Dedicated to Lincoln Phayze who always goes with the flow except for the times when he doesn’t.  Both of us are lost…

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/b37bd4f91ab74c2b5be4a419893cfda7/

That was an advice from somebody like me.  The gentleman in question works in the arts (I almost said “arts industry” and I was appalled by the ugliness of the expression).  Correction:  he used to work in the arts, but now he is in as much mess as I am.  He told me that once he was taking the program “The Artist’s Way” and one of the requirements was keeping a diary.  Yes, a diary.  Keeping a diary in order to awaken one’s creativity, reconnect with one’s creativity, and welcome one’s creativity back.  So the rules were simple enough – you wake up and write three pages without letting the pen stop.  The rule to remember is “Don’t get it right, get it written…”

It is a very catchy and encouraging phrase.  But no matter how encouraging a phrase may be, it still took me a while to actually start writing in my diary.  But I did.  I have some “volumes” completed, mostly filled with crap worth only getting rid of (by shredding, this detail is very important! LOL), but it does not matter.  It was not right, it was written.  My web-site contains very little of my private diary entries, it is more polished and edited. Of course.  Which course?  Moving on…

Of course. Which course? Do we know where we go?

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/d09d182bdef53d9a4b384576a47df417/

Am I creative?  We all are supposed to be creative, by the way…

Well, anyway, when I started this web-site, it was nearly impossible to find things to write about, and I stopped almost as soon I started.  Then I came back to it and I was more or less consistent.  There were some large gaps due to my mood swings.  When I am depressed, I feel like drowning, when I am high, I feel as if I am resurfacing…and what does it have to do with water I have no idea…  Maybe because I am a Water Sign?  Sometimes I dream that I fly so high and so skillfully…

In my dreams I fly so much higher

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/9f878a2f026418e54ca53b7917b261e9/

Coming back to the gaps.  There some of them, all due to polarity of my moods, doubts, losing faith, not really knowing what to do.  The last one started early in May when I finally found a part-time job, started dancing more and generally was busy with I don’t even remember what.  But I tried to come back.  There must be something about writing that I either like or need or maybe both.  Self-expression?  Letting out the pain?  Sharing my experience?  Pleasure of typing? LOL – yeah, that must be it, “pleasure of typing” – exercising my fine motor skills.

Exercising fine motor skills

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/5dc33cf6576d5f43e0de16fa8bf43253/

But the idea of “not getting it right, but getting it written” is very appealing.  I was reading some of my own posts from January and it turned out to be pleasant enough.  I have already forgotten the pain and the joy and details.  And it was nice to come back and see – my insanity (at one point), my pain, my suffering, and the progress I made.  So the verdict is “YES”, the point may very well be ZERO, but I should keep at it.  My diary, my web-site, “My life, my universe and everything”.  Life goes on and diary is only a reflection.  We all love mirrors, don’t we?

Or yes, we do.  Reflections, reflections, reflections…

It seems strange nowadays, but I do have difficulty even picking a film.  Maybe I just do not want to waste my time watching some garbage.  The major difficulty is, of course, in defining what garbage is.  I can only pass a judgment after having watched a movie.  Now, I try to laugh at myself on many accounts.  This one is no exception.

Maybe it simply was awhile since I was aware of what is out there.  There is no list in my mind of what I should watch.  So I feel like a blind person in a forest.  Then I go to the “Hidden Gems” category and try picking something suitable.  Then I get stuck with what is exactly suitable.  Suitable for what?  For my mood?  For improving it or for reflecting it?  Or neither?

When I picked “Two Lovers”, it is hard to say what exactly I expected.  I think instinctively I knew it would not be a simple comedy you forget right after the film is over.  I like Joaquin Phoenix and he was so highly praised for his performance, that it was hard to resist.  The fact that Gwyneth Paltrow was there also was almost a turn-off, but you can’t have everything.  So there, the choice was made.

After having watched “Two Lovers”, I haven’t thought much about the film.  Not because I would say it was not good.  It was not thrilling; I would even say it was boring to a point.  But I kept thinking about it, which is always a sign, that the film is really not bad.  Anything that makes you think is worthwhile.

I read the reviews later.  The critics sympathized with Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) and commented how likeable he was and how the critics knew what he should have done and how he should have behaved in order to make the right choice in love.  Pick somebody familiar and safe (and boring) and forego flashy, unstable and instantly attractive.  Save yourself trouble, trade excitement of love and a possibility of heartbreak for security, stability, maybe friendship. 

“However, while it is clear to the audience which of the two women Leonard should focus his attentions on, he instead pursues the other one.”  (Cinema Autopsy, Thomas Caldwell)  http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2009/06/06/film-review-two-lovers-2008/

Of course, there is truth and merit to that, but I wonder how many people could actually resist falling in love and how many of us sit and calculate the odds and the possible outcomes.  Maybe those who took the decision-making courses (you know “What-if analysis”, “Strategic Thinking”).  I know I did.  But I still prefer to be in love rather than not.  Maybe that is why Leonard is so likeable.  Not because he is bipolar, because he is very human.

That is the word – BIPOLAR. 

The film does not put such emphasis on his diagnosis and Leonard is only shown as a depressed person, rather than manic.  The diagnosis is mentioned in one of the reviews and whether it is an assumption or not, there is no way of knowing.  Being bipolar, I know the difference much better than film critics.  But, let’s say it does not matter.

But one point was so touching, so it took me a few weeks to really come back to it and remember.  Subtlety and gentleness of the film is chiefly responsible for the fact that I cannot stop thinking about it.  The first scene – Leonard is going (home?) or on his way to deliver dry-cleaned clothes – and he jumps into the ocean.  Suicide out of the Blue?

Here critics should have said that it was not advisable to jump fully-clothed in freezing water.  Oh, no, I never jumped.  I only thought about jumping from the balcony from the 20^th floor.  Oh, yes, I can sympathize.  That scene is now somewhat haunting and somewhat a relief really.  To see it from a different perspective.  You do have to jump in order to see the light of day.  To realize that there actually will be another day and …who knows what.

Just do not ask the film critics what is right and what is wrong.  Whom to pick and fall in love with.  Make your own decisions.

[first lines]

Arthur Edens: Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go to work… all I’m saying is wait, just wait, just-just-just… please hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it’s…

I’m begging you Michael. I’m begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building, okay, I’m running across Sixth Avenue, there’s a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I’m dictating. There’s this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and

I… I-I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… like a… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic – embryonic – fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve-I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death.

And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the… the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity.

And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now.

What to do?

Maybe most of you do not know what the word Soviet actually means.  The first meaning is Advice, the second is Counsel.  So coming from this great country of Advice, there is never lack of it.

Take one step at a time.  Thank you.  It is usually how it is done.  I need one leg to stand on.  Unless I jump.  I hope not from my balcony. Well, I am joking now.  But with bipolar you never know.

Anyway coming back to the steps and sequence.  I already revealed my big secret – I love dancing.  I want to open my own business – a dance studio.  “What are your qualificatons?”  — I told you.  I have Masters in Engineering from Moscow and a Bachelor Degree in IT from DeVry.  No, I cannot teach dance myself.  But it is my passion.  I know it will happen some day.  Dance is what brings me joy.

This post is an exercise in free style writing.  There is a free style dancing as well – not choreographed by others, but a dance which allows to express yourself.  Children do it all the time.  They are my inspiration. I love children just as much as I love dancing.

Ok, but for managing my “life dance” I do need choreography.  Some of it. 

choreography

 dance composition

On Nov. 15, 1934, Virginia Woolf began her rewrite of a novel eventually titled “The Years.”  “Lord! Lord!” she noted in her diary, “10 pages a day for 90 days: three months … now, damnably disagreeable, as I see it will be – compacting the vast mass – I am using my faculties again.  & all the flies and fleas are forgotten.”

Seven years later the flies and fleas and larger plagues drove Woolf, who had fought mental illness throughout her life, to suicide.  An increasing number of psychiatrists, neurologists and geneticists, says an article in this week’s Science Times, believe there’s a link between the genius and madness of artists such as her.  Maybe so.  But as anyone who’s ever read Woolf’s letters and diaries can attest, it’s the link between imagination and self-discipline that got her a place in literature’s pantheon.  Her mind may have had a grasshopper’s fleetness, but her industry was the ant’s.  “People who have experienced emotional extremes, who have been forced to confront a huge range of feelings and who have successfully coped with those adversities, could end up with a richer organization in memory, a richer palette t work with,” said Dr. Ruth Richards, a psychiatrist in Belmont, Mass., which often served as a haven for Robert Lowell, the fine American poet.

At least three fine English poets – Byron, Shelley and Coleridge – also suffered from manic depression or severe depression; and so did the composer Robert Schumann, who starved himself to death when he was 46.  Dr. Robert M. Post, chief of the biological psychiatry branch at the National Institutes of Health, sees the link between bipolar disorder and creativity as “fortunate”, because it is in so many other ways “a devastating illness.”

To be mad is not necessarily to be creative, or there’d be Shelly on every street corner.  And to be creative is not necessarily to be mad, or Shakespeare would not have been a monument to shrewdness and adaptability.  But to be creative is almost invariably to be diligent – and, manic – depressive or no, to swing high, swing low.

Source: Editorial published in the New York Times, October 15, 1993.

From “Psychology. An Introduction. 8^th edition” by Jerome Kagan and Julius Segal  (page 488)

When people have recurrent episodes of depression like the one just described, the disorder is called unipolar disorder.  But there is another severe affective disorder – known as bipolar disorder, and referred to in the past as manic – depression – in which the lows typically alternate with exaggerated highs.  Most of us, of course, know that our mood can shift – sometimes for no apparent reason – from bright and joyful to dark and sad.  For those suffering from this disorder, the emotional pendulum swings wildly from intense excitement to deep melancholy, at first with long time intervals in between, but later with frequent and abrupt shifts from his to low (Goodwin & Jamieson, 1990).

A recent study of people with bipolar disorder estimates that more than three million Americans have the disorder (National Depressive and Manic – Depressive Association, 1993).

My comment:  when I read this in the year 2000, to be precise when I studied this book to take the proficiency exam at DeVry, I was depressed, as always, since the age of 10 and I did not take any antidepressants.  Maybe I was not always depressed, but more often than not.  The whole three years at DeVry for sure.  But I was not diagnosed.  In 2005, when my depression made me dysfunctional to the point that I could not do anything with my life but to seek help, then I was diagnosed as having depression and I was prescribed anti-depressants. 

 

Little did I know, that it would lead to mania.  Drug induced, mind you.  So, my first episode happened in December 2005 – January 2006.  I did go to see a Psychiatrist # 2 (the Psychiatrist # 1 who gave me the bloody drugs disappeared without a trace).  I told him I might be bipolar.  He did not believe me.  “Do not rush with the diagnosis”, I was told.  In May 2007, when I was doing the JVS program I had my second episode.  And that was when the whole hell broke loose. 

 

I will tell that story eventually, just give me time.  It is painful to write about it, but living this life was always painful.  Coming to grips with whatever happened to me is really worth it.  For you, my reader, it might save some pain in the future.  You are not alone.  Your situation may not be the worst.  And for those who in the different category (sane and good boys and girls), it might be just hilarious bordering on ridiculous.  Read it, if you have ever been depressed, on drugs, diagnosed with bipolar or were treated in a hospital, chained to a bed.  Well, back to the book…

Like unipolar depression, it appears to be on the rise – as shown in Figure 10.4.  Bipolar affects men and women equally, and sometimes appears during childhood.  Unfortunately, childhood or adolescent onset predicts more treatment difficulties and increased social disability.  The disorder often can be managed fairly well with drug therapy, but people often delay seeking treatment when early symptoms appear, and the problem is often misdiagnosed.

Bipolar disorder magnifies common human experiences to larger-than-life proportions.  Among the symptoms are exaggerations of normal sadness and fatigue, joy and exuberance, sexuality and sexuality, irritability and rage, energy and creativity.  To those afflicted, it can be so painful that suicide seems the only means of escape: about one of every four untreated for the condition actually does commit suicide.

In the manic phase, people with this disorder ten to be talkative, restless, aggressive, boastful, and destructive.  They develop a feeling of intense well-being and even ecstasy.  Sexual and moral inhibitions disappear and life is one uninterrupted “high”.  The manic person needs little sleep and is filled with abundant energy and grandiose notions.  Soon, however, most manic individuals plummet back to the depressed phase, becoming so gloomy and hopeless that they are immobilized.

As far as the ancient Greeks, society has believed that the artistic temperament is often touched by divine madness.  In recent years evidence has accumulated linking mood disorders to creativity (Jamison, 1993).  From the melancholy Lord Byron to the suicidal Sylvia Plath, biographies of celebrated poets, musicians, and artists have attested to extreme moods in creative people.  Here is how writer Virginia Woolf described her divine inspiration:

“As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at: and in its Lava I still find most of the things I write about.  It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does” (Woolf, 1978).

            Despite the links between creativity and bipolar disorder, it is important not to glamorize or trivialize the disorder.  In fact, most sufferers are not great creative geniuses, and most talented artists are mentally stable.  Modern medicine can today offer relief to those who endure the ravages of mood.  In the past, artist who were in the clutches of this devastating disorder had nowhere but their art to seek solace.  A further discussion in the Psychology and the Media box entitled “Making Art of Madness” (to be continued.)