November 24th, 2008
Jumping Gears
Have you ever been overcome with a blast of optimism and energy at a time it seemed impossible or ridiculous?
Transcriptorial: tight chains, the teeth of the gears / pull for the win
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over-medicated enough
or probably manic-depression.
euh.
i mean yes.
but it never last,
and then C’est la chute
~up/down[]
……
I always find myself smiling wide when I should be pitying myself or break down in tears. When the going gets rough, it cracks me up. Especially when it seems ridiculous. Maybe I feel like smiling is time better spent than feeling miserable.
yes. then they sat me down and told me I was manic depressive.
If they sat me down and told me I was manic depressive, I’d have a difficult time believing them.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
so did i. three years later, I’m finally free of medications and feeling far better than I ever did on them.
i think the doctors could have used a bit of my “mania.” It’s certainly getting me places in life.
Thank you, katie, for saying so. It’s encouraging to hear that you’re feeling better free. The DSM terrifies me sometimes, but maybe it’s healthier to find the humour in how gravely it takes its subjects, how earnestly elaborate its taxonomy.
My favourite doctor in the world is as crazy as I am, which is why she helps me so much.
There’s a hospital close to where I live. I kind of want to write there one night, am waiting for that moment when worrying about germs opens like life breaking its egg.
Awesome you’ve gotten your mania to work for you.
I get that all the time.
Lol, everybody is manic depressive. I get that all the time. I think it’s out body’s way of coping with down times, we reverse the feeling to carry us through.
A kind of biological survival instinct? That’d be cool.
At a time when it seems ridiculous…like 3 AM. Yes. But I tame the impulses because I live in a tiny apartment with another person who is dear to me and needs their sleep. My beloved just bought me a portable DVD player with headphones. They know that a well-placed movie is my cure for just about anything.
This image makes me imagine my imaginary skeleton and the creaking sounds it continues to make after such a tough year. Which reminds me that I have to start exercising again.
This image also makes me laugh. It’s a funny image. It’s almost as funny as a certain joke I heard this week about a curious cat.
as of recently, i’ve felt this actually. this have kind of been sucking and nothing really worked out the way i planned or wanted it to, or tried to make it. but somehow, i’m happier than i think i would’ve been had it all been at all like i had imagined.
even writing this is making me absurdly happy, honestly.
I find when I have no choice in the matter, I am happier. Even if there are two options and they both suck, I get really stressed out. But with one crappy option… well, all you can do is go for it the best you can. No room for doubt or stress.
BTW, is that paperclip dude dancing or climbing? Or both? I think that’s one of the more awesome images on the site. Kudos.
Thanks! You know, some people refer to climbing as the “vertical dance”. It’s a term I’ve always loved.
I suppose if one dances while climbing, one’d fall off whatever one was trying to climb. Unless one is flying, too.
Paperclip dude is priceless.
I was in the bathroom, and then it hit me: I feel like I’m living inside quotation marks.
And then I exploded with laughter and joy that I just described life the way I just did, made me happy, made my day, made me say, cut my pay. Insane you know? Like, the color orange crazy. That type of crazy, like chugging empty bottles of Lunesta.
You didn’t happen to be on the toilet glancing at toilet paper when you had your epiphany, did you?
Your final three sentences were thrilling to read.
Actually I was staring politely at the darkness outside, looking for Luna moths, during a new moon. Futile, I know.
‘The yellow jester does not play, but gently pulls the strings,
And smiles as the puppets dance, in the Court of the Crimson King…’
(Robert Fripp)
The ‘chess playing Turk’ of Poe fame, the ‘golems’ of magick and fantasy, Bradbury’s Fantoccini androids… They all have too much in common with us people.
Ah, yes. I am working to preserve this feeling now, to be used at will.
Humans have so much power in them the are not aware of. Have you ever wondered how is it that when we hope, when we expect the best, everything turns out at least a little better?
Imagine the possibilities.
Yes. It’s amazing that we even still feel despair, when hope is so much more helpful.
I find this statement rather facile and glib. Few people who are actually in true despair chose to be in that state…and most would do anything to be free of it.
Perhaps if you find yourself in such a situation, it won’t amaze you so.
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=325
I agree with Madness that human beings have so much more power than they know; with Somerled that hope is more helpful than despair; and with orinoco (and here I am being more interpretive) that it is easier to know the power of hope if one has had sufficient opportunity to test its power.
So much hinges on how one’s prayers are inflected. It’s easy to be in denial about one’s despair, and to hope for the wrong things. And it is even easier to feel misunderstood.
I think Somerled’s comment is grounded in a great deal of practical and theoretical experience. I read it in the context of his other writing on the internet.
Madness, your comments today have made quite an impression on me. Orinoco: you are indeed awesome.
I see what you mean. But I was speaking from a natural selection point of view, as in, why has this trait been passed down through the species for so long. How does it help us survive as a species? That kind of question. I wasn’t meaning to imply that anyone chooses it personally. When I feel despair, it’s in spite of knowing it isn’t productive, too.
Depression (a natural outcome of despair) is a kind of hibernation that allows an organism to postpone acting out aggressively. This can help it to avoid committing suicide, for example, but it can also help it to avoid provoking the aggression of someone in the immediate environment.
Depression is also related to cultural memory. A depressive remembers and embodies forgotten or otherwise threatened histories. If all of humanity were wiped out, the internet would remember us to the aliens. But if all technology were wiped out, culture would be reconstructed (in part) by those who were born with the instinct to remember it.
Imprecise and far from comprehensive, but anyway a lay person’s attempt at answering how despair might relate to species survival.
He just slices (like a hot knife through butter) through all the layers of the policy onion to reveal the heart