After all that dismay in the last post there is a tendency to see me as buried in it. There was never a temptation to give in to depression since several attempts at suicide and a long mental illness years ago. The sense of loss becomes overwhelming however when so much effort has gone into being more than just a useless life that then proves to be wasted each time my efforts are destroyed by another move to another tenement.
I thrashed around in despair for several weeks. There have been bouts of totally debilitating illness but the general physical malaise that had been creeping over me during the winter rolled back and I am more convinced than ever that it is sick house syndrome. Several of the other residents here suffer from deep winter illness which may be the same thing.
I have been looking with despair at the immense labor of making some of those ink drawings. Since this move I have become very trapped within this space and all that work looks like being left here until some person comes and adds them to the rubbish after my death. It horrified me deeply. The drawings themselves have become less complex and the beautiful line-work less obvious as decreasing health forces my mind to take simpler pathways. The ability to look deep into three dimensional images was being lost. The fight to regain my drawing skills was being defeated by the steady decrease in intellectual capacity. It hurt!
The desire to undertake the difficult work of making painted images also died when so many were damaged a few months ago. Really it was already a forced labor as I am making work that relies purely on my desire to create the images that appear in my mind with my individual style. I cannot assess if anyone feels I have made something that isnt ridiculous. I am struck by thoughts of that woman in the beginning of the last century that used to sing terribly and even made several horrible albums. Ernest desire and determination do not equal quality without other elements and the state of my mind makes me doubt. Rightfully! I cannot get out there to show the work and test the reaction of people. It is fine to say I should just make it because the muse takes me but it costs me money that I have to save from my pension. It takes strength that I have little of and the paintings replace comfortable chairs in here. They also seem to want to be very large and that is going to mean I will have to amass even more strength and more persistence and deal with even worse constraints on my lifestyle within this building.
Hence all that helpless dismay.
Back to the thrashing around. I could not escape the horror of my condition. It became everything and even arose in sprays of nightmares. The single nightmare that often left me emotionally wrung out was replaced with one after another all night long and even in the sleeps during the day which had previously been free of them. I did not want to sleep. The medications wear out while sleeping and waking is painful while the nightmares attack and break the sleep cycle. I did everything I could to stay awake and was met with serious angina attacks as my body failed even more.
It has been a long time since I was in the journal. It feels like a hundred years of serious illness and mental anguish.
There was a documentary on the television that discussed brain chemicals and how some medications heightened the function of the receptors. They mentioned nor-adrenaline which is part of the fight or flight reaction and also abused as amphetamines. It struck me that my problem with visualizing art and coping with external stimulation is along the lines of decreased function of dopamine. I had a couple of cold and flu tablets containing pseudo-ephedrine which becomes nor-adrenaline when processed by the body. I was scared to take even one as the heart is very damaged and the chance of failure is a part of my daily awareness. I took one anyway. Just one!
By the next evening the first swirling metaphysical surrealistic drawing I have done in years was finished to the pencil stage. It was taking me weeks to get through large drawings and they had been involving desperate battles to “see” them mentally. The improvement wasn’t total but it was considerable. Then I cleaned the sink and wiped down the kitchen floor. The flat is the shabbiest and dirtiest of any place I have ever resided. In a few moments I have gone from staring helplessly at the dirt to beginning to clean it and without having to struggle for tiny lots of energy! After that I cycled back because I was aware that I was in danger of stressing my heart. Over the next two days I was able to sort a few electrical parts and work on inking the drawing. Over that time the improvement trickled away and on the third day the drawing appeared as a set of lines and shapes I could not decipher without effort and the dismay was full returned. Three days of better function! It is a long way from what you probably consider reasonable but good enough to allow me to begin to strive again! I left a week after the effects wore off before trying another. The next time it was similar but lasted four days. Then I took my discovery to the doctor to ask about some form of medication that could safely replicate these effects.
I will have to stop writing this now. I am exhausted and it is making me cause mistake which require constant editing which taxes me. I have quite a bit more to write although I wonder if this journal would allow me to break the entry up into bite sized chunks. Hmm I will be back
Sense of Community; Adrift in the Great Hormonal See. (in progress)
The break can be supplied by the drawing.
The doctor was sent an email describing the process and asking if he knew of a safe substitute for the pseudo ephedrine.
Three drawings that had been started several years ago and which had defied my efforts to take them further were suddenly easy. There were a total of two tablets taken over two weeks and several days of increased capacity were noted.
The doctor decided to stick with the present thinking. He offered me a prescription containing modified release venlafaxine. Dopamine is released across the brain and once it has worked it is reabsorbed. There are a whole bunch of explanatory terms I have ignored but that is it. Venlafaxine works on depressions by slowing the re-absorption and forcing the brain to retain the positive emotion for longer. I would say that is the exact opposite of what I was attempting but we felt positive enough to try it.
The effect of the venlafaxine was a shock. They say some people take their own lives after the initial doses and I understand how that could happen. It was a powerful reaction that increased confusion, made the nightmares even more persistent and made the angina attacks as strong as they have ever been. It was even worse to realize I had taken an extended effect pill that would keep releasing all night. The paperwork tells me that considerably higher doses are used initially for PTSD. That made me listen. I have PTSD and probably would have suffered real damage with the dose recommended for it. I felt like I was suffering the emotional equivalent of the desire to claw my own face off!
My theory on the painful outcome of that dose and the successful use of pseudo-ephedrine is that I have some form of damaged dopamine manufacturing. The damaged dopamine becomes stronger and offers a more better transfer with the pseudo-ephedrine. That extension and purifying changes some part of the brain physicality enough so it provides better dopamine output for a short time (days) before trailing off. Possibly the presence of “good” dopamine causes the neurons to heal or gives them the better chemical to replicate. The effects of the second dose lasted a few days longer, I slept better and the nightmares were infrequent and weaker.
The nightmares under the venlafaxine were ridiculously cruel and persistent. The insomnia was persistent and even when sleep was possible it was possible in very short bursts only. I theorized that the dopamine supply is damaged, fragmented or corrupted in the brain damage I have. That corrupted neurotransmitter is then held in place instead of being reabsorbed and the outcome is an increase in the effect. The venlafaxine increases the effects of the damaged neurotransmitter and forces it to recycle which acts as an amplifier when the brain tries to compensate and is again dealt a corrupted message. It was awful and it lasted all night and at a lesser degree it lasted all the next day.
The pseudo-ephedrine lifted my ability to enter into the work in my mind and “see” in it many of the marks I had forgotten. They were not that mechanical use of hard won and dimly remembered marks but they were the free flow of idea and feeling that didn’t need a history but just met the paper on its own terms For the first time in some years the only definition of what I felt was bliss. I was back in the zone where there was nothing but the image. No doubt, no nightmares, no need to limit myself to prevent pain.
The problem of a lack of circulation of the drawings was a matter that had led to some despair. I wrestled with all sorts of ideas but a group of Australian Print-makers gave me some feedback that assisted and started a new direction. I asked them if I was wasting my time with the ink drawings. They suggested both aqua tints and something called giclee prints. They are a form of printing using archival, fine art, quality digital-output to reproduce numbers of an artwork. They are expensive but not as expensive as the entire month of working I have already spent on the image included above. They can be printed at need and so can be framed without risk even if the feud with Northern Lakes businesses again gets it sabotaged.
There are possibilities for the future that will allow me to share the ink drawings and even if I am stuck in this place for a long time I can escape with my work. The word “bliss” is the only thing that describes those times my mind and hands make images together. The visit to deep withing the structure of shapes and shades and light takes me away from everything and some part of me talks to the universe. I have missed it so much. Now I have to tell you about metaphysical surrealism because it grows out of that. No, it must wait! This is enough of my mind for now. Bliss is the key here and after the despair it almost overwhelms me to look back to it. Possibilities in the darkness. Light again. So I drop most of the plans and ideas to date and begin to save for the things I need to make these giclee prints.
The matter of writing the journal and some other written things has led me to reach out to extend my understanding of that medium as well. The colleges I tried feel like large commercial establishments and there was no way to find if the reviews on Google were done by their marketing or real people. The idea that I would attempt a course with all this illness was giving me pause but the possibility it might be a waste of all that effort put me right off and I let the idea drop.
One of the writer’s groups was working on an exercise with one of the artist’s groups I was sometimes a contributor to. They seemed to have a good body of people so I emailed them and asked about their meeting. Their president arranged to pick me up and take me in. It was a huge decision. To be out for any amount of time without a trained carer is daunting now and there were some things that happened.
The president arranged with me that she would phone and I would go out of the apartments and meet her in the street. The next I saw of her she was at the door of my apartment. I thought she had forgotten to call or wondered why I didnt want her at the flat but no, there was an unanswered call on the machine. I was sitting right by the phone for fifteen minute before she turned up and right until she turned up.
I really struggle to cope with more than one person talking to me. It was notable that as soon as the group gathered my body was sheeting overpowering chemical perspiration which was embarrassing when shoulder to shoulder with two intense and intelligent female writers. We had exercises that involved writing and reading out little bits of text about “place”. I would lose comprehension and slip into a semi-daydream after the first few words. I noticed that I had to force myself back and I wondered if that is what happened when the phone rang. Someone handed me a magazine that was a very nice little gift they had decided on at that moment and as I went to offer my appreciation it became an object without identity and slipped into fog. People were talking and the comprehension of the item disappeared into the struggle to see if I was required to enter conversation or recognize someone else’s effort at writing.
I had tried to prepare the president for my disabilities and they had even arranged a stair lift for me should I need it. I was very impressed and appreciated it but walked up anyway. I have been ferociously self dependent for so long I cannot easily bend to let others assist me. I suspect they wondered if I had exaggerated the disabilities I claimed.
They were troopers and made me feel very welcome. I have a confusing array of very painful and debilitating things in my life and their complexity confuses people. I enjoyed being with them very much. They talked of things that connected in my mind and I felt a sense of rightness with them. I dont know if I can do much with them. The limitations plus being nuts will make it very difficult but like the bliss from the drawing there is a sense of warmth and light around the future possibilities of their presence in my writing. It might make these journal entries more precise and shorter.
I was exhausted and s;ept almost as soon as I got home. The next day was also a day of helpless exhaustion and the next. Too many days out of the work of drawing but when life already imposes effort and exhaustion you do not plonk a hit of amphetamines on top. Not even a very weak one.
Here we are. Not giving up yet and taking my failing life and trying again. And more saving. I have to get a macro lens and set up a light box to use for photographing the ink drawings as well as possible so I can print off the photographs. There is that old, half finished set of shelves and cupboard I made from a bed base that can have two lights clamped to it and the drawing hung on the back wall to be photographed. I should have stopped before this. My chest hurts again. Sharp little stabs like a swollen and clogged artery wants to bust. Okay this chatterbox is gone for now.
I apologize for the edit. This is the best I can do right now and will fix it as soon as the energy lets me