Journey through the artistic mind, not autistic

A long time ago I gave up trying to understand my mind. I just appreciate that it's mine again. I stopped being completely detached and always looking at my life from a third person perspective(which fyi, is HELL!!). I still believe in God and each day I thank him for it because it is my only asset. That's why my greatest fear is losing it. Anyway, strangers, I decided to take you on a tour through the areas of it I understand, the rest you can deduce by going through past and future posts.

The basic wiring

Original Location http://haythamkenway22.deviantart.com/art/Yin-Yang-287028054

My mind was built in binary, not binary in the computing sense of the word i.e. zeroes and ones, no, binary in the astronomical sense...think binary stars or even better, the yin and yang. It functions better in the extremes, but then again so does everybody, right? So when it comes to emotions, I'll tend to either be extremely emotional, or very cold and the middle area between those is rarely seen. Even my arrangement of things in the house seems very cluttered, with nothing where it should be(but very clean), but on the other side my codes are really organized to the point of obsession; even a brace that is indented wrong in a file with hundreds of lines of other well organized code will drive me crazy and I'll notice immediately. So you get the gist of that bit. So when i was diagnosed with bipolar it made a lot of sense in explaining my moods.

I've always been a child of the wild, then again I'm also a willing prisoner in the concrete jungle. The city thrills me; all the noise, the infinite variety of people and personalities, the organized chaos. The whole artificial nature of everything in a city is intriguing. And the strange mix of bad intentions and virtuous traits. On the other side I love the countryside! The more isolated, wild and hostile the better. I love nature even with all it's hostility and secretly wish someday we'd go back to that.

Thought Process

Since I was old enough to have a functioning hippocampus my thoughts were visual and all the subtitles in English. Those are the two ways I can best express myself because of the infinite availability of English words and pictures. Oddly enough for communication among loved ones and friends it's always constrained to swahili, but in a formal environment or when i really need to lie my way out of something, I regain access to the english  - verbalizer bridge, then again, who am i to question the wiring if i can't change it? Same thing applies to the images in my head! They are usually very vivid, colour and all but when I pick up a pencil to transfer it to paper the motions of the hand refuse. But when doing it from observation the result is a very accurate depiction of whatever I'm looking at.

Drawn from observation...I think. Can't remember, drew it in 2004

The same doesn't apply for writing! Writing is the only time I have my mind in its entirety! There are no language limitations, I can switch between English, Swahili, Kikuyu, French, Spanish easily, no holds barred, depending on the vocabulary available, which is the whole dictionary for the first one!  Writing really is my first love! [holy horseshit, Batman! A whole paragraph with exclamation marks for punctuation! Bravo! Now you've got me doing it too! - Editor]

My hand, definitely from observation, the outline i.e The blood is just this mind's idea of Photoshop

There you have it! A brief description/explanation of how my mind works. Word of advice, use your Stephen Hawking inner voice to read this again. It's kinda funny, unless you're laughing at his disability, then it stops being funny.
There you have it. Into my mind, with Ben

Cheers!

Careful Ben, don't jinx yourself

For the longest time this blog was me musing about what I thought/imagined of love, friendships, death God, depression, and the bipolar. A few months ago the depression just vanished. Not a recession like previous times, or an ominous dark cloud always hanging over my psyche waiting to pounce when I least expect it, nah, it's gone.

With it went the neurotic nature, and my memories and personality got a reboot and reverted to the pre-depressive state. "Good news everyone!" Right? A big hell yes and a small no....
The yes is for so many things, full control over my mind, I'm happy again, the love for life is back and all inhibitions are gone! And that is all that matters! The appreciation for life!

The downside is for some reason I'm always too busy to do what I love a lot of the time. To gain control back over my mind I had to cut down impulsiveness and keep my mind really busy away from emotions and other distractions. I stopped writing, no poetry for almost two(?) years, no creative writing. Still haven't recovered the flare for those yet. I have months cut out to recondition my body and discipline it again, reflexes that need to be conditioned back or overridden.

Analogy time; in the temple that is my body, mind and soul, I spent over 2 years trashing everything I'd collected over the years and misplacing them, and introducing junk I don't really need. Now that I got the control room cleaned up nicely with a few knobs to be polished and a few bits of furniture to replace, I have to throw out most things I collected in those two years as i restore the rest to their respective places. Simple reason being, they were collected by a different person that is now dead. Somebody i no longer acknowledge.

Anyway, I plan to publish all posts in the drafts that I removed from the web because of the content, like The Razor. Wrote this one sometime in 2010, not sure the month but I was in a really really dark place at the time, the worst depth of depression where a semblance of control could only be achieved by transferring my thoughts to words. There are about 50 posts in my draft that need to be vetted before publishing. Some I'm not sure will ever be finished but I'll publish nevertheless.

The contents in future posts will continue to be my thoughts in my "new" life and maybe I'll try my hand at poetry and creative writing again, but the personal details will be a bit more obscure as the web has become more hostile over the past two years with anonymous blogs purely intended at malice coming up. Guess if I can spare a few fucks about such bloggers I'll pen a few words describing the bitter taste they leave in my mouth.

So, that's pretty much it! Needed to break the silence after months of not writing anything here. The writing flow is among the things I'm working on recovering, don't fret. Keep it here on my yen where i try to keep it real, even when I'm dreaming [you sound like a broken TV station - Editor].

The razor

In my place i have this razor. I've had it for months. Its dark in colour and amazingly sharp.
I once nicked myself with it and due to the sharpness i never felt a thing, just blood and a thin sliver of separated skin. I know i should get rid of it, not because there is any risk of tetanus or hiv, but because of the shadow.

I really don't have any creative name for my bipolar and depression. It is just a cold shadow that engulfs my soul whenever it feels like it. Makes me hate myself and my life. Most of the time i don't even know when it comes in, i just find myself over a flyover over a road willing myself not to jump a few milliseconds ahead of an oncoming vehicle.

Death is a close friend, keeping tabs on when i'll do it. Always hovering and waiting. He must have gotten excited that day i nicked myself in the dance of death. A game of chess with my life. I came to with the razor having broken skin, albeit slightly. This close and they'd both have their way.
Sometime i think death doesn't want me to go to heaven. He won't take me the way he does others, an accident, a sickness or even murder. He knows i know the exact spot on my wrist, where there is the ever so slight pulsating of the life flowing beneath.

But he knows i love life and i love; the only barrier between us. He's had a taste of my blood and together they convince me to take the easy road.

As i walk the road of life, i hear their voices sung to the tune of the razor.