So, I am spending my second day waiting for Verizon to fix my phone line. I have a cel phone. The phone line is for my computer....
I got the call yesterday, just before eight, checking to see if I would let them in some time before twelve. I then passed the afternoon calling Verizon to see if they could find out when their man might show. At six, I left for a meeting in prison. At seven twenty, Verizon called to say they were at my house.
Bastards.
This morning, I had some fun trying to locate an office that was open and could tell me if I would be visited by a repair man any time today. It was a fruitless waste of time. As I said to the last person I spoke to, we can put a man on the moon, yet we still can't locate the repair guy.
Wankers.
To All My Friends....!
I fell of the blogasphere for a few reasons. I am on a fantastic new med, which has me much more social in the R/L. I also took on a lot of commitments for the prison stuff I do, as well as sponsoring a newly released inmate. I am in school, as you may know, so I have been stuffing my brain with all sorts of new information...
I shall stop here, because I need to stop by and see all of my virtual friends, maybe even respond to comments!
My dear readers,
Thank you for your on-going concern and interest. I am now back and will be trying to catch up to all my friends over the next few days.
The opening was packed, which was great and iI got a 91 out of 100 on my exam....something I'm still pissy about, as I wanted 100!
I plan on uploading pictures from the show, visiting all your blogs and looking at all the emails I haven't opened. In short, I plan on participating again.
I have been remiss in writing my blog, and worse, in visiting the lovely group of friends I have made. I was a bit busy, what with the show and I also had my first exam from the Animal Behavior College. So I am dragging a bit. I am well, just a bit out of it. I am now giving myself a holiday, planning to return in a week or so.
Please know that you are all in my thoughts and soul....
Here are the two portraits for the show. I think I lost how Tenbroek (on the right) looks in the painting process.....! Oops. Hope she doesn't hate me too much. Have run out of time, as they are due at the gallery tomorrow. Should be interesting, as they are soaking wet right now.
The show that I'm in includes interviews of all the artists. Below is the portion of mine that will be presented with my work. I'm printing it for those of you who live too far away to attend. If I can figure out how, in the future I will offer the entire recording of it.
I suppose overall I had a contented childhood. I remember going to places outside of where I lived and thinking, this is where I could be happy. I remember distinctly thinking if my name weren’t "Dano", then I wouldn’t be in trouble.
[When I am painting] I need a catalyst of some sort to get me to the actual painting. So something as silly as a Swedish fish candy could be the starting point. After a while, I begin to lose myself in the process. I cease to think, and I get into perhaps a state of mind where one doesn’t exist. That is when I know that a panting is going well. It is the loss of self. That is when I produce the best work.
The title “artist” is a heavy label. A lot of times I tell people I am a painter. The term “artist” gets bandied around and cheapened. That is the great thing about Oasis. There is none of this ridiculous laden down stuff [at Oasis] that exists in art schools. It has to be about you showing your own truths from within.
When I have been institutionalized, I bring with me a sketchpad and whatever materials are allowed in that particular institution. It’s a great way of recording how I am thinking and what I a dreaming, and through the drawings you can see how I progress mentally. When I am producing in the studio I feel better about myself mentally. I feel more validated. Producing art is not really related to identity. It just has to be done. It’s more like breathing.
Last year I came out of the hospital and for three months they’d had me on 600mg of Thorazine, amongst other medications. It’s considered a medicinal straight jacket. That greatly diminished my ability to work visually. In 2000 or 2001, I went through twenty one bouts of electroshock therapy. A lot of doctors will tell you that it doesn’t affect your memory unless administered too close together. I’ve lost two or three years worth of memories from around that time. I don’t remember 9/11, for example.
I did a lot of work to rebuild my memory. I have a saintly good friend, Cricket, my best friend. Apparently, we watched the same movies again and again and again until finally I turned to her and said, “Haven’t we seen this before”? I actually would never have signed up for ETC, but for the fact that the doctors were telling me this would be the cure to my crashing and awful suicidal depressions. Pat Lyons, Cricket, and my boyfriend begged me not to go for it, but I was interested in my survival, so I signed up for something that I believe was one of the most self-destructed acts of my life.
I would like to meet the Mother of [the painter] Utrillo. She was a model for many people and a self-taught artist. Her son was much better known than she. She struggled. She worked in various capacities to put together a pittance of money during a time of great upheaval in France. I admire a woman who fights to do what she feels driven towards.
Because I am bipolar, when things are going well, I have some intense abilities. Visually, I can see things that other people can’t, like I can see rainbows in the hairs of my cats. I also have a great sense of smell and taste. I can comprehend and process large amount of information. When I am feeling well, I can be witty and charming and bright and appeal to people. I think it has also given me a certain sensitivity and understanding to other peoples’ plight, which I think is important. It’s hard for me to know whether or not my heightened senses inform my work, because I haven’t seen life through another person’s brain.
We [people with mental challenges] are super-human people. We do things that would waylay the average person. William Styron wrote a short book called Darkness Visible. He points out that people who are depressed are in incredible pain, and they are required to go around like normal people. They go through their daily routine while suffering gut-wrenching, mind-numbing suicidal thoughts sometimes, and they are supposed to talk to people and even smile.
The average person who was in that kind of pain would be bedridden, hooked up to IV’s with pain relief being pumped into them and people visiting them with cards and flowers. And this is not true of people who are depressed. They are looked at as incompetent or lazy and shiftless and bizarre. In 2002 the World Health Organization stated that we have a pandemic on our hands, that one out of five people globally are clinically depressed.
Mental illness is separate from physical illness in the way that the medical establishment views it. I have a medical power of attorney that my best friend holds for me, but that apparently does not include my mental health. So I have to get a separate page added to include my mental health. I don’t see why mental health is not naturally included with your physical health. Your mental health affects your whole health.
My mental health has affected my immediate family. My sister has elected to no longer include me in her life. When I started going in and out of hospitals and it became clear that there was irreparable damage, she didn’t see fit to come visit me. My father and my mother were in New York recently and elected not to see me, even though I haven’t seen them in six years. He wrote and said it was his choice, not my mother’s, and that ever since I was a small child, I have done my best to be provocative, irritating, and enraging. I found that ironic, because all my life I’ve tried my level best to make him proud. I wrote him back and said, “As a child who was sexually molested and with mental health issues, one tends to act out. It’s a fact. I won’t bother you anymore”.
I don’t like the label “mental health consumer”. I didn’t shop for this. It has cost me so much over the years in terms of family, time in hospitals, brain cells from ETC, in terms of loss of self-esteem, and all those sort for things.
If I could change one thing about myself, I’d change the depression because it is so awful and it eats up a lot of my time. However, I would keep the depression if it would help others become more aware and understanding.
My face shows everything and nothing.
Some of you may recall my dislike of "Fwd:" email guff. Look, I love to send things that I find funny/interesting to my friends. But I don't send everything on to everyone. Why? Because I consider whom I'm sending things to. Just because I email crap to you, it doesn't mean that the next person in my book would enjoy said crap.
In light of that, I offer an email sent to me by "X". Clearly she still doesn't read my blog. She mass-emails me and fails to know when I'm ill. But sometimes the "Fwd" she has sent is worthwhile. This one may be an urban myth for working divers, but it's a good read.
So, enjoy the "Fwd". For the sake of this blog, I have edited it. If you wish to view it in it's entirety, give me your email. I'd be happy to "Fwd" it to you!
Subject : I love my job
This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.
Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana . He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103..2 FM in Ft. Wayne , Indiana , who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all .
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this : We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea.
It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse.. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn . I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done.. In agony I realized what had happened.
The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with Five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive.. I was instructed to make three agonizing =20in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber.
The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up &g t; your butt. Now repeat to yourself, 'I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.'
Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!! Pass this on to all your friends, just incase they're having a bad day!!!
My world is made a lot better by my best friend Cricket and the boys in our lives. Here they are, in no particular order:
This is Zebedee Minky Star.
The late, great Hello Newman.
Nigel Nancyboy a la Warhol.
Griffin, the first dog that I ever loved.
Push My Buttons!
Stumble It!
Friends Of Bill.
A Hoy Award.
Thanks to Stephany over at Soulful Sepulchre.
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