Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I am unsure as to what I am anymore. I have, through time, experience and despair become the kind of person that is to be pitied and pacified, but never taken seriously. On the whole I would say my personality has diminished greatly over the last few months and I find nothing but remorse and regret when I think upon my life. My triumphs all seem so small and insignificant in comparison to my failures. I have lost the ability to enjoy anything anymore. I am in this numb, sheltered state, trapped by my own mind b/c it has become too feeble to convince my body that we are not dead yet. I feel like I no longer deserve to move or speak, b/c to do so would only invite more calamity into a life I have already run the flames more than enough times. I seem almost incapable of learning from my mistakes. I seem compleletly unable to grasp the gravity of my actions until I am stuck paying for them, at none to reasonable a price. I have lost the understanding of what it means to be happy b/c I have spent so much time refusing to except the things I cannot change. I have become bitter and rueful and every action I've made, I've done so with the utmost pessimism. In fact, I am so often assured of my failure that I sometimes refuse to act at all. I am so often afraid of my ineptitude that I have sentenced myself to this half-existence, where I move slightly, or not at all, refusing to take risks or savor the moment, b/c I keep expecting the moment to come crashing down upon me in a rain of metaphysical rubble from yet another mistake I made, but failed to notice. I am rambling, but that is what one such as myself does when left with idle time. I have no other vices. I am too afraid of failing at them. If I read, I become jealous of the hero, who in the end always gets his prize. If I sing I am forced to think about the song's original creator who not only sang it better, but also knew all the words. My sadness weighs down everything I attempt. It hangs over me like a damp cloud, waiting to spill over it's mmany gallons of rain upon my listless body. I have tried to find optimism where I can, but always it is short-lived, or else accompanied by the sense that I am only kidding myself. And maybe I am.... maybe I always have been. I am wondering where I stand in this vast sea of humanity, when I am so wretched and alone. I am wondering if I am even myself at all. I feel like somehwere along the line, I lost me, and now I am only a shell, a mere fragment of what I once was, what I could've been. Dangerous thoughts at a time like this no doubt... but true thoughts, nonetheless. And I cannot escape them. I cannot defeat the worries and doubts that plague my mind and threaten to destroy what little I have left that keeps me alive. I know not what has become of my joy, but dear God, if it still exists, please, please let me find it again.

End.

all these words represent not 'danger' but insight of a state of being for the moment. Exploring how you feel right now is perhaps the highest honour you can do yourself before you find yourself at the mercy of a new human being who will depend on you for fulfilling her/his needs before you could possibly think of your own.
Now is the time to assess, to reflect, to mourn and maybe to feel compassion for how you are right now.

Assess how you've picked up on childhood plans, if they're still important, and how you've managed to act upon them. What was important then? Was it the accomplishment or the act of doing?
When i wanted to be an altruistic scientist to 'feed the world' and now i'm a teacher working with kids trying to feed their self esteem, is this a sign of failure? i answer, 'nah' - the first dream was romantic, the present reality is doing what i can where i can. (back to you). Assess if your spirit is still willing, and your assessment will leave you with tools to continue.

Reflect on how you feel when you look in the mirror. Are you still with yourself? Do you believe you are still who you were? Are all your inner mechanisms intact?

Mourning comes from thinking of lost opportunities, lost friends, optimism perhaps that has been shaved away. Do it. Mourn. say goodbye to that which won't return. Mourning frees the mind and gives opening for new connections.

Feeling compassion for who you are is the final step. This is me. I'm nuts. I'm crazy. I'm whatever i am (fill in the blanks) but i dig me. I'm unique. I'm weird. I'm gonna keep on exploring this being called me because i basically love this shell and inner filling. i'm the only me i've got. And i'm gonna figure out how to listen to my inner voice, how to hit the brakes before i fall off the cliff. i'm gonna learn, cause i'm precious.

Every pregnant woman deserves a self-centred pre-natal Indulgence. Go for it.

at age 60 i am discovering that i love my mother
this is one of my life's greatest gifts so far
also i appreciate judih's insights
likewise i am sure
still dealing with inner demons
and as i emerge from my gloom
they intensify
not wanting to let me go
but i am persistant and resilient
and get help
and make my efforts even when i fail
find success

oh... beautiful stream izzy!!

well it is a beautiful writing, brought out by the blues, the down and out's, the melancholies, the dark night of the soul,

don't know

there is no need to know

you have already recognized the angry ghosts
you have accepted they are here
but your investigations stopped with their description and bejewelled elaboration, deftly flowed
what comes next is looking deeper
how about the awareness that illuminates despair?

I cannot defeat the worries and doubts that plague my mind

the hardest thing to do is make self-congratulatory positiive affirmations when down
but this must be done
the basis for positive affirmation is, like,
the same as what is used for negations,
I am
I have
I seem
I would say
I keep expecting
I become
I cannot

I am resilient
I have mountains of worldliness
I seem compassionate
I would say the personality regressions Ii have experienced are nothing more than transient illuisions that are ephemeral without substance
I keep expecting with my next breath a moment of spacous clarity
I become more centered, calm, and positive about my qualities and abilities
I cannot accept defeat; I am beautiful, handsome, intelligent, and worthwhile.

an so on

these are my own clumsy words, nonetheless, made genuine by my own efforts.

write a positive resumee
a list of positive accomplishments
a list of positive characteristics

and beyond and beneath all that,
deep acceptance of the negative states as already manifested, as "real", allow yourself to breath there, and see the clarity of mind that manifests perceptions, that deep clear mind,
and then not-identifying so tightly with those thoughts,
almost welcome them, invite them in to your meditation abode,
tell them thay can not harm you,
tell them you do not fear them,
these angry ghosts, these jealous gods

you have already put them out on a screen,
see yourself as outside of them watching them,
spacious mind
clarity,
be kind to yourself
just for a moment.

This is all that Goddesses can do
angels whisdpering in your ear,
telling you the same,
pacify, clarify, heal.

--Durer

If could get some Crayola Water Colors, I would paint that rainbow for your daughter.



a powerful stream izzy

ah yes i was thinking about this one
thanks
cosmic trucker

• 

I cannot defeat the worries and doubts that plague my mind

melancholia public domain
no refrain
just blue green

From one freak to another...


Judih wrote:

Do it. Mourn. say goodbye to that which won't return. Mourning frees the mind and gives opening for new connections.

It was that bit that made me think of melancholia. I am haunted by Sylvia Plath. Like Nietzsche I have no time for experience. I have no need of real women when I have my paper dolls. Freud wrote an essay on Mourning and Melancholia. Plath seemed to find some insight in it. Is she another martyr to the fifties Freudian stereotyping of women? I don’t know. What interests me is whether Kayla realizes how well she writes. Maybe I try to poison her with self confidence but she has this ability to reach into her self and spread her thoughts and feelings out in a text box like strawberry jam. It is a gift that I hope will be a blessing.

Izzy forgive me I don’t know what I am doing, I am so busy trying to commit suicide by jelly donut. I can’t walk a mile in your shoes but sometimes I think I can. I wanted to be a healer, I spent twelve years as a pre med. Now I am busy trying to cure myself. I know you were still mourning your grandmother when this pregnancy happened, I don’t know if they are a related.

In his essay, Mourning and Melancholia, Freud states that melancholia, like mourning, is a reaction of grief to the loss of a loved object. "In mourning, it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia, it is the ego itself."[3] Therefore, mourning is grief over the loss of someone or something beloved. Melancholia is grief over the loss of the ego. "With one exception, the same traits (of melancholia) are met with in mourning,"[4] Freud states. Melancholia remains an unnatural open wound; mourning, a natural process, frees the participant upon its completion. The mourning or death process is similar to the creative process … the mourning process is a death process for the living in which the participant travels the cycle of adjustment when a loved one leaves. In the death process one may or may not find permanent rebirth, but one loses self-awareness and so achieves a temporary rebirth at least. In the mourning process, one must find rebirth; if not, one is in a cycle of melancholia instead. The mourning/death process, likened to the creative process,[5] gives new life, new art, new form.

Freud says the need to be an artist comes from early childhood and a sense of loss that enables the artist to see things differently. This vision rules his life. Not entirely neurotic, not entirely normal, the artist is endowed with a creative personality and a ruthless passion that allows him to separate his own grief feelings of melancholia from his grief feelings of mourning (death/rebirth or creativity cycle). Longing for normalcy, the artist is constantly fought by his need for art, by his vision, by his inner life. Beset by melancholia, his ruthless passion for his inner life during his session (days, weeks, months) of producing an art work separates him from his neurosis. Grief is interpreted as mourning, not depression. Mourning, a positive process in life, leads the sufferer to change and growth, to a kind of rebirth, to a condition previously unknown.

http://www.critiquemagazine.com/article/joyce.html

I like this bit from the Bell Jar, it probably is completely irrelevant. I suppose I just love fig trees.

...I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

This probably does not relate either:

Metaphors For a Pregnant Woman



I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.

Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there's no getting off.

~Sylvia Plath

From mourning
to morning sickness
to melancholia

I studied her life
as if I could walk a mile in her shoes
Now I am trying to turn my thoughts to Kerouac cause men are such simple creatures compared to women.

In spite of this seemingly insightful bit of rambling into my mind, I really have no idea what's going on inside me. Perhaps I do mourn so often b/c I got pregnant at a very inconvenient time in my life, right after losing one of my dearest relatives. My grandmother passed on the 13th of september, and about 2 and a half months later, I was peeing on a stick. It was very jarring, I think, and I wasn't really prepared. It took a piece out of me that I wasn't sure I would ever be able to replace even if I wanted to. And then to put that on top of bringing a child into the world when I felt so unequipped to take care of myself, well, I guess it'll rock anyone's world. I am trying to become stable again, but the road is long, and hard with sharp edges and potholes. I'll let you know when I make it to the other side. In the meantime, I will continue to mourn that which is lost, in hopes that I will eventually lead myeself (however blindly) into a better place. Wilder things have happened.

--k

Thanx for the compliment ST. Coming from you it means a million.

Like you said once, everyone reminds me of someone else. Your freak of nature ramble reminds of something I read in Plath's journal. I will post it latter.



Well anyway here is some mor jam for you

Conversations on Freud; excerpt from 1932-33 lectures Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Notes by Rush Rhees after a conversation: summer 1942

When we are studying psychology we may feel there is something unsatisfactory, some difficulty about the whole subject or study- because we are taking physics as our ideal science. We think of formulating laws as in physics. And then we find we cannot use the same sort of ‘metric’, the same ideas of measurement as in physics. This is especially clear when we try to describe the appearces: the least noticeable differences of colours; the least least noticeable differences in length, and so on…….

Or suppose you want to speak of causality in the operation of feelings. ‘Determinism applies to the mind as truly as to physical things.’

This is obscure because when we think of causal laws in physical things we think of experiments. We have nothing like this in connexion with feelings and motivation. And yet psychologists want to say: ‘There must be some law’-although no law has been found. (Freud: ‘Do you want to say, gentleman, that changes in mental phenomena are guided by chance?) Whereas to me the fact that there aren’t actually any such laws seems important.

I don’t know about Freud he seems to know me Kayla. But he said so many absurd things about women it is hard to take him serious. But I think Freud was right when he said all human behavior is over determined.

I am going to continue this on another thread. I don't want to hijack yours.

is wittgenstein saying that there are no laws in human behavior as compared with laws in science?

mental health studies patterns of behavior and constructs models

i worked with a man the last two days with lung cancer (his lungs are fine!) but with mets to the spine, in pain, dealing with palliative care.

he is very resilient.
i wish that i could cure him
as i left work last eve, he was walking about the circuitous figure eight that our unit is shaped like,
he said to me, "enjoy your day off tomorrow"
i said, "i get to mow my step-daughter's lawn"

it's all relative

young single mothers are heroes

don't know what is going on
the path of not knowing

kayla you are a treasure to us

ps i bought a pack of american indian rolling tobacco
light, i been tooting a cigarrette, several light puffs
milder than buglers
is it taps or rev·eil·le

Freud is constantly claiming to be scientific. But what he gives is speculation- something prior to even to the formation of any hypothesis.

From the same essay by Wittgenstein.

If I remember correctly Freud said that he did not have the science, but he had no doubt that in time the science would come along. He predicted that the answer to the mental processes he speculated about would come from biochemistry I think Zen is a better answer. As if I knew jack shit about Zen. But whatever gets a body through the night . Does Kayla watch her thoughts chug across her consciousness like random boxcars or is she attached to them? Do I give her an invidious honor when I compare her to Plath’s “eye of a little god”?



Sylvia searching through Mourning and Melancholia looking for insights into herself seems so sad to me. All I can think of is this bit from Nietzsche:

We are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves . . . Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in our selves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto, "Each is the farthest away from himself"--as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers...

The sad truth is that we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we don't understand our own substance, we must mistake ourselves; the axiom, ‘Each man is farthest from himself' will hold for us to all eternity. Of ourselves we are not ‘knowers' . . . The Genealogy of Morals

“

Nietzsche, educated by Schopenhauer, regarded consciousness as being a rather shallow phenomenon, almost to the point of dismissing it as epiphenomenal (Cf. GS 11, 333, 354, BGE 32). Prefiguring Freud, he believes that for ideas to be truly effective they must work on us at a level below consciousness
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/staff/academi ... selvesOct4

I suppose that is why Zen appeals to me, my awareness just the tip of the iceberg, but I can't meditate, too restless or no discipline.

I cry at everthing. Simply to spite myself and embarrass myself. Finished two poems, a long one, on Electra on Azalea Path and “Metaphors for a Pregnant Woman”, ironic, nine lines, nine syllables in each. They are never perfect, but I think have goodness. Criticism of 4 of my poems in Lowell’s class: criticism of rhetoric. He sets me up with Ann Sexton, an honor I suppose. Well about time. She has very good things, and they get better, though there is a lot of loose stuff. ~ Plath’s Journal, March 20, Friday 1959.

shit izzy
i am wandering all over your post
I meant to do this on another thread



Women scare the hell out me
Pregnant women most of all
take care of your self
don't mind crazy old jack

I love your wanderings St. They are the necessary spice.

--k

p.s jim, you are a treasure too.

i suggest

talk therapy &
anti-depressants

hope you feel better soon