If I hadn't noticed
it would have continued
to grow
but I wouldn't
have had to know.
If I died,
it could just go
insane with power
and take over
my entire bathroom.
Even sitting here
typing this poem
I feel mad
with a desire
to get bleach
and attack
its mockery
of life.
It wants
my entire bathroom
to be blue
and fuzzy
a blue bathrobe
with its young decay
like a peach
willingly bruising
itself
over and over,
throwing itself
off some ledge
and calling
it dancing.
The Mania Of The Moment
28 minutes ago
I feel the same way toward our frequent invasions of mice--cuter than a patch of mold, but they multiply more quickly. I sometimes think of that Robert Burns poem "To a Mouse," a lovely sentiment in those lines, but I’m not so tender-hearted toward the ones that keep getting into our old house. They must be breeding them next door, in the barn at the Feed & Seed. They eat anything–-paper, birthday candles, Tampax (WTF?), bits of food stuck to shirts in the laundry (of course they eat bits of the shirt as well).
ReplyDeleteThree times I have found them in the trash, whereupon I stomped furiously on the bag. Got at least one that way, and maimed another–it managed to scurry away on its three good legs. They are so fast! Blinded one I caught under the microwave (there was a can of Lysol within reach)–-it tried to run and drowned itself in the sink. Oh dear. Between the maiming and the blind mouse I'm reminded of the farmer's wife and her carving knife. If only they were house-trained, but aaugh, the mess they leave! Sometimes I joke about leaving a row of tiny heads on toothpicks, to scare them off. Just call me Vlad.
I love that Burns poem. Burns is like the 19th century version of Bukowski. Well, minus the misanthropy I guess. But he's definitely one of the "great" poets of alcoholism. But what's not to love about a great dialect poem.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to see we've only ever had one mouse...that we know of. I tried using live traps and Lee thought I was crazy for bothering. But these didn't work. Our cat Dru (only one we had then) was able to locate the mouse for us, but when the mouse ran across the kitchen floor Dru went straight up into the air as though he had jet rockets on his paws...no way that fuckin thing was touching him!
So the mouse ran under a larder cabinet thingie and we were all (Lee's kids were staying with us that week) rocking the cabinet to try to catch-and-release the mouse...and we somehow crushed the poor creature to death.
I felt horrible.
Limp mouse = tragedy.
lol@Tampax-eating mice. Tampaxivorous?
OMG with the last two sentences!! AMY!!!!
You are definitely way tougher than I am.
I was happy to read convincing science that insects don't feel pain but I'm still rather sure mammals do.
I feel like such a sucker for all the years I felt terrible for the moth in the flame or the moth frying itself on the light bulb.
But now we know why they do that.
They don't feel a fucking thing.
Empathy for insects is a sucker bet. Hurray! One less group on the evolutionary chart that I have to feel sorry for!
The Australian mice videos on YouTube are a guilty pleasure. I'm sure you've seen those. They open a cabinet door and a river of molten mice pours out like mice lava.
I also like the KFC rat videos (in NYC).
The poem above is acutally about reading art that is different from your own and realizing death will stop you talking about what art you think is "good" or "bad" etc....but I really did just see a mold patch I have to go bleach away...its minuscule but must not be left to spread)...I spend too much time in hot baths and no vent in there so the moisture hits the walls....
Worst mice story I ever heard was a coworker at ACME.
This woman was like the Biblical version of the long-suffering mother.
She worked all the time, often two shifts in a row. Had a druggie husband who wouldn't work and whose idea of watching the kids while she was at work was getting stoned with a bunch of druggie friends and dealer friend and playing video games while the kids tried to survive on the Serenghetti of the floor, walls, ceiling, whatever.
She would have things like 800 dollar heating bills (one month).
And then she told me about the mice invading her home.
She would open drawers and find mice turds in her panties. Mice eating family photographs. Mice spilling out of drawers opened. Mice neonatal units in shoes.
Horror story.
She knew everything about that company and I don't think there was anybody's job she didn't do at one time or another.
But because she wore sweaters with peanut butter and jelly to work and had hair like a crayon drawing they never gave her any supervisory position for which they applied.
Instead they hired young girls half her size and nearly half her weight to boss her around and delegate half their job to her.
God, I hope she's sitting in some posh tiny office and laughing her ass off now...as she deserves.
She was the best.
And the nicest person.
Never heard her say a single bad word about anybody.
She should have her own fucking book in the Bible. Srs.
I can half-remember a Bukowski poem that compares creative inspiration to catching a big bug crawling up the wall, or something along those lines.
DeleteMy adolescent self would be horrified at my current attitude toward the wee mousies. Like my reaction to learning that Mom had dispatched a woodchuck with a shovel by the compost pile. Now, I get it. She was once a gardener. After college I moved back in with my folks for a year and paid "rent" with a vegetable and herb garden in the backyard and a homemade, everything-from-scratch dinner every night (this was back when I was healthy as a horse; how I used to love digging up the rocky soil in the spring). The woodchucks descended upon my garden one night and ate the entire patch of butternut squash and all the brussels sprouts too, down to the stumps. At that moment, gazing upon those stumps and thinking of all that work wasted, I would have dispatched the entire family if I had them at my mercy.
I empathize with your friend with the horrible infestation--no mice in the undies as of yet, but they got into the sweater drawer (ate the cedar chips) and the bath linens too (probably looking for more Tampax). The mice caught in the traps don't appear to have suffered much, if at all--the trap usually breaks their backs, which hopefully leads to a swift death. Though once, I found a trap that held but a single paw--the desperate creature had chewed off its own foot!
The spouse once purchased those sticky traps--I objected vociferously to those! Not necessary to make them suffer that way. Nasty.
I'm glad that I'm not squeamish about bugs and vermin--I already need the spouse to do all the heavy lifting; at least I don't have to put pest control on his plate as well. I can also dispatch an avocado-sized wasp nest without screaming like a little girl. ;)
lol.
ReplyDeleteI will do your "little girl" screaming for you.
Bukowski usually is about that cheerful. I like his stuff even though he's never ambitious as a poet. Well, he's not ambitious as a human being. His whole schtick is "I gave up years ago--you're not gonna get a rise out of this prematurely dead guy."
People can dig that existential cool.
I can too. In small doses. I do have a number of his books and look at them occasionally. Like his prose too.
Someone (unintentionally) raked the ashes off my borderline personality disorder engagement coals elsewhere on this blog earlier today.
I liked hearing from someone else and swapping empathies about it.
I was going to say she (but I'm guessing--maybe he) linked me to a site for people who have had bad experiences with those with BPD...it's not a site for those who have BPD.
I haven't checked it out yet but I'm curious.
I don't want to dwell on it since I wasn't lovers or anything and I'm over it now.
But you do think back and realized how you were played. And that leaves anger.
All that empathy. To feed a bottomless hole.
But then to be honest I feed my own bottomless hole every day.
She said the reflection thing is common. Telling me she was bipolar too when she wasn't. Being gay with gay people, bi with bi people and straight with straights.
It makes me laugh it's so fucked up.
I guess I should feel fortunate I wasn't born with that one.
That has to suck way more than even my life.
Like her moving every six months. And I mean from state to state.
No way I could deal with irrational drives like that.
Maybe she has a body count or something.
Maybe I'll see her on ID one of these nights.
I've seen quite a few online comment threads between victims of people with BPD. Lots of horror stories. For whatever reason I've never had any close friends with the disorder--as far as I can tell. Not that I don't attract damaged people, but I attract different types of damaged people. Whatever types mesh well with (or feed?) my own damage, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteAmy, you said something that I had already been thinking while I was in the tub a little while ago. I sounded as though I was glorying in the idea of a site dedicated to a release of anger towards people with borderline. And I thought, surely there are many such sites for people attacked by bipolar people like me. I was just reliving the hurt of that person playing that trick of disappearing. Let me strees I did not care if she chose to disappear out of my life. I just wanted to know she was okay and I know she played games with my goodwill. And this went on weeks. Every few days I'd send an email just escalating in worry. Because she had drawn a picture for me that she could be in imminent physical danger with her living arrangements (nuts living in upstairs building were trying to destroy the building to get back at evil landlord or something). And I know she was online because she's never gone 24 hours without being online. And the moment I (abstractly) addressed my frustration in a comment I got an email telling me never to contact her again because I had finally blown a fuse and said "Games. Fuck off" basically. She could have said "I'm fine. Don't feel like talking. Bye." I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. I stopped talking to her for like a year last time because of something else she did dirty to me which I won't even go into. But yeah you attracted my attention and I am damaged. I don't mind being ignored, really I don't. It's my default function actually. But feeling like someone squeezed me for emotion like a toothpaste tube. That hurt. And I won't go there again. As that woman said to me yesterday, "The good thing is you recognize the type much easier next time." I don't think that's necessarily true. Or not of me anyway. I think her truer comment was when she said "These people are good. Many of them fool psychiatrists for the longest time." My friend was bipolar to me, gay to gay people, straight to straight people, bi to bi people, etc. I know it's silly to feel anger about stupid lies like that but yesterday I did briefly. And then I laughed. And i did realize the hypocrisy of wanting to forgive myself but not forgive her. I guess I already have forgiven her (as if she gives a fuck--I have neither power nor money, two things she's interested in) but I don't want to experience something like that again.
ReplyDelete(continued, did it again, exceeded character count on rant)
Maybe I"m completely wrong but I feel for my sanity I need to avoid people that are tooo much like me. And we often mirrored each other in our dysfunctionality. If she's reading this she'll be going nuts that I'm talking about her even in a way nobody would recognize her in but she herself (I mean her real identity). But she would always delete every single trace of her previous incarnations online. She was obsessive about deleting all those Facebooks, blogs, etc. I remember her saying, "Once something's in the Google reader, it's there forever" with a sort of terror. Well, don't do horrible shit and you don't have to worry about Google reader. I never want back and tried to delete my asshole moments. But then when we were "working together" trying to help each other with "our" bipolar disorder she made it plain I couldn't publish anything talking about it. She wasn't "out" as bipolar. Yeah, and she never had mania either. Because she isn't bipolar. Fake ass. I really do wish her well despite the acidulous tone I'm using here. I wish she had somebody in her life she trusted enough to love (besides her cat). And I wished she trusted her own gifts as an artist, because she's very talented. I never denied that. But she's living lie after lie because of some fucked up shit her parents did to her as a child. What is so shameful about talking about the REAL damage? She does it in emails all the time. I really belive that psychobabble line about "we're only as sick as our secrets." I know that's an awful cliche but it's (usually) true. Sorry for the rant. I've been up way too long. On the fun side, Lee and I were watching the dvr'ed episodes of American Idol. What fun lol!
ReplyDeleteMy close friends and lovers have usually been damaged in some way--I don't relate as well to well-balanced people with happy, stable childhoods and "baggage" that fits in the overhead compartment. For me, there's a sweet spot between too crazy and not crazy enough.
ReplyDeleteI had a lovely fit of belly-laughs some years ago when I realized I have a "type" as far as romantic attraction goes. The "misunderstood genius." Intellectually brilliant, emotionally retarded, passionately opinionated, and socially isolated (and/or they have a tendency to rub people the wrong way). (If they have had a type I fall into, I have no idea what it is.)
Well, my baggage is no longer carry on. I once dreamed it was. But I'd be the guy sitting there with a pile of crap land a landfill if my baggage could be visualized.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you write "opinionated." I was venting one opinion after another on Teh Cheezburger teh other night while my one friend was making capshuns. And there was a pic of a kitteh with head sideways asleep with his tongue sticking out like they do sometimes without realizing...and it looked like a raspberry.
And he captioned it "Opinionated Kitteh / even has opininions in his SLEEP!"
I loled seriously and felt certain that was directed at me (in an irked but not really mean way) so I instantly left a comment on his message board: "I agree with Opinionated Kitteh. If we don't have opinions someone else tends to have them for us."
I hope that didn't piss him off.
I suppose it could be construed as a narcissist's move (everything everyone's saying is about me!) but I think it was me since we had just been talking and it was clear he was following my convo with someone else since he was also making captions related to those topics.
But his caption stuck in my head.
You don't ask what "type" you are and it's presumptuous of anyone to answer since wtf do we know.
I just know you're exceedingly analytical and not kneejerk. You're tolerant and well-read and au courant. You're caring but you don't rave. I tend to link caring and raving. No idea why. It makes me look quite silly. Of the "tolerant" and "well-read" and "au courant"--I'm almost the middle one of those and though I like to think of myself as the other two, I'm definitely NOT the third and only half the first--even if my intolerance is more about things like social conventions and ideas about things people "should do"---rather than being intolerant of people. (What's the opposite of being tolerant of people? I can only picture Nazis. But I guess there's a spectrum of rudeness from stereotypes to genocide)
Those are only a few adjectives I know about you.
I'm sure there are a bazillion more. But I only see a quadrant of you (pun intended).
Also, I am an abuser of punctuation and you are not.
I would try to change but the recidivism rate is horrible.
Oh, and you are a mouse killer.
I'm not.
lol.
I meant you "ask what type you are." I put the "don't" in the wrong place like an idiot.
ReplyDeleteWhy do I never proofread comments.
I do the same thing everywhere else.
I'm an idiot.
I have had a lot of opinionated friends over the years as well. Maybe it's because I have fun playing Devil's Advocate--encouraging people to see things from a different point of view.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I am au courant. I'm out of the loop. Though I am somewhat culturally literate. But as an observer, not a participant.
My Myers-Briggs type, for what it's worth, is INTP--Introvert/Intuitive/Thinking/Perceiving.
Introvert is obvious.
Intuitive (as opposed to sensing) means, I think, that I am no good at seeing details in the present but am more of a person who pays attention to future possibilities, and seeing patterns in history. I never miss the forest for the trees, but sometimes I walk into a tree while working out some theory about the forest.
Thinking--yeah, I live in my brain more than my heart. Not that I'm like a Vulcan or robot, though. The "Feeling" people--I guess they are the ones who link caring and raving, which is OK too! Just not my style.
Perceiving as opposed to Judging--I'm not terribly decisive, not very opinionated. I'm comfortable with gray areas. I'm not impatient about making decisions. I'd rather bounce off other people's opinions than form my own.
I should take the Myers-Briggs for a lark.
ReplyDeleteIf it's an electronic version I'm thinking it might burn up like a toaster and say "Never come back here!"
;-)
And I think your self-analysis is "spot on."
From what I know of you.
I just realized I forgot to check my email for two days.
I swear my brain is seriously malfunctioning a lot.
I know anyone can edit their comments by reading them BEFORE posting..which I seem to forget to do...but even still...I wasn't always this awful with weird word substitutions...usually I notice these are words that sound like the words they are supposed to be (ex "are" for "or"). So I know I'm hearing my voice (literally-aurally) in my head. But that's why music can affect me so. It can take over my brain. I'm visual too but I think I'm more about the afterimages of sounds.
But I do worry my brain is off. I think it's mostly behavior because I had Catscans, MRI, etc.
I think it's more just medication and lack of sleep and my mental disorders.
But some memory problems.
I can remember the tiniest details of some articles I've read.
But I can pick up a pill and take it and then not be sure if it was my synthroid or my Ambien I just took.
And this can cause problems!
I know about pill cases and all that and even have one.
But I hate feeling so old doing that and then I have a great period with no confusion.
And then it flip-flops again.
It's mostly the bipolar distraction. The mind is a dozen places at once. And sometimes that number is no exxaggeration.
I seem to bypass the weird word substitutions most of the time. Sometimes you add another message correcting what you wrote, and I look at the previous message and realize I read it "right" the first time, like my brain has a built-in auto-correct filter. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure. Part of me thinks I ought to be actually seeing what's in front of me. Perhaps my way of thinking comes from being an Intuitive type instead of a Sensing type.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a LOT of trouble with word recall until I started taking the Ritalin. I'm not ADHD; it's prescribed to me "off-label" for the autonomic dysfunction. For years I felt like not enough blood was getting to my head, or something like that, but when I tried to describe the problem I sounded Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. The Ritalin has been the biggest success of this whole saga of medical crappitude. I still get dopey, but it's not anywhere near as bad.
Myers-Briggs is fun, but it can become a crutch like any number of things, like astrology, which is perhaps a weird example, but it's used in a similar way by people trying to make sense of themselves and others. Also plenty of folks score in the middle on one or more of the four axes. They are hard to label neatly--they don't get to check off nice neat little boxes like most people.
I made the mistake of trying to go to sleep without taking Ambien. I finally gave in after realizing I didn't want to see yet one more gruesome murder on ID tv and my OCD didn't allow me to change the channel lol My cat was like "Go the hell to bed!" So I took one and figured I'd pop in until I crash. And since I usually take half a pill one should work wonders.
ReplyDeleteI realized in my sleepiness I failed to respond to something you said and I feel really terrible now. But that's something for an email. I wasn't try to be an a-hole. It was dopiness. So...sorry.
I don't have any anecdotal experiences with Ritalin. I think I had a stigma associated with the drug from news stories from way back but those stories are fuzzy in my brain and all about young children being given the drug. I'm glad some people really benefit from it...well that you did...not "some people"....
Glad you somehow miraculous read through my weird "sound typos."
And I didn't know that about Myers-Briggs. I figured it was yet another omniscient test that predicts every thing about me and every thing I will do for the next fifty years.
I'm being facetious, obviously, because I think so many of those tests are crap.
Like sociopaths (the "hardcore" ones) are going to admit they lie all the time on that Minnesota Personality test. Or anything else.
Sure, if you presume you have a person who knows how to understand the questions and isn't a sociopath or suffering from some other mental disorder in which they lie all the time, you might get real results.
It's like when I had to take ethics tests for certain jobs.
I was smart enough to figure out where it suited me to lie and where not.
If anything, I spent way too long on those tests because it always amused me to think about the reasoning behind each question and which pathological personality types would lie effectively and which ones would lie ineffectively.
And then people would just be victimized by their own dumbness or smarts.
Like the classic "Have you ever told a lie."
It's so funny how poor dumb people agree they never told a lie in their life and are instantly dropped way down the scale.
And then the slightly smarter person knows you put yourself somewhere like a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 of lying, even though you might be a 2.3 or even 4.
And the sociopath, who lies all the time, puts himself or herself at 1 on the scale as well.
But since they'll put the same answers as as the "slightly smarter" non-sociopath will probably get the job.
Because they'll have about a ton more glibness and charisma than the "SS N-S" who doesn't want the job anyway since he knows how much the job will suck.
But the sociopath looks forward to having the job because he will probably steal the company blind, fuck a lot of people who mean as much to him as cockroaches and then maybe later burn the building down for kicks while his boss is in it.
And then get an even better job next week.
I think that's how the world mostly works lol.
I meant to type "But since he'll put the same answers as the "slightly smarter non-sociopath," the sociopath will probably get the job.
ReplyDeleteThere have been at least a dozen somethings you've said that I meant to respond to, but the conversation moved on, or I flaked. Sometimes it's better to move ahead with the conversation rather than try to go back and tuck in all the loose ends. Though sometimes, later on, I realize I've missed something important. Ah, I used to be far more conscientious before I became a flaky puff.
ReplyDeleteMy ADHD son did poorly on Ritalin (he got nervous and lost weight--but his non-stimulant ADHD med has been a huge success), but I know an adult with ADHD who functions very well on another stimulant, Adderall (another stimulant--an amphetamine). The legal restrictions are a pain; I don't like having to take the urine tests, or having to pick up the prescription paper at the doctor's each month, bring it to the pharmacy, and wait for the prescription to be filled, but it's all worth it.
I've taken those job tests. It's funny, how you can tell what they are looking for most of the time. Though I betcha there are (a very very few) people out there who really have never told a lie, strange as that seems to most of us.
Just woke up due to cat being hella ebel.
ReplyDeleteI hear things about Adderall and wonder too. But the people(adults) I know who take it seem to see it as a godsend.
Those urine test drugs are annoying for people like me who hate leaving the house. Stressful. I was on Depakote and nobody ever checked anything. While it was trying to kill me. They never even asked. Maybe that's not one they check but someone told me later it is or should be.
Hard to imagine someone who never lied when they were two or three or how they could even remember their first language use.
There are plenty who don't do it on religious principle, I suppose.
Even when they crush people with truths totally unnecessary rather than little white lies that wouldn't have changed any of their decisions or their life other than to annoy them.
Like someone is dead and they secretly hated this person.
"i'm so glad X loved me. I cared so very deeply for him all my life."
"well, Julie, X hated your guts. All his life."
I'd let the person still think they were gonna be bunkmates in Heaven.
Rather than give them a gnawing anger and distrust of themselves that lasted their entire life.