Tetragrammaton

If you have seen Life of Brian you might remember my favorite scene, where the women have all dressed up as men so they can attend the stoning of a man convicted to death for saying Jehovah. The man is trying to explain himself “All I did was say that fish was fit for Jehovah himself!” To which the guard says “Stop saying Jehovah, it will only get you into more trouble!” “How much more trouble can I be in? Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah!” In the end of course the guard gets stoned for saying Jehovah.

Why was there a prohibition on using the word Jehovah? It’s somewhat complex, but very simple really. We have to look at the Tetragrammaton, which is God’s real name and which we’ve been told over and over not to use. Many say that his real name is Yahweh. To understand this name we have to look at translations from the original Hebrew. In Hebrew, this is accepted as a form of “To be.” Or, another commonly accepted translation, and the one which I will use, is “I Am What I Am.” Yes, Popeye uses the Tetragrammaton all the time. It’s just one of life’s ironies.

The reason you cannot use it is because when you say “I am what I am” it means identifying yourself as God. This is forbidden for various reasons, most of which involve control and keeping us all asleep. There are pitfalls and perils in realizing your God nature, for one thing, you’re in a mortal situation right now for a reason. No, you do not have powers attributed to God as most understand him, but that’s because you’re not ready. For another thing, you might not realize that everyone else is also God. There are a lot of things that come with this realization in kind of a domino effect, it really does change how you live. For instance, if we are all God, that means we are all the same person in a spiritual sense. That also means that while we are people like Buddha and Jesus we are also people like Hitler and George W Bush, or myself, who is clearly crazy.

But is “I am what I am” really the meaning of the Tetragrammaton? I would have to say yes, and I will tell you why. I read about the meaning of it, kind of but not really understood it, and then I read the Book of John in the New Testament. This is where some of the really interesting things Jesus said show up. We have to remember that the Bible has been gutted for political reasons, so certain things are vague just because then they could get through 2000 years of censorship. Just before he ends up being crucified, he’s asked to explain himself and if he really does think he is God or the Messiah. He responds “It is you who say ‘I am what I am.'” This is not just some bizarre affirmation, he’s using the Tetragrammaton, and in a very wise way I would say. He also says in another passage (and I’m paraphrasing) “You have been told that you are all gods.”

However, being god does not preclude being a stupid mean motherfucker, and that’s one of the pitfalls. I could get into my Big Bang theory of spiritual evolution, but maybe I will do that in a different post.

The problem with what has happened with the things Jesus said is that he became the supreme being, the god. Like since he became aware, that is not available for anyone else. We can’t say “Crucifixion was bad for Jesus, because he really was the son of god, but it’s fine for everyone else.” No. Doing something like that is horrid to do to anybody, “son of god” or not. And this is where Buddha catches us up, because he was really insistent about the fact that he was a mortal, like all life forms on earth, he really wanted people to know that enlightenment was possible for everyone, not only a select few.

One of the things which has frustrated me in my lifetime thus far is not that people don’t understand, it’s that they don’t WANT to understand. Everything you need to know is right here. This is a prime place to grow as a spiritual being, and if humanity ends without us waking up, we’re going to have to do it in a different form. And I don’t know about you, but having to evolve while living as a gaseous entity in space would take me a really really long time.

Within You Without You

I hope people don’t conflate my extended Eleanor Rigby years with this idea that I am forever and eternally depressed! There are a lot of things that make me happy, things that are quite small to some. I like looking at where buildings and trees meet the sky. I don’t think I can explain why that makes me happy, but it does. Astronomy used to terrify me with it’s enormity, but I quite like looking at star systems now. I like deeply emotional music, I like pop music too, I spent days and days wandering around singing the first few bars of My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas, why I’m not sure. I just liked it. But also sometimes I understand things better through music. I still go back and read Lewis Carroll books, because the ridiculousness of them is so fun.

I liked this album by Tori Amos when I was going crazy, I think now looking back on it it’s because it’s about positive disintegration.

The Smiths, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, video directed by the late great Derek Jarman.

The Littlest Birds by the Be Good Tanyas. Aw, so sweet!

The Importance of Bearing Witness to Suffering

I remember when I started out seeking to understand suffering. I think I was five or something. It was when I finally heard about the Holocaust in Germany, my mom told me that the Nazi’s would have killed my sister if we lived in that time. And I was so horrified, and upset, and I cried for about an hour thinking about it. Sometimes people think that profoundly gifted people regard persons with lower IQ scores as inferior, and I can tell you that is not true. People who think in that way, if they are intelligent, are usually only slightly more intelligent than the average population. Once you get into the high scores people actually have a very profound value for all life.

And so I valued my sister a lot. She was and is a beautiful human being, and I understood her, even though we crabbed like siblings do. I wasn’t ever ashamed of her, but sometimes I didn’t let people know much about her because I knew they would be judgmental as to her value and worth, and I didn’t want to have to explain something like her importance to someone so limited in their scope of thinking.

But it instilled in me a deep seated need to understand what had happened to all of these people in the Holocaust, not just the handicapped either, everyone, the Jews, the homosexuals, the Roma, the communists, all the fringe elements rounded up and ruthlessly murdered. Why would that happen? And so I began to study it, and I still do, and probably always will. It taught me a lot about the nature of evil, the nature of group think, and followers. And it extended from the actual camps to the political climate before the rise of Nazism, the seeds planted which could grow into such horrific shapes.

But more than that, it was about bearing witness to suffering. I hate the idea of someone suffering alone, because that was how I suffered. And so I needed to be there with people, even if I didn’t get there until decades later. It may seem strange to ruminate on such disturbing things. But I wanted to look at it inside and out, and make sure it would never happen again.

But it does, it did, and it is happening again. I used to be more vocal about the fact that the USA is a fascist state right now. I can tell you the history of the origins of fascism in America, because they funded Hitler, because they imported a lot of the war criminals from Germany after the war, because technically the war was won against Nazism, but in reality those people are continuing their work in the American government. I could give you all the links to find this out yourself, but google exists and you can use it on your own. A start would be to look up Operation Paperclip.

But people got really angry at me when I said it, because Nazism is considered the hallmark apex of evil, and to suggest that a country masquerading as a bastion of freedom is actually tainted by fascist thought pisses people off, like I am minimizing the original Holocaust.

But we do have to bear witness to suffering in order to grow. How many people turn off the news from Iraq when it involves a soldier deliberately murdering children? Probably a lot. Oh I don’t want to hear that, la la la. It’s this kind of deliberate ignorance which feeds evil. I’m shocked when I hear Americans still declare themselves the land of the free when it is so patently false. Canada also has malevolent forces in it’s government, and I look into that too.

But beyond the leaders who take people to this level, who create these intense sufferings, are the people being hurt. I know horrid things are happening at Guantanamo, in Iraq, at Abu Ghraib, in basically every section of this imperial march to world domination. But because people can’t or won’t bear witness to suffering, these terrible things are allowed to continue. It is the same here in Canada, if people knew what actually happened in those residential schools, the murders, the torture, the medical experimentation, they would have no other choice but to become aware of the damage of colonialism.

As a world which trusts the powerful, we have turned everything on it’s head. People glorify those who hurt, those who have guns, because those are the people who are seen as supreme. Supremacy is an irrelevant hallucinatory construct. People in positions of power have an alarming tendency towards psychopathy, marked by an inability to feel empathy or compassion, true empathy. And while you may do very well in society while being devoid of compassion, that doesn’t mean there isn’t something seriously lacking in your being.

Thousands of gifted people have died tragically trying to reform “powerful” psychopaths. But it is not them I am here to talk to. I want to talk to people who have a chance of thinking critically, who may really wake up in this lifetime. It’s been discovered that people can only emerge as leaders if they fall within a 30 IQ point difference between themselves and the average IQ of the masses. Beyond that, lower or higher, it completely falls apart. So too will most of my communications fall on deaf ears. But, I believe it is important that people start to show empathy, at least for the people around them. That is not such a bad place to start.

Suffering alone is difficult. It feels like no one cares, like you could be swallowed up by the earth and no one would give a damn. I know people did care about me after I got out of the psych ward, but no one seemed willing to hear what really happened to me in there. In fact, they would get defensive, because they did it “for my own good” and I am “expecting too much of them” and so on. Really, I think it’s because they didn’t know how to deal with guilt.

And when people start on a path towards spiritual understanding, guilt comes with the territory. It’s a difficult thing. Few ever said “I’m sorry that happened to you.” Or “I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to understand.” I have gone through periods of deep guilt over the state of the world, or over things I could have done to help people and didn’t. Some think that that indicates some kind of neurosis, but really it’s a nudge towards growth. I hope that some day I can be the person I expect of myself, someone who can instantly identify injustice or suffering and correct it in the gentlest way.

But the most powerful thing which could have happened to me, and did, actually, was being hugged after I got out of the ward. I wish I had more of those hugs, instead of rejection because people disliked being around suffering.

Love transcends death, but brute power can only exist on earth.

The Te of Rats

My best friend in college was a rat. That probably sounds strange to most people, but it’s true, he was a very wise old soul. And very silly. I think he kept me from killing myself more times than one would imagine. His name was Nikolas, and he was like a burst of sunlight in my life from the time he was a ratlet dangling from my glasses to his old age three years later snuggling up to me and just Being There. He also insisted in being in a video of mine once, he was honestly just supposed to be wandering around like normal but he leapt up into the frame. But mostly he would do things to make me laugh, and he would wash me when I was upset. I can’t adequately convey what his being was like, except that he was an exceptional friend.

When he died people ridiculed me for being so upset by it. I still miss him, five years later. I don’t know why people made fun of me, they thought he was “just a rat” and that small beings are essentially worthless. It was tragic, because that’s how I realized Nikolas contained more empathy than most of the people I knew. I remember crying and crying and deciding to leave Vancouver to find some place where people could understand mourning a rat. But, well, yeah, there isn’t a place where people understand that.

I’ve had some other very close animal friends, right now I have a dog who has the same personality as me, it’s really funny! People think he’s a bit of an asshole because he’s terribly suspicious of strangers and acts neurotic when they’re around. But as soon as he’s with people he likes and trusts he’s completely funny, energetic, loving, gentle, and ridiculously intelligent. It’s kind of interesting because he does come in such a small package, like Nikolas did, so people just treat him like a dumb little dog. I guess they just can’t understand him. And people assume that things they don’t understand are ugly or stupid. As bad as it sounds, how people treat my dog gives me a good idea of how they will treat me, so if someone’s a jerk to him I know to keep them away from both of us.

Once when I was in high school I came out of a store to get my dog Wesley and take us home, and I started talking to him like I always do when some snotty little girl said “Stupid! Talking to a dog! So so stupid!” And I was taken aback, not because I felt stupid but because someone so obviously idiotic was admonishing me. And if she had been a grown up I would have felt the same way.

Philosophical Questions

From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one’s passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt, that is the whole question. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

There are things I am supposed to have forgotten that I learned when I went crazy, deep insights into life itself, which make it impossible to ever look at the world in the same way. Camus called it recognition of the absurd, some people call it enlightenment, or awakening. Dabrowski called it Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration. And then of course a vocal majority call it psychosis, and feel very proud of themselves for labeling it as such. I don’t disagree with any of the labels, however I find it sad that Dabrowski thought psychosis ended the disintegrative process, because it does go on, there is the other side of psychosis, once you’ve integrated new knowledge into your life and hopefully not been too brainwashed to retreat to Primary Integration. I would tell you what these insights are, but it involves forbidden knowledge and of course, as seen previously, can get me into serious trouble. I don’t know how long it would take me to show it to someone else either, because for me it involved a combination of rabbinical study, quantum physics, taoism, and Buddhist thought, besides life experience. I understand why people don’t give away that knowledge so easily though, because it’s something you have to understand deep in your soul more than a logical analysis, although it is quite simple and scientifically based. I hear the film What the Bleep Do We Know explains it somewhat, but I haven’t seen it and some quantum physicists interviewed were apparently tetchy after.

But really, where I want to go with this blog is suicide, because that was how I ended up in psychiatric treatment when I took my first Paxil. I think suicide is a global problem more than an individual one, although it is true individuals need individually tailored assistance. But globally, we are committing murder-suicide. I heard that some politicians in the 80’s said they didn’t have to care about the environment because Armaggedon was coming and they were just interested in hastening it’s arrival. I think they genuinely believed they were doing a good thing, because the closer we get to Armaggedon, the closer we get to meeting Jesus! Right? Right? Hmm. Well, yes and no. I think most people have already met Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed, who are more of a state of mind than a specific individual. But they most likely would not have recognized these beings if they did meet them. The other issue is that most spiritual leaders were speaking largely in metaphors and parables, because if they spoke any other way they’d get into more trouble than they were already in.

People have all kinds of favorite quotes from the bible, like things about rods and staff and mustard seeds and fallen angels. But no one ever mentions my favorite bible quote, which comes from Jesus himself and goes like this:

“Not everyone who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do. When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord! In your name we spoke God’s message, by your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!’ Then I will say to them ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you wicked people!'”

I want to send this quote to all the Fred Phelps of the world, but I doubt they have the capacity to understand it anyway, or that he’s talking about them. There has been a sad divergence from what people like Jesus were actually talking about compared to what people believe. Now of course people really believe there is an external Kingdom of heaven which will be transposed on the world, and that men like Bush will be all decked out in Gold or some foolish nonsense. And it’s really talking about an internal experience. When Jesus said he would come back, I think most of the time he meant that an awakening would happen within people which would change the way they think and act. It may sound silly to say The Kingdom of God is within you, but it’s true, if you allow it.

Dabrowski said that positive disintegration was impossible for people who didn’t have enough Development Potential, which he identified as traits such as overexcitabilities, abilities and talents, and a drive for personal and autonomous growth. He believed someone with all of those had no choice but to undergo positive disintegration, while someone who had no Development Potentials could never achieve positive disintegration, even if they were in a conducive environment for it. I find that interesting, because when you look at Buddhism there is a belief that everyone can achieve enlightenment. Maybe development potentials take a few lifetimes to show up in someone? Buddha’s first act on his journey towards enlightenment was when he was a beast of burden in a lower realm and felt compassion for another oxen who was having difficulty carrying it’s load. He helped the other ox share it’s load and was struck down by a demon. While he didn’t achieve enlightenment then, he obviously did later on. So in that sense, any act of compassion should be seen as a personal achievement, even if it results in death.

This is a lower plane of existence than I would prefer to live in, which is perhaps why I was so obsessed with suicide for so long. But in the end, I decided I had to go through it, even though it involves pain and suffering. And by “go through it” i mean of course the business of living. I think the fact that global leaders are allowing our world to go to hell has a lot to do with the fact that many are not spiritual in any meaningful way, and that their own desire for suicide is leading them to make decisions about earth based on ending the experience now. The fact that they do not speak for the majority, and are probably psychopathic, doesn’t seem to make a difference. It does disturb me that essentially all of humanity is being held hostage by spiritually impoverished individuals, but at the same time I know enough about mobs and ignorance to avoid people who can’t understand.

While I was flipping through the bible for that favorite quote of mine, I also came across another:

“Take care of my sheep. I am telling you the truth: when you were young, you used to get ready and go anywhere you wanted to; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you up and take you where you do not want to go.”

Goddamn Scribblers!

I recently found a message board for gifted adults. I felt semi-intimidated, it reminded me of The Dummy Police feeling from elementary school. The feeling has the official title of Imposter Syndrome. Basically in elementary school, for at least five months, I was sure the Dummy Police were going to run into the program I was in, say a mistake had been made and I was actually really stupid, and throw me back into the regular school system. I was terrified in an attracted/repulsed way to the idea. If I went back to the normal school system I wouldn’t have so much pressure to succeed, I could wilt back into the background and vanish, which seemed really attractive. On the other hand I was really excited to be learning, instead of going over what I already knew. And I was excited that people paid attention and were interested, instead of being bored and saying everything was stupid and stuff. And I liked that people didn’t think I was weird for being quiet, because everyone was pretty quiet, at first. But I think people came out of their shells more, because they didn’t feel like they had to hide anymore.

It turns out that I felt really okay on the message board, and people were talking about more than just being smart, they were talking about all the strange things that come along with it, like having low self esteem. And then sense of being bullied and not fighting back not out of weakness but out of a profound empathy for what fighting back would do to that other person. It’s true, I have only ever thrown a punch once in my life. Other than that, I cannot do it. I probably could physically fight back if I had to, but I would be upset by it. I think it makes life so strange, I honestly sometimes don’t understand how people can live with themselves.

I think the Overexcitabilities really do make a huge impact on intelligence, but no one ever told me before. It’s strange to realize there really are tons of people who don’t know how to really empathize with someone. I heard of a Buddhist monk who was teaching and a dog was barking, so a man in the audience threw a rock at the dog to shut it up so he could hear the monk. But the monk was so enlightened that he shrieked and fell over and ended up with a bruise on his side in the exact spot where the dog was hurt. I think that’s how I understand empathy. Not that I get bruises, but sometimes it almost feels like that. And while you would think someone that sensitive to life would shrink away from horrible things, if it has a larger meaning I will look deeply into it. I don’t watch horror film or gore, but I will watch intense documentaries or go to the land where things have happened and things like that. If it really happened to someone, I often feel obligated to find out more, and often that can be physically painful to do. I nearly suffocated at a concentration camp once, and that was even before I read on a sign that I was at a small closet where prisoners were pushed into and suffocated. I get that at other sites too, sometimes I’ll stumble on some fear someone left behind and get deep urges to run when there isn’t any threat around.

I guess that’s why I started this blog in the first place, things happened to me during my time in the psychiatric industry that no one was willing to hear about. And so it was kind of festering. And I couldn’t really use my brain to do all the things I used to do to let things out, but I tried. When I think about those few years on an antipsychotic it seems like it is always night time, like there was never sun, just dark grey clouds blotting out even the stars, and an endless night where things were never warm. Ray Bradbury wrote this story, All Summer in a Day, and that kind of reminds me of it too, the sun only comes out for one hour after seven years, these kids live on Venus, and they lock a girl into the closet just before the sun comes out, because they’re jealous of her because she remembers seeing the sun, she can describe it, and people say she’s going back to earth. And there’s this description of her, “She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.” That’s how I felt on psychiatric medication, all erased and muted to a manageable level.

Now I’m being told that I’ve been comparing myself to the wrong people this whole time. I can’t measure myself based on what’s standard for Joe Blow, I have to measure myself based on what’s standard for Einstein or Da Vinci or Edison. And after doing that, jeez, I’m totally fine. I found out MD’s only have an average I.Q. of 130, and I’m way over that. I often wondered why I questioned medicine so much and got into trouble, I wasn’t supposed to know certain things, and I certainly wasn’t supposed to question a Doctor. But honestly, they make mistakes all the time! And why can’t they handle being questioned? Are their egos that fragile?

Also, people really don’t know anything about the gifted population. We’re a tiny minority and we scare people. I don’t know why. I think some of us prefer people don’t know about us.

I had this nightmare once when I was a kid where I was drawing perfect circles, and this guy kept running up and scribbling all over them when I was done. So I would draw another perfect circle and the guy would scribble it out again. And I did it over and over and finally got so mad that I punched my mom in her sleep because I thought she was the scribbler.

Goddamn scribblers! Scribbling all over the important things in life.

I’m also meeting a lot of people who have gotten tangled up in the psychiatric system a la Janet Frame. It’s kind of scary, to think of the grander implications of it. The fact that time after time highly intelligent people are killed or damaged because people don’t understand them. And it’s true, sometimes I feel like I’ve got the mute button on, just so I don’t say something really profound that will freak everyone out. I know people usually think I’m either mentally ill or possibly cognitively impaired, but I don’t think I can ever really get them to stop thinking that. Sometimes I want them to think that so I can find out how they would treat people of those groupings.

I don’t want to be treated by anyone anymore though. And I’m not sure how to be myself and survive, and not survive myself but survive everyone else. I’m not a danger to anything, but I am awfully terrified of society as a whole, based on it’s lack of empathy and acceptance of difference. For now I’m listening to other people’s stories, and reading autobiographies, trying to figure out how people protected themselves while still doing amazing work. I’m tired of using only parts of myself to be friends with people too. I wish I had a few more people in my life who I could be all of me with. I’m afraid of being judged, and then I know based on my psych history that judgment carries terrible penalties.

What a strange world, to feel so small and yet hide something so big. I am trying to make some kind of meaning out of being deprived of my intelligence for four years. I don’t know how though. It’s tragic, like walking around half dead. I remember in the psych ward this orderly was making fun of a patient because she said the world was full of dead people, and I thought, yeah, she’s totally right, and he’s one of them!!! I mean it as a metaphor of course, though in a spiritual sense it’s kind of true. And this is the other issue, in that I find metaphors are sometimes the only way to explain something. I was talking about sex with a friend recently and I suddenly switched into describing it how I experience it as, which is like going to the carnival and passing by all these different rides, and some are really SCARY but that’s why you have to do it. And then I realized I lost her somewhere along the way and she thought I was talking about an actual carnival. No, I was talking about sex. Right. Um, and anal fisting would be like the Ring of Fire or a wooden rollercoaster. And missionary is a merry go round. And oral sex is like the ferris wheel and fisting was like the Gravitron.

I haven’t been to the carnival in ages.

Um, this has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to post it at some point:

And now for something totally unrelated

I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes after watching this.

I hate you Johann!

I read the funniest thing about overexcitabilities. Apparently people can be so sensitive that you can piss someone off by going for a particular overexcitability. J.S. Bach’s wife, when she was mad at him, used to go to the piano and pound out dischordant tones which drove him spare. I’ve seen artists literally scream and get furious if they’re forced to endure bad art. And I, I cannot handle those stupid Pizza Pop commercials with the talking stomach, ooooh!!! It makes me mad just thinking about it, goddamn stomach!! Grrrr!

Grad School Deadline Approacheth

My Grad School deadline is coming up, eeeee! I still need one more letter of recommendation and I’m not sure I’ll get it from this person, aside from that I don’t know who else to ask for a letter from. It’s such a different direction to go into compared to a BFA in film and video. Maybe people are worried I’m giving up on the film side to go in this direction, but I’m not, this is just a fun program that can help me achieve a goal. I really do want to reform/abolish psychiatry and the treatment of individuals in psychological distress. There is a profound lack of empathy towards the mad, and it’s evolved into a deadly system of force and punishment supported by the very people around the individual in crisis. I intend to set out a new methodology for treating people without the use of force and without the use of medication. The adversarial nature of psychiatry keeps people from reaching out for help, because it is simply the laziest way of “helping” people. No one really seems to care about their friends or family enough to sit with them, or to admit that abuse has caused distress. And people are simply too stupid to appropriately question what is being sold as science. The scientific methodology in psychiatry is woefully lacking in intellectual rigor. They still talk about fuckin’ Oedipus and Electra complexes, even though we know Freud only came up with those theories to explain why all his female patients were reporting incest.

I sometimes wonder if Kurt Cobain would still be alive if he hadn’t been threatened with psychiatric incarceration. We take the best and brightest who are in the throes of existential despair and place them on intellectually damaging drugs which make them conform only because then they truly are operating at the same intelligence as the rest of the world. It’s sick and it’s destroying our societies potential for truly revolutionary humane and aware co-existence. I’m still sad that I lost my brain for three and a half years simply because someone gave me too much antidepressants.

Mental Illness is not a life sentence. We take an event and turn it into an identity, we damage people enough that we can turn them into chronic patients, always dependent on psychiatry and never given enough free reign to heal themselves. We punish those who don’t conform, even though they have potential for greatness.

So yeah, uh, grad school. Well, I have at least three concepts I am going to be working with in my thesis, and I’m looking forward to sitting around with people who are all thinking at the same level. I also think since it is a disability related program, my bad marks for two years won’t be such an issue in getting accepted, hopefully. And if I do really well in this course, I can use this GPA towards the PhD in The History of Consciousness program at Santa Cruz. I am also hoping to have at least one or two films, features, out by the time I apply for my PhD.

I am also thinking more about what lengths I may have to go to in order to survive a Level 1 society. Already I know there are times I have to shut up or I can get into trouble, but those are people I usually stay away from. Anyone who doesn’t believe me when I say something is usually gently excommunicated from my life, because I just don’t have time for them. I’m concerned about my family, you can only open their minds so much and then they get very angry, and they don’t like to read things which explain my experience. I also know my mom prefers to read my diaries instead of actually asking me questions. And instead of asking me how I am, too many people ask if I am taking my medication. I hate that. It’s so cold.

I do know I have to stop listening to people who think I’m being grandiose when I talk about trying to become a major feature filmmaker, learn four more languages, get my masters and PhD, and live off of my art work. People are more concerned about me getting a job and having a workplace I fit into, and I don’t fit into any workplaces. I think it’s a waste of my talents, my energy is better spent working on my own projects than making shoes forty hours a week. (I don’t make shoes, it’s just an example). I also decided I want to learn to play the guitar. I have a hard time playing music because it expresses my emotions the most concisly and that makes me shy, since everyone always told me my emotions were problematic. So I think it would be good for me to have an outlet for it. I really do like music. My mom used to always say that I was tone deaf or something, but I voraciously devour music and when she’s not around to make fun of me I actually do like bopping around singing. I am sure I will sometimes cry terribly while making music, but maybe that’s a form of therapy. Filmmaking is quite similar to music actually, in that it’s a time based medium and uses emotional responses.

I think it will be good for me to go to grad school. I can be around people who like learning, more so than people in a bachelors program. I was surrounded by a lot of other gifted people at Emily Carr, which was nice because for the first time I wasn’t a freak, but there were also some silly people there who were just doing art because they were told to go to uni in order to access their trust funds. It was fun though. And being in a learning environment dedicated to advancing human rights is really freakin’ sexy. I really hope it happens, I’m freaking out about the recommendation letters, but I have to do the other stuff and trust that the letters will come in. I still need to choose a writing sample, and that’s a BIG part of the issue. I know I wrote a brilliant analytical essay in an exam, I could use that. Hmm, not sure not sure. I have several papers around, but the sociology one might make the most sense.

Plus it’s a reason to spend a year in Toronto, which I’ve never really lived in. I don’t know how I’ll do there. I know I can’t live in Vancouver again, because people consistently lack empathy when I am bereaved, and obviously Montreal is a terribly dangerous place for someone like me to live, plus the health care system is deeply flawed. I’m surprised they’re not all dead actually. I am thinking I will probably end up settling down in Winnipeg. It’s probably the city I like the best in Canada, the people are all very nice and smart and doing amazing things in their lives, the cost of living is cheaper, and it has some pretty amazing stuff going on in the film/video sphere. Saskatoon is problematic for me in various ways, I love my family but I really don’t fit in with them and I end up feeling dominated and sad, there isn’t a film and video community, the art community is very insecure and conservative, and as a whole, I dunno, it’s not a happy place. I can’t even engage with the queer or BDSM community here, and that really sucks. I wish I knew more trans people too.

Ideally I would live in a big city, but I can’t do the starving to death thing again. It’s a ruthless and careless environment. I’m realizing more and more that I am going to have to envision and craft a lifestyle for myself that works, irregardless of other people’s opinions. I have a vague idea of what that will look like. I have to completely reassess myself now that I know about OE’s, that they are innate, and that I will always live with them. Accepting them is kind of interesting, because now I actually have something to work with. There’s no way to eliminate them short of killing myself, and I really don’t care to do that. So I am going to try and adjust to life with them. Some people only have a few OE’s, and I have all of them!!!

Deviant

Since starting to get off psych drugs my memory has returned, along with an ability to rapidly learn things again. I realized that while learning about Quantum mechanics helped me realize the existence of God, since I was immediately put on Zyprexa at the same time I have a shoddy recollection of basic quantum mechanic theory, which is irritating me. So now I have to relearn it. I do have some books around on it, it’s one of those conceptual ideas that I like playing with because it twists up all the ideas of reality which average people assume is the truth. Unfortunately, it’s also the kind of advanced concept that average people don’t study and therefore view as some kind of psychotic thought, especially when it comes out of someone who people don’t consider having an astute scientific mind.

I was talking to my friend Robin last night when we both suddenly stumbled on this idea of Genius Sex. It’s an unusual concept, to be sure, but there does seem to be a such thing as Genius Sex, and it doesn’t seem to be something most people can do. I was lucky in that my first two lovers were highly intelligent people and so having long extended four hour plus sex sessions were pretty normal. But then I found out, that isn’t the norm! Most people seem to have sex lasting on average half an hour. I think in some respects I gave up sex because I got tired of the limited scope of it with certain parties. I would choreograph extended sessions with fifteen different acts and get done with about two of them when the other person would roll over and turn out the lights. Uh, hey, wait a minute. We didn’t even get to hour two, and I had something REALLY spectacular planned at hour four. What the hell?

Robin said “You mean people don’t usually have sex for four hours or more? What?” It’s true. And people think intelligent people make terrible lovers, that’s just dumb. Imagine someone specifically trying to give you multiple orgasms in a Fibonacci mathematical sequence! We were trying to figure out why great sex and great minds seem to come together. I think it’s because sex is seen as a skill set by people who like to learn and are adept at it. I know the best BDSM practitioners are the ones who actually care to learn the culture, the medical issues, the psychological issues, along with technique and practical usage. The worst practitioners are the ones who just show up with a whip and don’t even care to learn how to avoid hitting kidneys or why you should avoid hitting them. And even with relatively vanilla techniques there’s a lot to learn, with a lot of dialogue with your partner to find out what’s working. I also think that since learning entails mistakes, people who enjoying the learning process are willing to admit when something they’re doing isn’t working, and more creative in finding something else that WILL work, and then applying that to several other different techniques. If the other person hasn’t rolled over and gone to sleep that is.

Which brings me to the other issue at hand, some people just can’t take sex sessions that are so extended. And gifted people generally have high levels of energy, so of course if you put two of them together and they’re having fun AND not getting tired it’s just going to go on and on.

So I’m relearning what giftedness feels like, since the psych drugs basically eradicated it during the last four years. It feels like, it’s really nice actually. I like being able to toy with concepts again, especially several at once. I like being moved to tears by film, music, and art again. I like seeing the big picture. I like the thoughts which psychiatrists considered grandiose but which are just reasonable thoughts and goals for me. I like that I have finally figured out my own psychological condition apart from a judged pathology label given by people who didn’t bother to ask me anything about myself and who thought maybe my filmmaking was a delusion. I’m not so used to the fact that I don’t need as much sleep again. I’ve often been a sleepy person, but I can function on an average of six hours of sleep. More is nice at times though, and sometimes less is necessary when I’m really working hard on something.

I’m trying to be careful around other people, because I know that few people around me understand what is normal for me. I guess you could say I was one of those gifted people that went underground after facing constant social rejection, but now I’m at a level of maturity where I don’t really care about fitting in anymore. I know I won’t. That’s okay. I just hope that people don’t think they can improve my life by MAKING me fit in, because that means making me dumb and I dislike the experience.

So I am trying to honour the fact that I have overexcitabilities, which are very different from manic depression but often mistakenly assumed to be manic depression. There is nothing wrong with crying because of something on the news, or being terribly excited about a new concept, or making a mess and not caring that it’s there. I’m trying to re-educate my mom on the experience of gifted people and the propensity of society to pathologize our differences in an attempt to help us conform, when we are not meant to conform. I’m not sure if she appreciates being constantly given information on gifted characteristics, but I’m hoping I can educate her enough that she won’t start telling me I’m doing something “bipolar” when I’m actually doing something gifted. Especially since I’m getting off the intellectually damaging drugs.

And I have done a lot better since getting off, I don’t have shakes and tremors, I haven’t had a seizure in a long time, I haven’t cared so much about smoking pot, I don’t hear things anymore, I sleep better in that I’m not super sleepy, my short and long term memory has improved, I can come up with creative ideas at a much more rapid pace, and I can assimilate new information with greater ease. I’m also not depressed anymore, which is a side effect of the drugs they gave me to cure mania, which was caused by antidepressants mostly and not spontaneously from me, and the antidepressants were originally used for existential depression. So I got misdiagnosed and treated for the wrong thing, most of my treatment in the last four years was to eliminate mania and hypomania, which are actually overexcitabilities which gifted people tend to have and which serve a purpose.

I am on 500mg of epival now. I think at the end of this week I will cease taking it. I’m hoping I don’t flip out, but we’ll see. Mostly I hope people give me a chance to get through the withdrawal symptom without running around yelling that I’m sick.

I think I’m lucky though, I do have a small number of people who I can have conversations with about what I care about, and that’s important. I don’t know anyone else but Robin who could have a half hour discussion on Genius Sex. I have another friend who sends sweet nothings in latin, and a few people here and there who I drop in on and talk about their thesis or dissertations or other pleasurable intellectual pursuits. I have been deeply lonely around the lack of people to talk to and play with and have sex with, yes, but I’ve reached a turning point where I’m not willing to measure myself based on the standard. I am a deviation, it is true, but that doesn’t always mean a lack.