fucking hell

Fucking hell, do I ever hate colonialism. Especially today. I’m deeply suspicious, and I hate feeling like that. I’m realizing that when I had my psychotic episode and got hospitalized I became locked into one state of being for a VERY long time, like four years. And that doesn’t mean four years of being in an ordinary state, that was like four years of being in the underworld. Ugh!! And now I’m getting out of it and I have no one to talk to because a lot of new stuff is happening which is very unusual in this culture I got stuck with. I’m being a very critical thinker though, which is good. But mostly I’m talking to more spiritual friends of mine who kind of get it. I guess I am having a spiritual emergence right now, which is corresponding to various states of spiritual emergence including kundalini awakening, shamanic crisis, unitive consciousness, psychic opening, and psychological renewal through central archetype. Which can all be found on this page here.

I’m doing well with it, I think. I’m keeping myself grounded by walks and doing physical labour, I’m still taking all my vitamins and so on, I’m trying to spend more time in nature. My body is changing on me and that’s weird, things flare up and go away. I’m more sensitive to certain things, like foods and sounds. I’m just trying to make sure I pay attention to the physical side of living and don’t drift away for good. I think I’m doing well on that front, I’m maintaining myself decently, still care enough to wash and clean and look after all the animals. I’m temporarily having a moratorium on the news, but I glance at it now and then. I feel pretty safe actually, since I’m on my home territory. I don’t feel like I have too much energy. I’m having trouble absorbing new information though, there’s a lot being worked out internally that’s taking up all the space. And then there is sort of a mystical undercurrent, but I’m not confusing it with this world which is good.

I’m ridiculously shy again, which is kind of funny. Maybe that’s just self preservation though. Sometimes I get ridiculous shivers up and down my body, or get super hot or super cold. It’s definitely not as highly dramatic as the first presentation, but I was in a state of extreme distress at the time. There are some other things showing up that I need to talk to someone about, but that person would have to be pretty conscious, I don’t want to explain it to someone with a tiny view, it would be too weird for both of us. There are at least two people who are kind of acting like spiritually aware bumper cars who keep pushing me back to a decent spot, and that’s really good. But without being evil, I mean they don’t tell me to fuck off to the bin, which is good. I’ve been reading everything I can on what to expect, you’d be surprised how much information is on the web about spiritual emergence. There’s actually a very good blog called Spiritual Emergency which is written by someone who’s been there.

I also found out there’s more than 7 chakras, fucking hell. I mean, in all the images it just spirals out after the crown and then that’s it, but it’s not true. There’s five more!! Really though, I do feel pretty secure, just confused. But not nearly so terrified as when it first happened in Montreal. I’m not in the heavy dark stuff really, which is where I was at the beginning. I’m trying to put some kind of more individual spiritual practice in my life so I can express it somehow without setting up a yin yang ritual with the damn salt and pepper in front of company. Which I’m not doing this time, but it would be something I would have done in Montreal. No impulse control then. Maybe I’m just walking on tip toes. And this time I have no interest in getting into the deep stuff I’m thinking about with everyone, this is kind of just me right now, and some close friends. Plus I’m sure I’m healing a lot of stuff and I don’t really want to bring up something that’s entirely specific to me and has no relevance to anyone else.

It’s a funny process. It’s the physical effects in my body that are the strangest though, I’m really not used to that, and I was never taught how this stuff happens but apparently it’s nothing out of the ordinary for this experience. So that’s good.

Weirdness fo sure!

Various Thoughts on a sunny Sunday

The Downtown Eastside isn’t all a bad place, actually the really pretty parts of it almost overwhelm the rest. Almost. There’s one very active Buddhist temple only a block away from the infamous Bad Manors. My friend, who I will call X, and I used to walk by it all the time on our various travels. One time we were walking up to it and we could hear this “mmmmmmmmmmmmmm” noise, and so X says “Oh I wonder what they’re chanting for today.” And we get up to the open doors and there’s a little woman vacuuming in there. I couldn’t stop laughing. Even now I sometimes say “Do you remember when they were vacuuming?” And she’ll say “Shut up.”

Bad Manors had a mouse problem. I remember one time I saw a mouse run into a plastic bag and I picked it up and was like “Oh, thank god, I can get this out of my house and not kill it either.” So I took it downstairs and let it free in the alley, only to see a cat come tearing out of nowhere and after the mouse. Crap.

My friends are getting married and I still have nothing to wear. Oh man!! I don’t think I’ll have money for a tux. But I really need to make use of this damn top hat, and I don’t know when I’m ever going to get it together to do my Marlene impersonation. I’m too much of a damn perfectionist, I practically won’t do it until I can speak German. Preston speaks German, I should talk to him. Still, it’s one of those funny languages that sounds violent no matter what you say. His sister yelled “Zipper” at him in German and really, it sounded like a horrible curse. “Reißverschluß!” Noooo!! Don’t say it again!

Oh I know, I could tell you about the Dene/Navajo migration. I heard this from my aunt. This tribe was following a vision someone had of four mountains, and they’d been walking a really long time over from that other place, and there was a schism in Saskatchewan when some people didn’t want to keep following the vision and decided to just stay where they were. So the people who became Navajo kept going and ended up at four corners.

And that’s why the Dene and Navajo languages are identical, well, with some changes I’m sure.

Happy Videos

Bjork comes from a patented gene pool.

I love Bjork. I think just about all of her music has come at just the right moment in my life. Army of Me was my high school song. I still watch Tank Girl once a year, which had this song in it.

This is Tori Amos singing Glory of the 80’s. This is what Tori had to say about this song:
“Mainly the honesty of the decadence of that decade. There’s the line and then, just when it all seemed clear you go and disappear. I knew a lot of great people in the eighties but at the time I didn’t always understand them. Now, there’s such a void in the art world, people with vision have physically passed on. It’s also a stab at political correctness – you can’t say this, you can’t say that; now everybody has to be called a Spanish American, an African American and I mean… Oh bloody, fucking hell!!! I understand the abuses that have happened and I absolutely think recompense should be paid, but you don’t do it just on a surface level. Everybody thinks that the debt has been paid to the ‘quote unquote’ Indians who had their land taken away from them because we call them Native Americans. It’s hard when everything is so eggshell, eggshell, eggshell. I do miss the eighties. It was great, knowing that friends were on one hand dialing a charity and on the other hand doing a line of blow — but not lying about it, being honest. None of us are this light and dark fantasy. What’s dark to you may be light to me and vice versa.”

The Burninators Club

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Originally uploaded by fit of pique.

I forgot to mention, when I was burning my stuff and setting off fireworks I made this prototype for my take on the fireworks classic The Burning Schoolhouse and made the Burning Psych Ward. It’s just a box with paper, some windows glued on and an open door, and where the Chimney is there’s a fountain firework. But it didn’t burn the way I was hoping it would, it just burned the roof off. I think I will use firecrackers next time and a secondary fountain or flare.

I’m trying to find healthy/creative ways to let out my darkside in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone. I’m toying with the idea of ethical pyromania, where things are made just to burn and in a safe way. I would call it The Burninators Club and it would meet once a month in a secluded location. There are a lot of ceremonies set up by societies to burn things in nice ways, not like book burning or burning at the stake kind of crap. Look at Burning Man. Anyway, yes, that’s one of my ideas for being ethically dark. I don’t really see darkness as a bad force, if it’s not attacking other people or animals. I think there is such a thing as benign darkness, or neutral darkness. That probably sounds really weird. I guess what I mean is that things can be balanced, and in trying to be a decent person you don’t have to try to divide yourself up to behave kindly.

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Originally uploaded by fit of pique.

This is my biohazard tattoo. I was fascinated by this idea of human bodies being forced to be seen as always potentially contagious. And I think having a pathological label also made me want to embrace this idea of having a dangerous body. So I got it tattooed on the back of my neck. I have to get it redone though. You can kind of see my Lamictal rash in this picture actually.

I have a strange relationship to my neck. When I was a little kid I had a really hard time with having my neck be vulnerable, I would freak out if it was exposed. And then I also have a really particular birthmark on my neck, a small dark oval. I used to think I was a victim of Jack the Ripper and got my throat cut, but that didn’t really jive with the rest of it, like why it’s an oval instead of a line. And since childhood, I’ve also had some very vivid memories of living in the second world war in Germany. I remember running from the Nazis, I remember hiding in a lot of places, I clearly remember standing by the windows during a bombing raid and feeling helpless. And if I hear air raid sirens, I freak the hell out. Oh man, do not like hearing those. I’ve never liked them, ever since I can remember.

Anyway, I found out that Nazi’s commonly killed people by shooting them in the neck.

So was that my last life?? Probably, but it’s mostly obscure, except I do know more than I should about that era, I mean, more than what I’ve read about.

But back to my neck, it’s also my favorite spot in the world to be touched, except I don’t let anyone touch me there. Except for one person. It’s a funny thing. And I have a vampire fetish like you wouldn’t believe, so I have no idea if that has to do with it. But I always liked vampires in the sexy way. Not in the rampaging Lost Boys way.

I thought I told you to stay off the boardwalk.

Once when I was a kid my babysitter and I made rice krispie squares and recited the entire Lost Boys screenplay word for word from beginning to end. I used to be able to do that with a lot of movies, memorize them in total. I probably still could.

Maher Arar: JFK to Syria

I’ve heard recently the US refuses to take his name off of their terrorist list because if they admit they made a mistake it will set a precedent.

French and Saunders are Regressing

Healing

This healing process I’m in is going a lot more rapidly than I had expected. My bloggy nature sometimes makes me want to write about it here, but for various reasons I’ve decided not to, partly to do with personal safety issues and partly to do with thinking about some advanced concepts that I don’t think most people would understand even if I took days and days to tell it. So rather than try to distill some of these thoughts into the form of a blog post, I’m just working it through with select people.

I’ve also discovered that I’m forming closer friendships and relationships with people who have known me the longest, people who knew me before I was an adult and more adept at hiding myself. I have one best friend who’s known me since I was three, one best friend who knew me in high school and someone else who knew me then too, and I’m going for coffee with a woman I knew when I was thirteen who helped me figure some stuff out about myself during a VERY difficult lesson for at least three people. Also, of course, I’m spending time with my family again, which, although it has some rough and rocky patches, is actually turning out to be really good for me. Spending time with my sister again is probably one of the better reasons to live here, since she’s non-verbal and we can’t use the telephone together. She’s somewhat telepathic, but it’s subtle and easy to miss if I’m not around her on a regular basis.

The worker at her home once said “I don’t know why people think these people don’t talk, they’re talking all the time!” It’s true. I’m excited about her Snoezelen room, man, everyone should have a snoezelen room! I want one! Actually, I’m trying to figure out cheaper ways of having/making sensory objects and so on, because the official snoezelen stuff is ridiculously expensive. So if anyone has any tips on DIY Snoezelen feel free to leave a comment.

Mostly though, I think I’ve undone this gordian knot of being stuck in some shitty things that happened to me. I was really worried I would end up carrying it forever, but I’d rather send it back to where it came from. Bleh, who wants to feel psychic restraints for the rest of their life? Nobody.

I’m also looking at mandalas a lot. They’re very healing, I can’t articulate why, they just are. I’ve also realized all of my tattoos are mandalas!! I was shocked, hey!!! What the hell? When Carl Jung had his psychotic episode he had a particular mandala which formed the cornerstone of his life’s work. And I had one too when I went psychotic, but it’s pretty intense, I don’t feel like writing about it here. Maybe some other time. It’s actually from a photograph I had, but I don’t even know if I still have that photo. I still have a drawing of it though, one thing which escaped being burnt. I drew it over and over and over and it’s not until now that I figured out what it means. Unusual! I think I’m going to start drawing them for therapy reasons.

“… Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: ‘Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal creation’ (Faust, II). And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions.” C. G. Jung

Mad Pride

I just got an invitation to submit something for Mad Pride Toronto. Yay!! I have to think about what I want to present, goodness!! Thank god for psychiatric survivors or I would still be on medication.

American Fascism

I read that Mayan priests are going to be cleansing a site that Bush is visiting, AFTER he leaves. They say not cleansing it of the evil spirits associated with Bush would be disrespectful to their ancestors. I’ve often wondered what spiritual people are doing about this issue.

And now the Iraq exit strategy is to invade Iran. Oh fucking hell. As if not enough trouble was caused. Karl Rove is now saying that Bush’s legacy is Preemptive warfare, and that he sees all future Presidents following this ideology. Help us now!

Yes, the world considers America to be the 4th Reich okay? Let’s just get that out of the way right now. It’s a fascist police state, and if you don’t believe me here’s a link to an AWESOME breakdown of Fascist governments and the corresponding news stories from the States. In fact, at one job I had David Suzuki came to speak and told us in 20 years Bush will be on trial for war crimes. It’s true it’s true. Why did it have to come to this? I don’t know. I saw this all coming way way back when the towers fell and I remembered the Reichstag. LOTS of people did, I wasn’t the only one, at all.