Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts

2023-04-10

NaPoWriMo 2023 - 9 - Taking it under advisement

(I have not skipped a couple, I kept them private because they fell out kinda personal...)




Taking it under advisement



the first rule of dealing-with-the-particular-thing-
the-thing-that's-secret-to-myself-and-that-
I-do-not-like-to-talk-about-
club, is we talk about it
that is the advice

at any rate,
that one sex blogger gives, documenting
how she's lived her life
radically reimagined
and somewhat exposed
these last five years

and been happier for it
who talks
about the dirty underside of her mind
the very not-talking being
what enabled
the "dirty" judgement to persist
and possibly it works for her

in some degree
because exhibitionism
which I so don't have


so I take the limited supply
of advice
as well intentioned but with a big
pinch of salt

and the advice I give is:

avoid magical thinking
--such as believing that the aforementioned
talking-about-the-unspeakable
can fix everything--
because it always seems like
if we could only address WXYZ
then everything would be lovely
in the garden

but this
is a failure
of imagination
and the post-WXYZ world is still a world

(or garden)

still messy and dirty and filled
with human beings, complex,
and not all well intentioned
and there was no way
that merely sorting out the WXYZ
was going to fix that


no, my advice is:

walk on the grass
whether the sign says otherwise or no
our pleasures are limited
and none of us know
when we'll go

bare feet on damp grass
your father running the sprinkler
but that was then and now you are the father
with no sprinkler
because ecology

and in this newer world in theory
sometimes you want but think you should not have

a Bakewell tart for example

of the more industrial kind
with solid sugar icing to at least
a quarter of an inch
but you can

because,
ultimately,
apart for those we choose ourselves
there are no rules.



2021-04-22

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XIV - Maybe I should stop taking the pills

Maybe I should stop taking the pills


as I was discussing a moment ago
with the lady beneath
the grating in the floor
they cannot see her by the door
where the nurses station lies
and I do not let the nurses
or the penguins
know I'm talking to her
because she's covered in dust bunnies
and a very private woman.  Maybe
I should stop playing this game
it's eating so much of my time
but strangely compelling
and I've made progress,
manoeuvring my avatar from the spawn point:
straightjacketed in the padded room,
through consultations, medications,
group and art therapies,
to here, where it's clear beyond the institution
there lies an outside
even if some grills, code-locks,
and surprisingly muscular psychiatric nurses
away; and maybe now is a day to reconsider assumptions
because it's surprisingly hard to tell what's real;
what's not; and what, although illusionary, conceals
some aspect of a truth.  Like the penguins.
Who would have thought
there were do-gooder nuns
behind the feathers and fish obsession.  And that they
would be the solution, to the sedatives problem.
Maybe I should stop
reading the magazines?
  But look, see
here's an article by someone like me,
only fitter and more sexy, saying that he
solved this very problem with one simple trick.
That's slick.  I most try it with Dr Andrews.
I'll let you know how it goes... except...
maybe I will stop writing this blog:
You should stop taking the medication - says one comment, and
Ignore that, he's a liar!  Says the next...
and having contradictions laid out in text
is strangely unhelpful.  Has the first guy spoken to any penguins?
Does the second know the woman beneath the grate?
Or Dr Andrews?  Is either closer to a date
when an orderly will key a code
and open that final grate
to the brightness of the lobby,
the heady freedom of the carpark, beyond.
Has either of them stopped taking the pills?




--

Disclaimer - I've never been in a psychiatric institution, but I have watched Season 6 of House MD.

And seriously this isn't about mental health, but more about our general impressions of reality and truth, and where we find them, the choices we make, what sources of "truth" we subscribe to...




2019-04-12

NaPoWriMo - 2019 #12 - What we can learn from alien machinery.



What we can learn from alien machinery.

Align the fixing lugs with care.  Keep clothing,
loose ideas and hair out of the works.
Don't shirk responsibilities, you are
the only one who can maintain
your interior landscape.  See how
the Centaurian Enveiglatron turns on

every nineteen and three-quarter hours, to brew itself
a cup of lukewarm surface-cleaning gel.
Try not to dwell upon a single goal
you can't control the quirks of fate and chance
see how the Nuclear Inflectionoid will dance

around alternative solutions and quest
not only for a task done well;
it's also seeking grace,
and to stop with every tool-head facing west
--we don't know why it does that,

and that's a lesson too!
There will be things you do,
simply part of you,
without a deeper meaning.  Do not ignore
the urge to laugh, or waltz,
or merely don your coat

with a perfectly unnecessary flourish.  You are a you
and like the Pseudo-de-crenalator
you're the only one we have.
So nourish yourself.  Make a scene, a song. a plan...
If you're not being you, then who the hell else can?



2019-04-07

NaPoWriMo - 2019 #6 - exits exist



Exits exist

Things that fell
apart, the centre
never holding. Text
inexplicable in
significance,
red on white
signage and see
there's bold and
underlining of random
words as if
as if it means
something

like other
random words, authority
figures shouting.  Oy!
What do they
want now? What
do they want
from me?  I
cannot see. I
mean I can
see everything

but that is
too much.  Complexity
kicks me
in the head,
although a stumble
into a simpler
place, like the
library, could work.



(From Carrie Etter's Short lines prompt..."

2018-04-25

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day twenty-three - Warning labels



Warning labels


May be acerbic.  May mock.  May experience
emotions not so easily described.  Grumpiness
can happen.  May want to help and get frustrated
when he cannot.  May mysteriously need
affection and although not ambitious, may
have a strange need to excel in everything,
without breaking sweat.  May guess your meaning
before you finish speaking.  May find the news
disturbing.  May find leaders unnerving
and likely think they all are jerks.  May conclude
that all of politics and media
are broken, beyond the wit of man to fix.
May look grim.  May mutter.  May slouch,
as if looking for something, along the gutter.







2017-09-05

Sept 5th - No man

No man

I don't see people any more,
they're all atoms and tissues and fresh
angles on psychology and neurology
and social roles made flesh.

I shan't see people any more,
I feel I have already seen
every option bulk mankind can offer me,
everything you could have ever been.

I won't see people any more,
I hear them distantly, muttering of thoughts,
perhaps their needs, I do not heed,
won't stand before that juggernaut.

I haven't seen people for years,
their tears or fear.  Oh, I see their tracks
and desperate graffitos on the walls
but human contact, I do not feel the lack.

I can't see people any more,
I do not have the eyes
so if I seem to look past you, or through you,
forgive me, I am a victim of solipsistic philosophy


.

2017-05-23

The guide to nine utopias - V - Emotional

The guide to nine utopias


V -- Emotional

My therapist's receptionist's name label
says: Hi, my other self is Kristin,
and I am Jane.
She's cataleptic; unable
to show that she's at home--no analyst in
the place either. I scratch my appointment
from in her book and go to look for group
up on the seventh floor. It's poignant
how I now recognise each different troupe

of troubled patients from the varied wails
that leak out of their room. Such sordid tales
I've told and heard behind these doors. Touching
ones as well of course but, oddly, I clutch
the most disturbing ones--collect them. Sad
but I'm well adjusted to the slightly mad.







2017-05-02

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 28th - Signs and portents

You have to imagine that the bits like this
etc
are informational signs with peeling paint on the walls in a disused hospital.


Signs and portents

stairs to all floors He believes in progress,
has worked on it through many years staff calendar.
Sometimes things change, his room caught fire one time, accident and
emergency

but other days he sweats ← gym to shift one item
from where it is basement storage to where it ought to be administration block.
This is the way things are these days preventative medicine, but he waves
the thought aside and shunts his occupational therapy handcart
through disused hallways.  He isn't really looking ophthalmology
at the walls or unsafe floor.  He doesn't really plan
the future any more; lacks accommodation staff apartments
for such mortuary errors as occur.  He had lunch
with Kate in the Kings Arms.  Her daughter paediatrics came too;
good grief that kid can put sausage and chips away canteen.
It felt like belonging family planning, and God knows he's better
than her ex psychiatric services--but all the while he was waiting
to be found out authorised personnel only.

2017-04-02

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 1st - The Impirator's Trending Clothes

The Impirator's Trending Clothes

Twenty-Three Thousand People are talking about this,
and of course you want to Save the Bees, so click:
the simplest act which in an earlier
and less gratificationally now
regime would have seemed as if it could at best
form just the smallest part of the process, the start
if you will, or perhaps the end.  New on your feed
what do you want to eat?  Where and with who?
How can you know what to do without ratings, reviews,
the telling clique of stars beside each name.
She clicks the link, you won't believe what happens
next
...  You've had a text from a so-called friend
amused that trolls beneath the bridge have told
the goats and sheep that you're a freak (though they
of course used your wrong you're: their stupid).  Click
to save sick kittens -- but where -- trending now, click here
to learn this simple trick
-- but where in all
this maze -- suggested page -- where did you leave --
why don't you want to see this ad -- where did
you leave your life?  Be first to comment on this.

2016-10-23

Late onset fallibility

This is a poem about dementia, which isn't something which has badly impacted me in my life.  Yet...

(My Nan had it, but I wasn't that old and we lived quite a long way away...)

It's going to touch me at some point however.  It's bound to.  About 1/6 of people over 80 are affected, and I know many more than 6 people.

Some see Alzheimer's as the worst tragedy of the modern age.  I am not sure I entirely agree, it's certainly one of the most painful for the victim's familypossibly worse even than having them in a persistent vegetative state, at least in that case the wreckage of the person you loved isn't still trying to talk to you.


However, to my mind dementia, horrible as it is, is a subset of the big tragedy, which is that people die.  I have written about this before: the inevitability of death, how it gets a little more evitable every year, and how that in itself brings interesting, new, social problems.  Those are good problems to have, however.  People living too long is infinitely preferable to them not living long enough.  The increase in diseases we can't yet fix: dementia, cancer, diseases of senescence in generalis the direct effect of taking out all those lesser deaths who were more vulnerable to our sorcery.

None of which makes the failure of a beloved mind any more bearable.


I have been asked why this is late onset, when early onset is even more tragic.  The answer is because early onset dementia is more like a horrible disease, striking down only a subset of us; however the diseases of old age, of which dementia is the one example, get everybody who lives long enough...








Late onset fallibility


He returns from walking the dog
no longer quite your father.
It's nearly your dog.

He returns from walking the dog;
he's only been gone two days,
which admits no ready explanation.

He returns from walking the dog
with a jaunty stride
and somebody else's shoes.

He returns from walking the dog:
your mother leaves without a word--
she has been dead for five years.

He returns from walking the dog
smiling strangely to himself;
scowling at you, your brother, the front room paper.

He returns from walking the dog;
seems like he's acting younger
and looking frailer than when he left.

He returns from walking the dog;
wants to speak to your sister, oblivious
that she lives in Queensland now.

He returns from his walk
with a cat on a piece of string
and seven tins of the wrong dog food.




2015-07-09

Days spent

A padded rooming house, earlier today...
Since Anger Bob was somewhat concerned with mental health, I was reminded about this one.

It's a bit old again, from 2010 I think, but stands up reasonable well against my current standards.  I might not say "himselves" now-a-days—it feels a bit coy.  (As I recall I hesitated at the time...)  Maybe also there are too many m-dashes.

This uses "hands" as a metaphor for the psychiatric staff.  It was only afterwards I was told that in the US "hands" is jargon for nursing auxiliaries.  I think the poem works well with or without this interpretation, however.

Administrative note: due to circumstances under my control, there will be no blog posting next week.  Talk amongst yourselves for a while.




Days spent

A hemmed head offers no escape
from the deftly padded rooming house—
sentinel cedars hedge it round.

Sometimes, in spite of care, he waxes
too strong for the watching hands—
needle-prick clouds breeding.

And on days too other, riddled
thoughts slam him sideways—
a soft wall to catch—no understanding

even for himselves. And days
spelunking and diving in the grey grains—
these days the hands call "good",

he does not know why. But perfect days,
they do exist, middling days drawn rarely—
everything balanced and in a place—

days playing to the gallery,
improvising on reality, insight,
variations on the theme of sanity—
even the hands applaud.