FortuneTeller (Alan Greenspan)

FortuneTeller (Alan Greenspan)
Originally uploaded by sfclay

Regarding my last post, this is a much more scary picture...I'm doing this thing at the moment where I am trying to link up the "real" world to my "inner" world in a meaningful way. I can so easily get lost in both. I think that may be what makes me ill. I get so far lost in the one that I lose touch with the other. When I look at pictures like this though and there were much more scary pictures of Greenspan on flickr I can see why. Now I have found my way out of the forest. do I have to deal with the real world all the time? Or can I dip in and out of the two? That would definitely be my preference but I have always had a problem with boundaries and moving in and out is sometimes painful....

Money or tranquillity?

Cottage at Kynance Cove
Originally uploaded by Erasmus T

I woke up this morning to Alan Greenspan on the Today programme saying: "Societies have to make choices as to whether they want more material well-being or more tranquillity. Regrettably, I think they cannot have both." Strange words to hear from an economic guru but all the more potent as a result. I think we've tried, since the fairy was born, to do the material well-being thing. We are not particularly good at it. It is literally making me ill. But I do want the tranquillity bit of it. Even the word sounds good. So I guess it might be a choice. I hadn't realised that.

Oh, no I have pleurisy, really....

Hypochondriacs_Wheel
Originally uploaded by Branded Consumer

Back to the being ill thing and not being able to stand it. My boy said today that he thought I was a hypochondriac and I reacted quite strongly - inwardly at least. I really feel as if I am so busy doing what I need to do to earn money most of the time that I just don't have enough time to just write...Maybe I get ill just to get a break. It does seem as if when I run out of books, I go back to work again.

Seven basic plots

Snow Queen
Originally uploaded by Laura Ward

I've been reading this book by Christopher Booker about the 7 basic plots. Only they really aren't that basic. Thought it is pretty interesting to see that I - and probably everyone - tends to like some plots over others. I really like "voyage and return" stories - where you lose youself in another world and come back transformed or not, depending on the author's preference. Brideshead is a voyage and return story but no-one gets transformed. Always wondered why I felt ambivalent. I also like rebirth stories - one of my favourites is HKA's The Snow Queen which also includes a quest. And of course, the Secret Garden..

By the way, I am still feeling lousy but getting used to it.

I have bear flu. . .

I have bear flu. . .
Originally uploaded by Phytheas Bear

Feeling worse today. This is the worst kind of blog isn't it? Indulgent. Sorry for itself. Good job nobody but me reads it. It makes me feel better though. I have this thing about illness. I always think I can "think" myself better - I think it must be mind over matter. And I get very annoyed when I can't. This one, I think, is one of those. Try as I can to dose myself up, I am not sleeping and when I wake up, I don't feel any better. The thing is though this seems to be happening to me a lot. Or it feels like it. Going to see Trevor next week - need to get this sorted. Or not.

Fuzzy Duck of Awesomeness

Fuzzy Duck of Awesomeness
Originally uploaded by rengawk

This is how I am feeling today. Very, very fuzzy around the edges. Am trying to work but also trying not to beat myself up that I am feeling fuzzy. This picture helps. A good thing happened last night though. In fact two good things happened yesterday. Lizzie sent me some contact details of some friends of hers who live in France and have just moved their Brighton. They sound very inspired and inspiring. And I started my French lessons. That wasn't so inspired and inspiring but I felt really excited about it. It feels like something is shifting and we may be moving on soon...

Having a poorly time

poorly
Originally uploaded by Chaymation

Think I must have caught the fairy's virus. It's not serious (!) but I really hate anything that makes me feel down or out of control. I feel as if everything is just a bit too much today and the house feels messy, sweaty and out of control too. In fact, lots of things feel out of control. I haven't billed for a while and I need to and I just feel as if I need a few days off my life. If anyone out there wants to come and be mummy that would be very nice...

The fairy is poorly

Fairy-cessories!! Of-Course!
Originally uploaded by DyeDye

The fairy has a virus so we are sitting at home in our pyjamas. If the truth be known I actually like these sweaty, smelly days. She sits on the sofa, with a laptop playing Japanese games and I sit at the dining table, surrounded by chaos, trying to work. The house has reached the stage of chaos where I am actually embarrassed and need to do something about it but haven't quite got to the action bit yet. Think I will go and take a shower in a moment but right now it's creative sitting here in the mess...

Suddenly got busy

A busy mind
Originally uploaded by NoOdLeMs

Suddenly work has started to take off again and I am rushing around trying to get it all done. One of the things I have always done is get up early in the morning to do some of the "work" writing but I just couldn't get up this morning. I just spend the time lying there with energy buzzing around my body - it felt like a much more useful way to spend my time. It was really lovely - I wonder if some people's bodies are buzzy like that all the time and that is why they spend so much more time than I do looking after them?

Writing

Barter Books 3
Originally uploaded by A knight who says Ni

I am in this lull between writing what I want to write and writing what I write to earn my living. They are two separate things at the moment. What I am going to do once I quit therapy is give one day a week up to writing what I want to write. I want to allow those days to flow. At the moment I have such a lot of deadlines. But this writing will be much more of an "inner" project. A bit llike this blog. I like the fact that this feels private even though it is public. And that I can use it to try things out and see if I think they work. Mostly I think they don't but right now unlike with my paying work, it really doesn't matter. Not such a bad place to be.

Giving up therapy

Therapy Couch in Therapy
Originally uploaded by tomswift46

I am going to tell Mica that I want to stop therapy tomorrow - I just wrote "today" then but it is tomorrow. I have no idea how that is going to go. I know how I feel about it. When I suddenly realised it is Tuesday today I felt this enormous sense of relief. I feel as if she is going to argue with me - there really is something deep down wrong with you and you need to keep on coming. Or maybe it would be worse if she just said OK, that's fine, when do you want to end? Or 'right, just don't come back.' It's probably going to be some place in the middle, I suppose. We'll organise a period of "cooling off"; we'll explore how it feels, I'll keep going for a while...sounds like the usual work rather than the drama.

Suffering...

Constantin Bracusi 'Suffering' 1907, The Institute of Art of Chicago
Originally uploaded by hanneorla

Apparently - I just read today - Jung said that neurotics are people who refuse to suffer. Sounds like my family all over. Have to think more about this - write about it. I am thinking right now about a book for young adults set partially in Deathville and partly in Atlantis. The heroine is called Anya and she can move between the two places.

Re-reading all of Faulkner

Originally uploaded by jotyco

One of the things I think I might do now is re-read the bits of Faulkner I have read and try and read the stuff I haven't . But like John Gardner says from the point of view of learning from the master not as a literary student etc. Sometimes I feel as if I have bits of "As I Laying Dying" in my heart - it is definitely the book I have absorbed the most - except perhaps Jane Eyre!

John Gardner

John Gardner
Originally uploaded by parryliam

I am reading this book by John Gardner. Apparently everyone who wants to write has read it. Except me. It's extraordinary. He's a real teacher. And he loves Faulkner. I still at the absorbing and taking it in stage but so far I'm blown away...

You Are The Hermit

You posses a great deal of wisdom and the ability to see people for who they are. You are always looking ahead at the future, developing visions. A loner, you tend to travel by yourself through life, seeking your own truth. You don't crave material things or fancy titles. You have no baggage. Your fortune: It's possible that there is a unknown guiding figure in your life, ready to help you. All you have to do is find this person and seek their advice. It's also possible that you need to start seeking the meaning of your own life. Either way, there's some deep thinking you need to undertake, and it needs to be done soon.

What Tarot Card Are You?

Depression and Tim Lott

bookshelf
Originally uploaded by niznoz

Sometimes I think I make my blog just a dump because I don't want to be understood. Or it is deposit for my mind and where I haven't understood things. I've been racing mentally. Just keeping going. Because if I were to stop - then what?

I have been reading Tim Lott's The Scent of Dried Roses recently and I can't recommend it highly enough. Coincidentally, there was a piece on the Today programme on R4 saying that depression does greater damage to long term health than many physical conditions like angina, arthritis or diabetes.And the package included an interview with Tim Lott.

Anyhow, in his book he says: "Depression is about anger, it is about anxiety, it is about character and heredity. But it is also about something that is in its way quite unique. It is the illness of identity, it is the illness of those who do not know where they fit, who lose faith in the myths that they have so painstakingly created for themselves. Thus, in this current confused, self-hating England, it is spreading like a virulent, dimly understood virus. And it is a plague - especially if you ad in all its various forms of expression, like alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, compulsive behaviour of one kind or another. They are all the same thing: attempts to avoid disappearance, or nothingness or chaos."
He adds that in finding a solution to identify, you begin to find a solution to depression. Maybe that oral history MA wasn't such a daft idea after all...

Van Gogh and writing and blues

blue van gogh
Originally uploaded by wanganeges

I keep moving away from this. And when I come back I realise that I was on a track or I was going somewhere but maybe it was painful to look at or too difficult. it is a bit like talking to Mum around my parents' wedding anniversary. She found it so difficult to think about or feel that it was easier to run away. The thing is though the running away is painful too. Very painful. So I am writing again. Slowly. Painfully. As well as working. I read this great quote today - rather like an ad - from a book by Dennis Palumbo. it said: Writer’s block. Procrastination. Loneliness. Doubt. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Just plain…fear. What does it mean if you struggle with these feelings on a daily basis?

It means you are a writer.