Tattered Tale

 I've recently been "washing out" all psychoactive medications to try to find my "baseline." 

Well, let me tell you, my friends, my baseline is looking pretty chaotic.

Like, I had hoped that after almost a decade on some medications I'd be okay to quit taking them. 

I am in a healthy, loving relationship with an amazing partner etc. working at a job I like, I have time for hobbies and sleep now.

So, naturally, I decided to shatter that balance.

And because I don't wish to bore you with the particulars  I have, instead, implemented the use of GIFS (this is one of the many maladaptive coping skills I have honed to a deadly double edged blade of "Dark Humor" meets "Total Despair and Confusion" that both meet at the nice sharp knife point of "My Loneliness is Killing Me but So is the Anxiety that I am Both a Burden to Everything and Selfish Beyond Measure.")

And to add a bit of a challenge to it, I'm only using New Girl GIFS.

So now that we have that all cleared up we can begin.

Well, most days it starts out well enough. 

Then I say hello to my dog Ezra and proceed to try to ignore the snakes crawling around in my body

So I head on in to the bathroom to try to look into the mirror and repeat sage advice I've heard from others over the years hoping this time it will take root within me.

So I try to start my self improvement journey yet again.

But this time make it doable.

Then I eat mashed potatoes and corn with cheese for breakfast.

So when that doesn't work I try to remember how far I've come in the last 28 years.

When that doesn't work I like to ruminate on our super fucked up world.

And while doing this my body likes to do weird shit for no reason.

It doesn't make me feel better. 

So I just keep trying to shut it down so that leads to making it worse actually.

And then I get angry and overwhelmed and try to talk myself into not feeling guilty for making decisions to help myself even if they make me feel selfish. 

And as you might have guessed by now. 

That doesn't work.

 So then I change tactics.

Aaaaaaaaaaand now I'm hungry.

We're tailspinning, tailspinning, tailspinning...

Trying not to break things including myself

Oh and there is intellectualizing

Lets try all the coping skills we know.

Nope. 

Still Spiraling. 

Deploy self-hatred.

Feelings:

Then you cry yourself to sleep after maybe trying weed as a last-ditch effort.

You wake up and feel both hungry and hungover and like a terrible person. 

But what do you say to someone who saw you being so..... weird?

Yes.

 That's it.

Let's call it what it isn't. Because that helps.

Now.

Do it again.

Here is some music that makes it more bearable.

Sharp Objects Playlist

(I swear it's one of the best playlists ever.)

Arterior Motifs

"There seems to be no barrier between any one object and any other, just a continuous flow of life becoming art and vice versa"

-Donald Judd

"This nigh-mystical concept is a kind of Eamesian just rightness that arises organically from a series of patterns and activities set by nature that are allowed to generate structures of their own"

-Excerpt from The Longing For Less

"A lot of people will walk right by it and not know that's it. They stand in front of [The Earth Room] for ten to twenty-seconds  gaze at the field of dirt, and wonder what they are missing instead of thinking about what's right in front of them. The reaction has something to do with our expectations that art should be readily apparent and distinct from the mundane world around it, or that it should offer up a message in the first place."

-Bill Dillworth 

It's been a while since I have written.

Because writing about life or feelings or observations feels like trying to make something that is naturally messy and fluid into something neat and solid and that can feel odd.

A few years ago I did a bit of an overhaul on my life.

I think trying to simplify my life (i.e., zero waste, owning less, buying less , etc.) was my way of trying to, in a practical way, strive for selflessness. 

I am speaking of selflessness as in a lessening of the distance. 

I wrote a blog post about it over a year ago that goes more in depth about what I mean when I say "selfless" if you're curious. > Smoke and Mirrors <

I was trying to make a life that allowed grace to have space to be seen in it always. Even though grace is always in it, as is its nature. 

( I understand "grace" to be the unselfconscious breathing life. Think dust motes in the early morning sun. Your favorite mug. Your unmade bed. Window panes in older houses. Or nature in general even.) 

 I didn't want to be ruled by my own discontent. 

And I feel more discontent or disconnected the more out of context I feel.

Because I think a part of what grace is, is context. 

Which leads me to another thing I have been contemplating. 

As far as art goes I appreciate knowing about the artist's life. 

I find the more I learn about a particular artist the more their art deepens for me. 

Their art work stops being "pieces" and starts being a big thread of their life. 

Ups and downs and different experiments and ideas.

Much like so many people and things in life. 

Stories are my life's blood. 

But I sometimes find myself using the "curation process" of simplifying my life as a way to make sure I myself take up as little space as possible.

To take up less resources. Take up as little of my body as possible. Take up less time. Take up less energy.

 Take up less everything.

I think that I, unfortunately, learned early in my life the lie: 

The moment you become "too much" is the moment you become unloved and unlovable.

In my head this lie pertains to me only.

I don't look out at any other person and think this is true. 

And I don't know why I can't make myself un-believe it about myself. 

Maybe with time that will change. Maybe I will look over my life over the years and see the thread and all it's stitches and this will just be a few rough stitches in the line. 

Most importantly,

I keep forgetting that"curation" is not a taking away of things it is the choosing of things.

The point of the space is not the emptiness, it is the potential of it. 

The point is not to remove the content it is to allow freedom enough for you to see it as it is for you where you are.

 The emptiness to witness how the context of your life plays out in front of you as art.

Whether they are real, fantasy, non-verbal or musical stories have taught me so much. 

And slowly over time I've collected wisdom from so many different places people and times that if the lessons were put into a room, you might think they would clash but I think somehow they might manage to flow together rather gracefully. 

(Vivian Maier)

Music to Breathe to:

Chewing Cotton Wool - The Japanese House 

Bad Dream - Vancouver Sleep Clinic 

Seneca - Novo Amor