Here's Some Crazy Talk

I know I've been missing it, so just in case you were craving some Crazy Talk (to be filed under Gibberish, which is located in the Lunacy drawer), I thought I'd better sit down and write a post. 

I think I've been spreading myself too thin. I'm not complaining, it's always good to be busy, but there's busy and then there is Spinning-Top-Mania. Spinning-Top-Mania is not productive. Don't let this happen to you! Although, it's almost certainly already too late. You're probably well-mersed in your own mania of spinning toppidness (when I'm cranky, I make up words. Sue me). We're all of us so busy, busy, busy and mostly we're busy with crapola that we don't even want to do. What the hell??? I'm standing in a line for stuff I don't want again, aren't I? Talk about crazy! Yeah that's all right, I'll have mine with a Side of Buttered Guilt (all the better to shove it down my gullet) and a mess (emphasis on the mess) of Smashed-And-Dashed Feelings. Thank you.

Just what am I trying to say here?? I really haven't a clue. There is way too much going on in this head of mine. And try as I might (really? is that the best you could come up with, IK?) I can't seem to make friends with my brain. So...I'm shutting it off. Yeah, that's right. Shut off the brain and enjoy the bliss...or at least that's the plan. I don't want to dump the poor dear permanently. Just shut it down for a bit. Honestly, my brain is so loud these days that I can't think. And yes, that actually does make sense. Just shut down your brain for a moment and you'll see. Ahhhh yes...much better.

And if all else fails, listen to The Beatles...

And if THAT hasn't solved the issue, here's Mr. Marley...

AND to bring this madness to a full and complete stop (please remain seated on Err Insanity until the captain's light goes on...you could be here awhile), I will leave you with a doodle. Yep. It's another Faery Snail. Hope all is going well in your world(s)...

Her Faery Snailness

Why is it that my snails have better fashion sense than I do? I'm a jeans-and-tee kinda gal. Where do these ball gowns (and wings. let's not forget about the wings) come from? Perhaps it is some sort of deep-rooted desire. Interesting. I don't really want to analyze this, by the way. My semi-functional delusions are far too much fun to risk losing them on some psychiatric couch.

Grayscale Part II – Winning the Battle of the Gray

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Oscar Wilde’s theory is that Art sets the tone for how we perceive everything. Without Art, we would not know beauty or despair or be empowered to glean meaning. Through the artist, Art presents us with the achingly beautiful, the depressingly ugly, and meaning. I don’t know if I’m 100% there with Oscar (having spent so many nights with him, I’m fairly certain we’re on a first name basis); however, I do believe that Art of whatever form (painting, photography, writing, humor, sculpture, poetry, music, film, food, whatever) does elevate Life. In the sense that without Art, there is merely existence. I’m not saying we all have to get to a museum more often, although that would not be a bad thing. I am saying that Art is actually everywhere, we just need to temporarily forget about the laundry, those aches and pains, our bank balance, or what’s for supper, and simply open our eyes.

A battery of tests (labs, x-rays, and biopsies oh my) have been run on me. Why do they call it “battery”? Did this all energize me? I think not. Is “battery” meaning battalion? As in the white coats are attacking me with tests? To that I can only say, they’ve thrown pretty much everything they have at me and I’m Still Standing (thank you, Elton) so na na na na.

And throughout it all I’m proud to report that I’ve maintained my F-U attitude with the white coats. As far as I’m concerned medicine and all the bureaucracy that goes with it, is a necessary evil, and perhaps less on the necessary and more on the evil. I don’t feel the same about nurses, by the way. Mostly, I think that’s because nurses generally don’t have that holier-than-thou demeanor and because they get stuck with all the dirty work of traditional medicine.

And what have all the test results told the white coats? Well, they know something’s wrong with me. Seriously? That’s what you get paid for? Stating the obvious?? Okay, they do know that it’s not cancer and that is a very good thing and I am really-truly-no-fooling grateful for that.

Apparently (or not so apparently), I have some sort of connective-tissue-disease-auto-immune-disorder thingy. Why didn’t you say so? If I were Yoda, I might say clear, things are not. The white coats have no idea which disease-disorder thingy my body is expressing at this point. Apparently (no qualification this time), there are a whole lotta these auto-immune thingamajiggies. I have been told that I’m in a “gray area” and until another symptom manifests, they probably won’t be able pinpoint which connective-doohickey is occurring. My advice to the white coats was, “look for the strangest, most obscure of these disorders and there will be a picture of me waiting for you to name it.”

Unfortunately, the white coats did not find my advice helpful. So for now…I’m stuck in this “gray area.” At first this seriously anger-and-frizzle-fried me. All this time has gone by, all these stupid, miserable tests, all that money and they can’t give me a name to associate this with??? And then, like the errant brick that Truth sometimes is, it smacked me in the forehead and I realized how dumb is that? Who cares what label they want to slap onto my whatchmacallit? Will that label cure me? No, it really won’t.

Does being in this “gray area” surprise me? No, it really does not. Gray has always played out a theme in my life and not just with my love of Grayscale Photography. My first novel features a land of gray. My greeting cards are grayscale doodles printed on (100% recycled) gray paper, which by the way took me ages to find. I’ve never been a fan of gold jewelry; I’m a lover of sterling silver. I tend to associate gray with depression, something that I've fought valiantly for most of my life. My finances are certainly more on the gray side than black (and thankfully not red). Philosophically, it has always been the “gray areas” of life that intrigue me far more than the black or white. And give me the lovely, soft light of cloudy overcast over recklessly blaring sunshine any day. Holy Graymoly. Sometimes it takes an illness, difficulty, tragedy, or a drastic change to connect the dots of your life, because we all have such bizarre patterns. But I do believe that we all have a pattern, perhaps several. 

A great deal of my life has been about gray, I just never knew it consciously until now. Upside? Now I can have fun with it. It’s what you don’t know that runs you like some sort robotic marionette. Once you know, you can run it. That may sound like a dubious upside, but not to me.

So, does Life truly imitate Art? Or is it that Art imitates Life? As my husband always says, “a little from column A, a little from column B.”