel be rent in two?/ I will never know the answer/ till love runs me through and thru
The coast seems clear, dare I step out-into the light? I think I must, after my last cryptic and elusive post. Nothing bad happened, artistically. I was uplifted, encouraged, validated. People needed to hear from me, needed to hear how a girl with so many odds stacked against her from the “git go”, plus the things I had piled on myself-how I had teetered at the edge of the abyss…and made it back to tell the tale.
Many are grieving themselves, their pain written in their beautiful eyes, on expertly made up, flawless faces. They searched mine, looking for an answer- “Why.” Why? Why? Had they missed the signs? Were there signs? Hadn’t they done everything, sought the right help, paid the right physician, listened closely in the therapy sessions?
I could only tell them that there was no rhyme or reason as to why I am here and their daughter is not. They did nothing to cause Bipolar Disorder. It doesn’t come from privilege, nor does it spring from want. It isn’t kept at bay with hugs or attention, nor is it fueled by neglect. At least none of this was true in my case.
My family was dysfunctional, true. So were many of my peers families. So are nearly all families. But my friends had not led lives fueled by a burning need to shoot across the sky in a blaze of purple confetti. Or to try to beat the Guiness world record for consecutive shots of 100 proof vodka. Nor had they experienced the kind of despair that left them lost and disheveled in their bathrobe when they were supposed to be graduating college or accepting an award.
I wanted to tell them they did more than my family ever did. That my Mom was the only one who believed that I did not want to be a train wreck. She asked the questions, walked thru broken glass for me and held my hand when the meds weren’t working. But ultimately she couldn’t divert the catastrophe either.
I’m trying to tell you it’s not your fault. Grieve the loss, but don’t blame yourself. I know when the darkness comes over me, it’s no one’s fault. And if I hold on really tight, it will pass. I white-knuckle it many nights, but a new day always dawns.
One day in the future there will not be any mental illness, or suicide. Until then just love your Bipolar person, hold on tight when you can and bask in their amazing glow. Be there when their sparklers fizzle and love them back to their feet. When they jump in their little rocket ships to the moon, put on a brave smile and wish them all the love in the world…till you meet again.
And if you are Bipolar and you are feeling alone, please reach out if you can. Know that you are worthy of love and that this darkness will eventually pass. You will be back on top again. The rain will stop. The sun will shine, the pain will ease. Hold on for dear life my friend.
So Long Ago was Yesterday; I thought it was Gone…but I was wrong. I understand now; I was stuck Here all along.
Now that I know, can I go?
No. Not now, maybe not ever. You have to remember, see? I need you to remember me. My family long ago passed on, they kept my picture right above the mantle, and I carried theirs’. I carried ours. Draped it around my 18 year-old neck like the roses on a Derby winner; around my neck like the rifle I carried. Around my neck just like my dog tags-the one’s that made that certain sound when they touched. You must remember. I am not a ghost, there are no such things. I am just a memory, dead in the dust, gone like the wisp of smoke that curled from the tip of the gun that killed me. Remember me, now and then.
A wisp of smoke…
More now. The children are on the battlefields today- at this very minute-with eyes of cornflower blue. Searching the horizon, squinting against the glare of sunlight that slants off the desert rock like a razor. Blue eyes scanning roadsides, green eyes scouring midnight skies for tell-tale vapor trails. Brown eyes staring blindly back at the insides of their night vision goggles, looking into eternity.
” Sweet Child in time, you ought to see the line-the line that’s drawn between the goodness and the bad. See the blind man? He’s shooting at the world; the bullets flying, taking their toll…If you’ve been bad (lord, I’ll bet you have) and you’ve not been hit, not been hit by flying lead; you’d better close your eyes-you’d better bow your head…
I came across this post I wrote a few years ago, and it resonates with me today in light of recent events. War is always the worst of mankinds’ inhumanity, nothing has changed in the years since Vietnam. I was a baby when first exposed to war thru a little black box that sat on a shelf next to where Mother sat me in my crib some 50 odd years ago. To this day the sound of chopper blades overhead stops me in my tracks; I peer up in questioning wonder-not sure what I am looking for. Maybe my Mom’s cammo-clad lover to rappel down and proclaim fatherhood of me, maybe for shots to ring out and stop my questions forever…
Today I am exposed to a little black tablet that bombards me with images of my unborn sons and daughters dressed in their uniforms, riding in Hummers, riding in wheelchairs, riding in hearses, riding away, always away…Day after dreaded year the casualties mount while my one life ebbs away: How many have sacrificed themselves in my 57 years? Have I even cried that many tears in this lifetime? How many is enough (Children? Tears?) to give to the General’s who orchestrate this endless miserable charade.
I feel sick. All the time. And when I think of Johnny, I cry. I know and I believe and I am promised and he is promised, PROMISED a resurrection by the One true Ruler of this Universe, so soon I will hold my soldier in my arms and look long into those crystal blue living eyes.
Until then, I will think of Blue-Eyed Johnny, and I will remember…
Did it hurt? No, of course not. (well, just a wee bit, maybe…)
Oh, the joys of waiting to hear if you got the “Call”. That’s what we artists refer to when we apply for a chance to get into a show, or to paint a mural, or design a sculpture, etc. It’s a process fraught with anxiety, not for the faint of heart. Not for the empty of pocket, either.
This last one did not cost me anything to apply to, which was good, because I did not get it. I am always disappointed when I don’t get in a show, it is a fact of life in the art world. I am becoming a bit cynical and jaded about this. I find myself making snide remarks(to myself) about favoritism and prejudice, and I don’t like this kind of negative thinking. On the one hand I think it’s just a self-soothing mechanism-if I say the process is unjust it means that my work really is the best. That I really should have been chosen.
Work in Progress for past 3 years!
I don’t think this is a good way for me to look at it. This kind of attitude will just make me negative about the whole process, the art community as a whole, and make me just as prejudiced as the people I am judging. Don’t think I’m saying what anyone else should think or feel, I just know how my quirky little mind works. My father spent his life feeling jaded and cynical about “the System”, and it reached the point where no one wanted to hear him go on about it.
I mean, just think about how the poison could seep into my art. If I’m second guessing the judges then maybe I will not try as hard, not push myself. Perhaps I’d rather not try, because they “don’t like me”. Or “they won’t pick me anyway.” Or “they only choose the society types”. If I let those thoughts in then my wings stay folded and I don’t try to fly, even when the cage door is open.
Fly birdie, fly!!!!
No, I didn’t get the call because someone else did. Period. No trying to mind read. No presuming I wasn’t chosen for a reason. How about remembering all the times I have been chosen, when another artist got passed over. Or how about knowing that my work is excellent, but different than what the judges were looking for.
I must create my best work no matter what the call, or even if there is NO call. My art comes from a deep and secret place far inside, not to be pissed out at the whim of a stranger. Sure, a call may motivate me, but ultimately my satisfaction must come from creating.
I remember being a little kid in art school, hiding my drawing from the other kids, because my work was so special that I had to protect it. I didn’t hide it because it was not good, I hid it so they could not copy it. It was the most special thing about me, a super power before any one knew about superpowers. I could make up any little dream and put it on a page and no one else could ever do it the same way. I wish I had a nickel for all my little fantasy doodles. I’m smiling as I remember.
I drew for the sheer joy of watching my inner world pour out the tip of my pen. I inhabited those secret worlds, where I was always “ok”. I did not need a prize, a ribbon, a write up in the paper. And the wonderful thing is that I still don’t need it. Over the past seven years that I have been showing my work my focus had turned to the idea of money. Making money from my art.
Not because I needed it, but because I am supposed to want that! I bought into the sales model. The websites that shout at me to join this or that marketing plan. Sell your art here! Make 5 grand a week! Be your own boss! While focusing on the money I began to sweat the call results. Did I get in to that show? What is the payout? How are the prizes broken down? What a bunch of joy-squishing nonsense!
I could see trying to make an impression on my Dad, but I knew he would never see me even when he was alive. Well, he sure can’t see me now, so I can quit trying to impress the family with my wealth ! I’m so glad we had this talk! Thanks for listening!
(No, I did not get the “Call for the Wall”, but I now have the coolest spare bugroom, um, bedroom, in the entire city !)
I have a special place inside my heart for fellow addicts. Those without the ability to get clean, without a relationship with God, without a friend in the world. Carrying the weight of the huge monkey on his back.
I talked to him from time to time, tried to impart some nugget of wisdom, a ray of hope. He would say, “I wish a train would hit me”.
I remember that level of despair. That loathing for anything good in my life, because I did not deserve it. Hating my very being, a degraded piece of trash, discarded by society. Abandoning all hope, embracing the darkness.
The pain is excruciating. It is no wonder he wished for death.
I live across the street from his Grandma’s, where he would stay, in her laundry shed-shooting heroin. I saw him go from a funny, kind of hillbilly guy to a wretch with bloody scabs oozing down his arms. The last time I saw him he said he was really sick this time, he thought he had Covid. Well, it wasn’t Covid. First time the ambulance came, he had OD’d. They brought him back.
This time, though, it isn’t the dope… They took him to hospital with pneumonia and a Blood infection, his very sad Grandma told me. He won’t be coming home, barring a miracle.
I just hope they have made him comfortable…and that he doesn’t suffer for long. Poor, poor, Chris… I guess maybe your train finally came. I have said prayers for him and his family, and for everyone sick and dying…
I will dream tonight of my Monarchs. I saw a caterpillar tonight who had just connected himself to the bottom of my wheelbarrow. He has probably changed into a chrysalis now. Soon he will totally disappear into a liquid, before miraculously turning into a beautiful Monarch, breaking out of the chrysalis and flying free!
I hope you fly free too , my friend. I will see you again, one day soon.
UNCHAINED, UNCUFFED, Mixed Media on Board, $400.00 (Available)
She was never very confident. Her mother said she was ‘pretty’. She did not believe her. She didn’t want to be ‘pretty’, anyway. No. She wanted to be ‘breathtaking’, achingly ‘beautiful’, devastatingly ‘gorgeous’. A ‘real heartbreaker’, ‘homewrecker’, a ‘ten’. A ‘perfect’ ten.
Like Tracy. Her best friend with the huge blue eyes and pretty lips, nice hips and long, long hair. But she was none of those things that Tracy was. She had a sneaking suspicion that her mother was lying about ‘pretty’ as well.
The boys did not say she was pretty. Not that she liked them. Only one. Joey. He was super smart. Super duper smart. Almost as smart as she was. But smart didn’t rate very high in her circle of giggly little girlfriends. It especially didn’t rate with Tracy who thought being smart was ‘stupid’ and ‘a drag’. A drag with a roll of the eyes added on.
It seemed she was just doomed to be a ‘bookworm’, which was a term that also elicited an eye roll from Tracy and the gigglers.
Oh, how she loved her books. She longed to go to the exotic places depicted in her ‘National Geographic’ magazine that her dad had ordered for her. He thought she was beautiful, but not in the ‘Tracy’ way. No, dad said she was beautiful for her brains, her intelligence. This made her feel very good. Her and her dad would walk in the garden and he would point out different creatures and plants for her to name, from her study books in the library. Oh, that’s a salamander…or, That one is a chickadee. His eyes glistened when she got this right, especially his beloved songbirds. He could whistle just like them, he knew every call. She could not whistle, because her tooth was missing in the front. He said he would make sure the tooth fairy knew that she had to have a mouth that would whistle for her next birthday. It was coming up soon, so she was excited.
Something bad happened that next month, tho’. Her daddy had a heart attack and died, and mom said he had gone away to a better place, in heaven. She didn’t get to tell him that the tooth fairy gave her a whistle, or that she could now tweet, almost as good as he did. She didn’t believe that heaven business, her dad said that heaven was a place where the birds lived, not dead people.
She spent a lot of time alone that winter, walking alone in the garden. She would whistle all the time, and learn about new animals and birds. She dreamed about her father every night, sometimes she would sleepwalk.
One cold, rainy February night she had an especially bad night. In her dream her dad was locked out of the house. He was calling to her, from the garden, and in her dream she wanted to fly down to him, like a beautiful exotic bird. She knew if he saw her, all arrayed in bright and glorious feathers, that he would be saved, and they would be together again. If only she could just fly down there. She started whistling and flapping her arms, and running to the window, still asleep, she fell thru the glass with a crash, landing unconscious in the garden below. Her bedraggled wet little body, so twisted and broken, was rushed to the hospital.
They said she would not be the same if she ever woke up. But they did not know that deep inside her amazing little mind, she was just fine. Her and her dad had both learned how to fly, and they tweeted happy little birdsongs back and forth as they flitted about a magnificent garden.
Hello again, and welcome to the big show! I have begun what will become a Major Series of New Works entitled , “INSIDE VOICE” a series of works that speak to my inner battle with Bipolar Disorder’s lows and maniac highs, my way to shout out how the battle rages on inside even when silence prevails outside.
Many people who meet me may be uncomfortable being near a person diagnosed with mental illness, such as Bipolar Disorder. However, they are often surprised at how “normal” I seem. It has been my experience both with my current diagnosis, and with my original diagnosis of Chronic Depression, that friends and family are amazed that I don’t run around slathering at the mouth, or beating my head against the wall. They often try denial on, “No…not you…” or, ” You seem so happy, normal, well adjusted, calm, smart …”
Some have even gone so far as to comment on my family tree, as in, ” Well your Grandpa was a little odd.” Or the opposite, “Nothing like this has ever been on my side of the family…” In my family, on my Mom’s side, my Grandpa and his Brothers had come to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Woodbury, Tennessee because there were good jobs to be had at the State Hospital, which was what insane asylums were called in the early 20th Century in the U.S. The treatment of mental illness was a whole different ballgame back then, my relatives saw many terrible and terrifying things, indeed.
Their positions within these huge hospitals required them to live on the Hospital Grounds in Dormitories, where they could hear the “lunatics” screaming and carrying on all day and night. It’s no wonder they were aghast at the idea that their kin were somehow linked to those poor souls in the “Looney Bin”. I am so glad to live in this century, and I am very grateful to all the poor souls who were the subject of many ghastly experiments and treatments, who helped behavioral science and the Mental Health Community to become what it is today. As a “50 Something” woman who was not properly diagnosed till the age of 32, my life now is a dream compared to the suicide attempts, the self medicating, the self debasing promiscuity, the manic spending, the jail time, the fate-tempting, death-defying thrill-seeking, mayhem-causing pain I lived thru before. The sheer energyit would take to put up a happy, smiling front…man, I needed a eight ball just to keep it up for a weekend.
But it would all unravel in the end. I was not OK. I was really, really not OK. Inside my head I was screaming, and my thoughts were rolling at warp speed. I was that cat on the electric floor in that Steven King movie, running up the walls. I would try to hold down a job, and this is after a year of sobriety, after a few hours I would go to the loo and hide, shaking like a leaf. After about a year and a half clean and sober, I got my hands on my first credit card and inheritance at the same time and bought 5 acres in the wilderness, had it cleared and levelled, had a well dug, fenced it and then went to the mall and purchased a bunch of tanzanite and diamond jewelry, winding up spending over 20 grand in 2 weeks(and ultimately filing a chapter 13 bankruptcy).
Mania Illuminata, sold
Interspersed between those bouts of mania, where I seemed so “normal”, I would cry. And cry. And Finally I just couldn’t take the pain anymore, so a dear friend said I should go to a local Mental Health Facility, called New Horizons. I was given this ancient psychiatrist who looked wizened, emaciated and nearly blind. But, bless her heart, she had me pegged. With her help, with my determination to stick with my med trials, with a great therapist and social worker, I have been able to stay alive there past 23 years, now clean and sober for 21 of them, come September.
. So, anyway…(whew, that was quite a tirade!)…I am painting this series to let you look inside a person with this illness, look into this inner world and I promise I will use my “INSIDE VOICE”.
Out of the Gutter Art 
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