DEPRESSION ~ Starts 2018

I was driving along a winding road just after the official midday sun when I started singing, "Jesus loves me this I know, 'cos the Bible tells me so.." I am blessed to know, also, because I have miracle after miracle and blessing after blessing. I am back in bed trying not to get too sick to ...  My favourite place is home and I am home and it is just lovely because my glass chimes, although in a very protected spot, are chiming in the December wind. One of my bucket list items is likely to be completed soon enough.  I shall tell you more about that when it happens.  I am quite excited at the prospect. Today I told stories about dancing and my love for steel factories and steel and men who work with all that.  Today I held the little girl; she was so happy to see me. Today I bought four new pencils. Today the sun is shining and the sky is blue.  My window is clean again and I can keep tabs on my tree and life in it.  My plants bloom ever on and I...

https://youtu.be/synJSNIJ8QE   ( link to the title of this)    Interesting fact. I drove an ordinary Hilman Vogue back in the late-ish seventies. Used the same filling station every week. Creature of habit. I knew the attendants. They certainly knew me. Good service. Friendly. Lovely people. Africans. Love them. All good. My friend Doug has a clapped out Merc, holding on by the golden thread that love is, through menopause and breathlessness - exhaust fumes will do that to you. "I'm going home to Australia for the holidays. Will you drive the old girl for me?" "Gosh. Really? Its a big car. Do you trust me? (I am an undiagnosed weirdo who smokes non stop and is skittish in a good situation). "She is easy to drive. She just needs to go for a run every day to keep going." I think of an old race horse.  "Okay..." I am freaked out, but he is my best friend - the only friend to be honest, the only man who respects my friendshi...

One gets one life. One gets one shot at this life. One imagines time is a slow thing. One dreams of many things. I have been lucky. I have done all the things on my theoretical bucket list, which was a surprise;  all I did was dream about doing these things. I never saved a dime towards all my travels. I just managed to find it possible from time to time. The Universe does truly conspire to grant you the desires of one's heart. The conscious ones and those we don't even imagine we desire. Onism. A lovely word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. "I passed through it once (planet earth), but I've never really been there."  As the Gregorian calender flips over and on with 2019 looming ahead, there is little comfort to go around and less cheer and joy in the world. If I had known, like really consciously known, not that surface stuff that fools you some, that I could have had the desires of my heart fulfilled, and if I had any brains, I would have been...

https://pin.it/7z7kaoedz2kge7 I love Love. And Keats is so full of it. I wonder who he is now... The day begins with holding hands. My "monster" looking large hand is held by a tiny old, skin and bone tiny hand. It is such a tender thing.  I can't help weeping. Why, I wonder, is it so hard for us to break free from our shells and love?  Why does the Higher Self only slide up and out in our last days? How long are our last days?                            "I love you." That is our final sentence, if we are fortunate enough to be conscious. My grandmother could not speak.  My Father could only say it with his eyes and my mother, bless her heart, said it often, not knowing who she said it to. But she said it. That is all that matters. Dearest Mommy, If you can hear me, I love you too. I will choose you again, and love you better next ...

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https://youtu.be/8ftDjebw8aA

I am a little surprised that I can be so wrong.  Here's the thing, I thought I would know Denzel Washington's voice when I hear it.  I don't! I started watching The Rainmaker, again, because I can.  I can't remember the story or who acts in it, but I remember I loved it.   So I am busy reformatting the page here, and the movie begins, and I could have sworn it was Denzel Washington speaking. I smiled.  I do like him.  I can listen and carry on here, but then I click back to the movie.  It is not Denzel Washington.  Just goes to show how wrong one can be, and be quite sure about it too, Matt Damon, not Denzel Washington. Joke. Difference between a "lady" and a lawyer, the lady will stop "extortion" after you are dead. It's not funny, because it is not really true, and it is funny because even when you are dead you have to pay for stuff on earth and some in the afterlife.  "Death and taxes," Cause and effect. For your edificati...

Ah! Technology. From my phone. The Retreat is too short, but the blessing of evening and morning prayers is beyond explanation to the worldly ear.  The point in the heart... is reached. The silence we all commit to brings a heightened sense of the Divine Presence.  Already my heart is responding with fullness again.  How much the world's noise and chaos robs us of watching, wating and welcoming. When we are told to guard our hearts we don't really know how.  A time out, a still quiet time in space, be it by the sea, in a study or on a mountain side where the wind and the sun give gifts of holiness, if we are open to receive, is all we need daily to renew and restore our being. This morning I found a holy tree.  I picked grasses as I did with my grandmother as a child, as I did with my children and keep them safe in my note book.  I was given a pressed, 4 leaf clover, from Italy, by my room mate. Gifts of the Spirit. I am soaking up the sounds of Lati...

It's time to take back your data from Google and Facebook's server farms http://flip.it/ISTMv4

I can't resist the bookshop.  It has taken the library's place.  Three copies of Jordan Peterson's book lie on the shelf with a slight discount.  I bought them all.  Why not?  Someone is going to need to read it before long. I am poised to go off into a spiritual retreat where I shall cleanse my soul, uplift my soul and come out rising on the wings of eagles, I think HaShem missed Job, so He created me.   That's okay. I'm down with Job.  I have the patience of Job and his bloody opponent, dogging my heels, but no matter.  I cling to the Creator. For future reference, my eyes are bad and I sometimes plonk in a comma when I mean a period, and sometimes, for safe measure, I give you both.  My dyslexia prevents me from picking it up when I write in the lamplight, which is not great, but my autism doesn't like bright lights.  It is what it is. Giving everything over to HaShem is, or can be, difficult.  I have good moments ...

Back in the madding "old days" when we wore mini skirts one minute and got thin as sticks and the next we hid our fine bone structures under midi's until denim saved us all, I was a fashion buyer for Garlicks. It was my favourite job.  I fell in love with the whole business of Garlicks. Hat departments, gloves, stockings, scarves and bags, the glorious showroom with lah-di-dah ladies wear and a restaurant with fine food for lunch. I smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes, with a filter, by then, having given up the Texan plain after spitting out fragments of tobacco and ripping the skin off half my lips often enough.   I could not get used to smoking. It was hard. I hated the smell and the taste, but damn, I thought it looked cool, so I went on and on until I found Lucky Strike.  Bob's your uncle we used to say.  By then I could drink whiskey too, neat, and leave Rhodesians under the table after a challenge.  I was so stressed that it didn't touch sides. ...

I have just watched  "The Children Act"  with Emma Thompson. I wept. I don't usually weep.   But, Adam Henry is brilliantly Light, and ... Oh, God!  Oh, God! I think those of us who read are under the illusion that all men want to be good and sane and act to gain to keep values that are good and sane.  Emma Thompson makes me feel that glorious sense of life that Ayn Rand shares so efficiently. Yes. Like Jordan Peterson, Ayn Rand delivered her Objective views efficiently, even I could understand it all, mit dictionary, of course.  Some words were strangers at the time. Out there in the Unknown Region, children grow and blossom and some die and some don't and every time a child dies a light goes out in the world, and we act as if we have light to spare. We don't.   We simply don't.   Why is it so hard for rebels and leaders to understand that the blood of children pouring into the earth is our collective d...

My tree of knowledge of good and evil. This tree exists in Mossel Bay.   I gave up trying to draw it, packed up and drove away, but as I got around the back of it, I saw this.  I set myself up again.  It is the draft for a painting that is still not finished. I have no subject today.  Inspiration will come.  I seem always poised for change as if it will pounce on me when I am not looking. I, simultaneously, fear that change is going to get me, and I long for old lands, where I have been, desperate to swim in warm water again, heated by the sun alone.  Where better to go than to that junction where I met, "Nobody Nowhere" and "Somebody Somewhere," which were two books that explained a functional autistic person's journey to self.  It resonated. "At last!  After all these years, I have a word that describes me, almost." I was this functional working person, but totally crap at being in a marriage with a complex human with ne...

Depression? Pah!  Luxury! Let's talk about trauma. SOUTH AFRICA I am not a native to Africa. My ancestors come from Ireland and Scotland via Lesotho.  Not everyone is a refugee, but everyone is dealing with everyone's refugees, and although I am more of a deposit left by ancestors who came to build and ... and died leaving the offspring here in South Africa, I feel like a bit of refugee in some senses, not right for here, but not right for anywhere else. What to do with the likes of me?   I am certainly more African than I am European. South Africa struggles on with issues that are overwhelming for everyone and the privilege of voting serves little comfort when elected leaders act like looters, careless with the lives of citizens, regardless of colour or creed.   Crime and corruption filter from the top, down, into every area of public life.   There is the danger of having one's welfare affected by such corruption and crime,...

The trouble with depression is that it steals your words. Weariness is a by-product and one has to fight against it with all one's might. So learn with me, this night, when words are coming far too slowly for a story to begin. I have two alarms to tell me to go to bed. The second one has just gone off.  But I have a minute or two before I have to obey my rules. When one gets to the unproductive stage one has to find a diversion that is not taxing.  This is not easy because most movies are about the world as it is, and will become - if we don't find a way to love one another. Since that is hardly likely in the near future, a bunch of us have to keep the shiny side up, which works better in Afrikaans. "Hou die blink kant bo."    No matter which language one uses, one is not sure what it is that has a dull side and a shiny side. I'm thinking it must have something to do with steel. Pots maybe.  Not very useful. Everyone is jealous of Putin and Mugabe. The...

A quote, likely from, Jordan Petersen.  He has become important to my learning. Get busy. Get your personal space uncluttered. Be tidy. Know where everything is. Keep notes. She is good at being busy; this is deflection. She looks at the space. "It is ordered chaos," she tells the picture on the easel. She seldom knows exactly where things are, but they are filed. They are packed away. It is not important. They are eternal things; she can't look at it often. She can't call it anything except her remains. Notes. She keeps notes. Well, writing and art are notes. Occupational therapy, she calls it;   that bit of work between the marathon run, measured by her heartbeat; the only clock she trusts. The need for notes has been with her since 27-something.  It was the year of her awakening when life had no meaning without keeping some record.  It created meaning, she might have said, except she didn't think of it that way.  ...

When a woman makes it to CNN, and one has never heard of her, one must, "Go find!" As the lad says. One Story. The main road begins on top of a hill with a set of traffic lights. It slides down, ending in a serpent's tail-curl called, The Point. The speed limit is 40 Km/hr up the narrow road through town until midway up the hill leading to the serpent's head, the traffic lights, to finish the metaphor. To my left, a grey car ascends the hill. To my right, a big old truck edges towards the red traffic lights and hopes it will turn green. It doesn't. The truck stops. I judge the distance and speed of the grey car.  The light changes. The truck releases the brakes. I drove into the truck's lane.  The just moving truck changes gears.  He expects I shall move. We are on the same page, the truck and I. I turn to check the grey car. The driver inexplicably speeds up. The truck is coming closer too fast, but I can't risk jumping in front ...

So, here we are again. Keeping score of the mind, tracing the lines that are invisible to the eye, but essential, just the same. They tell me I am ill.  I am quite sure that if the medicine becomes unavailable I shall probably start going down the hill much like our go-cart in White River did, in 1950-something, which the young Shangan lads built with great skill and efficiency except they did not feel the need, or perhaps did not know how to design a steering or a brake mechanism.  When it went too fast or headed for rocks or tree trunks we all jumped off the racing tree product with glee, yelling and laughing all at once.  Yelling is something I have done. Once.  I do not wish to have that happen again. "Where are you going?" He asked. "China." We are all fraught with unexpected emotions.  It is not enough that our bloodlines bleed out, but the world, all the countries of the world, have to add to the worrisome ideas and conclusions that run about...

This is looking after me phase.  Unchartered territory. Survival strategies. Actions taken:- The specialist gave new medication - long term. Therapy ~ more meaningful than before. Perhaps because I am ready or desperate or I have found a good therapist or a combination of the three.) Actions to produce joy. 1. Knitting (I know! It sounds boring, but it is surprisingly comforting making things.) 2. Crocheting (Also not boring. Making up my own patterns. Progress good.) 3. Painting and drawing. (Spending more time drawing with some success. Practice does help.)  Exploring sculpting - early stages - starting with a seahorse I bought and am now going to finish off and make more durable and beautiful. 4. Writing. (Mostly notes from my studies of  The Zohar and reading other books) 5. Watching CNN. (Contradiction on the surface. However, it helps to know the state of collective consciousness.) 6. Planning holidays/trips. 6.1. Train journey to Durban to see thr...

Quote of the Day for June 16, 2018

I don't often read fiction, which is ridiculous ; nothing is fiction.  We stick vast blocks of self into our work, but we make it more palatable for readers. And fiction  is more digestible. We don't and can't know everything and we know very little about anyone else; few of us know ourselves well enough. Tomorrow our "world" can change. What is cast in stone may crumble.  Facts are too temporary to be worth time unless one is a Malcolm Gladwell. This is the age of disconcerting news, hard to process from a distance. The clan of souls who fight dragons, and dragons are, I believe, frequent confrontations with the unthinkable or inexplicable and finding oneself at an utter loss as to how to process such mind altering encounters that rob us of cetainty and faith in the future.  It sure isn't what it used to be. However, I have been carrying this book about for a while, not reading it, just carrying it about for the sake of having it on hand when the mood...

As I said, I have been therapied out.   I have seen all manner of therapists, but I have never done regression sessions nor hypnotherapy.  I m afraid of both.  If I don't know it, I don't need to know it.  I think.  That's just me. My session ended yesterday with my therapist asking me, "Why now"  What happened?" I made the appointment two weeks ago.  I can't remember what happened or how I felt.   I admitted that I was prompted and asked to promise I would make it, so I did.  Once I made the appointment I felt grateful.  Had I not had someone that close to me insist, I would have carried on without therapy without feeling that I was doing myself a disservice.  I am a great advocate of therapy. I am of the opinion that I know everything there is to know, I am just not doing it right.  I am always right, except when I am wrong, and I am never wrong, I say, quoting an anonymous author.  So, yes. I am gratef...

I would like to say that I am back by popular demand, but I am just back.  I finally have something I am ready to write about, albeit under the new title, although I am still Sixty-six and Counting. (old title). I have been speechless.  If you go back and read the last few posts, it is obvious that I have for a long time struggled to string two words together.  Gobsmacked, mostly. Politics has become strange, CNN has changed.  Everything has changed and too fast to digest enough to consider writing.  I have buried myself in books and occupied myself with paint and brushes, finding my voice in pictures rather. To my surprise, my voice is that of a writer and my pictures are imperfect because I cannot adequately express my story.  Added to that, my mood keeps changing, which changes the picture. I have not jumped, but lunged, as if into a wave, too big to surf, feeling as though I was drowning most of the time.  I obviously was not drown...