vancity aesthete

Audio

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:34:48 -0700

The 29 Most Canadian Things To Ever Canada In Canada

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:18:20 -0700

The 29 Most Canadian Things To Ever Canada In Canada:

I am Canadian.

Audio

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:14:25 -0700

Audio

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:09:47 -0700

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:39:00 -0700

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two:

Well done.

no vacation from self-deprecation

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:23:00 -0800

“Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.”

Sigmund Freud

Normalcy does not exist.

It is apparent that any sort of mental illness carries a social stigma, notwithstanding the individuals who are high functioning and are able to carry out day-to-day activities with little to no impairment on productivity. However, this stigma renders the spectrum completely futile. As long as an individual is stamped “mentally ill”, they still face the ignominy of breaching the status quo.

Bipolar Disorder is considered to be a mental illness. When I first heard of myself being labeled as “mentally ill”, I envisioned myself in a white straight jacket forced into confinement within the four walls of an ominous asylum with no liberty to agree or to oppose to any sort of treatment. I thought about being grouped into a certain breed of humans, herded like cattle whilst lining up for antipsychotic medication. To a degree, this is, in fact, a reality. However, deviations of one’s personality can go completely undetectable, even to oneself.

My mania had manifested as simply an outgoing personality. I lived spontaneously and believed that I was capable of achieving and attaining whatever and whomever it was that I wanted. Sadness became a far-fetched feeling, and past anguish became a distant dream. I was hungry for new and exciting things, and the search had never become arduous. It was a purely organic high.

Being manic is a breathtaking and an unpredictable adventure; however, it can become life threatening. It was as though I was feeling the adrenaline rush while standing atop a cliff, never once precariously looking over the jagged edge. I had become blind to my own movements and deaf to the words and ideas that had escaped my own lips. The excitement inched me closer to the brink, until I fell to the bottom, accidentally releasing an arrow for a deadly wound. Hitting bottom had confronted my illicit ecstasy.

The repercussions of hitting rock bottom were difficult to ingest. Feeling high became that distant dream and the desolation that I thought had been locked away, was unleashed and had become my new reality.

For years, I had myself convinced that I was unduly neurotic. That was, until, I was prescribed “antipsychotics” to essentially “bring me down”. “Antipsychotics?” I thought. “Why do I need antipsychotics? Am I psychotic? I thought I was just neurotic.”

[The term “psychosis” was conceived in 1845 (Feuchtersleben,1845) to denote “mental disorder which affected the personality as a whole” and was a subcategory of the then much wider category of the neuroses.]

In my mind, the dichotomy between neurosis and psychosis narrowed and coalesced into one hoard of injudicious ideas and undesired emotions.

But now, I make much more sense to myself. And perhaps to those in my life as well. There is a reason why I feel the way I feel at the times that I do.

So here begins my journey with my new friend, BD.

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:05:51 -0800

““One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.””

- Friedrich Nietzsche

haiku

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:41:55 -0800

once i discovered

that something better exists

life turned amazing.

Y

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 01:52:15 -0800

i hoped for X

but X never happened

so i asked Y

Y told me

to not lose hope

so i kept hoping

hoping for X

Y told me again

to not lose hope

so i kept hoping

hoping for X

but X never happened

i kept on hoping

praying for X

but X went away

and i hated X

i asked Y again

and Y said

you keep hoping

hoping for X

and you keep asking Y

Y keep hoping

but X can’t give you

what Y can

so Y hope for X

when you can hope for Y?

"La vie est essentiellement solitaire et les gens mariés et non mariés diffèrent seulement en ce que..."

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 23:00:25 -0700

“La vie est essentiellement solitaire et les gens mariés et non mariés diffèrent seulement en ce que nous nous sentons seuls quand nous sommes avec nous-mêmes et qu’ils se sentent seuls quand ils sont ensemble.”

- Inconnu

"On the edge of your seat in some dark movie, Can you memorize the scenes? They’ll be different..."

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:59:00 -0700

“On the edge of your seat in some dark movie,
Can you memorize the scenes?
They’ll be different next week.
Can you tell me can you tell can you tell,
If there is something better,
‘Cause you know there always is,
There always is.”

it's cloudy today.

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:51:26 -0700

your saints go on inventing more and more technologically perfect hells.

i am oscillating helplessly between ecstasy and despair.

hotspotmusic: The new album from San Francisco’s Fresh &...

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:56:51 -0700

hotspotmusic:

The new album from San Francisco’s Fresh & Onlys is another sun- and reverb-drenched album that can soundtrack your fall. It manages to combine the innocent rambunctiousness of the Ramones, the melodic gloom of the Cure and the pure lightness of the Beach Boys without being insincere or naive. But it’s not all fun and games. As with most records this sunny there’s a darker edge, with ill-conceived notions of romances lost and found and never-realised but these add character whilst complementing the killer feature, irresistible hooks. In essence, Long Slow Dance picks up where their last album, Play It Strange, left off and is a stellar release.

"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and..."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:14:20 -0700

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people — not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul…we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness.”

- Thomas Wolfe

summer killing spree

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:24:38 -0700

summer killing spree

haiku24

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:44:05 -0700

Go to sleep tonight

In the morning I’ll be there

Like I’ve never left

Tout ce qui mérite d’être fait, mérite d’être bien fait. Parce que chaque détail mérite...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:14:05 -0700

Tout ce qui mérite d’être fait, mérite d’être bien fait.

Parce que chaque détail mérite qu’on s’y arrête.

"Inconsistencies in [people] are generally testimony to their immaturity."

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:09:00 -0700

“Inconsistencies in [people] are generally testimony to their immaturity.”

- Cole

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first..."

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:30:21 -0700

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

- Chuck Klosterman (via arreter)

haiku23

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:24:20 -0700

feeling uncertain

take a jump with both feet in

let yourself be stark