Depressed

Well, I’m feeling very depressed today (so, what else is new?)  I’ve been avoiding taking my antidepressants because I feel like they’re making me eat more as well as hampering my libido and creativity.  I metabolize things differently now that I’ve had the surgery.  But I can’t tell what portion of my moods are brought on by chemical issues and what are brought on by emotional issues.  At least now, in my oh-so-maturity, I realize it’s not ALL just my circumstances.  I am definately noticing that I’m having very intense mood swings with the weather.  I have never noticed it quite so strongly before.  It’s ashame to because I love rainy weather, but I see now that it brings on this aweful depression.  And the sun makes me feel one with God.  I went online yesterday and looked up natural mood enhancers and think I will try this stuff called l-tyrosine.  It looks like that could be a good choice.  A natural appetite supressant, mood enhancer, libido enhancer, energy enhancer.  Yeah, right.  If it REALLY did all that I’d buy stock in the company LOL.  What I need is the drug that makes you slim, horny, happy, energetic, and maybe even tan and thrifty! 

I took my son to Great America yesterday.  He went on a few coasters while I read my poetry textbook.  I’m taking this little free online course at the “Barnes and Noble University.”  LOL  It’s pretty cool though.  They have a lot of free courses, but you usually end up having to buy a book to go with it.  As you all know, I pretty much love poetry, so I’m taking a poetry course.  I felt a little weird reading the book yesterday, though, because I didn’t really like some of the example poetry.  I like stuff that is not difficult to understand and feel and I’m partial to poetry that rhymes.  I like the sense of music that is implied when you read something that is paced and rhyming.  I know that can make things sound like greeting card poetry, but there is a place even for greeting card poetry! 

My favorite poet, however, is Emily Dickinson.  I love her poems and have read her over and over again.  Here is one of my favorites (although I have dozens of favorites):

SUCCESS is counted sweetest

By those who ne’er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

  

Not one of all the purple host
       5

Who took the flag to-day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of victory,

  

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear
        10

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear.

 

Now see, that rhymes.  The lines are not broken in wierd places, the meaning is not hidden and yet the poem is SO true and creates in the reader a certain epiphany of a great truth being spelled out. 

The writer of the textbook has created some poetry and I just don’t like his style.  I don’t like it when a sentence is broken off in an illogical place then resumed on the next line.  I like a poem that you can read outloud the first time you set your eyes on it and be able to know the pattern just by instinct.

There were some eye-opening ideas in the book, however.  Some were so plain I can’t believe I ever missed them!  He talked about how many poets keep a journal of various thoughts.  Of course I have this journal, here, but he was talking about just various phrases that might  come to mind and perhaps, later, you’d come back to them and the poem would take shape.  Duh… I never thought of that.  I’ll get a lovely phrase sometimes, but if the poem doesn’t come right then, it’s lost because I never thought to write down incomplete poems.  I often write drafts (as you can see from the previous few that still need some work) but I’ve never just jotted down wonderful phrases and stanzas.  The author of the book put in some excerpts from the journals of various poets and they were delightful to read!  So, I’m going to start doing that.

He also had some poetry in there that I did like.  There was a poem written by Terry Anderson, when he was imprisoned as a hostage in Lebanon for six years.  It is amazing… called Satan.  I found it on the web too, here it is:

Satan

align=center>Satan is a name we use
for darkness in the world,
a goat on which we load
our most horrific sins,
to carry off our guilt.
But all the evil I have seen
was done by human beings.
It isn’t a dark angel
who rigs a car into a bomb,
or steals money meant for others’ food.
And it wasn’t any alien spirit
that chained me to this wall.
One of those who kidnapped me
said once: “No man believes he’s evil.”
A penetrating and subtle though
in these circumstances, and from him.
And that’s the mystery:
He’s not stupid, and doesn’t seem insane.
He knows I’ve done no harm to him or his.
He’s looked into my face
each day for years, and
heard me crying in the night.
Still he daily checks my chain,
makes sure my blindfold is secure,
then kneels outside my cell
and prays to Allah, merciful, compassionate.
I know too well the darker urges in myself,
the violence and selfishness.
I’ve seen little in him I can’t recognize.
I also know my mind would shatter,
my soul would die if I did the things he does.
I’m tempted to believe there really is
a devil in him, some malefic,
independent force that makes him
less or other than a man.
That’s too easy and too dangerous an answer;
it’s how so many evils come to be.
I must reject, abhor, and fight against
these acts, and acknowledge that
they’re not inhuman–just the opposite.
We can’t separate the things
we do from what we are;
hate the

sin and love the sinner is not
a concept I’ll ever really understand.
I’ll never love him–I’m not Christ.
But I’ll try to achieve forgiveness,
because I know that in the end,
as always, Christ was right.

by Terry Anderson

 

Now, I realize that poem doesn’t rhyme, but the sentences are broken up in non-startling ways and it is powerful!  It gives you so much to think about.  I’m not sure I can say I see things exactly the same way as Mr. Anderson (I’ve never been imprisoned), but I can really understand what he is saying and I’ve been pondering it.  It has given me a different perspective on our individual responsibility for our own actions.  We don’t HAVE to do wrong, we can do right instead.  But I think that good poetry elicits a feeling and/or will begin an internal dialogue in the reader so that they’ll begin to look at things from other perspectives.

Long ago, when I was MUCH younger, before we were married, my husband and I did LSD.  “It blows the doors off your mind,” my husband explained to me.  And I suppose it did.  It was enjoyable and I felt it was a great experience (but the desire to repeat the experience faded soon after just because I didn’t NEED a drug to add depth to my life any longer).  The point I’m trying to get to here, is that I feel like good writing and/or conversation – art of all types – will blow doors off of my mind much better than any drug ever could.  I have dozens of doors in my mind and I don’t even realize they’re there.  Just the fact that I wouldn’t write down my non-poems revealed a door I had set up.  Why can’t I write down phrases?  I didn’t even realize I had put that “rule” on myself.  And I’m finding every day that doors are blown off my mind through experiences, observations, and truly – most of all – through conversations with the Holy Spirit who coaxes me to look at things differently via thoughts on the scripture. 

So, all that said, I’m hoping that this poetry class will help me refine what I’m already doing as well as teach me new things to do and open my creativity to things I didn’t think of before.  I’m also hoping it will help me to learn to appreciate the poetry I’m not as fond of — I’m hoping maybe some doors will be blown off that way as well.  We