I'm in the current issue!
The current issue of cardaddix just came out and I have a card featured!
It's the newsletter associated with ACEO MAGAZINE aceomagazine.com/. Subscriptions and individual issues can be purchased at the website.
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I've used this image before.
This card is about when it's all - everything and everyone - it's all just too much. How at some point you can't take a thing more - a good thing, a bad thing...anything.... not one thing more. And you know all that works to make it better is collapsing in on yourself. Curling up. Not hearing or seeing anything else until you are ready...
The card was done on a base of mat board cut into ACEO format. Through the main image you can see the base papers and I think that that gives even more of a feeling of vulnerability... The figure is not only curled into a fetal position but you can almost see through her...or partly...like she's fading away. On top of the image are webby papers, gauzy papers and glass beads. There is a haze over her. Its more obvious in person...the scan shows more of the figure than you can see when you look at the card.
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Know what's sick? aceo
The mentally ill commit crimes on television that diabetics do not. Has an episode of Law and Order ever focused on a defendant's irritable bowel syndrome?Or has a raging sinus infection ever been a mitigating factor?
Nope and nope....
Bipolar Disorder isn't an identity, or an excuse or a reason to feel sorry for me, it's a chronic illness. And I'm a person... not an illness with a person hanging off a label. It hurts that I can pick a random police drama and, with reasonable certainty, see someone with the same diagnosis on trial for a heinous crime because the mentally ill commit crimes on TV that people with carpel tunnel syndrome don't.
The portrayal of mental illness in the media is endless generalizations; generalization upon generalizion until the kernal of truth is lost. We see creepy, scary folks that eat bugs. The homeless. The stalkers. The people who pee in doorways while reciting the Gettysburg address and make you want to take another way home. Those that are news worthy when they run naked at major sporting events. Movies with fun-loving inpatients who your kids would love to hang with...
What's worse? Stigma or sideshow over-fascination? Despite the media's portrayal; we are not all bug-eating door-way peeing naked streakers or hopelessly hip inpatients. There is a middle-ground to live with bipolar disorder and most of us are there; boring as hell.
Stigma is about shame. Stigma can only go on in the dark so I try and answer questions people ask me:
"It's called Bipolar Disorder, rapid cycling with mixed episodes. Uh-huh. That's a mouthful. Yes, I've hallucinated. No, not often. It's been years, I think.... The funniest one? Well--It's hard to classify the psychotic as amusing but I suppose the funniest one was when the linguine with clam sauce was talking. It did too! No, I swear. Well. What it was saying is a hard one. No matter how close I moved my ear to the plate I still couldn't tell what they were saying. I ultimately decided the clams weren't talking to me but amongst themselves."
I am willing to talk openly about my meds:
"There are a lot of drugs. Mood stabilizers like anti-convulsants that epileptics use. (I feel on safe ground here because a drug used for epilepsy doesn't pack the drooling-stigma-punch of Thorazine.) There are drugs for depression. Oh, and the anti-anxiety drugs, the sleeping pills and anti-psychotics are used (The last one can be a bit tricky. While people say they want information, I lose a lot of folks on the anti-psychotics.)"
The drug side effects:
"Some make me tired. Confused... Liver failure.... Acne.... Hair loss, except of course on your chin...where it grows.... Weight gain. No, this one didn't make me gain weight but I gained 80 pounds on a different one. Yes, that was a lot of weight. No, your right. Haven't lost it all."
When people ask if I see and hear things "like TV crazy-people do," maybe they don't want to know. "I'm just like you, silly! No one really has those kinds of thoughts. " Well, no one they know. No one with a son in their kid's school. No one behind them in the 10 items or less grocery aisle...Or shops for shampoo at the same drugstore. Or waits on line behind them at the ATM.
Hopefully, being open and comfortable about myself will lessen stigma over time even if it makes my world a little uncomfortable for a moment or two. Or nine.... Granted, copping to hearing clams speak amongst themselves isn't something most people are ready for but most people aren't ready to change their minds about anything without a little push.
About ten years ago I went to a seminar with a speaker who couldn't make a strong point without swearing. And he made a lot of points. After about an hour a proper-looking woman got up and said she wasn't accustomed to hearing that kind of language. The speaker bolted to within an inch of her face and let loose a string of expletives with a ferocity unequaled to anything since the big bang. The audience held it's collective breath and after a minute the speaker screamed at the now pale woman, "Are you f-ing accustomed to it yet?"
It was a point well taken, with me anyway. People live at their own comfort level until they are challenged. Being that in-your-face does have a place but it isn't usually necessary. Just living visibly in the bipolar middle-ground can be enough. Even if people seem a bit queasy at first about talking shellfish I hope living openly will widen the middle-ground and give me a bigger place to live over time.
Most people think that life's got them. That they are stuck... trapped in situations that they can't get out of... Hamsters on one those wheels.... In bondage to their jobs.... partners.... bills... obligations... wants... needs....
I think the truth is closer to what you won't let go of, chains you to it.
I think we spend our lives wishing for something else all the while dragging what we don't want around with us... always looking over our shoulders to make sure what we have and don't want is still there, wanting something else but never getting so far away from our comfortable misery so we can't see it.
I think there are a lot of reason people have for doing this ...probably as many reasons as there are people. Some people fear change and living in known pain is better than an uncertain future. After all we know how heavy the chains are... What will it feel like without them? What will we do with our hands? What will we do with all the time we spent complaining? I think Lily Tomlin was right when she said, "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain. " People sure so love to complain!
I think some people really don't believe they can get off the hamster wheel and that dooms you from the start. If you think you can, you can and if you think you can't your right too. It's sort of the cosmic version of a pre-nuptual agreement. Sort of like your saying to the universe... Well I think I can sorta do it...probably... most likely.... but if I can't would you mind mitigating my damages? Might as well tattoo FAILURE across your forehead.
Plus there's a lot of letting go and trusting involved in getting what you want - from yourself and others and letting go isn't something most people find easy. I don't, anyway.
I think most of the stuckness in my life is me.
The card looks better than the picture - the card is uneven in height and very glossy so shooting it and scanning it is difficut. This has been an issue with any card Ive done that been a collage pretty much! This one is no different! The card is an aceo blank of mat board and a highly textured black paper (crinkly)... I only used one background paper and it looks like patent leather - its really cool. The chain is a silver plated small linked chain and it all bound there with thick acrylic sealer.
I saw these stones when I looked down.... they were a few inches from my feet on a beach in Cape May, NJ. I almost just squashed them into the sand by walking on them and would never noticed how beautiful they were... How soft looking, how polished.... how worthy of notice.
Maybe it's always like that. Me. Life. Maybe I always assume what I want off in the distance.... and thinking what I need must be over that next hill.... and I know what will make me relax and appreciate what I have is in that newly published self-help book.
But maybe life is always like the experience with these stones. Maybe I already have within my view and reach everything I need. Maybe what's over the next hill doesn't matter because the only thing you really have is the presant... and maybe what's in that next self-help book really is the same thing that was in the last self- help book, with a new cover.
Maybe there is something to be said for living fully in the moment.
This card was done on mat board cut into aceo format. There is a collage done with art papers under the main image and its all sealed with multiple layers of acrylic sealers. I like this card, its pretty and calming.
You may not like all your memories but they make the whole of you.
In each person you know there are things you might not like but that doesn't take away from the value of the person - and the person is the sum of his parts.
As each person person you know deserves a place in your life each of your memories is worthy.
I've struggled with this.
For many years I'd assumed there were things I'd rather forget. But I can't say I'm sorry who I am, who I've become... who looks out from behind my eyes. How can I pick and choose the memories, than? If I lose this one will someone else be looking out from behind green eyes? Or will it take two memories? Or not those two but two others?
Many years later I can see the value in not fighting the memories. Coming to terms with them...letting them rest.... in peace.
How much stuff do we carry forward in to new relationships ? As much as we truly want to end one before we get into another I think most people keep tugging everyone they ever knew along with them...
People call it baggage but I've seen how heavy it looks on some people - I think it's stone.
Somethings been bothering me for a while now. My cards are different... The cards I do are so linked to what I write that they aren't just the artwork but more a sum of several parts.
The images click with me as emotions not just pictures. When I post or list them I always include the emotion as text. When people look at them I think they may be attracted to the image but it's the emotion that chimes for them.
I think people like them but I think it's more the whole experience of the emotion than the card itself. I've had good and bad feelings about this. Does that make me an artist? Or a writer? Or really not enough at either to be good enough to consider myself one without the other?
I think what's happening is that they are just different. They aren't just the cards or just the words but a compliation of the two. Like a movie would be just pictures moving across a screen without the emotion of words. I've decided I'm fine with it and decided to call them something different from now on.
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