Bi-polar

wow

dark tunnels

these

memories

dropping into wormholes of visceral memory

working in the coal mines

the soul mines

spinning the poison into gold

with my silver tongue and mercury fingers

too much mercury will kill you

just enough will give you sublime visions

this soul is mine

i reclaim it

from the hobbits and trolls

the more visceral the wormholes the better

for the writing

for me, the writer, and you, the reader

writing is an act of discovery. i want to discover my relationship to my memories. i want to discover my relationship to you, the reader. i want to transcend the separation between you and me by taking the things i have isolated myself the most with, my private wounds and memories, and flush them through the burning of my words into the common language of all our experiences and dreams. i want transcendence. i want to break through the the other side. i pulse between the dark, small feelings of these moldy memories and the big, beautiful feeling of release when they are exposed. am i having a manic-depressive episode? every 2 minutes. it is a slippery slope considering where i have come from.

still, i dig my way through these impassable mountains of memory, persistently pushing like a mother in the necessity of childbirth. sometimes i get lost in a tunnel. this exersize is only fruitful if one part of my mind is strong enough to get out without getting too lost. i think of all the artists who have simply lost it, who died young of drug overdoses or were locked up in the looney bin from madness. they pushed it too far, to try to understand themselves, to break through the membrane-thin collective reality bubble and bring back handfulls of the sublime. in books and paintings they lost themselves and their minds. when you are pushing, do you always know what is too far? on the razor's edge, you only find out by testing your steps.

last night i could not sleep. i fell asleep with a faint sense of darkness, of angst, perhaps all is not right in the world. perhaps there are evil spirits, dark energies. but i am a grown woman, i put these childish thoughts aside and fell asleep none the less. i was woken by the buzzing alert on my phone that someone texted me. "fuck", a sense of dread that i would not be able to sleep again came over me. then the cell phone rang. a friend of mine telling me what a great night he was having, driving under an almost full moon, belly full of sake, having just made new friends at the restaurant he ate dinner at. he asked how i was doing. "twisting and burning", i said. "alone, here, in self-exhile in ohio, can't sleep". "well, you gotta get outta there then", he said. "otherwise you'll just keep twisting and burning". i didn't want to hear that. one of my favorite sticks for my mind to beat me with is that i am hard on myself for nothing. "i'll let you go back to sleep", he says. i wish it was that easy.

i lay for awhile with my eyes burning. how many sleepless nights have i spent in my life, wrestling with the feeling of darkness. i called another friend. "it's the demon time", i said. "the wind is howling through the trees, it is restless like me". "maybe it is telling you to follow it to a nearby graveyard you haven't found yet", he drawls in my ear. "no thanks, i don't need that to start up too". we laugh.  i confess to him that i am afraid i am not doing anything, producing anything of value with my writing. that i am making myself miserable for nothing. he tells me that i am doing good, that i am producing something. i feel much better.

after we hang up, i still can't sleep. but when i close my eyes now, my skull is filled with a beautiful, radiant, strobing light. my body is filled with a comforting, sensual warmth, as if something soft is rubbing my whole being from the inside, invisible. i have always felt this. the fight between the light and darkness has often been fought in my body between the hours of midnight and 4am. since i was a little girl laying in bed. and the darkness always felt like a shadowy, oppressive force of dark intention. and the light always felt pleasurable in my body. that's why i understood immediately the language of the saints, nuns and martyrs who talked of being consummated with god, the bridegroom, in the bridal chamber. when the ecstasy overtakes me, i am transported to that place, that bridal chamber, and i am touched by the holy spirit. it is quite beautiful.

i spend a few hours running my fingers over the skin of my naked body, throwing off the bedcovers. i feel the hard jutting shape of my ribcage and the soft wrapper of golden skin. what miracle is this? i feel the wetness of my tongue as the taste grows sweet, the amrit, nectar of immortality releases in my throat as i salivate more. i brush my fingers like the hands of a ghost or the feathers of the wings of a bird over the shape of my breasts and nipples. they change shape at the tips and begin to feel cold and sharp. i am aroused. but in a thick sort of trancey way. i do not want to have an orgasm or come. i run my fingers lightly between my legs, feel the bones of my hips on both sides like a leather saddle. i run my fingers through the electric fuzz hair and touch my my private self. i linger momentarily, then bring my hands back to my breasts, my ribs. i listen to the sound of my breath.

i say some prayers to the angels, to the almighty goodness, i think of my guru in india. without my mantras, i might just be some crazy lady pushing a shopping cart down the street. i was diagnosed as bi-polar before. in another lifetime in this same lifetime. i think it was a spiritual diagnosis. i did not know how to weave between the ecstasy and the agony. between the feeling that we are all one and that i am alone in a cruel, meaningless universe. i was like a paper boat tossed on the waves of the passions. yoga is what saved me. made me feel like a functional human being. after a year of doing yoga, i tapered of all my psyche meds. i gave up on being normal a long time ago. i am functional. and beyond functional, i regularly dance in super-real realms of intensity of light and shadow that i feel is a beauty way to move through my barefoot lifetime on this small planet.