Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.”“Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness. While not a lesson plan it documents my therapeutic journey to finding love against all odds. Useful for therapists, and for patients with Bipolar Disorder and/or Asperger’s Syndrome. A scholarly, autobiographical case history of my story was the showcase article in vopl. 13 no. 1 of Psychoanalytic Inquiry in 1993.
Learning to love is an ongoing process and I am writing posts on new lessons learned.
All the original abstract painting is posted to advocate for Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome– for it is those very handicaps that feed my art. The more realistic nature art is dedicated to raising consciousness for animals and the environment. All other art work is purely for your enjoyment.
Finally I have also posted selections from my nature writing and poetry. My nature essays were published in a small paper in upstate New York for a year and a half. The poems have appeared throughout my life, coming and going as they please.
Welcome to samples of my work in various art forms showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
I love this form of greeting– so much better than a handshake.
Christians believe God dwells within our souls. Perhaps other religions do as well. It seems Hindus do also if that is not too simplistic of me to express. Please excuse me if it is.
In some of the best of the old Bollywood classics love is portrayed without so much as a simple kiss. It is shown by gazing into the eyes of the beloved and saying “I see God in you.”
Eyes are the window to the soul. For people such as my husband and myself who are on the Autism Spectrum, eye contact is fearsome. It is threatening. And yet eye contact is precious beyond all fortune. Eye contact in love is wondrous and life-changing.
I have seen God in my husband’s eyes for a fleeting moment of eye contact on a walk in the countryside when we were being loving with one another… and on precious contact when I come in to talk to him while he is on the computer in New York City. I have seen God in my husband when he is telling a joke and I am laughing at him and he is so happy to make me laugh. He is child like, God like. It seems I hit the jackpot in marrying him. Looking deeply into another’s eyes, the “right” other, one finds God is Love, God is Joy. This is nothing new– just new to me.
One time I looked deeply into another’s eyes with a person I worked with long before I met my husband. It reached down deep inside both of us and it changed my life forever. It led me on a road to a complete breakdown and a long road back rebuilding my personality slowly in therapy until I was whole. And then I met my husband. And eye-contact with him is precious. It is special. Not frequent and in its rarity, powerful and sacred.
Eye-locks are powerful, potent conveyors of love, joy, sadness and finally, and most importantly, they can be a vehicle to God.
Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
When I was little I swore to myself that I would not be one of those grown-ups who told children “When I was a child, I walked 10 miles back and forth to school every day in all weather– blizzards and ice storms, and I carried 15 pounds of books on my back and I took care of my eight little sisters and brothers and such and such and such and such.” But here I am, not telling it to my grandchildren, but worse, writing it in a blog post. My excuse? I feel almost an obligation to tell young people what they are missing and point the finger at the cause. There seems to have been a fundamental shift in reality as we know it. Maybe every generation feels this and that is why there are these older people going around saying: “When I was a child…”
When I was a child, I remember autumns so brisk you could feel the frost on your cheeks in October rather than a sun beating down 80 degrees in “unseasonably warm” weeks of extended summer. I remember Thanksgivings so cold the grown-ups drank hot toddies at the Thanksgiving Day parade and we children would go home with frozen fingers and red cheeks and warm by the fire before the grand feast began. It was never 70 degrees in November or God forbid in December!! And I remember ice skating on a frozen pond in January and going home with toes so frozen they hurt when you put them near the radiator to warm up. And swollen red fingers. But the hurt felt good and the fresh air felt good and the icy cheeks felt good, for you knew you were really alive, with a keen mind and an invigoration that rivaled any cup of Frapaccino from Starbucks. And I remember springs so cool you needed to have a spring coat or jacket. Winter did not just stop one day and summer begin the next with 90 degree days in April. My memories are precious and the young today may never know such memories in great thanks to Global Warming. Now it is approaching normal to have 70 degrees in November and 90 degrees in April.
And most of all when I was little I remember looking at the night sky and seeing a phantasmagoram of stars. Some readers may remember 50 years ago looking up at the Sputnik passing overhead and they may recall the stars seeming brighter then. They were. Today thanks to light pollution we see “less than one per cent of what Galileo would have been able to see without a telescope” as David Owen writes in his recent article The Dark Side. This light pollution is called “sky glow” and basically it means that because of air pollution the atmosphere is more reflective rather than being transparent making it harder to see the stars.
Of course this brings up the outrage and perils of air pollution which clouds the skies night and day!!!
On top of that so much illumination from the earth has faded the stars above thanks to things called “glare bombs” which are light fixtures that spread light sideways right into our eyes. Owen explains that the “eye adapts to the brightest thing in sight… when you have glare, the eye adapts to the glare, but then you can’t see anything darker.” It has to do with the rods and cones in our eyes. Rods are what allow us to see at night and cones give us color vision. The rods are very sensitive and can take an hour to readjust to the dark after being exposed to a light. The brighter the light, the longer it takes to adjust. So we are making it harder to see with these bright light packs that Owen points out make it easier for crime to occur because it is harder for people to see in the dark areas. This is why deer, who have superior night vision due to a greater concentration of rods, are blinded by headlights of cars. It has nothing to do with their intelligence and again, like all of this, plenty to do with man’s so called “progress.” And these light packs are so bright, Owen reckons they could probably be seen from earth with a hobbyist’s telescope if they were put on the moon. He points out that in a “truly dark sky” one can see more shooting stars than one can count. I have never seen a shooting star. My husband saw one as a child in camp in Wisconsin.
“I need a place where I can see the stars,” my husband said when we decided to buy our renovated barn in Stanfordville. And when we gaze at the night sky it sometimes takes our breath away and indeed on some nights we just stand outside gazing upwards speechless. It is the “awe” factor and seeing ourselves within the perspective of the infinite. But in the 5 years we have been here, the sky has become brighter and the stars harder to see. Poughkeepsie is a bright glow on the horizon and just a few weeks ago some sort of electrical transformer was installed on our road with a piercing green light maybe one inch in diameter that illumines the road and the whole front of our house at night. My husband calls it “the green eye of Mordor.” This light makes star gazing more difficult.
I mourn the frosty falls, the cold winters, the cool springs and the brilliant night sky. But at least people of my generation have their memories. The young people of today have been short-changed by my generation who have squandered nature. The youth of today have grown up deprived of some of the most brilliant shows of natural beauty and variety in climate. Global warming and pollution are the criminals here. They have robbed today’s children of some of life’s greatest treasures– treasures that turn into warm memories, themselves treasures, of “When I was a child…”
Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
My husband and I sit in our living room with all the little still-intact dairy barn windows showing flakes falling as if we are on ship at sea in a snowfall. Except for the high ceiling the living room has the feeling of a ship cabin, our converted dairy barn, and I think it is most beautiful when the snow is falling.
The glass doors at the pentagon of the far end of the barn gives us perfect view of the suet bird feeder. We only feed the birds suet in winter because in summer a fat raccoon comes and eats the whole suet cake in one sitting. The bird feeder in winter is our television. We watch male cardinals, bright red in the stark white, feed and contend with the beautiful, bullying blue jays. And the more modest and gentle little juncos and sparrows touch our hearts with their humility.
One winter, when the snow had covered the ground for a month or so and turned to solid ice we watched horrified as squirrels clawed at the feeder and fought with one another for a chance to feed making their shrill cries of territoriality. That hasn’t happened since and we think the ground was too frozen for them to retrieve the nuts and such that they buried in the fall and they were fighting off starvation.
Waking up in the morning there is no need for a weather report as we see the snow piled high on the surrounding trees and we see the sky through the second story doorway in the barn where they used to bring hay inside, now a cathedral window in our bedroom. The thermometer in the former hay loft tells us how cold it is though we can feel how chill the air is. It is great to wake up to see the squirrels running along the limbs of the trees, cleaning off the heavy snow. They seem friskiest just aftter a snowfall.
And if we are lucky and the snow is deep enough we get out our snow shoes and climb up the hill behind our little barn to what we were once told was a Christian Indian burial ground. There are no markers left but the spot has the air of the sacred and it affords a small view of the Catskills in winter. High on the hill overlooking the valley, it seems a perfect place for a burial ground. The snowfall makes it easier to walk the hill which in the summer is too full of saplings and underbrush to be able to walk the “meadow” as we call it. We only get it brush hog mowed once a year.
Our property does not include the entire meadow but on our half of the meadow there is a squat fir tree there which provides a great shelter for deer in a storm and the deer love the meadow. There are a few blown over trees. And as we snow shoe we see all kinds of animal tracks which we attempt to identify. And animal shelters from the harsh elements.
Like many barns, ours was built near the road so we do get some traffic noise. But in the meadow we are far removed from the road and its bustle. And when it snows, it is so beautiful in the quiet, looking at the animal tracks and feeling the spirits in the graveyard. Our secret little piece of Paradise. And to stand there in the silence, in the virgin white, and see the abstract patterns of the snow on the surrounding hundreds of trees is divine.
Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
December is my favorite time of year. In this the month of darkness, in this the darkest month, the light of the human spirit shines forth in a fullness shown by so many, in so many ways. As the days grow shorter in North America, houses and trees are decorated, and snow falls. In the hushed silence of the nights, lights shine in windows, and the beauty is shared by passersby. For this season of giving brings the festivals of lights: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza. Each tradition incorporates light in its ceremonies and decorations.
An animal friend who lived down the road, a donkey in his stable, reminded me of the story of another manger over 2000 years ago. And seeing him snug in his stable with snow on the ground gave the illusion that all was right in the world. But all was not well and all is not right now. Thousands know no peace in any season. Millions are cold and starving. Racism and religious wars prevail. Climate change advances in leaps and bounds, faster than most predicted.
Those who live closer to the land are especially blessed. They share their lives with animals who are constant reminders of humility and simplicity in this rapid, complex, multi-tasking world. They can drive around on a December night and see houses covered in lights with illuminated trees, houses warmed by fires, imagining them filled with laughter and conversation and love, and feel blessed. Blessed to have so much when others have so little. Blessed to be able to celebrate as they wish when others cannot.
Yet even those living in the worst conditions show the light of the human spirit and celebrate the season of light in personal ways. For the human spirit is indomitable.
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Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe”– a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” We are all cut from the same cloth and our inner light unites us.
In December’s darkness we light lights. For we are beings of light. A light glows within each one of us. And, at the most basic level, we are all beings of light because we are made from stardust. Perhaps that is why the stars hold such majesty for us– we are all– Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist– whatever– we are all made from star material.
And in this holiday season we behold the night sky as Christians say shepherds did over two thousand years ago on the birth of the holy infant, in a stable like the one down the road. On that night they say a star lit the whole sky to guide the shepherds to the stable of the infant, Jesus, the son of God.
In these deep, long, silent nights as we light our houses, our candles, our trees, let us look inside and try to find the glow that may guide us each, alone but intrinsically one, to the LIGHT!
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Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
It is an overcast day. Brightly colored birds stand out like jewels in the greyness. The winter birds– jays and cardinals, juncos, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers flock to the bird feeder and it has to be filled up almost every day. The red berries on the bushes are nearly all gone and the feeder is becoming a matter of survival. On our walks we see empty nests held in the bare arms of winter trees. An empty robin’s nest is filled with snow– the hatchlings and the mother long gone to fairer climes. The trees are stripped down to their souls. With ice storms they become tinkling chandeliers. In the rain the few remaining dead leaves drip icy tear drops.
Occasionally a dove visits the feeder. The chipmunk, who gathered scattered seeds under the feeder all fall, is not to be seen. He must be in torpor in his den. According to Bernd Heinrich in: The Winter World: the Ingenuity of Animal Survival, the eastern chipmunk builds a twelve foot storage system with a nest chamber some three feet down and a tunnel system which includes a food storage chamber. Heinrich says chipmunks go in and out of torpor. He reasons that they would not gather food if they were to be in torpor all winter long. We will probably not see our chipmunk for the rest of the winter for, in his stuporous state, he would be easy prey. However he can be roused to eat and venture outdoors if need be, especially in March when there still may be snow on the ground but mating season begins.
The grey squirrels are busy clearing snow from branches as they run along tree limbs. On the ground they dig through the snow for the walnuts we watched them bury in the ground with their noses this fall. They do not need to hibernate for they have food stores which they built up in the autumn and leafy, well-insulated nests. The red squirrels survive winter by putting on a thick, insulating fur.
The back yard is a maze of tunnels. We think they are deer mouse tunnels as many have tunneled their way into our house. But they must get by the feral cat who sometimes waits out a snow storm under our deck. In the woods, the occasional deer waits out the same storm under a squat fir tree. The tracks in the snow tell the story of how they weathered a Nor’Easter.
Beneath the tracks in the snow, in the frozen leaf litter, the insect world is dormant. Some hibernate. Others fill their bodies with antifreeze, glycerol, to stay alive. Heinrich talks about woolly bears hibernating but they are also capable of freezing solid and surviving, coming to life again as they thaw in the spring. The pupae, however, don’t survive being frozen.
In Winter: an Ecological Handbook, authors, James C. Halfpenny, Elizabeth Besiot and Roy Douglas Ozonne, tell us that the reptiles and amphibians pick out a “microclimate for hibernation that does not freeze” for their winter, such as the “bottoms of ponds, streams, or deep in the ground.”
Our stream flows out back in the marsh under ice and snow and one can see the elongated bubbles of running water. In the pond next door the turtles lay beneath the ice in their hibernacula. At the end of the book, The Year of the Turtle, David M. Carroll, the naturalist, author and artist, has his watercolor of a spotted turtle hibernating. This picture is hypnotic and in its spell, I think of all the animals hibernating beneath our feet in lugubrious gloom. It reminds me of the penguins in the film, The March of the Penguins, in the dead of an Antarctic winter, huddled together for warmth in the harsh, strong winds and snow, taking turns being on the outside of the huddle. Winter can be magnificent in its transformations yet tragic in its harshness: hibernating animals who freeze to death and deer starving to death in the snow among the victims of its violence.
Carroll’s drawing shows the turtle all alone, withdrawn into its shell under less than two feet of water lodged firmly in the mud under ice under snow in a sunny winter’s day, a far better clime than the penguin’s– and yet it evokes a certain sadness for this little creature all alone beneath the snow, in a torpid state. The turtle is missing out on a sunny day, sleeping a deep sleep in a “half year of stillness.”
Carroll’s writing is sheer poetry as he describes the turtle’s hibernation: “Mounting layers of snow silently cover the ice. Night after night in the harshest depth of winter, as Orion and the Pleiades burn distant and brilliant in the black sky and strong winds howl off the mountain to the northwest, the turtles rest beneath the ice. With the life in them nearly suspended, reduced to its most tenuous hold, all but extinct in the vast, inhospitable regime that reaches above them to the limits of the universe, they lie within their shells, waiting for the earth to make its required turnings and return them to the sun that will awaken them to another season.”
I think of the turtles below, along with all the other beautiful creatures. I wish them a kind sleep from which they will safely stir with the life force surging through their veins as the sun brings them to the fullness of life again. The death of some, and the half life of so many, proffers the poignancy of winter.
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Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
It was a beautiful day in the fleeting footfall of late autumn. The air was the icy cool that late November and early December bring and the birds and the squirrels were in a feeding frenzy. I barely noticed though because all morning was spent cleaning resistant rust stains with some horrid acid cleaner with all kinds of warnings on it. And I had a low fever and was feeling kind of lousy. A phone call set the afternoon on a downward spiral. It had been an angry phone call. I had called my husband at lunch time and he was showing all the signs of extreme job stress. He was a psychiatric social worker and at times it seems all his clients act out at once and intakes happen and hospitalizations happen and whatever can go wrong, does. It was one of those kind of days. He proceeded to yell at me, for what seemed like fifteen minutes but was probably only five, about all that went wrong that day. Then suddenly the phone went dead. I called back immediately and got a fast busy signal. Tried again with the same result. And again. Tried the cell but his cell was turned off. So there was no getting through. And he had a long commute home and considering his mood and all, I was totally alarmed. I tried him on and off all afternoon and finally left a message on his cell asking him to call me. He didn’t. Until well after the time he should have left work.
“Are you still speaking to me?” he asked right away. “Yes, of course, why do you ask?” “Because I was yelling at you at lunch time.” “I know and I was wondering why but I didn’t hang up. The phone went dead.” “Okay, I am on my way home. It will take some time because I was delayed and traffic is worse at this time.” “Okay,” I said. I didn’t say my usual “Be careful!” or other worried dictums. I was just happy he had called. When I hung up the phone I thanked God he had called and he seemed to have calmed down some since lunchtime. Things were looking better than they had at midday.
And then there was the unmistakable thud on the window. I hoped in vain that it was one of the last of the falling walnuts that start to fall in October. But two feathers on the window pane left telltale marks. I was sick. We had just put up a wooden bird house with suction cups in the window above to prevent bird collisions according to the advertisement. I looked out the window on the deck for a body. None. I went outside. No bird. Such a loud thud though was unmistakable. When I turned the corner of the deck onto the lawn, sure enough, I saw the bird. He saw me and seemed too stunned to be afraid so I did a quick form of Japanese energy healing technique some of you may know as Reiki on him. Deciding my gigantic presence was probably stressing him out further I went inside. I could see him from the window. I did the symbols for distant healing and sent him the animal healing symbol. He sat there with his head resting on the ground. At least he did not have his beak open in a screech like a wounded blue jay a few months ago but things did not look good.
Now half of me comes from a Sicilian background and it is a strong strain in my psyche. My maternal grandfather was a peasant working in the stone quarries of Sicily when, at 16, he fulfilled his dream of coming to the United States. Here he wound up becoming a lawyer but only after first doing stone work to finance his night schooling. Among his carving work was the Lincoln Gettysburg address at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He was an exceptional man and I was very close to him as a little girl. His peasant background never left him. This was both good and bad. The bad, he and his wife and my mother were very superstitious. They believed in omens and signs. And this was instilled in me. Now to have this bird fly into the window just after talking to my husband about his long commute home was all too much. I argued in my mind against omens and superstitions but in my gut I was sick.
I kept checking on the bird, wondering if he was dead yet and if I should go bury him so he wouldn’t get eaten. I did more Reiki. I cried. It was not only that this poor little bird was hurt and probably going to die but what he represented. The birds had been in a feeding frenzy these past few days. I had just refilled the bird feeder yesterday and it was half empty not even 24 hours later. And it was bird central. Birds flying like kamikaze planes all over the front yard. When I went to fill the bird feeder a bird stayed on eating to the very last minute, unafraid of my approach. And as soon as I put the feeder back up in the tree he was back, not even waiting for me to leave. It was no wonder there was an accident.
I went back to the window to check the bird again. His head had been resting on the ground and things definitely did not look good! But, did I see his head up now? Yes, he had lifted up his head and he was moving his head right and left and up and down. I prayed in desperation. And I kept watching feeling guardedly hopeful. And next thing I knew he took to the air and flew to the swamp somewhere lost to my eyes. I was ecstatic. I got down on my knees and thanked God. This was truly a miracle. In my pessimism and superstition that I must battle with it seems daily I have lost all faith in miracles. But miracles do happen. The guy at work who was on death’s door after collapsing outside the library and wound up having cancer, was now fully tumor free and working out at the gym. Another miracle. People and birds don’t always die even when things look their bleakest. Sometimes there are miracles. And my husband came home safe and sound and apologized to me and was happy to be home. Sometimes, too, there are happy endings.
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Welcome to samples of my writing and art work showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
Every year what budded in autumn blossoms full blown in the weeks before official winter– my love affair with trees. Trees that were drop-dead gorgeous in their fall colors are now bare, with the exception of evergreens and a few stray deciduous trees that refuse to relinquish their leaves. Now the trees are stripped down to their souls and their souls sing a siren song to the universe.
The tops of trees lift my spirit; brushlike they paint the sky the baby pinks and blues of mornings, and the majestic magentas and violets of day’s end. Each tree has its signature shape against the sky, like a fingerprint or a snowflake, similar yet each unique. Some treetops in their bare state are shaped like a fancy coiffure; others look like wrought iron filigree. On distant mountains, against the snowy ground, some look like stubble on an old man’s unshaven face.
It is the cold, colorful pre-winter sky showing through, and showing off, the bare branches that woos me. The bare curvaceous branches are stark, dark lines against the bright of day and the inky sky of night. These resplendent creatures are living lines that explode. Branches tangle like the lines in a Jackson Pollock painting. Others curve in the sensuous lines of a Brancusi sculpture. Buxom tree trunks stand strong surrounded by their colorful, dead blossoms amid the ground cover and their burgeoning berries, the offspring of a Renaissance Madonna. In truth these trees are not like art at all. Rather art imitates them– their beauty provides the timeless inspiration for artists, writers and poets of all ages and styles.
Trees not only inspire, they themselves are paragons of diversity. One look out of a car window while driving on the Taconic and one can see squat pines alongside towering majestic firs, birches interspersed with maple and oak. And together the different brownand tan barks interspersed with evergreens create not only a mosaic of contrasting colors, but display an example to inspire humans to live together in peaceful unity.
These beneficent beings carry the heavy, dark grey clouds of winter. When it snows the tree trunks become canvases for the abstract patterns of windblown-snow, while the serpentine branches are outlined in white. In ice storms their branches become chandeliers, each enveloped in glassine ice. While in the melancholy of a winter rain, the branches become oiled skins of snakes weeping to the ground below. And finally, in the night sky, the branches hold the stars in their arms, those with leaves holding them in their hands, as they nurse the moon.
All trees, no matter what their species, age or height, stand tall in proud humility, their arms reaching up to the Heavens to our Creator in prayer– soft-spoken beings of peace and tranquility towering over us, while we wee, little creatures race around distractedly below.
<br>Wer ist der wahre eigentümer/schöpfer des herzens ? Gott gibt nur das Herz, du füllst es. Achtung. Was füllst du? Denn dann musst du es leeren. beschmutze nicht dein herz. Allah weiß auch, was in den Tiefen der Herzen ist. Alles was schön ist… Seele, Herz, Liebe, Glaube… Wer Kämpft, kann Verlieren. Wer nicht Kämpft, hat schon Verloren. Lebe jeden Tag deines Lebens, als wäre es dein letzter. Also wirst du eines Tages Recht haben"
MOONSIDE 