699. divine proportion

He took his finger and traced her lips. Applying gentle pressure, he pulled the lower lip down and let his finger lie upon it as upon a ledge, half dry, half wet, as beach and shore, as what was out and what was in. Her eyes were closed and her breathing steady. He asked her not to move, to pretend she was marble and he was a sculptor and in this way he would learn by touch an intimacy beyond sight; and with this sensation of tracing, pressing, pulling, with pad and nail, single finger and whole hand he would map every curve and carve upon his memory her features such to know them at night as he knew them in day. With each stroke he made mental note of flesh, bone, warmth and cold, of angles in divine proportion, a symmetry that delighted the eye but bore mathematical beauty into his pores as if his fingers were upon something other than flesh and blood, something beyond this moment in time, beyond the profane of earth and sky as if in structure she was composition, but more than notes, more than musical architecture, more than his humble mind could fathom other than to know this sense was beyond and in that moment, as if moved by hands other than his own, he held her head as if she had been gone a long time and just returned, as if the tremble of his fingers were as ten hearts beating and the water in his eyes the tears of one soul speaking to another. And this is how he kissed her, pressing his lips upon hers and there was a softness, a blending as breath between two blends as hands lace and tongues dance and clocks tick to mute ears.

698. before the window

(ver 2)
He asks her to stand before the window and take off her shirt. Without a smile, she unbuttons her blouse, slips the white cotton from one shoulder and then the other before letting it drop to the wood floor. Stand in profile he says. And look straight ahead. Her nipple grows erect in the chill. Light streams from the window casting her curve in silhouette. He sees not flesh but light and dark and the line, the curve between what was Em and what was not. He tries to draw the line, the curve. But nothing he draws looks remotely like what he sees. He tries again. And again. Paper balls upon the ground. He holds another sheet up. Compares curve to curve through the transparency of light and paper. Then he puts the paper down, takes a breath, his eyes fixed on her budding nipple. The smoothness of the curve. The creamy contrast between light and dark, sharply demarcated without any sense of demarcation. She is both separate and not separate and what he sees could not be drawn. Not drawn any more than a dream could be lassoed or the infinite understood. He notices his own breathing. He notices the quiet. How still she stands. How she has obey without question and how she looks in profile, of infinite curves, of shoulder and back, of thigh and calf. She is as sunrise and nightfall without being either. A tear falls from his cheek and he knows that some things do not need to be understood to be known.

__________

(ver 1)
He asked her to stand before the window and take her shirt off. Without a smile, she unbuttoned her blouse, slipped the white cotton from one shoulder and then the other before letting it drop to the wood floor. Stand in profile he said. And look straight ahead. Her nipple grew erect in the chill. Light streamed from the window casting her curve in silhouette. He saw not flesh but light and dark and the line, or in this case, the curve between what was Em and what was not. He tried to draw the line, or curve. But nothing he drew looked remotely like what he saw. He tried again. And again. Paper balled upon the ground. He held another sheet up. Compared curve to curve through the transparency of light and paper. Then he put the paper down, took a breath, his eyes fixed on her budding nipple. The smoothness of the curve. The creamy contrast between light and dark, sharply demarcated without any sense of demarcation. She was both separate and not separate and what he saw could not be drawn. Not drawn any more than a dream could be lassoed or the infinite understood. He noticed his own breathing. He noticed the quiet. How still she stood. How she had obey without question and how she looked in profile, of infinite curves, of shoulder and back, of thigh and calf. She was as sunrise and nightfall without being either. A tear fell from his cheek and he knew that some things did not need to be understood to be known.

Day: 28

after four weeks:

the good--

thoughts of suicide have all but vanished--the interminable darkness has been virtually absent--initial side-effects have either disappeared or continue to lessen--I have an evenness of mood not known before--I am more outgoing, more extroverted, more talkative--the tone in my voice is kinder, without edge--interaction with others comes naturally, not forced--I read more--my thought processes tend toward solution, toward what matters in moving forward--emotional issues/energy concerning envy, jealousy, vanity, anger, resentment, retribution, sensitivity to personal attack have all been remarkably, although not completely, absent--appetite has been suppressed (I was eating too much before, so this particular side-effect has been welcomed)--thought leans heavily toward reason, logic, order, linear--ratiocination--I am less manipulated by external emotional energy--conflict is handled on a greater objective level than before--I have smiled more in the last month than in the previous year


the not so good--

the pleasure of music has not fully returned--creative thought is still somehow altered, which is to say lacking--it might be more accurate to say the cognitive process itself has been altered of which creativity is only a part--emotional highs have been blunted along with the blunting of emotional lows--emotion overall has been confined to a narrow middle ground--emotional intensity is missing as too emotive empathy, although empathy on a logical plane exists as before--I experience poetry differently than before and my desire to read and write it is less--thought within my own mind feels less lyrical, less melodic--the feeling is a sense of blandness, of neutrality, of detachment


overall observations--

so far, the good outweighs the not good--the changes I have experienced using Sertraline have allowed me to function in ways I could not function before--the meds are not a cure-all--effort on my part is as important in returning to health--the process is ongoing and relatively speaking, we are still early in the process--there have been bumps in the road and I expect that there will be more, which is to say life happens, as it does to all of us--I am encouraged, cautiously optimistic, and I am under no illusions that much work is still to be done--the overall feeling, as of today, which was not there one month ago is: I can get there from here--I have returned to the view of life as a garden--it must be watered, weeded, sunned--on a daily basis--I have seen a separation between passion and emotion, which is to say, although my emotional register has been rather limited, passion on a personal and professional level seems unaffected--I need to explore this issue/concept with more awareness--my grasp of what is happening on this level is vague--what is passion without emotion--is there a range of emotion that is operating that I am unfamiliar with--something, on a very subtle level, is operating, something just beyond my grasp to comprehend, similar to a word on the tip of the tongue, something you know you know but just can't put your finger on

Day: 25-27

day twenty-five:

I am fighting a two-front war--on one front, my individual circumstances; on the other, chemistry--resources were stretched today--still vulnerable--still fragile

bad day--individual circumstances overwhelmed progress--emotional reactivity slowly returning--drugged feeling virtually gone



day twenty-six:

libido unaffected--ejaculation still more difficult, albeit possible, than premed--the mechanics of ejaculation are different--lacking premed force--I would still characterize the event as more ejaculation than orgasm but there seems to be positive movement in the premed direction--desire to buy books returning--low levels of anxiety, which I consider healthy, returning--sensation on crown of the head is unchanged--appetite remains suppressed--I ate only one meal yesterday, about 3pm, with no desire to eat before or after--and today, as it approaches 3pm, not having eaten in twenty-four hours, there is still no appetite--emotional reactivity, although greater now than a couple weeks ago, remains low--thought remains more logical than emotive--vocal music is judged or seen on a sliding scale of authenticity--ability to be manipulated by emotion, in song or otherwise, remains very low--in reading the fourth part of Bolano's 2666, the part about the crimes, perhaps some of the darkest reading this side of the holocaust, I've been watching closely how I process/react--have reached no conclusion other than my sense of disgust toward crimes of this nature remains unchanged and although the feelings of disgust are not as emotional as they might have been before, there is a depth to the logical response of injustice that seems stronger, clearer--as if I am able to comprehend better without the filter of emotion clouding conclusion--a sense of outrage based on fact rather than visceral reaction--the more I read Bolano, the more impressed I am

creative thought still lacking--the mind does not branch or mind map as if did before--one idea or thought does not immediately lead to two or three possibilities--thought occurs and then sits--it doesn't branch--several thoughts can occur but they are not linked--there is no concatenation--thought becomes discrete and to generate an imaginative thought, similar to ejaculation, requires a great deal of effort, focus and concentration--and what occurs seems more manufactured than natural--there is almost no sense of being drugged--dosage has not changed--the ability of the mind, of thought, of imagination to flow, to weave a narrative, seems to be absent and the feeling is of wires that have been disconnected--as if emotion was a major creative key and without that key, little happens--but it is more than just the absence of emotion--something far greater is occurring on a cognitive level--and I wonder if the absence of sadness is somehow related to the inability to construct and hold a narrative train of thought, the inability to mental mushroom so to speak, to take a single thought and build and therefore, negative thoughts are like orphans--they still occur but there is no, or little, ability to build a narrative around them and without the narrative, affect is vastly minimized--just a theory

for the second day in a row ghosts from my past have reappeared--I refer to ghosts as past negative events or situations that in my premed period were growing in force and strength--until yesterday, the sense of being drugged and the sense of progress had held both at bay and had given hope of a new beginning, a new start, a chance to experience life from this point forward--I fear this is not the case and I fear a slow return, in spite of the meds--to that all consuming darkness--I knew there would be days like yesterday and today--that there would be bumps in the road--but I am reminded today, despair has the gravitational pull of a black hole--one knows light by theory, by memory, but it seems unattainable, beyond reach, for other people but not yourself--I want to be healthy--I have no greater ambition--to experience simple joy and basic happiness with a modicum of peace and tranquility--and perhaps to do meaningful and significant work--to do no harm or as little as possible--today, there was an inkling of premed paranoia--this was the first time this particular energy has reemerged through the meds



day twenty-seven:

although the last two days were trial and tribulation, thoughts of suicide, which were present every day and every night for a period of eight months, maybe longer, premed, these thoughts are/were absent--or I should say, if they occur, the energy is very, very low and the mind feels no need or desire to invest--I've been told that we never get rid of a habit, we only replace it with another--whether this is true is beside the point--thought, as I experience it, is similar--which is to say, the mind, of its own accord, is always thinking--it doesn't just sit idle--this is not to be confused with creative mind mapping thought--in this case, the mind finds an object and almost relentlessly obsesses upon that object in the most detailed and subtle way, as if looking at the same thing from many different angles--what I find interesting, and this is where I think of habit, whereas before the only fixation, morning and night, was suicide--that fixation has been replaced with sexual fantasy--and I wonder, again, if the mind is simply not seeking a place, an extreme, that once there, is like a panic room--a place, that once there, is so encompassing as to thwart all the fears I am afraid to confront--as if the mind seeks an extreme--suicide or sex--antipodes--both, albeit from different directions, based on the same subconscious need--a drive unspoken--a need for protection--a need to focus so intently on one thing and one thing only as to eliminate the possibility of any other thought--as if the mind can, by its own processes, suck the oxygen from the brain--some form of instinct toward self-preservation that lies just below the level of conscious thought

appetite remains strangely suppressed--I have all but given up eating breakfast--there is simply no hunger till early afternoon--this is the one side-effect that seems to be increasing--yesterday, again, I ate only one meal, around 3pm, although I did snack lightly around 9pm--this eating behavior is in direct opposition to premed eating, when I seemed to snack all day long in addition to eating three meals

sensation on crown of head remains--drowsiness all but absent as too the sense of being drugged--on issues of conflict, there is no need or desire to find or fix blame, only the logical desire to move forward, to fix whatever is broken--there seems to be no emotional energy when wronged, no need for retribution or to defend oneself in the way that assigns blame to someone else, even when someone else is wrong--assigning blame is processed as a waste of time--periods of melancholy still emerge from time to time and for the life of me I cannot root out their origin--the melancholy is not as intense as premed nor as lasting, but there is no mistaking that dark energy--and there is the sense that the darkness is adapting to the meds and growing stronger--resistant to the antibiotic so to speak--if so, this is an ominous development--perhaps most perplexing is this continuing blankness of mind, the utter absence of creative spark, effort notwithstanding--I wonder to what extent there is a relation between the meds ability to ward off depressive thought and the meds ability to dampen creative thought, imaginative thought--what was originally experienced as emotional dullery feels as if it is or has shifted to a more subtle imaginative blunting, which, for the record, as been there from the first day, but with the reemergence of some emotion, seems more stark in being left behind, of there appearing to be little progress on the cognitive/creative/imaginative front

in the first few weeks the feeling of being drugged was such to dull all thought and all emotion--as the effects of the meds/side-effects lessen, so too the ability of the meds alone to hold melancholy at arms length--taking ownership of one's own thought processes and becoming more skillful, more aware in the moment is going to be a critical part of the healing process--the meds alone will not do it

697. untranslatable

Em stood before the window, looking upon the trees in morning light, branches swaying in a light breeze. From inside the cabin the brook could not be heard, although she would say later, that she did.

She didn't hear him come across the room nor feel his breath on the nape of her neck, his humid kisses keeping time with the rhythm of his chest, gentle kisses of exhale, warm as the tongue she wanted to taste, to hold, to feel brush against her ear. His sweater pressed against hers. There was that softness between them. And there was the silence of thought not spoken, of eyes not opened. She leaned her head back and pressed against him. He was strong, lean, hard and he smelled of milled soap, unscented, clean as the breeze off the mountain. The longer they spent together the more they spoke in touch and look and the less in word. And there was a mutual understanding that all the words in all the books could not say what the kisses, the embraces, the melding of flesh between them, that soft warmth of body and yet a warmth too in the touch but beyond the touch could, did. He was her fingerprint, uniquely what he was to her, and what they shared, they shared alone, a language of two, untranslatable.

Day: 24

all of my life I have been inclined to take abuse without standing up for myself for fear of offending the person who had offended me--if I was being yelled at or criticized then, so my thinking on some subconscious was, it must be my fault--I acted as if everyone else was an authority on whatever it was they were saying and I had no ground to stand upon, even when I knew their information was wrong--not to upset the other person became first and foremost in my mind--I only wanted peace, to be accepted and I was willing to pay any price for a moment, an hour or a day without drama--sometimes the only way to achieve this peace was to withdraw, to be alone, to shun interaction with anyone because to interact invited conflict, disagreement, yelling and words said that could not be taken back--as a result, I have lived virtually my entire life in fear, fear of offending--I knew the fear was unhealthy and irrational, but like many emotions, especially strong ones, the flow of energy was greater than the ability to channel it and one is consumed in a sort of madness--caught in a web, knowing one is caught in a web, but helpless to do anything about it--in this world, one does not take initiative because to act is to invite rebuke and nothing hurts as much as rejection, as consistent, unerring negative feedback--life wants to live, to survive and so in this environment, almost by instinct, for self-preservation, there is a withdrawal from interaction and a fear of those moments when interaction cannot be avoided--so one learns to be silent and unseen--the good child syndrome (good not for the sake of good--silent not out of respect)--and over time, the silence becomes not willed or chosen as much as the natural state--the mind simply shuts down--if there is no thought then there can be no narrative that further damages the self and there can be no interaction that can lead to a sense of inferiority--speak only when spoken to and then say nothing that could invite controversy--in other words, have no opinions or at least none that you are wiling to share

since I have been on meds, this fear of standing up for myself, for my views and doing so without fear, without exerting some effort to overcome past habit, but rather a logical and natural need to deal in fact, to see the situation objectively, to understand or comprehend the difference between the self and the world outside of the self had been nothing less than remarkable--when someone places an opposing view before me, I feel no threat--I am able to see the position without some personal/emotional involvement or attachment and I don't confuse the self, the value of the self with the outcome of opinion or argument--in a very real sense, what is right takes precedence over who is right--now, this is a philosophy I have known for a long, long time and have taught for many years--but to know something on paper or even in the mind and to know it within the integrity of mind/body/spirit (for lack of a better way to put it) is quite a different thing--in short, there is a feeling of mental health I can't say I've ever felt before and just as the darkness was most evident in moments of non-darkness, so too this sense of health is seen and known in contrast to everything I've known before

day by day, my confidence, which the darkness had completely eradicated, is returning--the return is based not on affirmation but grounded in day to day experiences, of decisions, of cognitive and emotional processing of daily tasks and conflicts--I am using affirmation, but what is affirmed is the experience, not the idea of fake it till you make it--each positive experience and interaction is like a deposit in the bank account of myself--my belief in my abilities--to be of value, of worth--capable of making positive contributions to the world I inhabit--what I have just said I could not have said one month ago

I do have one fear--namely that I will wake up one day, or it will just hit me out of the blue like the darkness used to do without rhyme or reason, and all the progress I have made will have evaporated and life as I knew it will return

Day: 23

I am still amazed with the issue of irritation--I see it rise and watch it pass through me without eliciting a reaction or response--this is not me thinking differently--this is a direct effect of the meds, which has been in effect since I started taking the meds--the experience is odd in that I can see the irritation rise just as it did before the meds--the same things that irritated me then still irritate me now--so there has been no change in that regard--I am still the same person on that level--what is different is reaction--where before there would be an almost uncontrollable surge of energy, a surge I'd work very hard not to act upon but would still show on my face and in my tone of voice--the kind of tone where you are speaking in a whisper but the person you are speaking to asks you to stop yelling at them--that kind of tone--now, on these meds, although the irritation is still there, I can see it, there is no urge to react to it--or I should say the urge to react is so low as to be insignificant and I have to exert almost no energy to keep from a petty response to matters that just don't matter--within my personal relationships, this change has made a remarkable difference--the overall sense is of a more healthy self, a more well-adjusted self--the sense of this lack of reaction being a drugged 'reactionlessness' appears to be blending away, not completely, but like the sensation on the crown of my head, which is still there, I am starting to have to bring awareness to the influence of medication as to behavior

the other change in behavior which has been very positive and quiet remarkable to observe since it was not an expected or anticipated change is what I would call drive or initiative--when something needs to be done that was not on my agenda to do, that perhaps comes up unexpectedly, in the past where I might experience resentment and drag my feet, now, almost without thought, I just do it--this ties in to what I can only call a more logical thought process, a more task oriented view--this is not a subtle change in outlook or behavior but a rather significant one--as I look back on the last several years if not the last many, many years i wonder how my life would have been different had I been wired this way before--I am also becoming aware that what I have suffered from, to one degree or another, has been with me at least from high school and perhaps, although I am not certain, prior to that--my father suffered greatly from many of my same symptoms--there is a very real possibility I'm dealing with an hereditary disease, although I feel this is just idle speculation which is neither here nor there

on another note which I don't know what to make of, but seems to be a healthy change, my almost manic need to buy books has dropped away as too my need/desire to go to the bookstore almost everyday--bookstores still bring me great peace and I liken them as chapels but since I've been on meds, my desire has turned toward actually reading the books I've purchased rather than buying more--and believe me, I've bought a library worth of books--virtually all unread to one degree or another--of interest is this: I can see the thought to buy a new book rise and the next thought, on logical grounds, dismisses it--I can't ever recall shutting down the rising need/desire to purchase a book that caught my fancy--but with all the books I have, literally hundreds if not more, all of which are waiting to be read, my current med induced perception is it is just not logical or needed while at the same time a desire to actually read what I have grows stronger

there is a sense of adjustment--of being well-adjusted--and it almost scares me to write for fear that in the writing it will disappear or slip away like a dream, as if by speaking about it you jinx yourself--but this sense of being well-adjusted is unlike any sense I've ever had before--there is a calmness and a view and an operating logic that is hard to explain--I am knocking on wood that my perception of these changes this morning endure--that I am not simply deceiving myself on a good day

day by day as I observe these changes in myself and compare them to how I reacted prior to the meds, my tolerance for personality in others has expanded with a greater compassion--to have an awareness that the heart and the action may very well be different and the person may be beyond ability to rise above their own chemistry--I know and I am humbled in that my own changes (still knocking on wood) are not because of willpower or discipline or some zen-like training/enlightenment or awareness, but because I have introduced a psychoactive chemical into my system--without this chemical change, I cannot imagine that I would be any different than before--regardless of my circumstances professionally or personally--this is not to say that I could not have improved my situation by some degree, only that these changes I am experiencing now seem beyond simple self-improvement by an order of magnitude, exponential changes so to speak

and on day 23, my head bobbed to music--there has been no bobbing since I started on the meds--to be clear, this is not a complete return to premed experience, but it is the most significant development or step in a positive direction to date--I am hopeful this development continues--likewise, there is a sense of playing with fire, that before, music could move me so, bring me to tears for almost no conscious reason--so I'm cautiously watching this development--can I regain my ability to enjoy music, recover that key to creative thought without it destroying me

on the sexual front, I was able to achieve the third orgasm since starting meds, the first of which occurred on day twenty--the first achieved ejaculation (I say ejaculation rather than orgasm because it did not feel so much like an orgasm as much as a sense of simply being milked) required such a force of will, focus, concentration and effort as to be completely without any pleasure and although there was a supreme sense of accomplishment, as if my willpower had defeated the meds, I knew, although a positive step, that this was not triumph--two days ago, a second ejaculation was achieved--this time with less effort, but still the sense was more ejaculation than orgasm--the third 'orgasm' last night was again a degree easier, so progress in being made, but the sense is still more biological functioning on a mechanical level than the pure magic of orgasm--still, the last four days have seen positive moment and I can't complain about moving forward, moving in the right direction