A peak inside my sick head!
I am afflicted, unfortunately, by the misfortune that led to many mortal ends, this disease, this cross that I bear, my secret burden, is that my head sometimes gets swarmed with words and ideas so maddening that I feel forced to expunge it, to force it, by traumatic osmosis, into speech, paper, or computer screen lest my head explode and beside my definite demise, will lead to my heirs losing the apartment deposit because of all the mess on the wall. I used to call the times I have recurrence of my ailment, my “reflective” seizures, as they coincides with periods of extreme self introspection.As for speech, I have learned, by the force of grave incidents, that speaking (or shouting) the hurricane winding through my head during these times is ill-advised. The audience invariably took it as the beer or the pill talking, or worse, me trying to impress them by speaking in tongues! Hence, unleashing the beast must be restrained in human company, and I resorted to cocooning myself during these times to avoid the inevitable conflagration.
Writing down the barrage which is disjointed words, streams of emotions, and bottomless anger and frustration that manifest itself in the melon above my shoulder was exit from the dark tunnel. I will write down thoughts, doodle indecipherable sketches and generally fill pages of worthless crap. The only problem for me, because of my horrid handwriting in both languages, that I could barely make sense of what I wrote later, I have no sense of glue that connected all of rivers of information.
During a long introspective period in the early 90s, I used to “write” almost daily, and after a while, I could mould the outcome of the “seizures” into something that hinges on the understandable. I worked this clay into a deformed form of poetry, which only grew with each bout, more and more flowed, it never really came out voluntarily, there was pain involved, lots unpolished thoughts, and extreme fatality, which greatly bothered me. Nevertheless, it was totally therapeutic, I felt great after “giving birth” to each new poem, and somehow, my medicine became my language!
By the mid 90s, my “seizures” decreased as my time filled up with work, and my dissatisfaction with my “poetry” greatly increased as I came acquainted with great poets such as William Blake, T.S Eliot, and Allen Ginsberg. For a while I published the disjointed poems online on Geocities under the title “Wings of Wax and Feather”, how very original! Of all the heroes and villains of mythology, I chose the hapless Icarus as my avatar, a testament to my self image as wayward son!
I will be lying to say I did not have “seizures” between 1997 (the date of last “poem”) and now, I had quite a few. I willed them away with alcohol, TV, or any other distraction, at certain times I did download the virus unto paper, but kept none of it post coitus. I somehow managed to cram the genie back in bottle most of the time. On times that it did escape, the chimera shifted shapes, instead of overly sentimental and self-focused mediocre poetry, rage filled articles and commentary came out! A few of those made it outside a small circle of friend (reminding me of the REM song), one of these “manifestations of the serpent” was an article widely published online and offline, read by over 500,000 sorry readers.
This bring me to why I am writing this quite lengthy post, lately, the demons have awakened, the fire that never quite died was fed somehow, and I have been trying to put it down. Unfortunately for you, my reader, this blog is becoming my outlet, the backroom where the monster is let loose, where some collateral damage is tolerated, and sometimes encouraged.
So the doors of the Colosseum are hereby opened!
posted by Desert Pundit @ 11:07 AM
5 Comments:
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Allow me to say I can relate to what you mentioned about the overflow of ideas, one that has to be unleashed on any medium that would accept the word, or severe damage would happen.
toloy
I am glad that I am not alone, writing is my therapy, and I suspect many bloggers share that as well.
Regards
Qais
Mazen
As I said, it is my affliction, believe me, I resist it really hard, but sometimes it lead to an output, you suffered this writing (though email duels) before, and now others are sharing this.
Happy new year to you and Mrs.
Qais
wowow!!!
my mind is like an atom bomb
ready to explode.....
trapped words and endless thoughts of unspoken fate....
definitely another me ;)
sugarsweetheaven@yahoo.co.uk
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