Depression passing through like a shit, yay!

Well well my pretty ponies, I'm almost done with a recent foray into the depressive realms! The proverbial light appears (in my proverbial tunnel? Now that just sounds rude.)

I'm really enjoying reading 'Magical Thinking' by Augusten Burroughs. He wrote (and it was subsequently turned into a movie) 'Running with Scissors'. I haven't read that or seen the movie. Yet. I guess he has a similar style to my beloved David Sedaris, and they have a few things in common; gay, alcoholic, overly analytical, anxious, depressed, superior, inferior and incredibly funny. Really puts me in a good mood. Seriously. Perhaps it's the reading equivalent of listening to The Smiths.

I was going to go for a swim before working this afternoon, but the temptation to sit in bed reading and writing was too compelling. Getting through a rough patch really feels fucking brilliant. I'm almost high off feeling an absence of pain. I think that's why I enjoy reading Burroughs and Sedaris; their vulnerability and ways of trying to deal with an excess of feeling and fear touches me and helps me to laugh at myself.

Tell you what else helps ... is dancing. Went to The Checks on Saturday night with Bob and really enjoyed it. The audience were adorably young and wearing things my more stylish friends might have sported in 1988. Sort of

made me feel maternal towards my past self.

I drank little and danced lots. My legs are still aching actually. Bob was great company, and we talked about when my cousin Claire comes back from Vietnam and we'll be able to catch up with her. Not too far off!

Was also cheered by the presence of Mother duck and the ducklings at our back steps. Loooooook at theeeeemmmmmm.

Caught up with my ma yesterday and had pizza on the beach. Everything looked so good, so clean, so clear. Mum is still struggling with her grief over Nanna, it's only been six months so that's understandable.

We talked about how depression could be like a big shit that just needs to pass through. I guess it sometimes feels like you are made entirely of shit, forgetting how to let it simply work it's way out, to give yourself whatever you need to assist that process. Oh, and here's a tip: if you have a friend who is depressed, don't tell them to snap out of it, get on with it, get over it or to harden up. That's really depressing. It's like telling someone who hasn't had a shit for a week to eat a brick. Fortunately for me, I've only had one person offer the 'just get on with it' advice, but that's because she was also struggling with her own anxiety. Sometimes just saying 'the fear is passing through me' over and over again, is enough to help shift your state. It's temporary. It always is.

And so another week begins. The new moon grants you another start, new beginnings.

I am getting excited about my upcoming 'unemployment' period .... modest living for two months, but time to do all those things I say I'm going to do. Like trying to learn the guitar (been saying that for half my life), or writing a book, or getting fitter. It makes it sound like I might even be in charge of my life.

I might turn into someone really efficient, clean the mould off my bedroom ceiling (I know it should bother me), keep surfaces clear of clutter, with hold information from strangers, hang clothes up instead of throwing them on the floor, walk briskly through forests instead of staring at a bird for ten minutes, that sort of thing.

Time to open my window and get ready for work. God I sound efficient. Watch out world, I might even clean the mould off my ceiling.

T

Mathew Dentith's Voice, Reptilian Shape Shifters and talking with Mum.

Observations in space

November 23^rd

Mathew's Voice, Reptilian Shape Shifters and talking with Mum.

On a Thursday morning at around 7.40am you can hear the plummy musings of Mathew Dentith on BFM (student radio). He does this segment on conspiracy theories but gets really excited and wanders onto other topics.

Dentith occasionally slips into the beginnings of a stutter and brings it back with this lovely extended, roundy-vowelled way of speaking. I imagine him wearing a pink and green (diamond pattern) vest and sipping earl grey tea. I repeat the way he says things, murmuring under my breath as if praying as I drive towards South Auckland.

I’d never heard him, or of him, until a few months back. He sounds like he woke up with a silver spoon in his mouth and I’ve constructed a wonderfully imagined Dentith as a result. I envision child hood years of being misunderstood, stuttering in the school yard, mummy paying loads for elocution lessons and daddy wondering why his son won’t just harden the fuck up.

I like to think of him coming into his own (oh my!) as his stutter fades away and he forms stimulating friendships, spends hours analysing low brow American sitcoms and many more hours arguing patiently with anyone expounding religious views or whacky theories. For some reason I see him enjoying a nice soft boiled egg that his mum has just made him.

“Mother, where are my soldiers?”

“Now Mathew be patient, I’m just buttering them for you now.”

“Oh lovely, thanks Mother, you’re a brick.”

He’s really very funny and informative. I am rapt that he went along to see David Icke’s rally and don’t tire of how he refers back to it nearly every week, pondering which politicians might well be reptilian shape-shifters with psychic powers. Johnny Boy Keys looks pretty reptilian to me, so there might be something to it. (For my non-NZ friends – John Key is leader of the National Party, the party that’s more interested in running the country like a business than anything else. Oh yeah, and he's our Prime Minister.)

I was telling mum about the Mathew Dentith way of speaking, and then about David Icke and the naughty reptiles theory.

“So evidently at this convention there were about 640 true believers”

“Fuuck,” exhaled my mother sweetly

“I can’t believe there’s one person who believes that let alone 640”.

We agreed that being under some kind of illusion in the world is plausible, but that saying it’s an illusion purposely perpetrated by powerful lizards might be taking it a tad too far.

Something else I’m rather excited about (say that with a Dentith accent, oh my!) is one David Sedaris coming to NZ in January next year. Holy shit mouse, I love this guys’ writing. He is a most endearing and quirky beast. I’ve read two of his books and feel the need to re-read and find anything else of his I’ve not eaten with my eyes. I especially enjoyed his account of being on a train in France and having an American couple assume he was French . This wasn't a good thing as the man complained to his wife about how stinky the ‘frog’ was. Evidently he went on for some time, much to Sedaris’ silent mortification and fascination. I would like to go and see David Sedaris. Who knows what he'd deliver, but I'd like to know.

Did anyone see Eddie Izzard? Missed that, wonder if he’s still ‘got it’. He’s looking a bit more butch these days, but such pretty eyes as always.

Here’s a wee poem I forgot about until last night when flicking through a note book. Inspired by a little walk in New Lynn.

Blood and Blossoms

August 2011

Pollocks of blood

On the path

Trailing past the bus stop

finches yellow

sing and dance in the pink

blossom tree

silver jangles on my wrist

I walk behind the old man

his hair dyed ginger and in two tiny plaits

the blood leads up his driveway

he’s clutching his bag of piss

A frustrated artist

pink jandals

shrinking trackie pants

From 1983

here’s your freedom

and here’s mine too

Sky blue

and walking

_______________

So yes, ye olde voting this weekend. Mum commented that she really could imagine John Keys suddenly sticking out a lizard’s tongue and catching a fly. I’m sure there must be 640 people sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a glimpse of glinting scales or double eyelids. I see that the National party campaigners are doing what is common in South Korea: standing on corners with signs and being dicks. Asking me to toot my support. Nearly gave one of them the fingers but decided that was a little immature. A water gun full of red paint would be funny (ok, yeah, still immature).

Earlier today we had that exhilarating wind and rain burst.

I was trying to explain our rain to someone in Korea once ... it’s as if it’s trying to get right into you. It wants to sneak down the back of your neck and knickers, the kind of rain that renders an umbrella completely useless.

God, it’s enough to make one wish for a bath and a nap. Maybe a boiled egg and some soldiers. The possibilities (use your Mathew Dentith voice) are, as they say, infinite and not necessarily based on linear perceptions of time. It’s all happening now my little tigers, you lilies of the field, you wild horses at midnight. It’s only ever now.

(Fuuuck.)