Real World Update

My sister is more well off than me, temporarily anyway. She has $1000 to spend and we have to do it before social services decides that disabled people are living in the lap of luxury. So she’s taking me to Cirque De Soleil. Or rather, Cirque de Petit Soleil, since it’s an offshoot. I’m kidding, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the touring show from them. And we’re trying to help her get her group home’s Snoezelen room together. I keep telling her I’m going to drop E and spend all my time in her Snoezelen room. We were talking with her worker about siblings of the disabled eventually becoming the guardians when our parents die, and it was so funny, I said “I know, I might be her parent one day” and she just shot me this nasty look like “Oh, I don’t think so little sister, don’t insult me!” I had better find a better name for looking out for her AND being her little sister.

I’ve decided I don’t have enough money to go to Burning Man this year, sad!!! 🙁 Oh well. Next year maybe.

My iPod is being a jerk, I have to troubleshoot it because it’s not holding a charge properly. And I need my iPod!!!

I had a terrible dream the other night that the War started, I was walking in the street and suddenly a guy came running past saying The War is here! And we were all running and suddenly there were tanks everywhere and I had to keep hitting the ground to avoid being shot. And I remember so clearly waiting for bullets to rip through me, but none ever did. I ended up at my friend Preston’s, describing the war to him (he’s blind) while I looked out the windows. And then they attacked his fridge (??) and I said “Preston, they’re attacking your fridge” and he ran after them and was like “Stop attacking my fridge!”

Life’s okay. I’m doing well, my sleep has gone to a nice 6.5 hours a night, which is pretty good. I’m really giggly, but not crazy. Maybe I’m just supposed to be giggly. No, actually that’s not true, I’m only giggly around a certain person who makes me feel happy.

Invasion of the Penis Snatchers

I have a tendency to pick up whiffs of thought here and there and then eventually put it all together. A while ago I found out that the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) originated as a more obviously malicious book known as the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witchcraft. This horrid piece of Inquisition literature was used principly to destroy european indigenous religions, Druids, Witches, etc, by describing what to look for in witch hunting. The Christian Church was using Jesus’ teachings to enact a deadly system of colonialist control over the population, and religions which didn’t depend on an intermediary between the divine and the practictioner were seen as dangerous to this need for total control. In fact one other reason was because pagan cultures practiced the democratic election of leaders rather than choosing leaders by birthright (ie The Monarchy). And you can’t exert total control by saying God told me to do this if your population has their own experience with communicating with divine forces and can tell you that’s bunk.

Incidentally the word “faggot” as a derogatory term for gay men comes from this era as well, because homosexuals were used to stoke the fires used to burn pagan practitioners.

Apparently the origins of the Inquisition were men becoming convinced that women were stealing their penises (women who were Witches of course). You can parallel this with Freud’s later development of Penis Envy, which probably comes from the same paranoia and thus perversion of female power.

Side Note: This is a Tibetan sand Mandala being made:

But we don’t have burnings at the stake anymore. Now we have four and five point restraints, and chemical lobotomies. MUCH cleaner and yet equally destructive.

I had been reminded of this when I was reading about Spiritual Emergencies and how they relate to psychiatric designations as Manic Psychosis and Schizophrenic breaks. I had read When The Dream Becomes Real a couple of years ago, but even though it’s a solid piece of scholarly writing, I still was too brainwashed to be able to accept or understand it. I’ve read it again and I have to say, it does a really good job of describing the rise of Pathology labels in terms of colonialist control.

In Celtic Ireland, there was no specific pathology for persons in schizophrenic states. A guardian would take responsibility for anything they did, but there weren’t derogatory labels for someone in a state of psychosis. They were touched by god, or taken by god. And in fact the Irish lived by the principle that “the rights of the insane take precedence over any other rights.” That is VERY different than today, where the rights of anyone else take precedence over the rights of the insane, even if someone else is asserting their right by destroying the brain tissue of the insane via meds, lobotomies, or ECT. Carl Jung in fact had a concept of schizophrenic breaks as a state of self healing, and Loren Mosher’s Soteria project bore this out, along with John Weir Perry’s Diabasis and R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall. However that idea has been generally disregarded in favour of capitalist pharmaceuticals originating from nazi experimentation, while another of Jung’s ideas were developed into the Myers Briggs Type Indicator which many people follow wholeheartedly. Kind of like Christians harping on the Ten Commandments and disregarding the fact that Jesus included two more commandments which are even more important than the originals.

Side note: This is an animation of a Mandala:

Colonialism in the guise of Christianity did some hideous things to the European pagan traditions, like turning the Horned God of fertility into Lucifer, who was originally just a knock a bout fallen angel in the Bible. It was also a lazy way of explaining evil in the world. The major Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter, correspond to previous pagan holidays based on lunar cycles. It was the saddest case of appropriation ever. And yet strangely, in it’s own way, still adheres to the original Pagan religious structure. Christianity all over the world is adapted by and for different cultures actually, which is why in central America the Virgin Mary is the big religious figure and why the Sacred Heart of Jesus is everywhere. Also Latin American Christianity has some of the most awe inspiring churches and cathedrals because the people who lived there responded to sensual opulance more than in other places. The African religion of Voodoo survived by substituting saints in the place of other spirits.

Sometimes I look at the world and just shake my head. I don’t know why religions have to fight each other all the time, especially since I enjoy aspects of nearly every religion. Mostly though I think it’s ridiculous for everyone to fight over religion since at it’s most basic essence it’s using the same types of universal energies for the same communal spirit. Mantras, prayers, magic, medicine, it’s really all the same thing. BUT I don’t think we should all have to practice spiritual beliefs in the same way, because that would be boring and people would feel like they didn’t fit in, imagine a Voodoo priestess trying to sit through an Anglican sermon, or a Catholic trying to deal with being in a hot dark sweatlodge. Not that interfaith occurances don’t happen, but MAKING someone worship in a certain way, aaahh! Nooo, don’t do it. That’s how we get places like Residential Schools and pedophile nuns, ugh.

And yet psychiatry is still the number 1 place people turn to when someone starts talking about God more than they did before or acting otherwise peculiar. Logically one would turn to a religious or spiritual figure in the community, but no. Instead we go directly to the transubstantiated Inquisitors who are only too willing to “help” someone become part of the colonized body politic again.

This is an animation following the rules of Chaos Mathematics.

The irony, of course, is that now more than any other time people need to watch the Self and Ego breakdown, and this means record numbers of people are having psychotic/schizophrenic states. But I don’t feel like being ashamed of mine anymore. I sorted some awesome stuff out for myself in it, and I think I’m a stronger person now (especially now that I’m off the drugs). I don’t think I’ll ever have to go back to that state, because I think I managed to absorb the important bits before I got Blanche Dubois’d.

Graduate student in clinical psychology:

– Overheard at a talk given by R.D.Laing in New York (When the Dream Becomes Real)

This is a video of quark and subatomic particles moving according to Chaos theory. By the way, Mandalas figure prominently in psychotic episodes.

Names

I was talking with my mom last night about finally deciding to get a Name. I forget why, but she basically asked why I even wanted one and I got all frustrated and said “Everyone else has a Name!!!” I mean an Indian Name. My late cousin Christopher’s name was Snowdrift. Laurel told me that a long time ago you could go to any medicine person and they would all give you the same name. Now you can get different names from different people, and none of them will match. Kind of like Ab Fab, Patsy Stone’s full name is really Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone. So many names!!!

I currently have three, the usual number, first middle and last. Thirza is from Thirza Jones, who is a filmmaker incidentally and one of my mom’s friends. Jean is from Jean Goodwill, an Aunt of my mom’s who was one of the first Indian women to get a university education and went into nursing. And Cuthand is from my Grampa. But I did have a boys name, which was never used. If I’d been born male I would have been called Sarain.

Sarain, for those who don’t know, was an influential Aboriginal artist who also played matchmaker with my mum and dad. His father was stationed in Italy during the war, and met his mom over there. Then Sarain moved to Canada to learn more about his roots. He set up my mom and dad and then when he was in Mexico died tragically in an undertow in the Gulf. Just after he died, my mom got a letter from him where he mentioned going to see a fortune teller who had a little monkey who pulled out cards, and the card it pulled out was Death. Oh man! Mum’s friend had to call Sarain’s mom in Italy and tell her her son had died, not being able to speak any Italian either! Anyway, I think he suppressed the story of his Venetian past to avoid being called a pretend Indian or something like Grey Owl, which he wasn’t, he just had an Italian background as well. No, Pierce Brosnan will not be playing Sarain. My dad once showed me some of his drawings which clearly depict the back of the boats used in the canals of Venice. In fact, I just found a rather cute article with my dad in his youth and Sarain.

So I have thought seriously about taking on this boy name which would have been mine as well as my usual name. I have no idea what that would look like, besides having a longer name. I don’t know if sometimes I would go by Sarain or not.

And I still want my Cree name, because I would ordinarily have gotten a new name after reaching some level of adulthood. But it’ll probably be a name only a few people know, generally we don’t run around calling ourselves by our Cree names, it’s kind of special, although some do. Maybe we’ve just been colonized into humility and shame! Oh no!! Really though, a lot of stuff about my culture I simply don’t tell people as kind of a protection mechanism.

Ugh, my last job I worked with some white guy who thought Indian names were stupid, I nearly choked him. And the boss wouldn’t tell him to knock of the racist shit. No wonder I was so miserable.

Ancestors

It’s nice to be living near my family and have people to talk to about spiritual concerns. I know I don’t chase people down to smudge them or anything, but I was raised primarily with Cree spiritual traditions, some of which seem very unbelievable. I used to get so frustrated and indignant with white people when I tried to talk about spiritual events I’d just naturally seen during my life. Or heard about. But I don’t think I will talk about my personal experiences. Instead I will talk about my Great Great Grandfather Mistatimwas.

His story is the one I remember the most, we were all told it over and over so that we would remember where we came from before the first Cuthand had a last name. Mistatimwas was a war chief, horse thief, and medicine man. His name means Flying Horse, because that’s what he looked like when he was stealing a horse. he was apparently an excellent horse thief. You have to remember this was a long time ago, when things were still very different. He was the war chief for the infamous Battle of Cutknife Hill, during the Northwest Rebellion, and we used to get long drawn out explanations of his battle plan which actually worked, using the nature of the geography and basically surrounding the Red Coats led by Colonel Otter.

Mistatimwas doesn’t get any credit for leading this battle actually, Poundmaker does. But in fact Poundmaker was the Peace Chief and did the diplomatic work before and afterwards, and for some reason the europeans decided he was the one who lead the war. Nope. He did lead the people, but the battle plans and war charge were lead by Mistatimwas. I hear there are historical documents of Mistatimwas saying “I was the one who did that!” And Poundmaker saying “Yes, it’s true, he did it, not me!” But Poundmaker is the one who got into shit over it, and he’s the one who’s remembered.

Mistatimwas was also seriously injured during the battle of Cutknife Hill. Here’s the story (the spelling is different between what I was taught and what’s written, I don’t know which one is correct, I’ll have to ask Grampa. This is from “Old Ways of the People of the Cree Tribe” by Fine Day).

“Misatimwas was dying – wounded in the belly. His guts were coming out. He told them to cut it off, but no one had the courage to do it, so he did it himself. The Bear hide was hanging in the tipi where he lay. Misatimwas drank a lot of water all the time. His father took down the Bear hide near morning, when Misatimwas was just about dead. The old man started to speak to the hide and covered his son with it – head to head – and sat behind the heads. He took a rattle and started to sing a Bear song. The fire went out – it was pretty dark. Before long we saw the Bear hide moving, and we heard a Bear squealing. The old man kept on singing. We could hear the Bear all the time, coming down. I don’t know if the sound came from the hide or the man’s body.

“Misatimwas was so low that he didn’t want anymore water. When the fire blazed up I went close and Misatimwas motioned me to come closer. “If I see the Sun coming up I’ll live.” I could hardly hear him. His father asked what he had said and I told him. Misatimwas sank lower. It seemed as though the Sun wouldn’t come up soon enough. I listened to his breath and the others were watching for the Sun. They finally saw it, but I thought that Misatimwas had fooled himself – that he was going to die anyway. But when the Sun was quite high he drew a deep breath. Not long after he breathed good – called for water and was well. I saw this with my own eyes. He was Jose Cuthand’s father.”

Heady and romantic stuff for a young native bolshi activist. Woo! Anyway, yes, Poundmaker got the credit for the battle of Cutknife Hill. I actually went to day care and school with a descendant of his, Tara Worme. I locked her in a sandbox and went off for snack time with Laurel and left her there when we were three. I think my first television appearance was me chasing her around a jungle gym with a little halloween witch on CBC. She and I also did a 24 hour hunger strike in solidarity with the other hunger strikers when a cap was put on Native education funding back in the 80’s. I wrote a really mean letter to Mulroney. We weren’t allowed to publicise it though because people thought some would assume we were being pressured to do it, when it was our idea in the first place. Sadness, a political act without an audience, like one brown hand clapping.

While Mistatimwas was being doctored his son, my great grandfather, Jose, fled Saskatchewan and went down to Montana to tour with a Wild West show. I’ve heard it was because he thought his father was dead for sure. So he went down to the states and played Indian for a while, then he came back up here. Mistatimwas is buried on the reserve in an unmarked grave, because he was buried with a medicine bundle and the family didn’t want grave robbers to get it. As you may surmise, some pretty intense medicine has been handed down through the generations. I’ve known a couple people to tell me about the process when it shows up, it involves a specific triad of female spirits. But that’s getting personal. I can say that the Bear spirit stays with our family, it’s a really funny character, but also fierce. There’s something about dreaming about being eaten by a bear that starts the process of becoming a healer, but it’s pretty scary for me anyway. I keep running away. Nooo! Don’t eat me!

Generally the Bear spirit in our family is terribly witty though. I’ve heard other tribes get suspicious of Bear spirits, but I think there are various types.

I saw a Huron medicine bundle at the Smithsonian once and my mom and I were really disturbed by it, the fact that it was being displayed, for one, and that you could tell it was getting angry. It was a really unhappy bundle. I’ve heard that museums with remains and artifacts get VERY haunted. In fact, I recently heard that a museum in the States with the remains of an Inuit shaman had been having some problems because he would get out in the middle of the night, leave his case, and start walking around the museum, TERRIFYING the security guards.

I’ve also found out that a lot of old artifacts which are being repatriated, like bundles, have been turned into toxic waste, LITERALLY. To preserve leather and feathers they’ve been liberally sprayed with DDT. If people want to repatriate them to bury them in the land, they can’t, because it’s legally toxic waste material. They can’t even touch it. Now that is a crime. I know to some people aboriginal spiritual objects seem like just a bunch of things, but there’s some really intense power in them, and to turn them into toxic waste material is just beyond revolting.

No one’s taken me to the location of Mistatimwas’ grave, but I’m hoping this year someone will show me. I’m also hoping to get a grant to do my huge history documentary. I’m hoping to trace my Cree and Scots ancestors and figure out where I come from in both the European and the Aboriginal lines. I’m hoping to find out which tribe in Mongolia or Sibera has the same haplotype as me and go visit them. And at the end I’m going to get my lip chin tattoo, and hopefully be able to speak Cree.

I hate telling my interesting stories to people who just go “Nah, that never happened, it isn’t possible or logical.” Boring. There are many things in the world we can never begin to comprehend, especially not with that DDT attitude.

Here’s my Grampa’s version of the story, and to remind you, Poundmaker was the Peace Chief so he did all the diplomatic work.
Poundmaker’s Surrender by Stan Cuthand, Saskatchewan Indian 1988
Ahaw is a Cree utterance of agreement, Tapwe means truth, or more specifically true speech. We were also neither a patriarchal nor matriarchal society, we were egalitarians, so there’s a lovely detail about Poundmaker’s wife trying to speak to the white soldiers and them being totally disinterested. In fact, women were the ones in charge of trade, which made the Fur Trade history complicated. Women would tell the men what to say because those were the only people the white traders listened to, and often in order to be a successful trader white men took on native wives (with the charming name Country Wives) because otherwise they couldn’t access trade as easily.

Anglican 404

A work related moment of humour: This is the quote which comes up on a 404 page not found page on the Anglican Church of Canada website.

“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.”
— Amos 8:12 (KJV)

Lord, why doth thou 404 me?

Beer guzzlers and scrumpers from the Betelgeuse system

I was talking to one of my best friends just now, the one who saw the UFO/Wormhole thing with me (see October). She was telling me a story about someone who got abducted in a movie she saw based on a true story and was freaking me out. Then she asked where my mom was. I’d just heard my mom come in so I said “She was at work but she came home.” Then I heard her crack open a beer “She just cracked open a beer.”

“Are you sure it’s your mom?” She was really freaked out.

“Oh honestly, do you think aliens walk into the house, say hello to the dogs, and crack open a beer?”

“Just wait, now one’s going to show up in the basement and say ‘wazzup’!”

Really though, that is just being silly.

Once I had a strange conversation with a friend’s boyfriend about what would constitute illicit drugs for an extraterrestrial and he said “Maybe they go scrumping.” Would explain why there’s so many UFO sightings in Interior BC.

“Bisexual Straight Woman” and cold toes

For the record, let me say outright that I don’t believe in this term “bisexual straight woman.” I just found it on the After Ellen site in reference to a tortured discussion of bisexual celebrities. Oh man, my head practically exploded after reading it. To sum up, a bisexual straight woman either says she’s bisexual but hasn’t had a relationship with a woman as defined by, uh, I don’t know. But if they had sex with women but never a long term relationship, they were bisexual straight women. If they were settled in a long term relationship with a man, they were bisexual straight women unless they emphatically asserted that a future relationship with a woman was still possible. And if they were virgins with women, they were most definitely bisexual straight women.

I don’t know about you, but I think asking ANYONE in a long term relationship if they could ever love someone else is kind of fucked up, that’s like asking newlyweds who gets the cats when they divorce.

If you mean someone who’s straight who’s saying they’re bisexual for appearances, then the precise term is poseur. Although I don’t know that many bisexuals who are poseurs. I don’t think I know any actually. I do know bisexuals who swear off an entire gender because they had an icky experience, but I also know straight women who swear off men when they have an icky experience, likewise lesbians swearing off women. But generally those are more of fits of pique. And let’s not even get into gay men trying to swear off men, those are just Brokeback tragic.

If you mean someone who’s straight but doing an experiment (I can hear the test tubes rattling) then fucking be quiet, one of us could nail her! Seriously though, so what. Lesbians experiment with boys too.

So does that make them Bisexual Lesbians? Oddly enough, some would say yes. And I suppose some people might identify as Bisexual Straight women even, but it’s not for us to put a secondary sexual orientation qualifier on to someone else who has already clearly defined themselves. Especially if it’s just because they’re monogamous. I mean, if they weren’t monogamous then people would bitch about all bisexuals being promiscuous and unfaithful (although, again, someone can be promiscuous and unfaithful of any orientation. And sometimes they’ve set up poly relationships, which is a whole different thing and again not orientation specific.). Oh, so many pitfalls.

I’m not sure I’ve decided between the bisexual or lesbian label, or straight even because sometimes I’m a man who loves women. I am a queer without a category. So multiple categories ARE possible, but imposing them arbitrarily to diminish someone’s identity is rude.

On other news . . . I stood out in the freezing cold waiting for a bus for over an hour!!! I don’t even want to look at my toes, I’m worried they’re black as old bananas. No, they’re fine, just frozen. I did think about some things while I waited though, nice things. Shivery quivery delicious things. And some sad things. Personal stuff really, but it was nice to have the time to do that.

per request: Bi with a Boyfriend: The Latest Hollywood Trend?

One of Us, One of Us

I’ve been really getting into this book I’m currently reading, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen. Basically he discusses how humanity groups itself off and attacks those of other groups by denying the very human experience of plural identities. It’s quite a lovely book, right now I’m at the part where he talks about the plural identities in Muslim communities. For instance, he says that while algebra was invented by a Muslim, we don’t group it off and call it Jihadist mathematics. However we do that with certain other things originating with Muslim people.

Kurt Vonnegut says that George W. Bush hates Muslims because they invented algebra! Ha, what a hoot! Maybe he’s right.

But back to this idea of plural identities, as someone with a cornicopia of identity politics I have often gotten into trouble with various factions wanting me to renounce everything except whatever particular singular cause they’re advancing. And causes are good things, but renouncing one’s own internal diversity in order to fit into a cause is highly problematic. I did once have someone ask me “But really, who do you REALLY align yourself with.” At the time I said Aboriginals, but mostly because the person asking the question was Aboriginal as well and I didn’t want her to hit me. Also because I hadn’t chewed on this idea enough. But it does become a game of “Which identity needs the most support and has the most discrimination? I’ll go with that identity for now and forsake the rest.” Bleh. I’m giving up on that.

But I’m also trying to departition my mind. The other day I was watching Angelina Jolie’s interview on Inside The Actor’s Studio (if you really want to know what the stars are like, this is probably the most insightful programme). She mentioned being part Iroquois, and I though “Oh, that’s why she’s so sexy, she’s native.” And then I back tracked “But lots of other races are sexy.” And then I thought “But what is wrong with saying aboriginal people are sexy when so many people assume that we’re ugly?” And then I thought “She is sexy, and she is mixed race like me, and possibly being native has something to do with her sexuality, but that doesn’t mean ONLY natives are sexy.” Fucking hell it’s hard being politically aware.

Still I don’t think it’s appropriate to deny that her mixed race heritage has nothing to do with who she is. In fact, I’m surprised I didn’t know that myself. TONS of “white” people aren’t in fact white, they are mixed race, but people assume skin tone determines racial seperations, and that is problematic. Some native people try to kick me out of the club because I’m such a pale chickie, even though I have clearly defined Native facial features, including a Mongolian halo in my eyes (I have brown rimmed with green). And then white people, well, sometimes they try to claim all of me only because of my intelligence, and encourage me to refute my Cree background.

In the immortal words of James Dean “You’re tearing me apart!”

Same with lesbians. I get into deep shit for loving bisexuals, and I also get into shit for being trans, and I’m sure I’ll get into more shit if I also mention I like cocksucking. Jeezie Chreezie! I don’t think I fit in anywhere. I have kind of revoked my lesbian membership card though, I used to say it because I only fall in love with women, but there are some other complicating factors. Queers have so many goddamned categories. Butch femme soft butch soft femme butchy-femme femmy-butch, gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, intersexed, leather folks, vanilla folks, drag queens, transvestites, transsexuals, FTM’s, MTF’s, FTF’s, MTM’s, oh man! And this plurality isn’t a problem at all, except that there are border guards who get all pissy when someone is a variety of any of the above categories. Even among bisexuals there’s always huge entangled semantic wars about what bisexuality means and who is bisexual and so on. Gives me a headache. Fucking hell.

On the other hand when someone says “Don’t label me” I have a tendency to roll my eyes, just because then it seems to be almost closet case behaviour. But that is me.

I remember when I was finally coming out as a sadomasochist I had some tortured conversation with an older friend who had been in the BDSM community for quite some time. I was trying to reconcile being a submissive with being a person of colour and ALSO with a tendency to date white women, and I was all hung up on the politics of submitting to a white woman and she said “Jeezie Chreezie Thirza!” (She didn’t say Jeezie Chreezie, I just like that particular blasphemy right now) “Jeezie Chreezie, don’t take politics into the bedroom, just leave it behind.” And I was so freaking liberated. It wasn’t about a person of colour submitting to a white person for fun and games, it was just two HUMANS doing erotic powerplay, and fuck the rest.

The irony of course is that now I’m submissive to someone with a similar racial background as me.

And when I had the psych diagnosis, people often made the erroneous assumption that Craziness precludes high intelligence, so suddenly I wasn’t just crazy, I was also unbelievably stupid. And this was compounded with the fact that my treatment entailed utilizing cognitively disabling medication. So I’d be really struggling to show my intelligence and people often dismissed whatever factual things I mentioned as the ravings of a mad woman. I can’t even begin to list off the things I told Normals which they dismissed out of hand based on my identity. I knew a SHITLOAD of stuff about psychiatry and how it worked, and they kept pooh poohing me as a paranoid freakazoid because they had read a VERY informative article on manic depression in Reader’s Digest. Fucking Normals!!! I’m still amazed at the vast assumptions people make about madness.

Salvador Dali once asked Freud if he could psychoanalyze him using a new treatment Dali had invented called the “Paranoid Critic” method. Obviously Freud turned him down, since he was a paranoid critic. Freud that is, not Dali, Dali was just having a laugh.

One of us, one of us. Gooba gaba.

Mixed race, sadomasochist, bisexual, humanitarian, actress, director, mother, pilot, UN Ambassador superstar Angelina Jolie

Addendum: Being Iroquois could also relate to her humanitarian work, since the Iroquois Confederacy forms the basis of democratic government.

Jeezie Chreezie!

I glanced at some research papers on Depakote (AKA Epival, which I have stopped taking after four years). You would not believe the shit it can do to your body. Diabetes II, death, liver faliure, pancreas damage, birth defects, cognitive dysfunction, anorexia, visual disturbances, psychosis, depression, restless legs, etc etc etc. No wonder I’ve been seriously fucked up for four years. AND two other relatives on Epival do have diabetes II now. I’m . . . not as shocked as I thought I would be. I thought Zyprexa was evil, but Depakote is just as evil, as are the SSRI’s. Fucking hell.

Take your meds indeed. Take this and stick it up your ass, wanker!

A description of the Capitalist marketplace of the Pharmaceutical Industry

Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love Of Pharmaceutical Companies
A little giggle from The Onion.

Who Am I?

I’ve been so seriously overmedicated for four years that I don’t even remember who I am anymore. It’s really strange. I’m reading everything I can find on gifted adults, there tends to be more literature about gifted children than adults, but I’m still finding out some fascinating stuff. One is that a high number of highly gifted people need either significantly LESS sleep than average and some need significantly MORE. I thought I was someone who needed more, but I’m realizing that had more to do with my medication. In fact, I’ve been doing really decently on four hours of sleep, which isn’t entirely uncommon in the highly gifted population. And when I think back to when I was a kid, I was the same way. I went to bed at around 10:00, but I lay awake in the dark until 3:00 am usually. And yes, I was busy entertaining myself during those hours, but that’s probably TMI. It was strange at first, I got a bit freaked out by it because all those psych pathologies started going through my head about mania and no sleep blah blah blah. But I go to sleep at around 2:00am generally and wake up pretty much automatically at 6:00am. WEIRD!!! I lay in bed for the required 8 hours though, just because I like the physical rest even if I’m not sleeping.

What other weird things have I noticed? Oh yeah, sensual overexcitability. Well, since most literature on gifteds is around children, they tend to talk about more neutral things like being irritated by sock wrinkles and tags in clothing (it’s true, tags will drive me spare!). But sexually it’s like being on low grade ecstacy, it’s fuckin’ intense!! Lovely intense obviously, it makes everything so exquisite. I found out that it makes my experience of sex quite different from the experience someone without sensual OE would have, and I guess I never knew that. For instance, people with sensual OE often experience sex in more spiritual terms, and I suppose I never understood why so many people didn’t feel the same way. It’s a religious experience man!! It makes sense though when I think about times in my life I really did do ecstacy, and it seemed to hit me far more strongly than my friends. I’d be laying on a couch wiggling my toes for an hour in total bliss and unable to walk around, and meanwhile they’d be dancing and fucking and generally being busy bodies. And I’d be like “Oh, I can only move my toes, well that is still nice.” And it turns out that early sexual development happens in gifted children, which explains a lot about me.

Ooh! I also found out that really highly gifted people have a tendency towards androgeny, which is SO me. Fuck I confused everyone from when I was a baby until now and probably until I die. I know I used to drive FTM’s crazy because they thought I was just some kind of stubborn hold out, and then other people thought I was quite feminine and didn’t see the butchy side of me at all for some reason. I don’t know. I did seriously consider the hormone option, but I let it go when I decided I prefered negotiating my complex gender, which is sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes both, and sometimes neither, from this particular body. It’s too fluid for me to contain it into a specific gendered role, sometimes grasping my gender is just like trying to impose solidity on mercury. As soon as I try to say I’m a boy, I’ll do something so typically girly like write someone’s name in the margins of my paper and surround it with dozens of tiny hearts, and vice versa. Which is why I date bisexuals mainly. Once I did date a lesbian who was calling herself bisexual at the time and I remember we hit a wall when I wanted to be a boy with her and she suddenly had to admit she didn’t really like boys. Yeah, awkward!! But she was still terrified of being a lesbian. It was ridiculously bizarre. She couldn’t be seriously with me because I was a girl, but she also didn’t find me sexy the few times I was a boy. WTF?

Silly big breasted boy!

I’ve also realized I do background thinking, which is hard to describe. I process several things at once, but some things I am thinking about in kind of a quieter way at the back of my brain, and they’ll be a different thought in the forefront (and several in between) and suddenly the deep background thought will have a breakthrough and just pop up out of seemingly nowhere. I’ll be talking to someone about say, uh, Quaker oatmeal, and then suddenly from the back of my head I’ll switch to talking about ideas around translation and where meaning is lost, and people will just be baffled by it. I’ve compensated by tracing the conversation backwards to pull it back to what we were talking about before, but still somehow I’ll end up mixing Quaker oatmeal and translation together and SOMEHOW it will make sense. I’ve never had that specific conversation though, it’s just a random example.

I’ve also found that I’ve made myself less threatening to people by being ridiculously funny. I don’t know why, but people are more willing to grok an idea if I inflate it with Wildean wit, even if it’s quite a serious idea. I’ve even been able to ridicule people who are nasty in disarmingly charming ways, I don’t know if that’s good or not, but it’s something I’ve noticed. I try not to do it though because teasing can be really mean, and I don’t want to be mean. But I will do silly things to an idea just so people will follow me with it. I play a lot, and even thinking and reading serious heavy tomes is still quite a playful experience for me.

A side note about Oscar Wilde. I went to Pere Lachaise Cemetery when I was in Paris (to see Jim Morrison, among others) and I got to see Oscar Wilde’s grave. It has this huge granite masculine angel on it, but someone hacked the penis off and took it away. Who has Oscar Wilde’s guardian angel’s penis? Someone must repatriate it immediately.

And onto this idea of repatriation, I had the most humourous faux pas with a Wiccan friend the other day. I was trying to talk about how sad I was in the Wizard of Oz when the witch gets melted, and I said “That is a terrible thing to happen, even to a witch!” Oh fuck. I got the most nasty look directed at me, and for good reason, so I started qualifying in a ridiculous way. “Even for an evil witch.” Another nasty look. “It was a travesty of justice!” And now a weird look. “But it was an accident” because it was, she was just trying to put the scarecrow out, who was on fire, and the Wicked Witch got in the cross fire. But by then I had just done some very silly roundabout and so my friend just shook her head.

Really though, all the Wicked Witch was doing was repatriating the ruby slippers from a colonialist in a gingham dress. Is that a crime?