Burning up on re-entry…

Hi there, all you jolly readers in the blogosphere.  Greetings from planet Earth, if that is really where I am.  Sorry I haven’t posted for a while but I have been listening to the music of other spheres and unable to transmit at the same time.  So – how have you been?

Here’s today’s poem:

Vote

dressed in flapping yellow top

trousers from the Oxfam shop

I stand before the meeting

turn, give the greeting:

‘Good evening.’

‘Evening’

they

say.

My top

and I, stop:

shuffle papers

shapers

of thought

caught

in lines

which entwines

my wrists

enlists

their nod.

When I start a poem, I often don’t have a clue what it’s going to be about.  This one began when I was writing some lines in a diary, and remembered a time when I was addressing a CND meeting and going through a somewhat eccentric phase sartorially.  The line I had written as prose, “dressed in a flapping yellow top” sidled up slyly and suggested that it would prefer to be in a poem – and so the rest followed.  The structure is similar to the one about the pope (see blog entry, “Here’s Today’s Popem”) though not, I think, as good.

Today I am going to send the story, “One Day in Paradise” to a short story competition.  If I can get some printer paper, that is.

Wish me luck!

(Break a finger!)

TTFN

Back now…

Dinner was lovely. Six of us – Mark and me, Holly and Daniel, River and Jonathan. Daniel ate nothing, drank mango juice. Jonathan said he’d read this blog. When I said it was insane, he didn’t disagree. God knows what people must think. God only knows what I think. To paraphrase Robert Browning, when I wrote those letters to L*****d, only two people in the world knew what they were about; God and Sarada Gray. Now, only God knows. Actually, even I wasn’t sure. So there you are.

Re: Henry James. Turns out the “Beast ” that he’s waiting for is the waiting itself – in other words, the worst thing that can happen is never to live because you are afraid (one reason why I will never regret my psychosis – it took me where I needed to go). The problem is that the story illustrates this ie nothing happens rather eloquently but infuriatingly for nigh-on a hundred pages. Then the woman dies and he realises he should have loved her.  Even more infuriatingly he spends another few pages in useless regret before realising the big mistake and giving up his whole life as a bad job.  I want to take people like this and shake them.  I want to say “You’re not dead yet!  You’re making the same mistake again!  Live now, for God’s sake!”  I can’t stand it when people waste their lives in this way.  And whatever else I may have to reproach myself with when I’m old, I hope it won’t be that.

…and it’s goodnight from her

Am feeling utterly sheepish and embarrassed about everything C***n related on this blog.  I have gone from desperately wanting him to read it to hoping fervently that he hasn’t.

It felt good to put my poems up there though.

Had a very empowering session with a student doing their FCA (final class assessment) this evening.

That’s all – just wanted to record my feelings of utter embarrassment, in the spirit of putting it all down just as it comes to me.  If nothing else this whole trip has taught me to be true to myself, to where I am at the moment, no matter how insane.  And that is a good thing.  Too often we cover up or explain – and like that character in “View from the Bridge” www.amazon.com/View-Bridge-Heinemann-Plays/dp/0435233122 – 271k -I have allowed myself to be fully known.

Henry James is driving me mad at the moment.  I am reading a short (not very) story called “The Beast in the Jungle” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_in_the_Jungle and I have never known anything take so long to get nowhere.

Will go to the chalet tomorrow.

Night night!  Sleep well.

enjoy life.  It’s the only one we have.

Love

Liz

The genius of Mark

This just in…

“blackbeth – the Scottish play on horseback”

“Morris mining – extraction of retro cars from under the ground”

(presumably by Morris men)

I’m doing OK.  Recovering fairly well from psychosis.  Recent thoughts include – “I need a guru to help me deal with all this stuff – the challenges of training teachers plus dealing with insanity”.

On Attachment…

This is called Samskara in yoga.

How was my weekend?  I hear you cry.  Well.. a bit mixed.  After thiis whole psychotic trip I had some bad times, some very dark and paunful moments when this whole thing seemed like a repetition of what I went through after Dave: ie being in a very dark place and failing to teach.  So there were moments when the whole weeken (a residential with my students) seemed to be falling apart.  Some of them got annoyed with me because I forgot things they had told me.  I had forgotten anything told to me in the previous three months.  The only thing I could do about this was explain slightly and apologise.

It was clear to me that a lot of complex dynamics were going on with my students and that training teachers is a whole different ball-game from teaching ordinary students, in the way they relate to you.  I’m sure I flt the same degree of difficulty when starting to teach, but it’s so lng ago now, and I have developed such a degree of expertise (not only in teaching but in dealing with people) that I can’t remember how it was.  Anyway, my thought on all this was that I now need a guru for myself in order to do this.  So I asked the universe to bring me one.

Watch this space!

Odd, really.  I never wanted a guru – never thought I could trust anyone enough to give them that kind of power.  But then, I never thought I could trust anyone enough to get married and share my life with them.  And I think that where I am now is analogous to where I was before Mark and I got married – ie just before a big life-change.

My difficulty is this:  how to be a genius but also come back down to earth so that I don’t screw up as a teacher.  Because I need the teaching as well as the writing.  I am Gemini, a twin sign, and I have these two aspects to my being.  Also I think women approach things differently.  This makes things harder but is ultimately a strength. because we don’t put all our eggs (!) in one basket.  These thoughts are connected also to male orgasm and the “pushing through” (or penetrative!) aspect of male energy.  Women are slower, more diffuse, but we get there, and in the end, it is the female energy (not always the individula woman) who is wiser.  As the Tao says:

“Know the masculine, but keep to the feminine”.  Because it is the female energy that is in touch with where we live.  And that is what we need – to come back down to earth.

Some possibly helpful advice for fellow-sufferers of psychosis

In the spirit of Proust, I am now going to analyse all this.  As I said, if you are sick to death of all this, avoid postings in the category “anatomy of insanity”.

Here’s what I think now:

it seemed real to me for the following reasons:

1.  It came to me unbidden, without any conscious or voluntary action on my part

2.  I did not believe my unconscious could invent such things

3.  Expreiences such as waking at 3 am and being in ecstatic communion were so far outside my realm of reality that I thought they must be connected with someone else.

I now realise that the mind is far deeper and more complex than I had understood, and that in times of upheaval it is able to present as reality those experiences which are not real.

I also believe there was a deep wisdom in all of this, which allowed me to believe in the reality in order to get me to a certain point, viz:

I was very stuck in my life and my art.  Fulfilment involved an upheaval so terrifying that I kept putting it off from day to day just as Proust did.

Whether or not there was any connection with anyone outside me is something I will never know.  And that is as it should be.

On a deep spiritual level this has all been for my development.  I have experienced divine love.  It all got tangled up with one individual but now I can separate the strands.  Even though it has been the hardest thing I have ever done, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

I hope these comments may be of use to anyone who is going through a similar thing.  If you are, here are some of the things that worked for me:

be aware that the physical is where we live

stand.  Literally!  Stand on your own two feet.  Practise the mountain pose

connect to your breath

do lots of karma yoga (washing up, gardening etc.  Connect with the earth and nature)

don’t do lots of meditation.  If experiences are too much, avoid meditation altogether

eat regularly and eat wholesome food

try to get enough sleep

Use your support network.  Don’t neglect your family and friends.  Tell those who love you what is going on with you.  Ask for their support but ask them to refrain from suggesting solutions or interpretations.

Give it all to a higher power (whatever you believe in.)  If this means nothing to you, just give it to the earth.  Imagine you are breathing it all out.

Try to enjoy life!  Don’t stop doing the things you enjoy.  Go out for meals, drinks – visit friends.  Connect yourself to others in an everyday sense.  Keep in touch.

Avoid taking up any new activity or challenge at this time.

If you want to post any comments or questions, please do.  I am not an expert, except that, having been through these experiences, I am an expert on my own psychosis.

Take care

Liz

Here is where I stand…

..I can do no other. Who said that? Was it Kennedy? Martin Luther King? Anyway, in a tiny personal sense that’s it for me.

Have you ever seen an expert chef fillet a fish? Me neither. But this is how I imagine it: the fish lies inertly, inexpertly n the dish, practising its corpse pose. The chef comes along with a knife and flicks it a couple of times in the air. The fish then obediently falls into several bits which land on different parts of the dish. Thus: me, this morning. The chef? Swami Nishchalananda, or Swamiji as we call him, from Mandala Yoga Ashram. We spoke on the phone, he dissected my problem with a few deft passes of his intuition, and here I am. I can see now how this whole thing happened.

I shall be doing a Proust on this over the next few weeks ie dissecting it and mulling it over. So, as I said about He Who Must Not Be Named, if you’re not a fan of Proust you might want to avoid this blog for a while.

Now, I know Proust isn’t going to call me. I’m not that crazy. Honest…

Couple of beers with Peter tonight. I have no idea what is going to happen now, but I firmly believe it is all for my highest good.

Thanks, dear reader, for reading. If things had worked out according to my psychotic nightmare, by now I would be offering you all tickets to Birmingham to see me on stage.

I will never know whether any of this had to do with anyone apart from me. But I don’t need to know. As Aslan says in the Narnia books, everyone is only ever told their own story. Because that’s all we need to know.

I may, in future weeks, connect to some blogs about mental health problems. Because that is what this has been, at least in part. It has also been a sublime experience, which, as I said to Swamiji, I wouldn’t have missed for the world. But I have to come down to earth now.

Earth is where we live.

Enjoy the earth.

Have a good night. Don’t have nightmares. Especially after reading about mine.

Love to you all

Liz

OK so this is what I am determined to do…

to bring this plane of insanity in to land.  I am going to do this now.  I am going to call a halt.  I am determined that He Who Must Not be Named shall not enter my life again, since he refuses to enter it in time and space.  he shall not enter my head-space again.

The reality will emerge.  Either it was really he and he could not or would not manifest physically, or it was a bundle of things in my subconscious grouping together like a limited company and calling themselves by his name.  I feel a great sense of emerging fulfilment.

I cannot lose by this.  I have felt sublime love and the object of this love is unimportant.  It is divine love for everyone.

So a line is drawn under this now.  And this love will fulfil itself in other ways, and my genius will fulfil itself in other ways.

It has been a prolonged form of torture but I am calling a halt now.

Sorry.  I know this has been C***n by another name.  But I will create another category – that of “chronicle of an insanity”.  So you can avoid these in future if you want to.  But you might be fascinated to glimpse the end of the story.

Who was it did “A Grief Observed”?  I think it was CS LEwis.  Yes

www.amazon.com/Grief-Observed-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652381 – 314k -

I really am going to go off like a rocket.  Any moment now.

See ya!

Liz

One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go

Ah, Dylan, where are you now?

We know where you are

but you’re lost

Funny story from my time in hell (I never quite lost my sense of humour, even when I entered the staff room and thought for a moment that I was Jesus)

So this was in 1981 after Dave had broken my heart and ruined my life. I was comprehensively failing to teach anything at all at Irlam High School, Lancashire. The staff room was very amusing.

the theory of these places is that anyone can sit anywhere. There are no rules. But you’d have to be blind not to recognise that the large, round, oak table in the very centre with easy access to the coffee and a good view of the door, is for Senior Staff Only.

Well, there was one person who didn’t. She was Canadian as well – and whether it was not being British or whether she was just gloriously thick-skinned, she didn’t get it. So she sat there unaware.  It was so funny. I think the humour of this got me through those dark days. I was so ruined I didn’t even listen to Leonard Cohen any more (that’s how had it was). Well of course they didn’t want her there – but of course they couldn’t say anything – because anyone can sit anywhere. So they tried everything. We watched in helpless giggles as day after day they tried freezing her out, talking over her, leaning across her, jogging her elbow – anything they could think of – and she just sat on, oblivious.

Ah, Reggie, where are you now? I need to thank you. You saved my life;

Novel on Yellow Paper

I can pinpoint the exact time and place when I started writing.  I was eight, and I began a novel in a yellow notebook.  This was years before I’d heard of Stevie Smith mefeedia.com/tags/steviesmith Unfortunately this novel only ran to one page and then stopped.

Munich Station

30th December, 1980, Christmas coach trip, going home for New Year.  One breakdown, three suicide attempts behind me.  We pull into Munich Station.  The courier points out the toilets – but I only have eyes for the kiosk.  Suddenly I know I have to start a journal.  Now.

Back on the coach with a tiny, squared notebook and a pen, I begin.  The notebook is now destroyed but I can remember the first thing I wrote:

I asked the man opposite if he was enjoying the ttip.

“So far”, he answered gloomily, as though he expected his enjoyment to come to an abrupt end due to some sudden and unforeseen circumstance.

A bit wordy (I think I was reading Dickens at the time).  I also remember:

The countryside is dusted with snow like flour on bread.

I was aware of choosing the word bread because “cake” would be twee.  I now think that bread is also appropriate because the Germans seem to eat a lot of the stuff.

Sending a wodge of poems to Ambit magazine tomorrow.   www.ambitmagazine.co.uk

Keep everything crossed! (don’t bother – see “fuck off post” 6th Sept)

TTFN