At this point, I must accept the idea that I may in fact be totally insane. At least in isolated parts of my life. You can't have tons of energy and a very vivid imagination for long before someone else thinks you are crazy. I will admit I have a very warped perspective on a lot of things, but my mind is the only place I have to live, so I deal with it.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it is all relative, and just because something is perceived by my mind or experienced by my senses, sixth or otherwise, doesn't meant it isn't real or true.
And my mind works overtime. I have compared it to the restlessness of a shark, continually moving just to stay alive. When your brain is going all the time like that, it takes you to some strange places. Sometimes my flights of fancy allow me to come up with creative solutions for problems. Sometimes I cook up unusual stories or characters that I write down and make my feeble attempts at art with. Other times, I devolve into anxiety, depression, and worry.
I may not actually be insane. That oversimplifies. Insane people can't function at all. They have no connection to the common reality. I manage to have a demanding job and maintain relationships with people. I just have all this extra stuff. So, if anything, I am super-sane. Better yet, I could define sanity (functional life) along the spectrum of experiences as being in the middle, like the spectrum of visible light. Then religious ecstasy and intuition would be ultrasanity, whereas depression and melancholy would be infrasanity. I just came up with those words, and therefore hold the rights to them.
If you follow that logic, and I will contend that there is a peculiar logic to it, most people have a mix of all three. Some folks vibrate right in the middle, and live quite ordered and sensible lives. Others, and most of the artists I know, exist in the liminal spaces where the common shared reality blurs into imagination. I have patients in the hospital that suffer in the outer areas almost exclusively, or may pass through lucid moments only briefly on their excursions from one extreme to the other.
Go too far to either extreme of course, and you get the life threatening outcomes of mania and suicidal ideation. Biological life thrives in a narrow range of pH, and so our minds thrive in areas where we, as social animals, get the most positive feedback. There is social acceptance in being sane. Falling even a little outside that make you a delightful eccentric, and a lot outside it makes you homeless. So unless you have others around you to endorse your version of reality, you are gonna be pretty lonely.
I don't know about you, but that concept make me feel a whole lot better about my situation.
The inner workings of the writer, gadfly, and all around odd bird, Stacie Ferrante
Showing posts with label blasphemy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blasphemy. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 10, 2008
Poetry-Blasphemy

They call you LORD.
The way I see it is
You mock me mercilessly
Like a second-balcony heckler.
Too far away to understand
The garbled epithets you hurl
But close enough to hear
The audience's laughter.
So many people try to tell me
How great you are, how loving
But why create me impermeable
And so prone to blasphemy?
I try to be a good girl
And in all ways be worth your boon,
But in my way I'm born to sin
And in my descent gather following.
They call you God Almighty
And mighty your judgment falls.
But good or ill, I'm on my own
In discerning what fickle fate holds.
It would feel good to trust you
To just let go and let you.
But I have had a hard daughter's day
And don't need another father.
Why not "God the Lover"?
At least that I understand
For divine fingers hooking my heart
Might make me a believer.
And in the cushioned nightfall
When you've got me godly gravid,
Heavy-seeded, I could forgive
And call you my immortal beloved.
(c) Stacie Ferrante
11-10-08
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