ebb and flood - Schizophrenia

2006-06-13T15:40:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Yesteray ha a particularly good day, although obviously it had some bad in it. For example I always regret the way I act aroun people, if i meet someone ill regret something about it, useually the regret will be piercing, as it was yesterday, but the good out wieghe the bad.

I'd rather be the dust of the road
And be trampled on by the feet of the poor...

I'd rather be the rivers that flow
And have washerwomen along my shore...

I'd rather be the poplars next to the river
With only the sky above and the water below...

I'd rather be the miller's donkey
And have him beat me and care for me...

Rather this than to go through life
Always looking back and feeling regret...

I went into work in the morning and did a days worth of decorating, which wasnt ba, with enjoyable car rides, and then went to my granddads who lives in a nice quite country area about an hours rive. I especially enjoyed this as we went into the garden, which looks on into the distant crop fields, with the sun blazing above. We spent about two hours out there, and as i said i dissovle in the cinema, i peasently dissolved in the garden. Then came back and smoked quite alot of cannabis, and got a piercing headache from getting my mind going through thinking. Couldnt sleep that night, as it was stifling, and so ended up taking a quick cold shower at 2 in the morning, and after that feel asleep. I awoke after disturbing dreams, to feeling completely out of sorts and disjointed (yin yang is always with me). Went into work but was to depressed to do anything, and so am now back here, doing nothing. But planning to go to the cinema tonight to see the omen.

2006-06-12T12:06:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Went out yesteray as well, and am going out today. I think i will have to go out every day now, since i cant stay at home any more. This means i will have to move (i get caught up in nie daydreams about that), so atleast i will be able to go out for walks, as i cant go out onto the forecourt without some purpose an with someone really, or else the dread of comeing back to it would be unbearble, in case aload of people were out there, and i hate being seen. Im still smoking cannabis, which i will have to stop. I can feel that the time is soon when i will stop it, as happens with me, i get a feeling building up inside of me that continue unconsciously and wait for its culmination.
Yesterday i went out to a book shop, to look for Nietsche by Lou Salome and stormy search for the self, but it had niether of these so i settled for Sickness Unto Death. Im still having truoble reading, but i think this maybe also to do with the cannabis, although before two years ago it use to help me concentrate an take me off the page. Then i went to the cinema an saw X-men, we took the train up there. Throughout all this time, i was worried about being trappe, with no car and having a panic attack with no where to go, but i kept telling myself, in the words of Dave Briggs and Geoff Thompson, that whatever the worst that happens, "I will handle it". Walking to the multiplex wasnt so bad, we got the tickets and sat own in the cinema 15 mins early. I was worrie about the cinema especially once i got inside of there, as what used to happen to me, and did a bit that day, was my "Self" would be lost and blended into the atmosphere of the film, and when the film was over my self woul be naked to the fire of the world, and so PANIC. But this didnt happen as such, it did in a way, but no way near as bad as it used to. I also couldnt really concentrate on it and kept yawning, thats another thing, i dont like to get tired out doors or in the cinema especially or else the same thing happens. So i was a bit paincy afterwars in the book shop, but pulle myself together soon enough.
Today im going to work for a bit then down my uncles

2006-06-10T20:40:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Been out for the whole day today, and feeling exausted. Went up town, which takes about an hour. Something new has awakened insie of me, and one of the things that comes with it si an intense boredom at staying at home and depression, and a sort of drive to go out. I felt, a i have done recently, fine at the sdtart of the car journey, but i loose it after about half an hour, completely, from staying in the same state and position for too long. My face starts to melt and my mind becomes totally groundless and uncertain, even of my features and face.But as soon as i step out of the car, it all pulls back together again until ive been out for more than half an hour when a crippling self consciousness comes over me, so i went back to the car and stayed there for about another hour.
But for now the boredom has gone and im glad to be back through exaustion.

2006-06-09T13:22:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Went into work for half the day today with my parents, doing decorating. I was going to stay for the whole day but felt exausted after a few hours as im quite out of shape, since coming out of hospital ive not done any exercise as such or very much reading and ive been over eating, which isnt surprising, as for that week in hospital i never ate anything, apart from the few days i came home for an hour, to aviod having to meet all the people, and spent my days just reading with no other stimulus in one bland, small an stuffy room.
This means i can get another order of amazon, which is good as there are a few other books i really want, and will be the last order for a long time.

2006-06-05T13:32:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Feeling incredibly depressed again, i cant even think straight or remember what i was going to write. Life truly isnt worth living for me, i cant see myself ever getting a life, and the one i live now certainly isnt enjoyable, i cant stand being around my schizophrenogenic dad. I cant see myself ever becomeing or even pretending to be a person, and i feel like these tablets have taken away my ability to read, although im still not a hundered percent as to wether its just a faze that im going through and need to push myself through as i mentioned in a post before, as has happened before. Even when i try to kill myself again, if it doesnt work, at least il get put in that horrible hospital again and so take me out of the lethargic indolence of sensitivity that im in living at home.

2006-06-04T23:55:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

I was just smoking when another memory shot out of the oblivion.
"The Pieces which of the Chuang tzu assembled in 'Going rambleing without a destination' are all on the theme of soaring above restricted veiw points of the worldly. Escape the fixed routes to worldly success and fame, defy all reprouches that you are useless, selfish, indifferent to the good of the empire, and a perspective opens from which all ordinary ambitions are seen as negligible, the journey of life becomes an effortless ramble." Intro to Chuangtzu by Angus Graham

I was called useless once, in the most spiteful intent possible, with a giggle by one of our group of frieds who i used to smoke with about three years ago, before he knew how 'safe' i was. I had a reputation about the people that had known what i waws like before about how 'safe' i had become, although this didnt stop them from treading on me and taking full and complete advantage of my new found 'qualities' that were of a profoundly buddhist nature due to my disintergration of the ego and the vacumme i had become. You have to grow through these circumstances, the Will to Truth awakens in you in such desperate situations and impending repeated annihalation, nothing you do withstands the heat of the fire that your world has become and so soon enough that oldist instinct awakens in its pure form. Idiots will mock 'growth', for they dont understand how to contemplate anything that would make them truly uncomfortable, this is alsmot impossible for them to do, and so just move comforatble round in a circle of growth leading to expected ends. And so they wont understand of the inexplicable yet at bottom reasonful and innocent happenings that occure on this path. You dont have to have a full blown schizophrenogenic childhood to beable to understand these things, but I do beleive you have to have the drive in you. For a ontalogically secure person its just impossible, they deem the things to pathetic and unreasonable to be seriously looked into, and so dont get outside there box. Although we cant get into the 'real' world, the nature of our real self is 'absurd', and this certainly is not a nice place to be, is dimensionless, and is the only place that the Will to Truth comes to drive you to each Self and perspective, which is as old as Absurdity itself. these idiots would deem it to stupid and unraesonable to venture out into the forest of absrdity, and so find satisfaction in a subtle 'leap of faith'.

In the pastures of this world I endlessly
Push aside the tall grass in search of the bull.
following unnamed rivers, lost upon the
interpenatrating paths of distant mountains,
my strengh fading and mt=y vitality
exhausted, I cannot find the bull.
I only hear the locusts churring through
the forest at night.

Along the riverbank under the trees, I
Discover footprints!
Even under the fragrant grass I see his prints.
Deep in remote mountains they are found.
These tracks no more can be hidden than
Ones nose, looking heavenward.

I hear the song of the niightinggale,
The sun is warm, the wind is mild,
Willows are green along the shore,
Here no bull can hide!
What artist can draw that massive head,
those majistic horns?

I seize him with a terrific struggle.
His great will and power are inexhaustible.
He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mist,
Or in a inpenatrable ravine he stands.

The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray of down some dusty road.
Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle.
The, unfettered, he obeys his master

complete tommorro

2006-06-04T12:38:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

I had just had a smoke, when a memory shot out of the oblivion and pierced my heart like a knife, and I tried to block it out, when it suddenly occured to me that perhaps to accept it would allow me to rebuild my memories over the oblivion, and so the memory came back to me and i accepted it with my philosophy in hindsight, and felt calm. This is potentially perspective changing, and will change the way i react to event from now on, not to obliterate them to behind the oblivion into my unconscious, and have them shoot up and hit me in unexperted moments (allow this will probably still happen even though ive accepted them) but to accpt them, even on a eternal recurrence. A man is explicable by no more than his past.

2006-06-03T11:12:00.000+01:00

Camus on Metaphysics, the Absurd, and Nothing/world

The minds first step is to distinguish what is true from what is false. However, as soon as thought reflects itself, what it first discovers is its contradiction. Useless to strive to be convincing in this case. Over the centries noone has furnished a clearer and more elegant demostration of the business than Aristotle: 'The often ridiculed consequence of these oppinions is that they destroy themselves. For by asserting that all is true we assert the truth of the contrary assertiono and consequently the falsity of our own thesis (for the contrary assertion does not admit that it can be true). If one says that all is false, hat assertion is itself false. It we declare that solely the assertion to ours is false or else that soely ours is not false, we are nevertheless forced to admit an infinate number of true or false judgements. For the one who expresses a true assertion proclaims simultaneously that it is true, and so on ad infinitum.'
This viscious circle is but the first of a serise in which the mind that studies itself gets lost in a giddy whirling. The very simplicity of these paradoxes make them irreducible. Whatever may be the play on words and the acrobatics of logic, to understand is above all to unify. The minds edepest desire, even in the most elaborate operations, parallels mans unconscious feelings in the face of his universe: it is an insistance upon familiarity, an appitie for lcarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cats universe is not the universe of the ant-hill. The truism 'All thought is anthopomorphic' has no other meaning. Liekwise the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realised that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If though discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal realtionscapable of summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessde would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appitite for the agbsolute illustates the essential impulse for the human drama. But the fact of that nostalgia's existance does not imply that it is to be immediately satisfied. For if, bridgeing the gulf that separates desire from conquest, we assert with Paramenides the reality of the One (what ever it may be) we fall into the ridiculous contradition of a ind that asserts total unity and proves by its very assertion its own difference and the diversity it claimed to resolves. This other viscious circle is enough to stifle our hopes."

"At any street corner the feeling of absuridity can strike any man in the face. As it is, in its destressing nudity, in its light without effulgence, it is elusive. But that very difficulty deserves reflection. It is probably true that a man remains forever unknown to us and that there is in him something irreducible that escapes us. But practically I know men and recognise them by there behavior, by the totallity of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by there presence. Liekwise, all those irrational feeling which offer no purchase to analysis. I can define them practically, appriciate them practically, by gathering together the sum of their consequences in the domain of intelligence, by siezeing and noting all their aspects, by outlining their universe. It is certain that apparently, though I have seen the same cator a hundered times, I shall not for that reason know him any better personally. Yet if I add up the heros he has personified and if I say that I know him a little better at the hundereth character counted of, this will be felt to contain an element of truth. For this apparent paradox is also an apalogue. There is a moral to it. It teaches that a man defines himself by his makebelieve as well as by his sincere impulses. There is thus a lower key of feelings, inaccecible in the heart but partially discolsed by the acts they imply and the attitudes of mind they assume. It is clear that in this way I am defining a method. but It is also evident that that method is one of analysis and not of knowledge. For methods imply metaphysics; unconsciously they discolse conclusions that they claim not to know yet. Similarly the last pages of a book are already contained in its first pages. Such a link is inevitable. The method defined here acknoladges the feeling that all true knowledge is impossible. Soely appearances can be enumereated and the climate make itself felt."

"Hiedegger considers the human condition coldly and annonces that existances is humiliated. The only erality is 'anxiety' in the whole chain of beings. To the man lost n the world and its devisions this anxiety is a brief, fleeting fear. But if that fear becomes conscious of itself, it becomes anguish, the perpetual climate of the lucid man 'in whom existance is concentrated'. This professor of philosophy writes without trembling and in the most abstract language in the world that 'the finite and limited character of human existance is more primordial than man himself.' His interest in Kant extends only to recognising the restircted character of his 'pure Reason'. This is to conclude at the end of his analysis that ' the world can no longer offer anything to the man filled with anguish'. This anxiety seems to him so much more imporatant than all the categories in the world that he thinks and talks only of it."

2006-05-31T14:19:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

"The fact that our task corresponds exactly with our life gives it a sense of infinity" - Franz Kafka, a schizophrenic philosopher and story writer.

I am going though a dry patch at the moment, i cant read as such, cant listen to the radio, cant watch tv, i can listen to music if i get my mind into a lethargic sensitivity when im on the computer, but otherwise cant listen to it in my room. This feels like it could go on to infinity, but after so much life experience in things like this i know its only a blip in the ebb and flow of things, and comes after another blip of things moreorless feeling in place which came after another one of intense mental activity. Now this state comes, when that itellectual activity has settled into my unconscious and become instinctive, and left a scythian landscape only the things that attack me to counter act the ones i can now, and stifling oblivion. I need to will myself through this stage with exercise and forced reading, with a persistant dying and starting again but with the drips of accumalation from the attemps before until i break through this state into the next.
I have also closed of the comments, for no reason related to anyone, but so i can write more clearly without having to think that it will be cmomented on or what the person will think, espcially the fact that with me things fall into a system - thats one of the most painfully subtle things of being a schizophrenic (its not that subtle ives just never made it so conscious to write it down before) your constantly "slapped in the face" by reality. I did it so i can bascically write for myself. If you did want to contact me on anything, you can get my e-amil of my profile.

2006-05-30T17:46:00.000+01:00

Quote

I found this whilst browsing through amazon, that someone wrote as a review for Heidegger's essays on Nietzsche,

Heidegger's first series of lectures in this volume is entitled The Will to Power as Art. By will to power Nietzsche meant an enhancement or heightening of life. This will to power appears most clearly in the artist, particularly in the artist of the grand style, who puts forward a vision of life as a whole. The demand for such a vision of life becomes most pressing only when a person has fully appreciated the nihilism of the present world. It is only then that he feels the great pressure to find a solution, and it is then too that he becomes fully conscious of the inadequacy of his resources for dealing with the problem. The individual feels this demand as a great burden weighing down on him.Yet it is a demand that he must meet if he is to become the one he essentially is.
We are here approaching the thought of the eternal return of the same, the subject of the second series of lectures in this volume. If a person allows his existence to drift in fear and ignorance, then the individual moments of his life will come again; they will be the same in that they are all fleeting and evasive moments. But if he shapes something supreme out of the next moment, if he notes well and retains the consequences, then that moment will come again and will continue to return in its essential characteristics. A stable, eternal element will be introduced into the flux of becoming.

Alchemical purpose of schizophrenia

2006-05-30T15:33:00.000+01:00

The sun is cursed by all men jaded,
To them the worth of tree's is - shaded!

In one golden room
Lives a pair of beauties:
Whoever acts at whimsy
Is not sincere at heart.
If you can produce
A sun within a moon,
The black dragon spews forth
The luminous pearl.

Waves of the river of affection
Rise layer upon layer,
When it is intense you sink,
When it is light you rise.
Drumming the oars,
If you can exersice bold determination,
The weak water of the Isle of Immortals
Will not fail to buoy you up.

Mind like still water,
I'm naturally at peace.
Always calm yet ever alert,
I make good progress.
Having nurtured the raven to plumpness,
I feed the rabbit so thin:
Spiritual mushrooms pop up
On the blue-green peak.

The secret of the receptive
Must be sought in stillness;
Within stillness there remains
The potential for action.
If hyou force empty sitting,
Holding dead images in mind,
The tiger runs, the dragon flies -
How can the elxir be given?

My mind is like the autumn
In the heartland of Chan;
I earnestly sit in mental work
From midnight and noon.
Fish and dragons are lively,
While the waves are still -
There is just the moonlight remaining
In the eternal sky.

You need companions to travel
To the isle of Immortals -
It is hard to climb
The azure cliffs alone.
If you take dead stillness for refinement,
The weak water brimming
Will lack a convienient boat.

2006-05-30T00:08:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Feeling in a strange mood at the moment, its strange because its so different and long since i experienced it. I feel relaxed pshyscially, with a underlying sensation of a dread of the tediousness of the next moment (like i usually feel something like), but still more relaxed than anything. I did some Chi-gung this evening a while ago, and i swear nothing is more exahsting and physically and mentally demanding, if you want to do it properly. I didnt even do it properly, since i havent done any sort of exerscise for about three weeks (since the last time i entered it in a post) and still my back was drenched with sweat in particular, even though i didnt do it perfectly. And this is just from focus, deep breathing and and stretching combined in one. You dont sweat profusely to the point of sweat dripping from you frmo a placebo affect, so there must be something to it, although i dont beleve yin and yang are material energies, there is something profoundly natural and about this form of exercise. It takes the most discipline possible for a human being to master, as your shattering your most funadamental habits of breathing for example. Ive actually seen it preformed properly before, and know with the aid of hindsight in what my old kungfu teacher was showing us, i can see how impossible the perfection of the seemingly simple feat was that he preformed for us

2006-05-28T11:26:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Just had my appiontment with the crisis team today, and at one point i asked him wether he sees alot of schizophrenics, and he says hes seen alot, and that most of them keep up a part time job.
This leads me to think why going out for me is so mipossible, i must have agoraphobia on top of it then, i thought the two go hand in hand.
I think the reason why im also agoraphobia is the what lead and perpetuated me to the total schizophrenic breakdown. It wasnt just a profound contradiction in me that had finally come to the surface, spured on perhaps by some devastating affect or potential trigger, i was humiliated and pressureised into a schizophrenic breakdown, to the point where reality became a surreal nightmare. There was a devastating thing that happened, something i wont say, but all in all it was the above that led me to be trapped in a nightmare.
I really lost my way when i became a teenager, due to my schizophrenogenic parents but especially due to my intentional dad, this was something, a profound contradiction that had been building up in me for a long time, since my earliest years. I had my inherent good (perfect, wether you believe it or not) nature, a mum who, spured on but a 'emotionally' abusive husband was inherantly good intentioned, and a dad who was like a devil, a evil recluse who never left the house for what it seemed at the time to terrify me all the more. The things he would say, tell me to do and the way to act were at a complete opposite than those i got from my mum, and were always contradictory in themselves. He used to take tons of drugs (thats all hed do all day), and would either be in one of two extremes, completely off balance, behavior that if it were boserved by anyone of experience would get him into a hospitol. He was either ridiculously, sickeningly happy to the point of, not crying, but weeping. A truly pathetic sight. Or he was in the absolute and complete contradiction and opposite, a for all intentional purposes sadist, a twisted contradiction who never talked but only shouted, that was his normal vioce, who would invent things to scold me about and even do these things over the things he told me to do.
That was the uneggagerated father firgure i had as a child, i wont even tell you the rest as i cant put it into words.
When I grew up, the anxiety of moving to highschool, and having nothing to fall back on (no faith in a stablised Self) all that contradcition, all that i knew came to the surface and turned me into something that to the core i wasnt, and thats what i mean when i say i lost my way as a teenager, and what led to that devastating impact that completely pushed me over the edge. It was a situation after that though, when i experienced in one moment the edstruction of the foundtation of the ego. This was one evening after i had come back from a night out with my friends at the age of 15, i got railed by my parents for it being eleven o clock without having called, whereas i was used to staying out much later. It was only my dad, he had gotten my mum in hysterics for no reason (that shitheaed!), and he kept pushing me over the edge. As i were walking up the stairs he was walking, right behind me, and said "are you drunk?", making me extremely self-conscious, something he used to do alot in my childhood as well with my being overweight, it makes you extremely self-conscious when youve got the drive of schizophrenia and someone is walking directly behind you, right up to you, commenting on you. But anyway, so i went up to my room and, my parents burst in with my mum in hysterics, and my dad with the most incredibly, undistcirably fucking, stupid smirk on his face, and i commited the first act of self harm that night in front of them, i hit myself in the head four times. Then my mum woke up, and walked out upset, and thats when i saw my dad, and he closed the door. I should say that it was the devastating thing that happend more than the events of the night that forced me to do whats next, it had been maturing in me for quite a while by then, and the events of that night just ripened it completely.
I took my hunting knife from under my bed and attempted to cut myself first horizontally across my forearm. I felt absolutely nothing, and all i saw was a white line in the dim light of the night sky. I pressed a bit harder this time and attemtped to cut another line directly through it, but the knife missed and went across the edge of it. This falier, completely pushed me, entirely over the edge, and i pressed with all my strenght this time right across both of them, so i ended up with almost a star on my forearm. How to disricbe the sensation! It was like being disovled in a white sea. The dimension opened up through the cancellation of the potentially enormous physical pain through the gigantic emotion pain. Thats a night that ive never felt anything like it before, but i looked back at my arm and both were still only white lines, but one was split open, but there was still no blood (due to their being clean cuts) so i got into bed and almost fell asleep, with the most enourmaous experience still fresh on my conscience, knowing that when i woke up i wont be the same. It was only after a couple of minutes that my arm felt damp, and it was covered with blood. I look back at it now, and see that all three would have eneded stitches.
But it was the events that followed that proved this experience wasnt just a 'mad rush' but was in fact a disintergration of the foundtaion of the ego, as i was never the same after it and continually lost my grip on things, until at last, the actual Self disolved and i became trapped in a nightmare, just like the end of the story the Double with goldyaking (a book you would definately read). I cant be bothered to clean this post up and finish it, all the infomation is here if you read back and iece it together. I was humiliated and so forth into a breakdown, do to the destruction of the foundtation of the ego, until eventually the ego dispersed.

2006-05-27T21:36:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

I was just spured on to thinking about why im now taking medication, (although ive thought about this alot of times before). I take it because, theres no way i can progress in any sort of paradigm shifting way anymore in the place im currently in. Theres too many bad intentions and, not lack of support but mis-support. You would be justified to say that a follower of Nietzsche would handle anything thrown at him and turn it to "gold", but this is impossible if you have no place to start from. From my experience so far, ive merely laid the foundations.
When I get out of here and get a life independantly, il stop taking my meds abruptly so its sets on with the withdrawals again, and i will experienced it, but this time on my own, with noone pushing my buttons. And ill be more mature than last time, although i cant express it through this oblivion, this experience has taught me right from wrong in the most fundamental sense is what i honestly feel (any dishonestly wouldnt stand against the kernal of schizophreia, your guilty enough as it is)

"The fortunateness of my existance, its uniqeness perhaps, lies in its fatality: to express it in the form fo a riddle, as my father I have already died, as my mother I still live and grow old. This two fold origin, as it were from the highest and the lowest rung of the ladder of life, at once decadent and beginning - this if anything explains that neutrality, that freedom from party in relation to the total problem of life which perhaps distinguishes me"

2006-05-26T11:46:00.000+01:00

Quote

From Journey to the West

"I watch the chess game, my axe handles rotted*
I chop wood, cheng-cheng the sound.
I walked slowly by the clouds fringe at the valleys entrance.**
Selling my firewood to buy some wine,
I am happy and laughing without restraint.
When the path is frosted in autumn's height,
I face the moon, my pillow the pine root.
Sleeping till dawn
I find my familiar woods.
I climb the plateus and scale the peaks
To cut dry creepers with my axe.

* The rotted axe handle (lan-k'o) alludes to the mountain by such a name (lan-k'o Shan) south of Chu-chou. Acording to the Shu-i chia certain Wang Chihof the Tsin period went to this mountain to gather wood. He saw two youth playing chess who agve him a fruit to eat shaped like the pit of a date, after which he felt no hunger at all. When atlast the game had finished, one of the youths pointed to his ax and said, "Your handle has rotted!" When Wang had returned home, a centry had elapsed

**If you want to spare your eyes and your mind, follow the sun from the shadows behind -Nietzsche

When I gather enough to make a load,
I stroll singing through the marketplace
And trade it for three pints of rice,
With nary the slightest bickering
Over a price so modest.
Plots and scemes I do not know;
Without vainglory or attaint
My life's prolnged in simplicity.
Those I meet,
If not immortals,* would be Taoists,
Seated quitely to expound the Yellow court.

* "Without concepts, your mind is the same as it;
Without pointing, you reach everything;
Whoever exhausts the object exists forever" -poem from Lieh tzu. The traslator comments "..the first three seem to belong together and to be mystical propsitions directed against logic. Although very obscure, their point is perhaps that, since we are one with all things, to anaylise them, oint them out and form ideas of them does not bring us nearer to them, but on the contrary separate us from them. But if we cease to make distinctions, we become the universe and therefore eternal."

The first three lines of the poem set the scene for the rest, the enlightenment of soley knowing that life is as meaningless as a chess game allows him to find a new pleasure that people who dont realise this cant experience. Yet he dosent turn his back on the "world" (if that concept still hsa any strong value for him), but instead keeps his personality and follows truth from that shadow behind it, "I walk slowly by the clouds finge at the valleys entrance."

2006-05-25T14:07:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

I am now experienceing what it is like back at those times of fresh schizophrenic breakdown. I have just had a smoke, after something unimaginably stifiling and humiliating, and have been able to look through and experience a clean window back to those times. The stifling black cloud of depression had settled on me, macking my moves in absolute improvisation, so u decided to have a smoke and then watch the said film, which was hero, one that at that time i used to watch alot, and I remembered a kind of euphoria i used to go in to when i wasnt in the ebsolute opposite, its a euphoria of inthemomentness and of freshness (still dont know wether ive reading reading this out over typeing it - even this), whereas the other was a absolute hell of inthemomentness.

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2006-05-25T12:17:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Feel incredibly depressed at the moment, at limits edge. My day started with thoughts of the previous post, to then get ready for a appiontment in the clinic across the road, to meet my new key worker. I was surprised when i stepped out the door, it was just emptiness with a little anxiety, somthing i havent felt in a long time. Got in the car, drove acros the road, and went in the clinic. Sat down the waiting room, and the denseness of the world, this time slowly, crept back up on me, making me supersensitive to the thoughts and intentions of Them. This kept up a steady pace, until it became unbearable, and my thoughts turned melancholy as i were trying to fix my attention on them. But even so, it wasnt the worst i have experienced. Then after almost an hour of waiting, i got called. It was my new key worker who seems like a nice person, and a university student. My heart sank at that, i also had these new trousers on that gave me an even funnier walk as there diffreent material to the one iusually wear, but i pressed on. In conditions like this, truly "Every movement demands improviastion". So we went into a little room, and i had to spill my guts, also infront of a university student. I swear several times i almost cried from the pressure of improvisation, the humiliation of what im admitting (especially in front of a university student) and the aticipation of the tons fo depression that will fall on me after. But no way would i do that, those days of the deepest stylfiling abyss of humiliation are behind me, although this was some of the worst ive experienced, if i did that i would have lost my mind!, as always, i suck it up and compress it into a ball to stand on and try and keep my balance on tenuity. I told her about the antidepressants and she seemed to agree whole heartedly, such different impression i can give of! And finished the appionment with her. The university student showed me out, and made a few comments about the weather, which saves me alot fo angst and that was it. When my mum saw me come in that waiting room, she said "alright name" across the room, what a idiot! In fact i also thank her for that, as the anger of her stupidity (if she is that stupid) helped suppress the other emotions and weight. So i walked out, every movement reqireing improvisation, to the car (thank god we took it) and am now here. So lucky ive got one more joints worth.
"I love brief habits and consider them invaluable means for getting to know many things and states down to the bottom of their sweetness and bitterness; my nature is designed entirely for brief habits, even in the need for its physical health and generally as far as i can see at all, from the lowest to the highest. I always believe this will give me lasting satisfaction - even brief habits have this faith of passion, this faith in eternity - and that i am to be envied for having found and recognised it, and now it nourishes me at noon and in the evening and spreads a deep contentment around itself and into me, so that i desire nothing else, without having to compare, despise, or hate. And one day its time is up; the good thing parts from me, not as something that now disgusts me but peacefully and sated with me, as i with it and as if we ought to be grateful to each other and so shake hands and say farewell. And already the new waits at the door along with my faith - the indistructable fool and sage! - that this new thing will be the right thing, the last right thing. This happens to me with dishes, thoughts, people, cities, poems, music, doctrines, daily scheduals, and ways of living. Enduring habits, however, i hate, and feel as if a tyrant has come near me and the air around me is thickening when events take a shape that seems inevitably to produce enduring habits - for instance, owing to a official position, constant relations with the same people, a permanent residence, or uniquly good health. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul i am grateful to my misery and illnesses and whatever is imperfect in me because they provide a hundered back doors through which i can escape enduring habits. To me the most intolerable, truly terrible, would of course be a life entirely without habits, a life that continually demanded improvisation - that would be my exile and my Siberia."

2006-05-25T09:36:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Im full of hate. I got the idiots next door who giggle when im talking to the crisis team, the people on the internet whove hacked my computer with one that writes about me on his blog, and does the worst thing possible to a schizophrenic, i suppose hes being tough minded and is withing his 'rights', he writes about me indirectly as if he knows whats going on in my head, imposing 'orders' on me. Ive got a dad who, ,for all intent purposes, seriously, is a emotional sadist, he only had a son to see how twisted he could make it. Now in retrospect i can see and could even possible forgive him for all the weird, spiteful and threatening things he did in my childhood, because he had some serious problems, and was on alot of drugs, but as soon as i started to fall is when he stopped being a recluse. Hes truly a horrible person, most people are but hes by far the most shittyest.
And any movement i make i get ridiculed, even on this site called madnotbad.co.uk, full of peoplewith problems, they didnt excecot me, probably because of the 'wordsalad' i gave them.
People dont know what it is to have a real problem, there problems just make them feel down and depressed, they dont actually effect who they are, the way they talk, the way they walk and everything. Thats on a whole other continuum. When ever i eet people theyre all the same, i can anticipate from the persons faura (cant seen there face) what expression theyll get when they see me, its one of three, usually its a massive smirk full of ite and murky coloured power at seeing something so subjective.
On top of a world full of these kinds of people (i wish i could meet another schizophrenic whose like me) with only very occassional exceptions, who disimulate from a ulterior motive, not a primary one - ive got the problem of oblivion, not even being able to express myself, fully and completely, as i want to. My head isa black hole that shoots up thoughts when needed, but i cant choose. I never think as such, noly when im reading, its just thoughts shooting out of this black hole through my mouth, especially when on meeting someone.
I wish i lived in a world that was kept in order, where the illusions of freewill and non freewill had disapeared.

2006-05-24T20:56:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

"To what exetnt can truth stand to be incorperated?"
I was just reading Being and Nothingness and somethihng struck me. After much ado to this "Certainly I can pass beyond this table or this chair toward its being and raise the question of the being-or-this-table or the being-of-this-chair." And it struck me how experience is an infinate of possibilities. The being-of-the-table is metaphysics, and this struck me from the angle of Plato (as in when a critic said, "I see a horse, but not horseness." To which Plato replied "Thats because you have eyes but no intelligence.") And for a second I questioned how to get back to Nietzsche until I remember this quote by Bernard Williams, that he gives in his introduction to the Gay Science,
"In his earliest writing about truth and error, Nietzsche sometimes spoke as though he could compare the entire structure of our thought to the 'real' nature of things and find our thought defective. It is as though the business of using concepts at all falseified a reality which was - what? Formelss, perhaps, chaotic, or utterly unstructureed, Later. he rightly rejected this picture, with its implication that we can somehow look around the edge of our concepts at a world which we are applying them and grasp it as entirely unaffectied by any discriptions (including, we would be forced to admit, the discriptions 'formless', 'chaotic', and so one). ... He discusses fictions, the practice of regarding things as equal or identical or mathmatically structured when they are not so or only approximatly so. He is making the point, certainly, that mathmatical representaions which are offered by science are in various ways idealisations, and this is entirely intelligble. There is greater ambiguity when he suggests that nothing is really 'identical' or 'the same'. To take an example: the concept 'snake' allows us to classify various individual things as 'the same animal', and to recognize one individual thing as 'the same snake'. It is trivially true that 'snake' is a human concept, a cultrual product. But it is a much murkier proposition that its use somehow falsifies reality - that 'in itself' the world doesn not contain snakes, or indeed anything else you might mention. Nietzsche came to see that this idea of the world 'in itself' esd precisely a relic of the kind of metaphysics that he wanted to overcome. As a remark in ecce homo puts it "The antithesis of the apparent world and the true world is reduced to the antithesis "world" and "nothing""
"The existance of the table in fact is a center of opacity for consicouness. It would require an infinate proceeds to inventory the total contents of a thing."
So we have an infinate inside an infinate we cannot see, since "we cant look around our corner."
A conciousness generating to infinity inside - nothing, with a will to truth propelling us to learn to "dance" metaphysically to a comprehention of a infinity of perspectives, since every thing wants at first to "dischrge its power". I can now see why Nietzsche railed Plato and especially Christians, with the idea of a transendental essense or singularity of each particular of infinfity, eventually leading to the bliss of the "thing-in-itself" that being a total ignorace of existance altogether. There certainly does seem a certain weight behind an infinate of particulars 'containing' an infinate of perspectives, any such comprehention held in a moment of consciousness would crush you, and throw you into an alien 'world' of tenuity.

2006-05-24T10:35:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Ive started going over the edge now, sa happened before on the other blogs when i tried to write down everything that i think, i start "writing from oblivion" with alsmost no background of a context so noone would understand it, and just more than likely find it quite pathetic, so im going to take a break from it for a while and do somemore reading which ive been lacking as there more thoughts than quotes on this blog. I wont delete them though, i think it would be good note the thick and thin and ebb and flow of my conciousness (if i get back out of it soon enough). Besides what i should right at sometime or another will give a contxet to the thin of what ive recently written.

2006-05-23T19:17:00.000+01:00

Im so incredibly stupid. Just now a member of the crisis team made their daily visit, and for no reason at all, merely because the thought came out of the oblivion, i told him about my smoking cannabis for those four days. There was absolutely no reason to say this, as im not going to go back on it again at all, it was merely a change in state of mind through the depression and my being denied antidepressants, it was this drive, not thought that compelled me to do it, and now that i have i remember how it was back then in a certain respect, and it turned bad toward the end so this would be even more reason not to get back on it, let alone my drive being sated.
But i said. For no reason, and got a confirmative giggle (sure its not a vioce) from next door and a sign from my dad, for no other reason than my stupidity. Im sure there is some deeper logic in my blurting it out from the oblivion, that Dostoyevsky might have seen, i can smell it but not see it bright enough. Im so sick of myself! After he left the depression came back worse than normal, so i decided to try and read through it, but as there was a solid reason there it just got more acute (i can either wallow in lethargic indolance or focus it - but not get rid of it, its actually good to focus it in some respect).
Its not the fact of my saying this outload, its the fact more of my stupidity thats made me so depressed, even though it may not be a noraml persons stupidity, they would still count it as that, and thats all that has an effect anyway really.

2006-05-23T15:36:00.000+01:00

Quotes

Part of Nietzsche and Emerson's consolation for the self-conciousness of the underground man.

"Howelse could this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its desires, so singularly constituted for suffering, how could they have endured existance, if it had not been revealed to them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory? The same impulse which calls art into being, as the comlpement and consumation of existance, seducing one into a continuation of life, was also the cause of the Olympian world which the Hellenic "will" made use of as a transfiguring mirror. Thus do the gods justify hte life of man, in that they themselves live it ... Existance under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as desireable in itself, and the real grief of the Homeric men is caused by parting from it, especially by early parting: so that now, reversing the wisdom of Silenus, we might say of the greeks that "to die early is worst of them all, the next worse - some day to die at all."
"The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We as we read must become greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some secret reality in our experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Ceasar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and deprevations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, "Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself." This remedies the defect of our to great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective: and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balace and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can se my own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades and Catiline."
"This mountain makes the entire region it dominates attractive and significant in every way; having said this to ourselves for the hunderth time, we are so unreasonable and thankfully disposed toward it that we suppose that it, the bestower of such delight, must itself be the most delightful thing in the region - and so we climb it and are disapointed. Suddenly themountain itself and the entire landscape around us, beneth us.seem to have ost their magic; we had forgotten that certain types of greatness, like certain types of goodness, want to be beheld only from a distance and always from below, not from above - only thus do they have an effect. Perhaps you know people near you who ought to veiw themselves only from a distance in order to find themselves at all tolerable or attractive and invogorating; self-knowlage is something they should be advised against.

Whe dealing with people who are bashful about their feelings, one has to beable to disimulate; they feel a sudden hatred towards anyone who catches them in a tender or enthusiastic or elevated feeling, as if he had seen their secrets. If one wants to do them good in such moments, one should make them laugh or utter some cold, jocular sarcasm: then their feeling freeze and they regain power over themselves. But I am giving the moral before the story. There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you, "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?" - but then you didnt want to anymore, and when I asked again, you were silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers, and everything which separates and alienates, have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to reach each other, we couldnt anymore! But when you think of that little footbridge now, you have no words anymore - onlt sobs of bewildrement."

2006-05-22T20:15:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

The crisis team have asked me to print out this blog for them, i dont want them to read it but i want them to also, the reason for not wanting it is that i have no faith in what i write, not that its not true, because it all is however badly worded it is, but i have no faith in myself that im not an idiot.
The reason i want them to is because when i meet them or anyone else (that im talking about myself with like this), i talk from a oblviion more intense than the one i usually experience, i talk so as to keep my train of thought and character at the same hight (however low that is, better than being even lower), i dont think, i just say the first thing that shoots out from the oblivion (so its true in one way or another, wether on not in the context they were asking it for).

This is just some notes that i have never told them, i wanted to note this down: I never where my glasses or contacts in front of people, if i could see their faces i would give of a totally different impression than the one i give of without. This should clear up the misimpression of the eye contact that they would have made. The only downside is that when im out doors i cant tell wether ive seen someone that i know or not or used to know (not that i would want to! but i cant tell anyway, certainity would be unbearable but certain for the times i didnt seem them, uncertainity is almost unbearable at a constant level. With also the bonus of not being able to see peoples faces when they look at me.)
Cant rmeember any other notes.

2006-05-22T20:13:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Something that occured to me throughout the day, "I wonder if the landlady or one of her friend has overheard my disscussions with the crisis team, and so got the windows double glazed" Sounds better when i write it down actually

2006-05-22T11:34:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

We are having the windows double glazed (the landlord is), which is good. This is because the current windows are extremely thin and, not only does it let all the cold through but you can hear everything outside. This spurs on my paranoia of wether people can hear my thoughts and is also one of the preemptive reasons from my vivid dreams in this house and in the house before (under the same conditions). You dont want people to hear your thoughts, so you panic about dreams and try and supress them, but instead unlock them - its also to do with the 'kernal of shcizophrenia', your mind becomes your worst ememy so that you conciously really dont want something to happen and so you do it.

2006-05-21T12:59:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

These are just some thoughts ive had over the past couple of days and decided to note down in my note book (a book that i used to write in during my totla breakdown, at one time i had this massive, inexplicable urge to get my ideas out of my head. I couldnt write anything because it was always filtered through a flimsy 'self', so i used to piece things together when writing them down.) Not sure how much sense this will make to someone who might read it, i feel so incredible hopeless now, usually this hopelesness is in the back of my mind, but every so often it becomes concious of itself. Im so fed up of being an idiot! And i wish i could take a breath.
Here are the thoughts in no particular order

I was just thinking about why i dont self-harm. I dont do it because, i know this sounds ridiculous, but i would rather feel the pain than let it all out or neutralise it (although i know sometimes the pain is so much that you have to naturally, at one point about 2 years ago i self-harmed for about a week without actually realisiing it! When ever my dad used to say a word to me, i would hit myself in the head instincitivly, i hate him so much and the way he acts just drives me over the edge. He knew exactly all my problems, and used to say these stupid things so i would hit myself - after one of them he mockingly said giglleing "Do you need help name?" He like my worst possible enemy, and he always has been. But i stopped about a week latre as my face was to messed up!) I dont cry for the same reason. It gives me substance, and also the fact of scars. Ive already got a massive, shiny one from my only time at it.
I think when your schizophrenic, your so substanceless and subjective, you want something inside of you to compress and so atleast give "yourself" something to stand on.

I wish i knew how not to be an idiot. This is a very subtle notion that i dont often concisouly think about - I haev to blindly override it (something ive leaned to do over all this time) if i actually want to get anything done and not be stuck in the densest panic attakc all the time. My thoughts and ideas are justified in my head, but as soon as they find expression they turn stupid imperceptably, its as though theres this two-way filter near the front of my head that stupefies everything comeing out and hightens everything comeing in. Its also like a wall of total uncertainity that wont except anything put forth without toal acumen and tenacity. As i dont write things down unless im absolutely certain - or else it just comes out completely bungled abd disjointed and stupid as well.

People dont know anything about yin and yang, they think these 'things' and 'energies' that can be experienced 'objectively' - they dont even think this, its instinctive, and although in there deepest heart they know theyre being false, theyre to much the coward to do otherwise - and who of experience could blame them? Theyre all stuck in yang with a dot of yin, where as through the schizophrenic breakdown you get hurled into yin with a dot of yang.

This was something i recetly added to my first post for some reason (non in particular it just came to mind) and i had a dream relating to this (i had my eyes closed after a smoke, subliminally thinking about this)
My state-of-being is yin, or a vacumme in darkness, Im the small dot of yang, a fire tumbleing and feeding of itself shotting out of the dark vacumme.
The state-of-being of my antagonist (any kind of person) is yang, just like the sun or fireball in this darkness, toward which im tumbleing.

cant beat fire with fire
cant withdraw, or else
theyll annihalate me
just as a gas implodes a vacumme

This is something i wrote just before the post above.
Memory is so strange. Dispite the horrifying experiences of my past, theres a kind of nostalgia there (for the particular)
I was watching a film, that at one point i used to watch every day during my schizophrenic breakdown, and it showed a snowy scene (its called Ride With The Devil) and i got transfigured to a notion back then in my breakdown. I used to be extremely (even more than now) susceptable, one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is the false personalisation of all things. When i used to watch fillms like lord of the rings, i would actually bring those (supersensitive) notions to life, and imagine myself more or less in a situation containing them. In full blown schizophrenia theres no distincition between dream and reality. They are both fundamentall intertwined, inextricalby on all levels. I now experience the after effects of it, one of that ebing an unstructured memory of particulars.

I was just thinking about my parents. My mum must be profoundly stupid - the fact that for two whole years i never left my room (unless she threatened to humiliate me), that i would have panic attacks even at the mention of someone coming over, that i could go for days without eating if someone wa downstairs, and all the crazy things i said in the beginning of my philosophical journey with a cracked schizophrenic mind - to put this down to lazyness or a bit of mild depression is objective proff of her profound stupidity. Shes no thinker, shes far more intuitive, its my dad whos the thinker, hes a viper whispering into her ear. Now that shes lost me she instincitvvly went over to his side (whereas in my childhood it was always me and my mum against him) - Ive even seen her trance like expression when my dad was talking in there room. My dads evil, hes intentionally schizophrenogenic and always has been. My mums two faced now, she puts up her old face for certain people, and her newish one for others. She would hesitate or wouldnt be on my side if her pub friends jocked about me, as ive heard them do before with her.

2006-05-20T19:17:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

For the past few days i got back on cannabis, i just saw it in my dads draw anad felt compelled to take some. I think this partly stems from my being denied antidepressants during a visit with the psychiatrist, this was because they wanted my current medication to be in full effect before they try me on anything else. I havent smoked any of it for five months now, and am by no means planning to get back on it, but the experience was for the most part really pleasant (as it was in the beginning the first time i tried it), i only had one bad trip, which i cant really discribe really. Schizophrenics must have extremely wild trips compared to normal people, there minds work so fast, and all the time anyway; any such auxillery substance will just push them over a good or a bad edge. When i was on it i couldnt tell wether i were voiciing my thoughts at all. Looking back on it im 50-50 as to wether i was or not, its funny (not really) how your thoughts change once you cant tell theyre being vioced, just as my state of mind changes when someone gets an impression of me. This is partly what i mean in the post before this, when i was speaking of my inapropriate thoughts toward people. The schizophrenic mind is like a vacumme as i wrote before on the first post, its like a black hole. You become what ever people want you to be, and things hit you to the core. When meeting someone dispite the fact that you cant help being a vacumme, if you have trust in that person (how ever blind it is, even for a title like dr and so forth, you have to accept it when your schizophrenic for the alternitive is unbearable) if you have inherant trust in them, then you can supress all the impression they make on you and become to all outward (and most inward) impressions an idiot or a alsolute picture of what they had of you, eg if someone gets the idea that you might be vain from a mis or possible alternative interpretation of what you said for example, and searchs inside you for this and you become vain - you will supress and condense all oppions you might have and notions concerning the otherwise, until after when your alone, to have them then explode in depression. If you dont have trust in them then your in a 'blast furnace'.
But something i also discovered, i got some books(!) the other day in the post of amazon, and this just really surpirsed me.
This was after Lou andreas Salome decided to go back with Paul Rea instead of Nietzsche, leaing him devastated as she appeared to be hi kindered spirit. "He wrote them many unfinished letters and tried to medicate his loneleness and dispair with "vast amounts" of chloral hydrate and opium. "Keep in mind, both of you," he wrote in December, "that at bottom I am head-sick and half crazy, completly disordered by isolation."A few days later he wrote to his old friend and university of Basel colleague Franz Overbeck: "This last bit of life was the hardest I've chewed yet, and it is still possible that I will choke on it. I have suffered from insulting and excruciating memories of this summer as from a madness...If i do not discover the alchemist' trick for turning even this - dung into gold, I am lost."

He then went on to write the majority of his greatest works
This is also good as i will start reading again, which ive lacked recently from having no choice in what to read.

2006-05-17T11:53:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Feeling exteremly depressed at the moment, and very lethargic. Theres a black cloud of guilt hanging over my head, cant read or do anything really, nothing can penetrate it. Might take a cold shower (or will have to if i want to get out of it). The main source of this ton of guilt is the way i act around people, i was thinking about this the other day and will try and remember it, or work my way back into the thought; although its worst at the moment as i just had a smoke of tabacco. Tobacco makes me extremely lethargic, the after effects and mind assosiation of smoking all that cannabis i used to i guess. I have to stop, im not addicted to it as i dont get addictied to anything - anxiety is the primary for me, and that soon washes away any habit however deep set from my consiousness and unconcisouness, so long as it has freerain over me long enough. I smoked cannabis for two years, every day (during my total schziophrenic breakdown); only to have it totally washed away one completely unexpected day when my dad shouted as soon as he came in through the door a moneth before christmas "right, get your stuff together." We got kicked out of a our house, and had to stay in a shelter until we could find a new one. I was assigned a room (which i never left) and during the whole time there never once felt the drive to smoke cannabis, this anxiety is so fundamental - theres also no fundamental Self for the habit to latch on to. I was adicted to it in the house but not after we left it. We stayed there for a month until we found the new place.
But this guilt (thats on the surface) comes from meeting people, when ever i do these thoughts come into my head - its like (-at the point where my vitality starts to drain down the plug hole-) i try to make myself superior or i imagine totally inappropriate things or hurtful things, and make akward gestures (nothing is ever right, you cant learn from past experience as their all different[yet the same]). These dont come from egoism though! The black dog of depression sits on me after. The kernal of schizophrenia tries merely to humiliate me and so on with them. Im so sick of everything,
if someone were to try and help me they would have to be totally secure in themselves, so as they would be able to dissimulate from a primary motive - they would have to be someone like Nietzsche! Although its certainly true that schizophrenics are and look as though they are withdrawn from the 'world', its certainly not true that they are not part of it - its not 2 dimensional with them. No one precieves the world and peoples intentions and reactions more acutely and accurately than a schizophrenic. The following quote is somewhat taken out of context by the way
" ... There is much of a dispute of words in all this controvesy. When a man denies the sincerity of all public spirit or affection to a country and community, I am at a loss what to think of him. Perhaps he never felt this passion in so clear and distinct a manner as to remover all his doubts concerining its force and reality. But when he proceeds afterwards to reject all private friendship, if no interest or self-love intermix itself; I am then confident that he abuses terms, and confounds the idea of things; since it impossible for anyone to be so selfish, or rather so stupid, as to make no difference between one man and another, and give no preferance to qualities which engage his approbation and esteem. Is he also, say I, as insensible to anger as he pretends to be to friendship. And does injury and wrong affect him no more than kindness and benefits? Impossible: he does not know himself: he has forgotten the movements of his heart; or rather, he makes use of a different laguage from the rest of his coundtrymen, and calls not things by their proper names. What say you of antural affection? (I subjoin), Is that also a spiecies of self-love? Yes; all is self-love. Your children are loved only because they are yours: your friend for a like reason: and your coudntry engages you only so far as it has a connection with yourself. Werre the idea of self removed, nothing would affect you: you would be altogether inactive and insenseible: or, if you ever gave yourself an movement, it would only be from vanity, and a desire of fame and reputation to this same self. I am willing, reply I, to recieve your interpretation of human actions, provided you admit the facts. That spieicies of self-love which displays itself in kindness to others, you must allow to have great influence over human actions, and even greater, on many occassions, than that which remains in its original shape and form. For how few are there, having family, chidlren, and relations, who do not spend more on maintenance and education of these than on there own pleasures? This, indeed, you justly observe, may proceed from their self-love, since the prosperity of their family and friends is one, or the chief, of their pleasures, as well as their chief honour. Be you also one of these selfish men, and you are sure of everyones good oppionion and good-will; or, not to shock your ears with these expressions, the self-love of everyone, and mine among the rest, will then incline us to serve you, and speak well of you. ..."

2006-05-16T21:05:00.000+01:00

I was just browsing through the site mindriddles, a schizophrenic carers journel when a memory of a experience at the ward, waiting to be discharged sitting outside in the corridor of the ward whilst they talked to me mum - popped into my head for no reason. The corridor was busy and i was on a chair that kept the door open to a large dinning room with a tv.
Experiences like this are unbearable, my face starts to melt and crunch in disjointed, somewhat vacant experiession of trying to keep my attention on something - either abstract or material. But nothing ever works, nothing can withstand the heat - and anything that anyone might attempt to do would just flare up the fire and perhaps increase the temperature (although thats barely possible) wether 'good' or 'bad'. The best favour they could do me would to be aware as though i did not exist - its my existance that is the fire, constantly 'trying' - but absolutely fundamentally - to reaffirm my existance. These things cannot be known to a 'normal person', or to a person who experiences himself as real - i.e: someone grown into ontelogical security - they are not on the same continuum. If you were a genius and humble, you would understand it and the possiblity of its existance and therefore taste it, but you wouldnt beable to experience it unless you had the drive in you. Donnt get me wrong in saying this, i dont know why i am, but its only the great people who have this drive in them - Nietzsche, Kafka, Dostoyevsky; and the others who propel themselves to understand it - Laing, Camus, Satre etc. Although by all means it doesnt make you great that you experience this dimension, it certainly brings you closer to the great people who do. Only idiots of the 'world' dismiss this experience or the people who experience it. I take it thats what Nietzsche meant by "One word more against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention, our most personal defence and need: in every other sense it is merely a danger. That which does not constitute a condition of our life, is merely harmful to it: to possess a virtue merely because on happens to respect the concept "virtue," as Kant would have us do, is pernicious. "Virtue," "Duty," "goodness in itself." goodness stamped with the character of impersonation and universal validity - these things are mere mental halucinations, in which decline the final devitalisation of life and Koenigsbergian Chinadom find expression. The most fundamental laws of preservation and growth, demand prescisely the reverse, namely: - that each should discover his own virtue, his own Catagorical Imperative. A nation goes to the dogs when it confounds its concept of duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing is more profoundly, more thoughrouly pernicious, than every impersonal feeling of duty, than every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstaction. - Fancy noones having though Kant's Catagorical Imperative dangerous to life!... The instinct of the theologist alone took it under its wing! - An action stimulated by the instinct of life, is proved to be a proper action by the happiness that accompanies it: and that nihlist with the bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded happiness as an objection... What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work, think, feel, as an automaton of "duty," without internal prompting, without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the recipe par exellence of decadence and even of idiocy... Kant became an idiot. - And he was the contemporary of Goethe! ..."
Although ive got better at 'handleing' it now, when ive got some purpose, like when the secretary called me when i was sitting on that chair a few feet away from the office, my face lit up with a mask and i was - not structured because i wasnt, there was still no Self there - but theres was purpose, a place to direct my energy, my mind out of the blast furnace onto a tenuous line. She wanted to know where i had a social worker, i said no and hse asked me another question to which i replied, turned round, and found a nurse had stole my seat! So i had to go and sit in the dinner room, which was for the most part just as bad as the corridor except for my heart sinking at the fact that i had to do it.
I chose that picture of the arrows because, i initially wanted one of the arrows pointing into the circle, one that another schizophrenic drew in Laings book The devided Self, but foudn this more abstract one instead. It describe perfectly to me what happens in my head to some extent. My thoughts go through intense (unimaginable) to a breath in the emptiness that follows, and they go round in this circle until something catchs my attention. That why my face is so inexplicable in these situations.

2006-05-14T10:24:00.000+01:00

Thoughts 2

So i got a emergancy appiointment under way with the GP, woke up late, had a cold shower and left for it to be there at ten. I explained the situation to him with my intention of getting on some medication to take me out of this now completly unbearable state of mind seen as i would now be pushed to the back of the que with the pychiatrists - and he said he would sort something out and would give me a call showing his intention of getting me medicated.
Later that day i got a completly unexpected appiontment with the pychiatrists, half and hour before the appiontment. So i got myself ready and got my mum to drive me across the road (walking would be infinity crushed into the space of five minutes), and had the meeting. This was with my futre psychiatrist, who seems ok. After much ado, him and a social worker suggested a stay in hospital for a few days, just to get me checked over and make sure i dont show any unfavorable reaction to the medicine i would now be on. After explaining this would be quite a embrassing situation, i agreed; with the idea in my head of it being a stay in a ward full of medicated people staying in their rooms, occasionally talking to a nurse and the psyc throughout the day - i was looking forward to it in a way in that experiences like this condense me to read all day and i progress mentally that way - being trapped in a room with no tv etc and the anxiety (whihc would be slight with people staying in there room{in relativity}) of having to go out, and having to talk with these people i would have to be prepared mentally.
So they assigned me a bed and i had two hours ot get my stuff together, which i did in fifteen minutes, spending the rest of the time doing a bit of Chi-gung to get me psysically and mentally up for it (its in both respect exhausting - in a similar yet different way to rigorous solely physical exercise. After you complete the set you go into a kind of neutral euphoria).
So i went their with my expectations (as always) to be turned on their head, nothing ever turns out to my benefit, however reasonalbe i am! It was full of patients who didnt seem in a certain respect to have a problem at all, and were even more in a certain sense discriminate than other people. I thought there would have been other schizophrenics there for example, but there wasnt so it seems, at least i didnt see any anxious people there. I made a good first impression on the nurses but this soon faded when they sore i never came out of my room and my reason for being there (i must give of a strage impression to people when im 'normal', ive already been through the inability to hide my stuctureless mind, where a look will just shatter me like glass both inside and out, now its just inside with suttle affects outside). The junior doctor who i met first day there was a nice person, he too thought, after much rigorous questioning, that i was sensitive and just a strange sensitive indiviual (the same conclusion the first psychiatrist came to) who has been building castles in the sky for some reason, dispite admitting "Its a very strange castle to build". These things are not castles in the sky, though! They coudlnt be more real, when i talk its from a oblivion, i just say the first thought that shoots up from there, its never a lie (i cant do that you would pick me a mile of) but it could be wrong, but there would be a reason for it being wrong. So e.g. when a psychiatrist asked me wether i personalise what i read, i said "no" whereas i do, but in my eyes its justified but i also do this with the tv which obviously isnt (it used to be excruciating before, if someone was humiliating themselves on there i would feel it supersensivitly as though it were me, now its not bad in that respect, but things still spur me to day dream) - theres also a under-intention there that doesnt want to drop thjis mask or give the right impression, the "kernal of schizophrenia" as lain cioned it, but i dont feel like writing about that at the moment (thats to deep for me)- this intention just takes you into a labyrinth of unintentional impressions and oblivion. So i went to the hospital, and soon had my expectations blown away as soon as i settled into my room (schizophrenically).
The time i spent there was seriously like a infinity. I had no concept of time, as you dont in this kind of anxiety - a clock is meaningless except as a reference to the moving digits. i spent a totally of five whole days there. From the moment i got in the room (I was lucky to have got athe only 'room' whereas the other patentis had a curtain about them) people were outside my room as there wre sofas outside it and a smoking room next door. These people didnt seem to have a serious problem at all and were very socialble and therefore sharp spirited, i had a window in my door which forced me to lay on my bed in such a way as to have to cross my legs so i couldnt be seen through the window, and spend my days like this, or lay with my back to it. I ahte people looking at me enough, but to have them looking at me when im unawares is unbearable. And i also had the hell of wakling through the corridor when i got summoned - where the kernal of schizophrenia gives me a awkard step and funny walk from walking through the 'blast furnace'. One of the things i thought of while there and forgot to tell the psychiatrist was of an image of trying to put this across. Its like my spirit is five feet (like the the zen five foot pole) above me, tenuously linked to my body - in a absolutely stifeling darkness. Whilst my body is stinfining and becomeing more dead and akward. My time there really was up there with the worst in experience, but things like this are good as they totally take me out of my day and habits (i cant wait to set back in to lethargic indolance again). People seem to think it fine if a problem affects you objectively, that you can still show some signs of a stuctured Self underneath - but not real problems, then your on your own!
When ever i would coe back home for the day (as i started doing after the second, on the thrid i think) I would be totally and utterly, mentally and physically exhausted, to the point where i couldnt move really or hold my neck up - from the intensity of experience and the lack of energy through the meds. Now, even though im on a higher dose, they just make me a bit drowsey and 'irritable', restless yet with a lack of wanting to do anything (not nice). Schizophrenia is so fundamentally intense that it actually saps the vitality out of you! And you dont feel good after (not the same as exercise, the real vitality of you). Your actual 'spirit' is exhasted, your internals are burning - it even affect the way you move your bowels it affects you so much, they burn even.
So on the friday i had a meeting with the 'crisis team' who do home visits and affectivly "bring the ward to you". One thing that surprised me was how well i talked dispite all this with the psychs, i think because i was actually talking about the only thing i think about - i felt therefore no axiety with them. I was for once 'being myself' with no pressure of stabilising a mask in a 'blast furnace', with no pressure on how to act as such.
I got discharged for the weekend and had to go back today for nine thrity, to get their results. They accepted me and came round today to deliever my medication, and will now come every day to check up on me, for eight weeks i think.

2006-05-13T14:10:00.000+01:00

Thoughts 1

Just got the internet back on, but alots happened to me over the past week or so. I truly am unbelievable; certain things - the little things, or they seem little: the subtle things - happen to bring back at (predestined so it seems) times the thought i had in the wiles of schizophrenic breakdown, that i am really watched over by God! and am somehow chosen against the rest of humanity who he has singled out since before and at birth (beleifs i had in early childhood to, that had somewhat died down and become that much less prominant [relativly] over teenage years 13 to 15 and now exploded again) and now roasts me over a "green wood" fire for going so unbelievably of the tracks - but still favours me all the more for that. This is because whenever my spirits lift like this - the unimaginably terrible happens, this has happened before a few times but back then it was shrouded in uncertainity as to wether it is my fate to be so beyond seemingly incredible unluck. Now i have written proof - i get a incling that the unimaginably terrible will happen because of this new feeling, but ignore it always, and am blinded by the feeling, but the inclination does not disapear entirely but rather transforms into a subtle, flat underexperience.

It all started on the friday before last i think (so much has happened! seems like ages away) when the psychiatrists unexpectedly came round. In case i hadent written this before on this site for perhaps someone who might read it, i went to see my GP about a week before, and suggested i might be schizophrenic and he agreed, and so refered me to a team of psychs who happen to have their clinic across the road. I missed my appiontment with them, and so they came round unexpectedly as they thought i was in a "crisis".
And so they came round when i wasnt prepared at all, not prepared as in what to say, but mentally prepared so as to beable to handle the impact and onset of speaking with someone, especially about myself, a bit better. So they asked me questions and so on, but for the most part, all i could say after much oblivious uncertainity was "I cant explain it, really". And so they thought i was lying or exaggerating or something like that, the woman who was their even got a little sarcastic, such was the impression i must have given. And so theyre final diagnosis when i asked at the end was that i was suffering from maybe a bit of mild depression, and was just sensitive.
Before i continue i should just say that my worst paranoia is that people next door and my parents know hwat going on in my head (this is another thing to do with my incredibly ill-fortuned 'fate' or at least i used to beleve absolutely in fate). This is to such an extent that i cant even tell whether my thoughts are being spoken out load, and i can actually and usually do spend days on end thinking about this in a way, its always in the back of my mind. Now, with schizophrenia when someone asks you a question it obliterates any preconceptions you might have - its like a shock and the first thought that comes up comes out of your mouth - that why i need preperation so as to exercise my mind and get my thought stronger, or else i get stuck in a uncertain oblivion with a (more) groping consciousness. Despite the fact that i kept saying i would rather talk about this stuff in the clinic (when the thought came to me) this just spured them on to ask more questions, and so at the end i had said all this disjoined stuff with absolutely no ground at all, that must have sounded ridiculous due to this and the fact that i dont breakdown in front of people, but rather supress it all 'underground' only to have it explode after im alone, even for a minute. After this i was so overwhelmed, and felt worst then i had in a long time, about 5 months. My dad said, in his way, "bye name" as he walked out the door, which just pushed me complely over the edge. I was so bad that all i could think about was killing myself, i didnt decide to think about this, it was the only inevitability of being pushed over that edge. And so i got the preparations done. I could only think of electrocuting myself, i put myself of hanging myself a long time ago, as to much can go wrong: if it doesnt squeeze the right artery you head can swell with blood for example. So i got a plug extension, took some safty pins out of some other plugs and pluged them into the extenstion so that they were live, and prepared myself for it. I spent an hour and a half on my bed with my head phones on logically dismissing and therfore reving up and purifying my purpose - my main worry was not the suicide, but that it wont work and will disrupt the electric next door and below (this wasnt a 'cry for help') - but finally i came across the the idea that it will kncok me unconcisous and i will drown.
And so i went down starirs with a moreorless solid mind (this being my first attempt), and turned the shower on. I first attempted it under a cold shower (like i usually have), i turned it on and sat down under it with the plug in, so it slowly filled the bath up. This water is ice cold, and after you get through the pain of "your brain freezeing", you go into a neutral state of consciousness, and i stayed under it for a long time so as to beable to comfortably laydown in the bath with the plug after. But when i stood back up, my preconceptions were gone and i was neutral, so i had to get out feeling a bit stronger, and go back up stairs as i had lost the drive. But soon the utmost dread came back to me, and i went down as resolved as before. This time plugged the extension in first and then turned on the hot shower, got in and sat under it. After it filled up, after about 20 mins of secondary rationality, i got the plug out, and stuck it in up to the plug holes, just below them - my plan was to submerge my head and then stick them in the whole way - but theyre must have been a hole where the wire connnected to the device, and a bolt went through the bath unexpectedly. The shower and all the plugs in the house switched of. So i got out a bit overwhelmed but slightly proud of myself in a way that i had overcome that hurdle to killing myself, and went to phone my parents to say the elecric went. I phoned up my parents, it was ringing for a bit then some woman (a nasty person who i know called christine, my uncles girlfriend) answered laughing histerically, histerically saying half my name before the phone got cut of. This didnt have so much of a impact at that time since what had gone before, and i phoned again. My mum answered. I asked who was that who answered before? and she say what oh noone dad just had the phone. And i explained the situation that the plugs in the house had gone, and she told me to check the switches in the electric box, and so i did and found that the main one was down. So i flicked it back up and put the phone down.
After this i was in complete and utter dread and depression, i even tried to phone the GP a few times on his mobile (dad knows him) with the intention of setting up a emergancy meeting and asking him for medication, but never got through. I even stole a few packs of my dads 6mg Gabapentin tablets, which is a mood stabiliser. I took three in one goe, four over the next day and four over the day after. Then i got my mum to set up an emergancy appiontment with the GP with the initial complaint of not feeling well.

2006-05-04T12:20:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Today i woke up in a bright mood - dispite having unusual nightmares throughtout the night, they were not about humiliation and so were more entertaining than anything else (I lucid dream alot, i dream every night - most people would love that experience but its terrible really, you never get a proper deep, dreamless sleep), but i woke up bright after i pulled myself out of the twilight of sleeply consciousness. Today is going to be the hottest day of the year, and although by all means i dont want to go out in it or have anyone come over; that tsunami of dread and annihalation would soon obliterate any tenuity of summery feeling - leaving me in the pits of resentment and fustration after: Ive got this bright mood remniciant of the days when everything was a straight line of experience, and when you did something you did it, there was no question about it. Although i'm not conscious of this, it is a subtle version of that feeling back in those days before the storm, where everyday you had a mission that would tenuously lead to your next experience, and there was no responsibility apart from self-confidence and the rush of breaking the others.
Although I dont want to go back to those days, Ive been through to much for that, but theres is undeniably a sweetness that follows of living your life in a niave-boundless, self-confidence - but for people who were ment for more, who perheps never settled into "Ontological Security" - as Laing cioned it - and were therefore destined for something more; its not ment to last. They will loose hold of what they were forced to create at somepoint - as Churchill and Kafka did - or they will drive themselves over the edge through ignorance, abundance of energy and total lack of direction - these are the people that will suffer the most in my oppionion - and will have to deal with Churchill's black dog and Kafka's excruciating anxiety of non-being - for they will then have a reason to feel guilty, that in the pits of their heart they know to be true, and that they cannot deny through lack of Ontological Security (theres a profound innocence in this) - and will therefore have to fully comprehend themselves to overcome. For when your laying down your own tracks infront of you and havent yet had the experience of going of the rails - yet sense that going of them is going to be unimaginably horrific and inevitable, the outbursts of focus and energy coupled with niavety and lack of guidence or misguidence - your bound to make a last desperate (tragic if your existentialist, yet destined and necessary for Nietzsche, and the others moreorless) attempt at self-affirmation - however that manifests itself.
But for now that bright mood is still there, so ill listen to some music and then go and read Emerson, who ive not read before properly.
"Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology who was lauded as one of the cleverest, yet most devious men in history, with a propensity for flouting the traditions of Greek hospitality by murdering his guests. He was eventually condemned after deceiving first Death himself and then Hades, Lord of the Underworld, in order to escape his inevitable demise. As punishment for his audacity, he was sentenced to be blinded and to perpetually roll a giant boulder up a mountain to the peak, only to have it inevitably roll back down the mountain into the valley.
Camus develops the idea of the "absurd man", the man who is perpetually conscious of the ultimate futility of life ... Drawing on numerous philosophical and literary sources, and particularly Dostoevsky, Camus describes the historical development of absurd awareness and concludes that Sisyphus is the ultimate absurd hero ... In his essay, Camus has Sisyphus experiencing freedom for the one brief moment when he has stopped pushing the boulder before he has to start back down the mountain again. At that point, Camus felt that Sisyphus, even though blind, knew the view of the landscape was there and must have found this uplifting: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy", he declares. Returning to his original question, he concludes that suicide is never justified."

This is a good song that i heard only the other day, its not the type of music i usually listen to but has undeniably got that sweet summer feel to it, whoever denies that is lying. Its called "green grass of tunnel" by mum - let it run through on mute first or it jitters

2006-05-04T00:31:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

Although Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher, i have a affinity with the things he says, the most remarkable book is The Myth of Sisyphus. Today i experienced for the most part a deep set (more so than usual) depression, where not only was the fustration of not being able of express myself through that at full as it usually is, but everything else was weighing in on my conciousness, and peoples thoughts really got to me, more so than usual. They become the vioces in my head, its me unconciously attacking myself (i know what gets to me most) and when im in the pit of self-laceration things look extraordinarly bleak - yet i defy these wih the fundamental drive that the things i say are real and that it is truly how i feel - philosophically and 'otherwise', that i know these things - yet i cant express them trough this 'oblivion' - especially when its this intense - the most intense a oblivion can be for a person to experience. The air is to thick ... That my expression of my truth is smashed from all angles by the attacks conciously with bits and pieces eaten away subliminally by the oblivion before it finds expression, and i get lost between trying to hold onto that original picture through the assults whilst rebuilding whats been eaten away - the original picture undergoes metamorphosise - and you begin to express more the vioces, concerned also with negating there assumptions rather than the original picture you had in mind. Right now i have know vioces as such, because the philosophy of the Myth is still fresh unconciously in my mind - but i cant express it through this oblivion - the cause of this is partly through the mental exhaution of reading it.
Books like that i read at a subliminal level - the first time i read them its almost unconciously understood - all thats conscious is the inexplicability of my unconcious, i dont understand it at all really. But the more times i read it the more i understand it consciously. Something i just realised - speaking is not about honesty at all really, at least for people like me. We cant be otherwise; its about know what and what not to say- what to make the effort to say that will be understood by someone unlike yourself whose not so thoughtful or scrupulously honest and is rather looking to negate your assumptions than to listen neutrally. Consciousness is like a light that takes some effort to shine - you focus it on the tenuity of the mass you are trying to express, but if you dont stick to the priorities of what you have to shine it on; if you try to explain every detail and take every detail to its logical conclusion for the person - you will loose sight of what you originally wanted to put forward. This all stems from absolute self-doubt, and a lack of a Self - you have to prove yourself fundamentally, "every movement requires improvisation", theres no fluidity apart from that which you create in that stifiling oblivion that you are trying to prove against the adamus-headed genuius in your head, that ridicule absolutely everything. "armed soley with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts" - this is what you are trying to express which you loose through the petty details.
ill delete this tommoro

2006-05-01T15:15:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

I was just reading r. d. Laing when the doorbell rang, and the utmost dread rushed up and filled my system. My whole body was pounding in my heart beat, right down into the center of my belly. I realised then that the intese lerthargy or depression i experience is a unconcious self-defense mechanism against the 'surprise' of the world, it takes the high-pitched 'bite' out of it. When im reading, this larthargy disapears, and im lost to the book with my entire mind focused into it at full activity - at this time i'm entirely defenseless against any surprise; anything that does happen that causes 'me' to have to 'act' will hit me to the core of my soul. Otherwise, when im not employing the faculties of my mind in this way, anything that does happen will be 'filtered' through this larthargy and oblivon which will knock that high-pitch out of the onslaught, or transorm it into a more flat, wider and basser impact.
From this i realise that my 'Self' has been replaced by this 'oblivion' of intense 'lathargy' - it is my self-defence against the world. But theres no progress in this way of being - i have to drop this 'mask' if i want to get anywhere: and this is presicely the most dangerous and painful thing anyone can do.

2006-04-30T16:53:00.000+01:00

Quote

From the "Gay Science (Gaya Naturewissenchaft)"

"This book might need more than one preface; and in the end there would still be room for doubt as to wether someone who has not experienced something similar could, by means of prefaces, be bough close to the experiences of this book. It seems to be written in the language of the wind that brings a thaw: it contains high spirits, unrest, contradiction, and April weather, so that one is constantly reminded of winters nearness as well as the triumph over winter that is coming, must come, perhaps has already come. . .Gratitude flows forth incessantly, as if that which was most unexpected had just happened - the gratitude of a convalescent - for recovery was what was most unexpected. 'Gay Science': this signifies the saturnalia* of a mind that had patiently reisited a terrible, long pressure - patiently, severly, coldly, without yeilding, but also without hope - and is now all of a sudden attacked by hope, by hope for health, by the intoxication of recovery. Is it any wonder that in the process much that is unreasonable and foolish comes to light, much wanton tenderness, lavished even on problems that have a prickly hide, not made to be fondled and lured? This entire book is really nothing but an amusment after long privation and powerlessness, the jubilation of returning strenth, of a reawakened faith in tommoro and a day after tommoro, of a sudden sense of anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of reopened seas, of goals that are permitted and believed in again. How many and what sorts of things did not lie behind me then! This stretch of desart, exhaution, loss of faith, icing-up in the midst of youth; this onset of dotage at the wrong time; this tyranny of pain surpassed still by a tyranny of pride that refused the conclusions of pain - and conclusions are consolations; this radical seclusion as a self-defence against a pathologically clairvoyant contempt for humanity, this limitation in principle to what is bitter, harsh, painful to know, as perscribed by the nausea that had gradually developed from an incautious and excessivly luxurious spiritual diet - one calls it romantism - oh, who could experience all this as i did? But if anyone could, he would surly pardon even more than a bit of foolishness, exuberance, 'gay science' - for example, the handful of songs that have been added to the book this time, songs in which a poet makes fun of all poets in a manner that is hard to forgive. Alas, it is not just the poets and their beautiful 'lyrical sentiments' on whom this ressurected author has to vent his malice: who knows what kind of victim he is looking for, what kind of monster will stimulate him to pardon it? Incipiant tragoedia(the tradegy beings, we read at the end of this suspiciously innocent book. Beware! Something utterly wicked and mischievous is being announced here: incipit parodia(the parody begins), no doubt."

*Roman winter festival at which usual bonds of social order were thrown off, social roles were reversed, etc.

2006-04-29T22:22:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

The most fustrating thing to a schizophrenic two years into his condition, thus out of the 'shock' of its onset - is the fragmenting of consciousness. With schizophrenia, all you can do is focus all your attention on one fact at a time, while the rest is lost to that abyss of oblivion. Your lost in the moment, and take the chance of even illusory purpose as though you were following your nose - your mind is like a vacuum in space and sucks up that objective and inflames it to unimaginable sizes - it takes up the whole of your conciousness and almost blocks out the sky of oblivion - but its only a fragment. And no matter how much you search into it and discover, its only a tiny piece of the puzzel in reality and, although unconciously the schizophrenic knows the rest of the facts and so (unconciously) puts them into context and so has an innate notion he is speaking the truth he cant express this context as it is lost to the oblivion. And so all he does express is the minute details of this tiny piece of the puzzel that has been inflammed to unimaginable sizes in the vacuum of his mind which is to him unconciously in context, but this expression therefore comes across as completly ridiculous to an outsider, as theyve got no idea what this unconscious context is which is the only thing to give this expression of a fragment some solid basis, or any type of ground probably - and this is precisely what the schizophrenic cant express - hes not even aware of it at the time because its unconscious - he only, therefore, has a deep set drive and 'subconcious' belief that he is telling the truth, but you will never find someone to take you at your word. This is the most fustrating thing for a schizophrenic.
Nevertheless apparently it is a great thing. As Nieztsche once said:
"Faith in oneself - Few people have faith in themselves - and of these few some possess it as a useful blindness or partial eclipse of the mind (what they would behold if they could see to the bottom of themselves!), while the rest have to aquire it. Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an arguement against the sceptic inside them. They have to convince or persuede him, and that almost requires genius. These are the great self-dissatisfied people."

You see, because that context is lost to the oblivion and your moreorless unconcious of this fact - every abstract movement is conciously groundless - your left to discern and act of your intuition and innate belief that this is true which is a notion beyond any dross of the normal person - its not a belief in the normal sense. Uncertainity therefore is buzzing in the schizophrenic mind at all times - his idea of a self is totally inept at handleing the anxiety of total uncertainity - and your own mind is your worst enemy - that oblivion that holds all the keys but is just beyond your reach and taunts you with them, diverting you from them, ect - all in the context of this oblivious anxiety of in the momentness.

2006-04-29T22:15:00.000+01:00

Quotes

I was reading Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Spheres today, Its one of those books that always puts your priorities into perspective, and is full of solid and ambiguous, pragmatic advice for not "diviating from the true Way" of your chosen individual path - and to over come your opponents.
In every practise of every way of life, there is a state of mind called that of a deviant, Even if you strive diligently on your chosen path day after day, if your heart is not in accord with it, then even if you think you are on a good path, from the point of view of the straight and true, this is not a genuine path. If you do not pursue a genuine path to its conssumation, then a little bit of crookedness in the mind will later turn into a major warp. Refelct on this. It is no wonder that the world should consider the martial arts to consist solely of swordsmanship.

Fifth is the scroll of emptyness. The reason this scroll is entiteled emptyness is that once we speak of "emptyness", we can no longer define the inner depths in terms of the surface entryway. Having attained a principle; one detaches from the principle; thus one has spontaneous independance in the science of martial arts and naturally attains marvels: discovering the rythm when the time comes, one strikes spontaneously and naturally scores. This is all the way of emptyness.

The long sword seems heavy and unweildly at first, but everything is like that when you first take it up: a bow is hard to draw, a halbred is hard to swing. In any case, when you become accoustamed to each weapon, you become stronger at the bow, and you aquire the ability to weild the long sword. So when you attain the power of the way, it becomes easy to handle.

As far as paths are concerned, their are Confucians, Buddhists, tea connoisseurs, teachers of eqiquette, dancers and so on. These things do not exist in the way fo the warriors. But even if they are not your path, if you have a wide knowladge of their ways, you encounter them in everything. In any case, as human beings, it is enssential for us to cultivate and polish our own individual path.

Both spear and halbred depend on circumstances; niether is very useful in crowded situations. They are not even appropriate for taking prisoners; they should be reserved for use on the battle field. They are essential weapons in pitched battle. If you nevertheless learn to use them indoors, focusing attention on petty details and thus losing the real way, they will hardly prove sutible.

You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you. To attain likes and dislikes is bad for both commanders and soldiers. Pragmatic thinking is essential.

2006-04-29T22:07:00.000+01:00

Thoughts

With schizophrenia, your a totally chaotic and unorganised self. Your empty and oblivious to the moment, usually preoccupied subliminally with organising your memories and experiences - trying to make yourself a 'mask' that is strong, and worthy enough to stand up against the incomprehensible people of the world. Their inexpliacble to the schizophrenic because, the world that he percieves is inexplicable - its totally unbounded and unstructured, ruthless, nothing is familiar, theres a tenuous to no structure between cause and affect - everything is a total surprise of annihalating experience, "a slap in the face" for the man "underground" - and yet these people are totally at home in it. Its because there in another dimension theyve never had experience of a world like this - to have experience would require to undo everything that they are. People dont know anything about yin and yang, they think these 'things' and 'energies' that can be experienced 'objectively' - they dont even think this, its instinctive, and although in there deepest heart they know theyre being false, theyre to much the coward to do otherwise - and who of experience could blame them? Theyre all stuck in yang with a dot of yin, where as through the schizophrenic breakdown you get hurled into yin with a dot of yang.
So being an 'empty' schizophrenic with no solidly structured idea of a self - things hit you to the core of your soul, theres absolutely no barrier between that stimuli and the supersensitive core of your soul - theres also no Self to defelct the blow or even to diffrentiate between them. And so for one example, I will be say lost to the subliminal method of organising my experiences, and out of that 'stuffy hot' oblivion will shoot like a bolt one of the things that truly humiliated me in the past - and acted as a major notch and step or leap even to my destination of a schizophrenic breakdown. And it will hit me to the core - loosing none of its potensy along the way - infact by the laws of gravity it gains in kinetics the futher it travels - in this case its quite a distance - from the sky of oblivion right down to the unprotected core of the earth.
It will affect me so much that my face will unconciously cringe, I might even say something out load i'm so in the moment - as if the most unimaginably humiliating thing had only happened yesterday. This happened today (and losts of times before) but suddenly this quote popped into my head
"The argument from growing solitary - The reproach of concience is weak in even the most conceintious people compared to the feeling: 'This or that is against the morals of your society.' Even the stongest person still fears a cold look or a sneer on the face of those among whom and for whom he has been bought up. What is he really afraid of? Growing solitary! This is the argument that refutes even the best arguments for a person or a cause. - Thus the herd instinct speaks out in us."

And I realised just how far Nietzsche ment to stretch it.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

2006-04-29T12:18:00.000+01:00

A Buffalo Passes Through The Enclosuer

Goso said: "When a buffalo goes out of his enclosure to the edge of the abyss, his horns and his head and his hoofs all pass through, but why can't the tail also pass?"

Mummon's comment: If anyone can open one eye at this point and say a word of Zen, he is qualified to repay the four gratifications, and, not only that, he can save all sentient beings under him. But if he cannot say such a true word of Zen, he should turn back to his tail.
If the buffalo runs, he will fall into the trench;
If he returns, he will be butchered.
That little tail
Is a very strange thing.

Shuzan's Short Staff

Shuzan held out a short staff and said: "If you call this a shrot staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

Mummon's comment: If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. It cannot be expressed with words and it cannot be expresed without words. Now quickly say what it is.
Holding out the short staff,
He gave an order of life and death.
Positive and negative interwoven,
Even Buddha's and patriachs cannot escape this attack.

Basho's Staff

Basho said to his desciple: "When you have a staff, I will give it to you. If you have no staff, I will take it away from you."

Mummon's comment: When there is no bridge over the creek the staff will help me. When I return home on a moonless night the staff will accompany me. But if you call this a staff, you will enter hell like and arrow.
With this staff in my hand
I can measure the depths and shallows of the world.
The staff supports the heavens and makes firm the earth.
Everywhere it goes the true teaching will be spread.

Proceed From The Top Of The Pole

Sekiso asked: "How can you proceed from the top of a hundered foot pole?" Another Zen teacher said: "One who sits on top of a hundered-foot pole has attained a certain hight but still is not handleing Zen freely. He should proceed on from there and apear with his whole body in the ten parts of the world."

Mummon's comment: One can continue his steps or turn his body freely about on top of the pole. In either case he should be respected. I want to ask you monks, however: How will you proceed from the top of that pole? Look out!
The man who lacks the third eye of insight
Will cling to the measure of a hundered feet.
Such a man will jump from their and kill himself,
Like a blind man leading other blind men

Bodhidharma Pacifies The Mind

Bodhidharma sits facing the wall. His future successor stands in the snow and presents his severed arm to bodhidharma. He cries: "My mind is not pacified. Master, pacify my mind."
Bodhidharma says: "If you bring me your mind I will pacify it for you."
The successor says: "When I search my mind I cannot hold it."
Bodhidharma says: "The your mind is pacified already."

Mummon's comment: That broken toothed old hindu, Bodhidharma, came thousands of miles over the sea from India to China as if he had something wonderful. He is like raising waves without wind. After he remaind years in China he had only one desciple and that one lost his arm and was deformed. Alas, ever scince he sa had brainless desciples.
Why did Bodhidharma come to China?
For years monks have discussed this.
All the troubles that followed scince
Came that teacher and desciple.

Meeting a Zen Master On The Road

Goso said: "When you meet a Zen master on the road you cannot talk to him, you cannot face him with silence. What are you going to do?"

Mummon's comment: In such a case, if you can answer him intemately, your realisation will be beautiful, but if you cannot, you should look about without saying anything.
Meeting a Zen master on the road,
Face him niether with words nor silence.
Give him an uppercut,
And you will be called one who understands Zen.