Being An Artist is Boring

At least today it is. I spent the whole day filling in forms, updating my c.v., burning cd’s, sticking things in envelopes, photocopying (at my own home! I love my printer), going to the post office. Waiting in line. Realizing that I could have brought something else with me that needed urgent mailing. Came home and realized the form was more complicated than I thought. Poop.

My fingernails are disgusting. I mean, look at them! Ugh, bits of grimey-grimeness. Blah. And all uneven. I am ashamed of these fingernails. But the nail trimmer is lost in a sea of Thirza flotsam and jetsam. I am not an artist who can’t clean, I’m a performance of a forgotten seawreck.

No really, where is the nail clipper? I’m freaking out!

Okay, whew! Found one.

I think the shipwreck happened somewhere in the Georgia Straight, involving a butch with far too many things and no organizational thought.

In the hospital they called me “disorganized.” I just thought, dear God, I’ve been disorganized my whole life! Go look in my room if you don’t believe me. Once I bought a book called How To Get Organized and I lost it.

True story.

I want chips. I wish I could get chips teleported to me. No, I mustn’t. They are bad for me, but how can little potatoes with seasoning on it be bad? I guess they aren’t potatoes anymore are they? They’re genetically modified jellyfish-orangutan chips. Just my luck, to be born into a world where these things happen and yet there’s still no teleportation device.

Oh, but I have the new Coke. It’s called C2. Can you believe that? I’m drinking C2. Twice the damage to the indigenous peoples, but with reduced carbs and calories. I’m going to try it now.

A little less bite. Hmm, not bad. An aftertaste of guilt and shame at being complicit in the oppression of others.

Plus I got a little squat gnome-like can. If a tin can could be a gnome, this one definately is.

2 Reasons Why I love that Bears are my spirit guides

“A bold amphibious escape bid by a bear at Berlin zoo has been foiled in a dramatic shoot-out. Juan the Andean spectacled bear first paddled across a moat using a log for a raft, then scaled a wall. Finally he appeared to commandeer a bicycle, before zookeepers with brooms cornered him, and a colleague picked him off with a tranquiliser gun… After being stopped with darts from a tranquiliser gun, 294 lb. Juan was carried back to his enclosure. Mr Kloes told the Berliner Kurier newspaper zoo staff would make sure there were no further logs in the moat to prevent Juan’s future bids for freedom.”

-from BBC (Complete with photo of bear getting on the bike)

“A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

“We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around,” said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers’ coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds. It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge. They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.”

-from CNN

Cops suck

Or at least my experience with cops has been pretty sucky.

Oh but what was I going to tell you? My scriptwriting is coming along okay. Right now I’m averaging five pages a day. Then today I spent a few hours doing corrections and rewrites and moving events around in my script so they make a bit more sense. I keep trying to get my friend to read it, but she’s never home when I call. And I so need to get out of the house, my brain is melting!! But my other friend is doing up a grant proposal, so she’s indisposed.

I guess I will go back to what I was saying about cops.

Well cops came to get me when I went to the hospital. And all I can say is that even though I was buck naked they still treated me like I had a gun or some other weapon. In fact the whole experience was like being arrested for being crazy. Being crazy is treated as a crime in our society. And police are woefully uninformed about mental health issues.

Even when I wasn’t a “crazy” person, cops still sucked. I remember in Saskatoon we had Oscar the talking police car. He wasn’t a car, so much as a Van, with eyes and mouth painted on it, and he could speak. I always wanted to be one of the kids who got to see inside Oscar, but I never was picked. Oscar, what a sucky talking police car!

And then another time as a community initiative the police gave out collectible hockey cards if you flagged them down. But everytime me and my friends would wave, the police officers just waved back and drove on. No hockey cards for us.

I quit my job

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way of going back to school and making it through this time, with the most minimal amount of stress. Soooo, I offloaded the job. I was quite terrible at it really, I’m not a very good telemarketer. Excuse me, teleFundraiser. People treated me as if I was a telemarketer anyway.

So, the job is gone. It’s a bit of a relief really, I was getting sooo miserable from so many people griping at me about calling them at home. I think that kind of a job has a high burnout rate, although some people have been there for a long time.

What else? Life’s okay, getting ready for school. My mommy bought me new school clothes, which was awfully nice of her. And I got a new belt, my other one became way too small, what with the weight gain caused by the drugs I am on. Anyway, it made me feel like a sausage.

Belts are expensive!

What else? Hmm, gearing up for Back To School. I really hope it all works out. I hope my crazyness doesn’t interfer this time around. I have to take some special form to my doctor so that I can get some more access to resources for students with disabilities. Hopefully that will all work out. So many things to think about! I’m excited. I feel like my brain has atrophied. I need intellectual stimulation, not marshmallows. My sister needs marshmallows. That’s like, her absolute favorite food. If she had a choice she would live off of marshmallows. That’s just how she is. Working at a telemarketing place turns your brain into marshmallows. Or maybe that was just me.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

. . . is dead.

“Dying becomes lonely and impersonal because the patient is often taken out of his familiar environment and rushed to an emergency room. He may cry for rest, peace and dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or tracheostomy. … He will get a dozen people around the clock, all busily preoccupied with his heart rate, pulse, electrocardiogram or pulmonary functions, his secretions or excretions — but not with him as a human being.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

More at:

http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/

My reserve is funding me for another year!

Many of you may have noticed my ongoing struggles with getting back into school so I can go on to my Master’s program. Okay, maybe you didn’t notice. Well little crazy me is going back, BACK to ECIAD where I spent 4 1/2 years and then took three years off to wind myself into a completely psychotic state, only to slowly unwind back into what could reasonably be considered normal and grounded. Or at least, as grounded as I think I’m gonna get. Sometimes I still have days when I’m sad, or when my feet seem to be floating off the ground, but I’ve pretty much kept a nice stability for the past year or so.

Anyway, I realized this past week that I have yet to get a letter back from my reserve saying I was going to be funded to go back to school. And little me started to panic. Panicking, trying not to panic, trying to be normal, but with a little knot of worry forming in my guts. Oh god, what if I don’t get funded because I flunked a bunch of classes way back before I quit because I couldn’t cope with school? Eeeeee!!! And I’m so ready to go back, so ready to throw myself into it and really be serious and do it and say “I have a bachelor’s degree!!”

So I emailed. And I called. And I called. And finally today the woman at my reserve’s post secondary office called back to say it was ok. Hooray!! They are sending the letters out this week. Yay! I was so worried I would have to keep working and listening to people tell me off on the phone, getting more and more miserable.

What else? I’m back in Vancouver after my dramatic and also nice trip to Saskatoon. It was good to be there for my family. I came home with a heavy suitcase full of new clothes my mommy bought me, six braids of sweetgrass, Saskatoon berries, and six new york Bison steaks. I didn’t know they had Bison in New York. Ha ha, okay, maybe only I find that funny. Such an Indian’s suitcase. I suppose I should take Salmon back to my mom, but I much prefer bringing back Bison for my friend, maybe because I am a prairie Indian. Plains Cree, and don’t you forget it.

Thank you Little Pine Reserve! Thank you Mommy! And thank you bison, you will be good in my little tummy!

Suicide Attempt

I’m not quite sure what to write today. A person very close to me attempted suicide last night and is now in the hospital. I’m really worried and trying to send her lots of love. I know what it feels like, to be that desperate and sad and feeling lost. I think I will just re-post a link for all those people out there who might be in the same situation. It’s a good read, and so important.

Suicide . . . read this first

OH! Wait, I have a few other tips for people in the midst of a suicidal crisis. These have helped me in the past.

1. Instead of doing it now, procrastinate! I have in the past made myself suicide deadlines, after many years of recognizing that suicidal urges often dissipate over time. This past year I was having a crappy winter. I decided if I wasn’t feeling better by april (I gave myself a good four months) then I would do it. Of course by the time April came around it was sunny and all the cherry blossoms were out, and I was in a much stronger place. Yes procrastination can be a wonderful thing.

2. Make a list of all the things you would like to do before you die. Get grandiose! Plan dream vacations, make a movie, write a book, stand outside Barbara Sukowa’s apartment building (ok, I have a crush on her, leave me alone!), see an alien space ship, WHATEVER! Once I wrote out a list of about FIFTY things I wanted to do and see and try.

3. Learn problem solving skills. Often a suicidal crisis is precipitated by a life problem, like losing a job, a lover, whatever. Figure out the things you need to survive. Make some plans around finding a new job, join a job club. Or if you are without a girl/boyfriend, then develop some interests. Build up the other parts of your life so that being single doesn’t seem so lonely.

4. My favorite words: mental health break (as opposed to breakdown). Have a day just to yourself where you do something pleasant, like sit in a park looking at the clouds and listening to uhm . . . Roxette? I dunno, Roxette is cheery. Oh, but then there’s that song, what’s it called? Oh, you know it. Some sad song. Well, you don’t have to have a day like that, but think of some quiet relaxing stress free quality time you can just spend being YOU and learning to love yourself even when you’re sitting on your butt.

5. Call a crisis line. Once I did this and ended up connecting with a wonderful councellor who I did therapy with for two years. They are a good resource, they know all the places you can go in your city.

The Value of Psychotic Experience

A very interesting article I found today about the value of psychotic experiences. Kinda long, I’m not done reading it, I’m off to bed. Leave me comments on what you think of it. Maybe we can have some kind of discourse on it.

Saskatoon

Hellooo from Saskatoon! Beautiful Saskatoon, where there is an airshow, Folkfest, and general prairie entertainment. Today I walked by the Saskatchewan River and saw frogs and toads and their houses. I also saw a beaver dam, haven’t seen one of those in a while. I took a small chewed up stick from it, I hope the beavers don’t miss it.

I also went to the German pavillion at Folkfest to do some research for Red Oktoberfest, coming soon to Vancouver. Aboriginals do German culture. I figure it’s about time, since Germans have been doing Aboriginal culture for so long. Then me and my mom went to the Australian pavilion, yawn. Left soon after drinking an Australian beer and went to the Irish pavillion, which was way cool. I’m part Irish, maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I wish I could dance like that, arms straight down, slamming my feet on the floor. I should take a class.

Anyway, I am visiting my family, but I will keep posting things as I think of them and when I have the time. Hope everyone’s summer is ending nicely!

The first time I saw something . . .

…that wasn’t there.

I was living in a tiny white house with my mom and dad and sister. My sister and I slept in the same bedroom. I have to give you a bit of background so that this story makes sense.

My sister is severely mentally handicapped with a very rare syndrome called Patau’s Syndrome, however she is fortunate enough to have survived well into adulthood and is remarkably cute. I love her, but she could be a pain in the ass to grow up with. I think that was because she was the older sister, and she liked to power trip on me. Plus she was jealous of me for most of my early childhood, until she decided I wasn’t such a bad little person after all.

Anyway, we had bunkbeds, and I was on the top bunk. I had to sleep in the very middle and lay like a stick, because late at night small hands would creep up and try to pinch me. If I moved to one side of the bed, so would the hands. Pinching like little lobster fingers, ow, cut it out! We would also get locked in at night, because otherwise my sister would escape and go run out into the neighborhood.

And sometimes she pooped the bed. But she wasn’t content with just pooping the bed, she had to smoosh it all over our stuff and the walls and oh gosh it was just a mess.

So most of my early memories are of waking up to the smell of shit. Shit stinks!

Anyway, one shitty saturday morning I was banging on the door trying to wake my parents up to let me out of the room. I was probably three years old or so, my sister was about six. They weren’t waking up and I was getting upset and crying, because I didn’t want to be in such a stinky shitty room. I banged and I banged and wailed. And then the strangest thing happened.

The door was white, and wooden. And this image came up. It was as clear as if there was a film being projected onto our bedroom door. I was so stunned I stopped crying and banging. It was an aerial shot of the parking lot of the Buy Low Furniture Store downtown. The cars parking were late seventies models (this would have been about 1981 when it happened, so it makes sense). That was it. Cars parking at the Buy Low Furniture Store.

What did it mean? Not much of anything really. It was just this image, thrown out there to make me stop crying. And I was flabbergasted. I’d had a vision. And as far as I could tell, it didn’t mean anything.

Then my father opened the door and the image vanished, and I looked up at him and he had sleep in his eyes and I never saw anything like that again.

The Buy Low Furniture store was later torn down. My parents split up. And eventually, after a couple of decades my sister stopped smearing shit.

And I got a room of my own.