haiku: mania looms lost

mania looms lost

sardines hide pulling up chairs

vying for best view

bad moon on the rise

today is the pisces full moon. when the freaks come out to play... the operative phrase accompanied with this astronomical phase must be: out of control. gravitational shifts which are the stuff of physical astronomy but are bandied about in dime-store divergent astrological speak undoubtedly govern more than just changing tides in large bodies of water.

as a woman by proxy, i have a long interwoven history with the lunar cycle and the ebb & tide it creates within my own body on a physical & emotional plane.

as a person with bi-polar syndrome i’ve long since learnt & respected that the full moon & mania are bosom buddies. if running with the wolves is not a viable option [not usually] certain triggers which can free the mania & let the wild woman within run amok wreaking damage must be acknowledged & appeased. at times the were pull is much stronger than others. sometimes i am not strong enough & the echoes of those manic actions live on to serve & compound the existing complexities of life, for not just me but others.

with a tradition of operating amongst the cloak & dagger duplicity of the shady night, i’ve witnessed the manifestation of this behaviour in others with severely detrimental effects. as a consequence i like to stay off the streets away from the city’s seductive blinking red lights & say no to tempting party invitations on such an evening as tonight.

the advent of modern lighting is said to have attenuated the degree of effect that the moon once had on the sleep-wake cycle which is often associated with the induction of hypomania in susceptible people. still, i’ve had a gun put against my head, experienced extreme psychosis & faced an ex-lover crazed on ice wielding a revving chainsaw in a city street as the slow fat moon hung low & bloated in the afternoon sky behind. they don’t call them/us lunatics for nothing.

in a modern urban environment surrounded by accessible excesses, alcohol or drugs of choice exaggerate this asymptomatic behaviour to giddy & dangerous heights. psychotically related crimes such as murder & arson have been shown to statistically peak in sync when the moon is fully waxed. people who work in the police and hospital care services are all too familiar with this naturally amplified occurrence.

qualitative differences in violent behaviour when the moon is full have mostly been debunked in modern scientific study. there has been numerous research on the topic & the modern cult of medicine in its continued campaign to exert dominance over magic explains that a pervading ignorance of physics & a reliance for cheap entertaining thrills for whatever end allows the perpetuation of the [mis]belief. the observance & validity of lunar phenomena relegated to the domain of cheap parlour tricks & derided mysticism.

i’m happy to embrace my superstition which the ancients depicted as a visual wheel of fortune eternally spinning in a hypnotic revolution of highs & lows. i won’t be on the streets tonight as i continue to mop up the oil spill from my last turn: no matter how much you pay me.

don't go round tonight

well, it's bound to take your life,

there's a bad moon on the rise.

[moon pic copyright who you calling a sceptic?]

cat on a hot tin roof

this is my daughter's favourite photo of me. it has sat in her room for years amongst tot to tween to teen junk in a photo frame gathering dust until recently when i surreptitiously 'borrowed' the frame for a film shoot & reacquainted myself with this lost visage.

i must have scanned the image at the time knowing my terrible record for losing precious items because it's turned up in my photopile media archive as i was trawling through looking for something else.

my GF sonja took this pic on a day when i really did not want to be filmed. only an hour prior i had been gripped in angst & immobilized by tears, the slave of depression & agoraphobia not wanting to leave the safety nest of my little inner city warehouse up high beyond the reach of the fray, to face the pressure, plasticity & responsibilities of the world below.

eventually i'd faced my need to disappear & used all my strength to pick up the phone desperately trying to stall & reschedule a photography project with her. she flagrantly disobeyed, turned up on cue, banged down the door & pulled me from my turtle-like invisibility & despair. as do the best of friends.

taken from the kitchen window ledge between cigarettes & tissues looking out onto the patchwork of urban alley roofs, this is an accurate reflection of the day i acknowledged that i live with mental illness. an artist/thinker's lot. there are worse days.

old habits die hard

if i meditate on this lovely lightbulb & peeling paint long enough & allow it to create a strong enough story, i shall be absolved from the need to revisit blizzard's diablo III release page. this junkie gamer come filmmaker has other fish to fry. some obsessions die hard [and slow].

i successfully gave up cigarette smoking almost six years ago by going cold turkey. in the end though it wasn't the physical addiction which theatened to undo all my harnessed willpower & hard work, it was the all pervasive psychological associations. i no longer drink ristrettos. for a long time after quitting i embraced social death because going out was just not feasible. temptation was everywhere. a glass of wine in the hand meant a burning glow stick in the other...

it is said that smoking is a two-headed beast which offers physical & psychological addiction & overall is harder to give up than crack or heroin. in the end giving up smoking was easy, it was just a matter of training the mind in an orwellian reversion.

in order to cease smoking i had to learn to hate it to ensure i would never suck back on one of those cancer sticks which offered all the promise of a marlene dietrich fantasy. it started with the repugnance of being enslaved to tobacco companies & ended with a disdain for the habit & others who indulge. self-loathing transference. it helped that it fucks your health & smells bad but that couldn't be the primary reason: it's just not strong enough, or at least it wasn't at the time. smokers are often the worst anti-smokers. it's certainly true for me. i couldn't date anyone who smokes which provides an interesting conundrum when falling onto the love slippery slide.

i have a chequered history in gaming addiction. sometimes when i need to hide from the world & my hermit mode kicks in, i have been known to disappear into the video game abyss. i am not immune to the seductive charms, having commenced the relationship when i used to edit one particular internet magazine way back when it was still called the information super highway. this is before web 2.0 kids.

it all started with the launch of playstation & that enormous sony TV in my office and those first few old school pioneer games: wipeout, demolition derby, tekken etc that sony kindly dumped on my lap for review...

my pixelated vehicle of escapism choice for many years since however is diablo. i've been through all the previous versions/expansions/patches & had a 18-24 hour a day habit 7 days a week for almost 2 years. i was a respected hardcore ladder player in asia & US west. people knew my name, revered my characters, bought uber items from me. it was my metaverse: a concept our inner cyber punks are increasingly lured into. technically that makes me a loser in certain realities ie IRL. i don't generally do things by halves. my intense all consuming passion forbids it. dilution shits me.

depression and mania manifest themselves in strange ways & sometimes treatment goes outside of the square or right deep down into the very soul of the cyber-bits of it. these days my daughter gets nervous when my eyes shine and i talk about my sorceress, randomly discuss a necromancer spell or utter some inane phrase in multiple dialects [barbarian, necromancer, assassin, amazon, sorceress, druid]: " a gift for you", or even just "thank you". she knows... so i do what any addict does: i hide, i justify, i lie.

there should really be a new standard or comparable addiction scale which rates blizzard games at the top. because i know when i saw that world of warcraft booth & clare asked me if i'd ever have used one the answer was an absolute resounding yes. although my virtual walls are so impenetrable once jacked into the realm that nothing else exists. bodily functions are secondary to the need to fight PKs, slay monsters, collect treasure and gather points without allowing your precious hardcore character to die. who needs to eat, sleep or urinate when there's a uber 8 player tristrum run about to go down with the potential of exponential experience points and the opportunity for booty & respect?

i played on bnet asia realm [the servers are based in korea] the day that two seoul kids allegedly shot themselves when their hardcore characters died. i felt... empathy, before quickly logging back into a room to mule my items.

i don't think that smoking has ever elicited the same kind of obsession. its mortal danger fades in comparison to the craftmanship of undoing which is the brilliance of blizzard.net.

maybe i can kiss you after all [just this once].