“They’re really powerful”

he said, as he gave me a small handful of powdery mushrooms. Okay, whatever. It was halloween, and I didn’t think of it much. It was supposed to be good time night. And I guess I wasn’t really thinking that the last time little mushrooms had crossed my path, I wasn’t taking manic depression drugs, specifically Zyprexa.

“So an antipsychotic and a mushroom walk into a halloween party. . .”

And the first hour was okay, and so was the second, although I was starting to feel a little tripped out. Wacky. Slow and slipping into molasses. We go to a friend’s apartment for something to drink. Water. La la la. This is nice.

Then everything goes to black.

Waking up and my friends are shaking me asking me if I need an ambulance. I think of the hospital. I think of going crazy. I figure compliance is the best thing. “yes, that could be a good idea,” I concur. Some paramedics come. I list everything I’ve been on for the night. Beer. Antipsychotics. Pot. Mushrooms. Mood Stabilizers. Yep, my body’s one big old party. I still feel high. Stay calm stay calm. Whew. This bowtie is hot. Good thing I wasn’t wearing my new top hat when all this tragedy hit.

At the hospital time drags on. The nurse is dressed as a ghoul, another one is a princess. Some crazy people come in. Someone who was slipped a hallucinogen and is freaking out. Some guy got his arm broken and is screaming bloody murder. And two people have been stabbed.

Later on I also hear that Halloween is a big time for babies being stolen from hospitals. Weird.

I’m feeling better, but the hours drag on until it’s 7:30 in the morning. Grey light filters onto the street as I leave the hospital, vowing to never again mix an anti-psychotic with a hallucinogen.

****************

So they voted for Bush. And the world throws it’s hands up in exasperation. I don’t even know what to say, but I feel I should post something. Nah. We all know what it means, more freakin’ wars, more desperate imperialism for oil. Blah.

Yesterday I bought a persian carpet for only twenty bucks. Woo! It’s a bit dirty, I have to find a place to clean it up for me, but at least now I have a rug, which I have needed for a while. Ugh! I really have to clean my room AND write a paper and figure out my presentation of Stanislavsky. Blah.

Anti Bush Music Video

From Eminem

My favorite part is where he makes putting on a bunnyhug a revolutionary act.

I am lonely

Being in Montreal is bizarre, to say the least. It’s not the people I am having trouble with, but my own ghosts, the little shadow of Thirza that still walks down these streets, all shattered and fucked up. And it’s a strange feeling, because in Vancouver I did a lot of healing work, started feeling really stable, understood what it meant to have both feet on the ground. Rooted in some kind of understanding of myself as a freak, found a community of freaks, found a place that I could call my own. And here I feel strangely disjointed, disconnected, and alone, even with people surrounding me.

I am lonely, it is true. There’s no one I can laugh with about my latest weird dream, that Condoleeza Rice was necking with me and gave me the secret papers about 9/11. I mean that’s fucked up! I must be watching way too much CNN. I woke up and was all willied about Republicans.

Still, there are some good things about being back here. One is that I have to face my demons, and all those people who saw me do fucked up shit that I don’t even remember. Mania is a weird thing, some parts of it are totally blacked out. I only remember this glorious feeling of light, and churchbells. And the hospital, and when the cops came to get me.

My rat did an evil thing which has also made me feel fucked up. He ate my friends hamster. I didn’t even know what to say when I found out. How do you apologize for your little friend eating your friend’s little friend? I mean, how do you even begin to make that right? And such a grisly thing to do. But how to you stop an animal from doing what animals do?

I am nervous about my performance, always wondering if it’s going to be good enough. It’s a problem I have. But today I bought fake blood which even “oozes and clots” according to the label. It’s basically corn syrup. I want to talk about my body, about my ancestors and where I come from, and how bloodlines are not always something you see on the outside, it’s all interior for me. When people of colour start talking about their identity based on the colour of their skin, I always feel left out, because I’m not an obvious person of colour.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts out here.

Oh yeh, I guess I should give you a link to this whole do. It’s La Centrale

Teletbubi zurück Winker!

which means:

Someone who waves back at the teletubbies.

You Puffmutters can find more German insults at:

http://www.insultmonger.com/swearing/german.htm

I am presently sick, ill, dead on my own two little feet. I’ve been drinking Buckley’s because I believe that something so foul tasting must have some medicinal purpose. Of course it could be just a ruse to get people to drink camphor gism. I’ve got this horrid cold I can’t seem to shake, all icky and blah. It felt like I had mucus coming out of every pore a couple days ago, now it’s down to a chronic cough and some dramatic looking sweats. I’m sure my roomies are horrified, considering all the gross sounds I was making on the weekend, and the fact that I pretty much laid around in bed the whole time.

Then today I took transit, feeling like a typhoid mary, me and my germ factory, touching all the handrails. I started feeling bad for all the strangers I was making sick, and then today I called a friend who’d borrowed money for beer. In a croaky voice she said “You made me sick.” Not even a hello. Oh, I felt like a terrible little germ factory. I just hope the wee little rat doesn’t get sick. Rats are terribly vulnerable to respiratory infections.

Anyway, I have been too ill to write and now I am off to Montreal. So the german insults will come in real handy, yeah right. Dammit. I should see if they have any french insults.

They do!!

“Sais-tu combien de temps ta mère prend pour chier? Neuf mois!”

Although “Léchez mon clito” would win me more dates.

Go find out what I just said.

Kiss that Social Anxiety Better

Over the past year I’ve noticed my social anxiety running amok again. Le sigh. It’s pretty silly really, I get all queasy and my hands shake. Shake shake shake. Shake that booty. Damn, that would be funny, if my butt shook instead of my appendages. I wonder if it would be easier to hide. Someone told me that shaky hands are just a medication side effect. Could be true. Sometimes my hands shake when I’m not even thinking about being in public, with everyone’s googly eyes looking at me. It’s a bit of a liability when you’re holding a cup of hot coffee.

Has that ever happened to you? Holding something hot, like soup or tea or whatever, and you get all shaky or spill it on yourself AND IT BURNS!!! Ahhhhhh! But you can’t just drop it. And so you have to be all burning, finding a spot to put it down. Ouch!!! Kiss it better someone quick!

What’s with that, the kiss it better thing? Kissing something never makes it feel better, except that in your heart you get the warm fuzzies that someone cares enough to put their lips to your ouchie.

Is that even safe these days? I guess no one kisses gross ouches, like oozing bleeding roadburn from a spill on your bike.

When I was a kid my mum would always get so upset when one of us got cuts and the like. She couldn’t handle blood very well. She’d say “Ooo, eee, ouch, ah.” It was like she was the one who was hurt. I remember barricading myself in the bathroom so I could dig out gravel from my knee without her making me feel worse. Once my sister got all mad one day and threw a bowl on the floor and broke it, then stepped on a huge shard and cut the bottom of her foot open. Mom couldn’t even look at it, even as this huge puddle of blood appeared. (Okay, so this is a gross story) So I had to be the one to declare that we needed to go to the hospital. Have you ever tried to take a hundred and thirty pound angry bleeding mentally handicapped woman to the hospital? It’s quite an adventure really.

But that’s not about social anxiety is it?

Sometimes being crazy in public is kind of goofy, I’m all “ha ha, la le la la, don’t pay attention to my little hand quiver.”

It’s a bit rude to point out a crazy person’s symptoms. I’ve had people IN PUBLIC point to my hands and be all “LOOK AT THAT!! ARE YOU EVER SHAKING!! WHY ARE YOU SHAKING!” And I’m all “shuddup!”

Maybe I should get people to kiss my little hand tremors better. It would be cute if someone who liked me did that, just for your future reference, if you are someone with a wee crush.

“And to your left is a suicidal man on a crane”

These were essentially the words some friends and I heard from a bus driver, as he spoke into the p.a. system. Sure enough there were police, an ambulance, and the fire department, all assembled below a crane on a construction site. I caught myself straining to look at the would-be jumper. Dear lord, suicide as a spectator sport.

“He’s just below the orange part” the bus driver continued saying, as he slowed the bus to a crawl so we could all rubberneck this man on the verge of death.

And then we went dancing????

This city’s getting to me.

Energy and Bipolar

I need to go for a walk. A long walk. The kind of late night stroll where you listen to cds and take the quiet streets. My legs are itchy. I need to be somewhere, to go somewhere, and yet there isn’t a destination.

Somedays I can walk all the way to the downtown eastside.

Other days I can barely get to the bus stop a block away, sometimes I can’t even get out of bed. Sometimes showering is a lot of work, and not worth the bother because I’ll just get dirty the next day, and the day after, and so on.

I always knew I had probs with my energy levels fluctuating, but now being bipolar explains all. Amazing. I have the best excuse. And except for the little suicidal lemming brain issue that comes up every winter, it’s not really an illness that could kill me.

I mean, I suppose it could. A lot of people die from being bipolar. I suppose I’ve dealt with suicidal tendencies for two decades now, and I feel more equipped to deal with that than with being manic. Being manic is so seductive. Who wouldn’t want to be manic? A lot of the drugs people take mimic mania, like coke, or crystal.

This post has no point really, except to say I need to go have a walk, a long walk.

Elderly woman sexually assaulted – doesn’t go to police for fear of being committed

This (link) kind of thing makes me so upset. This elderly woman (76) was terrorized by juvenile boys and sexually assaulted, but was so afraid of being committed to a mental health facility again (after a previous sexual assault) that she didn’t contact police.

Only someone who has never been in a mental health facility could possibly think it’s a healthy space for someone to be in, esp. someone who’s just gone through severe trauma. Mental health facilities by their very nature were created as penitentiaries for the “insane.” They are not a form of health care so much as a form of segregation. And what does it say about hospitals that this woman was more in fear of them than the boys assaulting her? What kind of treatment did she recieve the last time she was committed?

I don’t know what else to say about it, read the article.

Dating and Mad Pride

So school has been taking up a lot of my time, along with keeping up with all my friends, and I haven’t had a chance to update as often. Anyway, I am sitting in a big mess, which I simply MUST clean up today. I did some of the readings I have to do for tomorrow’s class, and later on tonight I have to do a script analysis. So much work!

And in the middle of all of this, I have decided it’s time to leap headfirst into the dating pool again. I’ve been quasi available for a while, but I think part of me was too busy with me to be able to actually give anything to another person. And probably another part of my whole reluctance to date has to do with my weight gain from my medication, and wondering about when would be a good time to disclose my odd illness. People act wacky when they find out you are crazy.

Recently I ran into yet another old acquaintance who’s been relatively recently diagnosed with bipolar. It’s a growing trend. It made me kind of sad, because I think she’s really worried about the stigma.

Stigma is a sucky thing. And yet so many people who are really talented and lovely are bipolar, or another mental illness.

But then even I carry around some internalized stigma. This whole dating thing, for one thing. When do I say “Oh by the way, I am bipolar.” Is that going to keep women away from me? Will they make assumptions about how that impacts my life and therefore themselves? And finally, do I even want to date someone who has a narrow view of life, who demands impossible perfection?

Ugh, I still have this room to clean!! I should go do that now.

On the Rumoured Death of Identity Politics

Recently an old friend told me she was sick of identity politics. I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond, especially considering the vast majority of my work concerns identity and the power others attempt to wield over me concerning my identity. I wasn’t sure what to say because my identity is so fluid, ever changing and shapeshifting to suit my mood. Being on the borders of male-female, white and red, identity is something I wake up to every morning when I have my coffee and read the news. It’s something I struggle with every day, trying to navigate my way through polarized territories which other people rarely consider.

“Identity politics is dead.”

Recently during a conversation with some fellow mixed bloods we discussed peoples aversion to identity politics. Someone suggested it’s something people say when they are tired of being allies to those of us who carry around some intense identity issues. It’s something people say when they’re tired of hearing us out, tired of being a part of the struggles of marginalized populations, tired of us “taking space”.

And then there are other questions I have about identity, like, is my bipolar disorder an identity? Some people with bipolar disagree, they do not want to be defined by their disorder. However in my case I identify as bipolar because it has made as much of an impact on my life and how I view the world as being queer and a halfbreed and inhabiting a female body. It’s something I want to be proud of for forming and influencing who I am today.

So when someone says “I’m sick of identity politics, identity politics is dead,” what are they really saying? Are they saying that artists should cease making works about race/class/gender/disability/sexuality? If that’s what it means, I am seriously fucked, because I could talk about those things forever and still barely scratch the surface on what it means to live life as an Other.

And who decided identity politics was dead anyway? Probably someone who’s in a relative position of power in society, who doesn’t have to fight all the fucked up isms every day of their life.

As long as humans and post humans are struggling with hatred, fear, and oppression based on their identities, identity politics is relevant and crucial to artistic practice. As long as people ask me “What are you?” in regards to my race, gender, sexuality, whatever, identity politics is relevant. As long as certain people with certain backgrounds have certain privileges that others are denied, identity politics is relevant.