Fallow Field

It's been real and it's been fun..I s'pose that means it's been real fun.
I started the blog on a whim and almost immediately let it lie fallow for a couple of years 'til a solitary reader sorta inpired me to put up twenty-some posts this year (09) .. I've got kind of a sneaking suspicion that reader's moved on.
It only takes a spark to keepa fire going. Drop a comment and I'll start posting.. or maybe CONTINUE posting @ this spot.

peace and hope
-km-

Bastille day.. Harry potter.. stuff

Yeah, funny how that stuff works out, huh.. I'm not sure, really, but this.. writing in the compost spot seemed like a good idea again. Hell, imean heck.. it's 431AM Wed 7-15-09. Judging from the way they look in the archival morass this was one of my better birthdays in a few years.. got ecards from txmi, Sil and Tu.. Ariel and Nam wrote me a story AND a bit later Ariel forwarded a couple of new chapts of her WIP. And I finished Half-Blood. That's a big part of what kept me up so late.. what is this the third night innarow.. reading HP. So I started Deathly Hallows. and made another pot of coffee. It doesn't look like I'll be heading to bed right away.. Of course iota, but, heh, when has that really been a reliable indicator of what I'm going to do. Yeah, not really a question.
Wow, JUST coming up for air ThuAM.. but I did get thru' all three books and I guess that was sort of a short term goal. Well, it got me out of the archives for a while. I was trying to get a handle on how that went, earlier.. on the page. I s'pose I started Order after watching all or parts of the first four HPs when they ran on tv Sat and Sunpm.. I think ABC ran all four both days, punctuated w/teasers for the pt6 (Half-Blood) movie. Yeah, so I .. ireckoni wanted a good distraction, reading Half-Blood seemed like a good one; why not back up and read Order, since it's @ the house.. I'm sure I woulda read all seven if I'd planned it and gotten the first four from the library, but it was an impulse thing, so I had to go w/what I had.. and then I sorta set a goal to be done w/all three by the time the girls got back from seeing the movie. Annidid. I thought Hailey and I would sit and watch Order before they left to see Half-Blood, but the night we popped popcorn, Jen had rented Benjamin Button.. so I watched that; it's a right decent movie. Hailey said it was a cross between Big Fish (which I did not realize was a Tim Burton movie, different discussion w/the child) and Forrest Gump. So she now owes me TWO movie nights, for Twilight and Order.
The sort.. I started Order Sunpm and finished it around twoAM Tue.. started Half-Blood, I think that was the one that ran into the all-nighter. When was my birthday? I'd been up all night reading that day.. and wrapped Deathly Hallows around twoAM today. No, I musta finished it @ 2 yesterday, 'cause I was done when the girls came in from the midnight show and that woulda been twoAM (actually after three) on the 15th. Wow, sorta all runs together. I definitely began Order Sunpm and I was done when the girls got in from the movie.. anniguess they left the house around elevenpm on the 14th.. my birthday.. and that was Tuesday. Before the movie we went to dinner @ Sweet Tomato.. I don't think I'd been up all night, that musta been Mon.. okay.. read 'til twoAM and went to bed Mon, then read all of the next night that WOULD bleed into Tues, huh. Oh yeah, 'cause I remember seeing some of the ecards in the box BEFORE going to bed and deciding I'd open them after I got up.. um, no.. I saw them but read HP all night, didn't open them 'til after daybreak.. maybe. I know I saw them and didn't open them right away and whenever I went in to open the cards there was one more and then the hot fic and liked them all a lot, again.. prob'ly couldn't pick a fave among them.
HA! ! did the ed run and it looks like the all-nighter was the night AFTER my birthday.. no.. by then I'd finished all the books.. maybe not. Maybe I only got Order and Half-Blood done before the girls came in from the movie. Then, hmm, between threeAM or so on the 15th and twoAM the next day.. which woulda been THIS morning I read thru' Hallows? I sure don't know.

Whose fears are REAL..are yours, are mine?

Can YOU spell schizophrenia?
Heh.

Here's s'more stuff I found in the archives as I look for stuff to add to the fake chronolgy, which is up to (thank you for asking) 630+ pages.

some notes
Reality is not something that just happens to you.
Reality is something you make.
There is an objective reality, but we cannot experience it directly.
It is also without significance or meaning.
The reality we experience is drawn from the objective reality
but sliced, diced, julienned and pureed by the food processor
of our bodies, cultures and minds.

People who are manic tend to
make A LOT of bad decisions.
It is common to spend money irresponsibly,
make bold sexual advances or to have affairs,
quit one's job or get fired,
or drive cars recklessly.

The excitement that manic people feel can be deceptively attractive to others who are then often conned into the belief that one is doing just fine - in fact, they are often quite happy to see one "doing so well". Their enthusiasm then reinforces one's disturbed behavior.

familiar w/the phenomenon, hesed

-km-

Truckin' in my hedfones

Heh.
What a long strange trip.
I've had waaaay much taime to browse my own archives.. kinda straightening up and stacking things. I'm building a pile w/as many of my old files as possible stacked up in chronological order. The first three or four hundred pages were pretty easy 'cause MOST of what I've done in the relative last three years has been put in discrete, easily dated packages. Today, I pushed the pagecount over 600 w/the addition of some spew from '91 - '93. I found an "introduction" to what had been an earlier attempt @sorting the archives. I've modified it only a TINY bit for this post.

Please like me.
Yeah, it might be a cry for attention but what I got you all here
for is the actual unveiling of the comp task.. yeah, somehow I knew
THAT was coming. The task is to sort through some old computer
files I've collected and roughly assembled to form the foundation
of a project I call the Great Worx.. Oh. And this is like the
culmination of the hopes and dreams of the Celebrated Author..
Great, I'm so glad you're keeping up so well. Maybe even a bit
ahead. So the actual deal, the wreal deal is, um, the fake
chronology. The bits were put together..um, about the bits..
yeah well I sat down and just let my fingers do the talking and
mainly tried to kick my mind out of gear and the bits are a
string of gems that I generated between March 1991 and April '93
then picking up again in July 2006 and carrying to the relative
present. Now, about the dates, um, this is what makes the
chronology a fake, the bits got collected out of a kazillion
files.. There are still abuncha files to sort and there's not an
entry for, like, every day and the days aren't precisely in order
and most of the string don't nearly include everything I generated
during that span. There are a couple of notable runs that pretty
much DO include nearly everything I generated for a few particular
weex, um, and earlier efforts to pull those scattered runs together
are what generated this, the largest, I think, allegedly coherent
collection of my musings that I've assembled.. The comp task..

Now, priming the phenomenal pump or going to the well might be
just as apt description.. um, beginning with the phenom of writing
to the page, or screen - as the case may be. Y'see, it's like a
running gag, page humor, that serves to remind that the association
driving the fingers often tends to be to how the page loox as I
cling to it.. hmmmm.. I can see that trying to explain this thing
is a large mistake with tremendous opportunity for needless
expansion. Y'see, the more I try to explain what happens and why,
the more I feel compelled to provide more and more backgrounding.
A fine example is the concept of writing to the page. The simple
explanation is that I'm writing about what's on my mind and when
I think about how what I just wrote loox then I start writing
about what I just wrote and how it sits on the page/screen and..
well, I think we can all see how a simple twist gets to be a braid
in a hurry. Which is not to denigrate braids, in fact, braiding
serves as an excellent metaphor. I have collected a handful of
strings, loose threads if you like, and braided them into the
thread that I then wove into this fabric which is a swatch of the
Great Worx.. a tapestry.. a travesty..


-km-

imagine trying to act normally in such a condition

Yeah.. been playin' in the personal archives and found.. *this* If pressed, I could get a nearly reliable date for this piece since it was posted @ my LJ blog, A Muse.
Really and truly it's funny how shit worx out sometimes. Let's try to tell the story foremost on my mind, how this file, the rclatest, came to have such a long and telling tit: imagine trying to act normally in such a condition.

The short version is that's viot WORD presented, since it was the first string in the clip rcthen at the top of the new file. After a month or so of medicinal treatment for bipolar disorder, I finally started doing some reading on the subject. My Google search began w/depakote bipolar, the name of my prescribed med and the diagnosed disorder. From the search page I learned it's the number one med prescribed for bipolar AND epilepsy; yay, we're number ONE! My first click, really against my better judgment, was to a personal testimonial called Living with Depakote or something like that. It took me to a page.. a couple of pages.. where one afflicted woman decribed how a variety of meds (each on its own page) affected her. The Depakote page was interesting but not particularly enlightening, well, it did show me that there's yet another wordsmith out there prob'ly better at wordsmithin' than me.. she's certainly got a better descriptive style than mine, which is mainly absent. I clicked on her "previous page" which was Living with Tegretol, where I found a gem I absolutely couldn't resist clipping. Really, the context of being hypermanic is nearly inconsequential, the gem is that last sentence.. here's the clip:

Imagine trying to act normally in such a condition, much less fight an internal battle. But without the high dosage of Tegretol, I would have no control and I would destabilize. My choice was between a rock and a hard place. Or the frying pan and the fire. Or the Devil and the deep blue sea. Or no description and a cliché.

Yeah, I smacked my forehead w/my palm AND laughed out loud. Butt of course, I'm easily amused. Now I want to put it up on the eljay, sorta taking a break from Indelicate Obsession, which is getting no comments and is getting kinda hard for ME to read, as I do the trans.. tho' of course I find it hugely interesting and hafta wonder why I would EVER want to share that kinda stuff. Oh back to the foremost story. I did get back to more technical reading, sort of.. went to the ABOUT pages and clipped the symptomatology of manic and depressive stages.. and came away w/the thought "doesn't EVERYONE live like this?" Apparently not, 'cause the absence of joy in my life and the incredibly fast mood swings that sent me the dr were pretty much unbearable. Nevertheless, as a public service AND, doubtlessly, a copyright infringement here's the manic/depressive symptomatology:

Manic state or phase
Distractibility. This is the most common symptom and it is usually characterized by the inability to pay attention to any activity for very long.
Insomnia in mania typically means having high energy and requiring less sleep. (This differs from insomnia in depression, in which the patient has low energy plus an inability to sleep.)
Grandiosity. Patients with this symptom have an inflated sense of themselves, which, in severe cases, can be delusional. Close to 60% of all manic patients experience feelings of omnipotence. Sometimes they feel that they are godlike or have celebrity status.
Flight of ideas. Thoughts literally race.
Activity. An increase in intensity in goal-directed activities occurs, which is related to social behavior, sexual activity, work or school.
Speech. Excessive talking.
Thoughtlessness. Excessive involvement in high-risk activities is present (e.g., unrestrained shopping, promiscuity). Mood disturbance may be severe enough to damage one's job or social functioning or one's relationships with others, or which requires hospitalization to prevent harm to others or to the self.


Depressive state or phase

Sad mood.
Fatigue or loss of energy.
Sleep problems (insomnia, excessive sleeping, or shallow sleep with frequent awakenings).
Appetite changes (either an increase or decrease).
Diminished ability to concentrate or to make decisions.
Agitation or markedly sedentary behavior.
Feelings of guilt, pessimism, helplessness, or low self-esteem.
Loss of interest or pleasure in life.
Thoughts of, or attempts at, suicide.

I'll get back to posting IndObs sooner than any of us are ready.
-km-

Yer gonna laff

So..
I keep journals, you know that, right.. Present tense, plural.. @ the relative present I've got four annhaf journaling docs going. The one which is today's topic is the em (machine) jour.. the electronic one. It's the easiest to access and, so, the easiest to compile. I have a lot of fun playing in the electronic archives. The topic, imean the point.. over the course of the past however long it's been since 1992 I've managed to lose a considerable amount of text to a variety of sloppy and malicious acts; I've also lost a lot of paper and ink stuff, but that's not the point. Yeah, there's STILL a point looming here.
Something else you OUGHT to know about me is that I have.. lessay a history of recreational drug (ab)use. I woulda NEVER have believed, the first time I smoked pot, as Easter dawned in 1972, that I COULD or would ever go joy riding w/my brain more than once or twice a year, but three years later I was crispin' up li'l sections of rope (hemp, y'know) every day. The next year I "discovered" psilosybin mushrooms and became an evangelist for hallucinogens along the lines of Aldous Huxley or Ken Kesey. My adult avocoation and situation has mostly precluded the opportunities to indulge that, um, recreation. Why was I surprised to find that I'd be inclined to "explore" off-label use of the various prescription meds which came w/my diagnosis of bipolar disorder/affective schizophrenia? I'd never used pills before, unless you count those little "purple barrel" hits of acid.
Relative lately, I've been taking my superfluous sleep aid, Ambien for "fun." I'd noticed, a couple or three months ago, that if I was writing @ bedtime (after taking the pill) I'd often return to my page or screen and find lines I'd writ but had absolutely no recollection of setting down. Hmmph, THAT could be fun ! !
Here's the point. I got up WedAM, opened the em journal and made the surprisingly quick trip to the bottom of the file. "Say what," I said.. that was TOO quick. And it was. The file which was 97 or so pages when last I remembered seeing it a scant six hours previously had only a single page of text in it.. headed thusly:

some freaky stupid thing wants to be messing severely w/the text. I may hafta do the restart.. something else the box seems not to like.

And I said Whoops.. or somethinglike that.
Yeah, imagine my chagrin. But surely YOU saw it coming, eh.

peace and hope
-km-