Janis Joplin on Haight St in 1967 is a beautiful sight.

 

Janis Joplin on Haight St. in 1967 is a beautiful sight. The end.

Today I am celebrating the birth of Percy B Shelley, English poet and visionary.

It's Percy B. Shelley's Birthday today, a day I ALWAYS celebrate. I've been lying in bed this morning, composing in my head a post and tribute to this polymathic genius that I adore and who is my number #1 influence since I was a sixteen year old girl. Of course, I lay there long enough to where the post turned into a small paper, some of it filled with pithy comments on those in his circle. No film has ever captured him correctly. His critics are often foolish and biased, especially those who see him as cruel, sexist, and misogynistic. How absurd. He was a young man, brilliant, and way ahead of his time. A man of our current time. No other Romantic poet is so fitting for the 21st century. It literally breaks my heart that he died before he was 30 years old. I am not one to believe in so called "destiny" but the moment Percy B set foot in Milan in 1816, a series of events were set in motion that would lead to his drowning in 1822. Lilliputian ties and I can trace them in my mind as I did this morning, lying there in bed. I suppose out of all his circle, I adore Claire Clairmont and Thomas Peacock the most, the rest all deserve my contempt (I even give that grudgingly) and this morning I recounted their sins in my head for hours and that includes Mary Shelley, who out of guilt and desperation, slaved over compiling an edition of his poems until she had a nervous breakdown, one of the many she already had experienced. I pity her. I do. But she was Godwin's true daughter and if you don't know what that means, go read about Godwin. Shelley, himself, made two serious mistakes, and they both concerned his so-called marriages, something he never believed in or held to and it cost him. And he paid the ultimate price. Of the two, Harriet Westbrook is the one that haunted him emotionally. It is easy to see how all that happened, when ones considers Shelley's nasty upbringing with a neglectful mother and sadistic father, where the poet's only emotional respite was the adoration and love of his sisters. This pattern never left his emotional make-up. It ruled him. He was flawed, of course, but he was genuine and warm and generous and good. I feel so blessed to know his work, to understand his life, and to feel his visions. To share those visions. I was one of those women who was a prisoner, too, until his work freed me to see the world very differently, to embrace independent thought and skepticism and live in doubt and uncertainty with the grace that he possessed. What an incredible human being. I am not into mythmaking and I make none of him. I am team Human. He was human. That's enough.

This is true, no matter what, even if you don't like it.

There is no magical and quick solutions to things like mental health or physical fitness or even plagues. It's work. And we can't fix all emotions. People can feel anything but it IS people who have to change their feelings. I think, in many ways, through our current literature, our current state of political engagement, our current views that are just vast unworkable theories, that we ARE NOW living in a dark age. There, I said it and I mean it.

The Eve of St. Agnes by Harry Clarke

 The Eve of St. Agnes, (Based on the poem by John Keats) by Harry Clarke. His art is so beautiful and I adore narrative art.

True Detective Season 1 is my favorite TV.

 

I first saw Season 1 of True Detective around the 20th of June and I have been thinking about it constantly since then. I have to admit I think (quite seriously) it's probably the best TV show I have ever seen in terms of writing, acting, and all around techniques. Since I know the environment of True Detective personally and vividly, I find it even more fascinating how psychogeography is used so well. But also symbols, motifs, philosophy, development of character, design, all the structural principles that one can use in writing anything. It's quite masterful and if I were a younger person, in college, I would write my thesis on it. It is literally a brilliant piece of both fiction and film. And of course, because of my own work, it resonated deeply with me. I am haunted by it. Just haunted by its artistry.

The Last London by Iain Sinclair

 Wow, I haven't posted since the last week of June. I have not felt well and have been so busy just trying to stay functional and working and keeping house. Right now I need to be outside working in the garden but I am waiting till in the morning as it's been raining a bit. I am going to began again on the blog posting a Beloved Book for me. Iain Sinclair's The Last London. It's an incredible book, written so well and it has brought me so much joy during these really depressing times. I am so impressed with it that I am going to read all Sinclair's books. Today I am going to start a reread making notes. And then afterwards, write up a nice review. Pyschogeography is something I am very interested in and it has influenced all my work, writing, perspectives, and art. Place is everything. I don't think we can write adequate history without the context of geography in terms of country to the roads and buildings, to the mindscapes. Judging history and people outside these parameters is both shallow and incomplete.

Reading a book is an experience.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

— Neil Gaiman

Walking is very important to me, so I am pounding the streets early before the heat.

 

The things we do learn as we love and lose.

“After some time, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and imprisoning a soul; You learn that love does not equal sex, and that company does not equal security, and you start to learn…. That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promise..."

― Jorge Luis Borges

The Woman in White is one of my favorite novels of all time.

 

The Woman in White

Frederick Walker, ARA (1840-1875)

1871

Gouache on paper

2172 x 1289 mm

Courtesy of Tate Britain N02080

Presented by Sir Claude Phillips in memory of his sister Eugenie Phillips 1906

This life-sized poster is one of the first examples of a fine artist undertaking an advertisement. It was made for Wilkie Collins’s ‘sensation’ play The Woman in White, which opened at the Olympic Theatre, London in October 1871. It combines a Pre-Raphaelite-style beauty with black and white graphic design. Sweeping lines pull the viewer’s eye to the woman’s mysterious and inviting expression.— Tate Britain Commentary

(at the moment, I am reading small portions of this novel out loud to myself.)

Today's question is this.

Mais qui voit-on dans le miroir ????

Camille Claudel had such an interesting but sad life.

 

French sculptor Camille Claudel and her friend Ghita Theurietque in 1882.

I love creating anything, but I would like to be good at something. Laughing.

True perseverance lies in fulfilling our most powerful creative impulses despite all setbacks. We only get into trouble when we become obsessed with particular outcomes, when wanting to be recognized for our art is more important to us than the art itself. Arrogance paired with comparatively little talent (or at least seriously underdeveloped talent) is what results in work that embarrasses everyone but the person making it. You can’t be delusional if what you desire — what you truly desire — is simply to be with your camera or notebook or piano, engrossed and alive.

— Camille de Angelis

Contradictions are painful at times.

  Many things have happened to me in the last several years and I've been thinking about convictions and people who are entrenched in their own convictions. One thing I know from my own life and the lives of people I respect or know well, or from scientists that I have met, known, or studied is that if one experiences life and studies any one thing long enough, convictions are meaningless. Other people are the opposite. They feel you can never remain neutral, as many political figures feel. I think Howard Zinn is one. His example is "how can one remain neutral on a moving train." Some people are even admired for their convictions, etc. etc. etc. I am more align with Nietzsche who felt convictions were just as dangerous as lies. In fact, he referred to them as prisons. For me personally, a person who is likely to change her mind about any one subject based on new information, convictions are just "things" that are fashionable and convenient and generational even. But I would definitely say convictions are psychological prisons. This perspective makes it impossible for me to be a people pleaser or fashionable or tribal in any way. In some ways, it has alienated me from people I truly love. 

It is really not what happens on the surface between you and other people that counts, but how these people make you feel on the inside and how you make them feel on the inside. And I know that is often uneasy for me. And sometimes, you actually know what the other people are truly feeling. The painful part is not caring as you know they would, because you don't hold the same philosophical value on convictions and sometimes a "core" value. You possess empathy but it's very objective and not emotional empathy. (Most people don't understand or practice objective empathy and it must be practiced.) And what you feel really bad about is that alienation, that forceful distance between person and person that you can never cross, because you do not hold the same values regarding the word "convictions." And they will never understand that perspective. It's foreign or unreal to them. While you take the entire situation in through reality, the other people will often choose labels that psychologically match their emotional values. And then the distance between grows wider and there is nothing you can do.

Nothing I can do. This is what it means to be living in true contradictions. This, for me, is the coldest alienation. And perhaps the saddest thing is that I know how the other person will write it off and I have to live with that and go on. I see me as they see me. And it's painful. And there is no defense, no last word, no bitterness, no revenge, no projection, no hate, just the wide space that aways exist between and the sorrow of the situation that I will mourn but eventually move on from.

When I was very young, I wanted to be understood and loved. And then I realized that was also a prison. I had to learn to love myself and believe in myself. I knew how different I was and that even in that difference, I was the same, that all people want to love and be loved. But not all people are happy or content or hold a high value on their worth. But somehow, for whatever reason, at a very young age, I did. Even with all my wounds and neurosis. My problem was being a fixer and I was going to fix my broken family and relationships until I decided I could only fix myself and help people in their journey or leave them along. Probably because I wanted to understand myself and the world and that is how I became a person who realized convictions were meaningless at times. And it was okay to say no, and to change my mind. To be wrong. 

Did you know that some people can never say no without feeling guilty or justifying? Some people can never say they are wrong? Some people can never change their minds? Some people are always looking for labels to explain uncertainty?  Some people are always ashamed or in regret or just feel like they are not good enough. These are prisons. 

I call all this the Impossible. And some people are always in search for it. The Impossible. But the Impossible, this psuedo-perfection and reality is just delusion. And yes, impossible.

(Sometimes, The Impossible transforms into a conviction.)

I am rambling here, but I do understand that sometimes there is no right or wrong, only a decision. Only a choice. And because I have been a creative since I was a child, I understood that choices happen every day, all the time. And some do not have good consequences. Sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. I wish I was wrong today. I will wish it all the rest of the day.

Today I feel like I know this enough to write it here. 

Tomorrow, I may change my mind. Laughing.

The light of the world is a little dimmer now.

 

Lana (December 30, 2007 - May 23, 2021)

Some people do have very short lives. But within that brief time, they radiated so brightly that they touched everyone who ever knew them. Lana was one of those people. For thirteen years, she was a burning star in the lives of her family, and friends, and community. She loved God, her family, and basketball.

It's summer time and the roses are blooming.

 From Ben's lawn. May 22, 2021.

I've had a very good day but I did something silly.

 Today I accidentally deleted links that had to do with my work.

(((omg)))

As I have been saying the last six months, "oh, well..."

Art is not a democratic act.

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”

                         ― Flannery O'Connor

This is one of my favorite paintings.

 

Simeon Solomon

Poetry c.1864

Watercolor

I am feeling low.

 

Painting by

Ion Vincent Danu

Enslaved By Your Roots

This is not the first time I have written about changes. Since 1998, my life, nearly every single year, has been one of major change. Not small things, though I have voluntarily made those, too, but very big emotional things like careers, and marriages, and illnesses, and deaths and those involuntary things that happen to us if we live long enough and love enough. In his incredible book, Life is in the Transitions, Bruce Feiler calls these "Life Quakes" or as I call them, "The Big Assaults On My Stability." I have experienced an unusual amount of them. Nothing is to be done, but how I react. I learned this the hard way at first, and then I mastered a method to deal with crisis so that I could exist AKA How we make meaning in times of change. I am there again, right in the middle of making seriously big creative changes. I did not expect it. Of course, it is never expected. It, this THING, this DISRUPTOR, began last November, though it was probably dormant before that. Who knows? Doesn't matter. Much of it is rooted in me, in various ways, hence the painting. We are all rooted in ways we cannot fully understand, physically, environmentally, and yes mentally. This DISRUPTOR has been of my own making and now I must endure by unmaking it in what ways I can. I will never fully unmake it. I will have to endure its existence to a certain point.

It's going to be chronic.

I am quite familiar with the "chronic."  But I do not like it.

So while I know what to do physically (this is very hard work). It's the mental issues that are going to drag me down. It's the emotional fallout, and today I wondered if I should go back on Prozac and if I do, what dosage. It's not like I have not been here, in this exact place, previously. So I have written it here on my blog because this is a major decision that will affect everything else in my life, especially my creativity. But if I fall into an anxiety/depression cycle, things could get bad, and guess what, I am feeling low right now. I keep journals. I know when I am winding down. It's been over six months and the downward spiral is really clear.

I'll have to choose at some point. But not today. But the choice is there.

Update: NO PROZAC. No sleep.