He Kissed My Hand!

Visit went well with therapist. It was really weird to see my husband in action with my therapist. My therapist got a mild shock when my husband said he's seen mentally ill people come on and off medication all the time and swing in their moods and behavior - I guess my therapist forgot that my husband really did work with the mentally ill as a health care provider. At first my therapist said "you mean you've seen Karen come off and on medication" and my husband corrected him. My husband told a little story about a person who didn't know that they were behaving differently off medication, but that it was clear to him that the fellow was quite a different man.

My therapist said that the main reason he wanted the visit was because I said I would lie to my medication provider and do whatever I wished with my medication. This worried him and made him think that I should have a new medication provider, one I trusted more and had better communication with. And my husband laughed and said, "I know Karen. She might go intending to lie, but once she was in the room, she would tell the truth. Karen is incapable of lying."

Do you know what a thrill it is for someone to have so much confidence in you? In your moral nature?

And then to top it off, my husband took my hand, kissed the back of it, and put it on his knee, covering it with his own hand.

Inside I was like, my God, he's so gallant! And he's saying to my therapist piss off, the lady is mine!

The therapist did not, for whatever reason, want a long visit. In further conversation my husband said that I was bold, a fact he realized when I was willing to leave my last abusive husband for him (not in my eyes a bold move, simple self preservation) and this lead to a discussion on divorce and lawyers, and my therapist was practically ready to leap out of his chair, he wanted the visit to terminate. But my husband said, "before we go, do you want to hear a good lawyer joke?" And then he told a funny joke I had not heard before and we all laughed. It seemed rather clear to me that the strongest personality in the room was my husband's. And he seemed too to be the healthiest of the lot of us.

On the way home I commented on my therapist' lack of interest in keeping us in the room. My husband's take was that it was painful for him to see us together. "He's probably a little in love with you" my husband said.

I think my therapist just wanted to go have lunch or meet up with some friends, it was a Saturday after all, and he wasn't planning on charging us for the visit, so he saw he was wasting his time. One, my husband was just as experienced and knowledgeable about medication changes as he was, and two my husband said I was incapable of lying to my medication provider! My husband characterized my medication provider as a cranky grandmotherly type.

Actually, I think he's right one thing. I couldn't lie to her, even if I said so. And in fact, I had steeled myself to tell her the truth a long while back, and it was in a moment of willful obstinacy that I threw out the idea about lying. Not something that is really memorable to me.

Painting again. Background grass which is really boring, but necessary. I should listen to music while I'm doing the boring bits. Just bought at Wal-Mart the best of the Rolling Stones and haven't opened it yet, am drooling to listen to it.

How come the Rolling Stone's music makes me feel like a sexy woman?

All The Creatures Fear Me

My therapist said something interesting today. He got it from a book. He apparently falls asleep at night reading books. Books are littered all round the floor of his bed. In his office too, books are littered around the floor.

The book posits that the soul of a child knows what is in store for it in life. The book gave examples. A famous bull fighter as a child hid behind his mother's apron. This is because (and of course it takes a psychologist, maybe a new age one to see it) the child's soul knows that the boy will grow up to be a famous bullfighter and die in the ring, gored by a bull. Winston Churchill stuttered as a small child, and this is because he knew he grew up to become the voice for his country of freedom against a Nazi enemy that was evil. And me? They used to in kindergarten spit out the windows of the bus on my hair. I was ostracized and signaled out as different. In kindergarten, for whatever reason, the school sent me to see a school psychologist. In kindergarten I felt different from the other children and alone.

So my therapist said that maybe I knew I would grow up to have this feared illness called schizophrenia. And he said people really do fear schizophrenia. In the past he and I have talked about health care workers that fear schizophrenia and ostracize the patients they work with. He said an example was the health care workers who warned my husband not to get romantically involved with me. One of them said I would be a "monster" off of my medication. This from a very popular health care worker, some of my mentally ill peers really adored him! Another example I am currently experiencing from my medication provider, who predicted incompetency, irrationality, and paranoia on lower doses of medication. She made me feel like without my medication I was a poor excuse for a human being - that the medication humanized me. And then my therapist said never mind about the time I was institutionalized as a teen, that was in his eyes too terrible to even discuss again.

We had begun the session talking about my vision for a new painting. Its a self portrait. I've always wanted to do a self portrait, but never had a theme or vision for it. What am I wearing? Is my hair up or down? Are there angels whispering in my ear? Or lions in the background goring each other? I adore Frida Kahlo self portraits, it seems to me she portrays herself as a goddess, sometimes wounded goddess. She's very glamorous. I even bought a necklace once that I thought I would wear in a self portrait. Frida wears exotic jewelry in hers. So what do I finally, in a burst of inspiration, get for the theme of a self portrait?

I am standing in the center. And the canvas is perfectly square, so the center is obvious. And there are animals and angels and strange sort of creatures, and they are all running, in all directions, north, east, south, and west, in terror, trying to get away from me. I look ordinary, a self portrait working from a photograph, but to the sensitivities of all these living things I am a monster and they try to get away from me. They use flying machines, they use boats and carts pulled by horses, they trip over themselves and tumble, they are afraid, they are moving fast with their legs extended, and they all wish to get away from me!

My therapist said that the idea for the painting was a delusion. Not a psychotic delusion, but one of the ordinary sort that ordinary people have. I said it was more a myth, a story that contains a seed of truth, and I said I feel this way in my heart, its a feeling that is very close to the bone. And it started in Kindergarten, no, I think in pre-school, way before mental illness and school, the feeling that I was rejected by the world.

Every session I make certain I bring cheese bits for my therapist's dog. Today, even though I was running late, I shoved cheese bits into my pocket before leaving home. Usually I have the time to put them in a plastic bag. So I feed his sweet black lab husky mix, and then she jumped up on the couch, curled up next to me, and went to sleep. My therapist said look at the dog, she does not do this with everyone, she is not a creature that is rejecting you, instead she likes you.

And we discussed a walk I took several nights ago with my husband and our dog. I was tired on the walk and let my husband do the work of leading the dog and training her on our walk. At the end of the walk was a park that my husband likes to let the dog play with sticks in. He asked me if I wanted to play with him and the dog in the park. I said no, I wanted to go home. So we parted ways, me continuing on the sidewalk and him going onto the grass of the park. I heard a shout behind me. I turned and saw my dog pulling the leash hard in my direction. "She doesn't want to be parted from you" said my husband, and that was that, no play time, we all went directly home. But evidently I have some place in my dog's heart that I did not fully realize. Because until that incident, I worried that I was not very important to my dog.

Our last training session with a professional dog trainer the trainer talked about my "energy" and that my homework for the week was to play more and have fun with my dog. What can you do when your dog knows that life is a struggle for you, more a fact of survival than fun, and picks up on your negative energy? In class my dog plodded along when she walked next to me. When she walked next to my husband she bounced and leaped a bit. The trainer showed me how, by simply changing his energy, he could change the way she walked. What happens when you feel that your dog rejects you? I wept bitterly after the class. The next day the vision of the self portrait came to me. I felt that my dog was one of the multitude of living creatures that ran from me.

I haven't done my homework for dog training class yet. I haven't gone outside and played with my dog. I will try this weekend. I have been so sad. It isn't depression really. It me feeling like I'm a freak and a failure.

Haven't painted for several days. Unfortunately this does nothing to bolster my self esteem. Spent all day yesterday in bed watching comedy DVD's of the television show "The Office". My back hurt by the end of the day for spending so much time immobile. Will not paint tomorrow. Tomorrow supposed to see my therapist with my husband, my therapist wants to try to convince us to change medication providers. And I think, in general, he wants feedback in how I've been doing on the lower dose of medication. If my husband needs to vent, this gives him the opportunity to vent. Then we go to a special clinic and for $10 get a rabies shot for my dog. THEN I WILL SUMMON UP HAPPY ENERGY AND PLAY WITH MY DOG. Probably go to the woods.

But the day after I will paint.

Adam and Eve Drawing

It was tricky trying to get this drawing to reproduce. It sized 20 x 24 inches, the dimensions of the canvas that is is going to be painted on. I'll walk you through the picture.

Eve is on the left and she has just bitten into the forbidden fruit. Her hand is over her mouth and she is dropping the fruit. Her hair is what the whole painting is really about. It is elaborately braided and held up by two birds. In the tree of life is a bird's nest with a parent and two chicks. The stripes that make up the sky background all are adjusted so that Eve's hair is for the most part, clear to comprehend. The first stripe I laid down was on a piece of tracing paper so that I could see how it would affect the drawing of Eve's hair underneath.

The tree of life is central, with two angels in hiding in the trunk. Wrapped around the trunk are garlands of different shaped leaves and little ribbons with bow ties. The crown of the tree of life takes the word pattern to an extreme. Repeating are the round forbidden fruit with distinctive leaves, and then there are leaves that I tried, with my imagination, to make as diverse as possible, both from nature and each other. I would say that there are seven or eight different "types" - everything from a four leaf clover to what looks like the emanations of a snail, and it was a challenge to get them all fitted in together making a seamless repeating whole.

In the center of the tree of life sits the devil. She is female, wearing a hat and heels, and a dress that comes from the archives of the style giant Dior. Lets just say that in contrast to the naked Adam and Eve, the devil knows that it is civilized to be wearing clothes - she has no innocence. Her gloved hand points to one of the forbidden fruit growing in the tree. Two horns puncture her hat.

On the right hand side is Adam and like Eve, he has just bitten into the forbidden fruit but his reaction is somewhat different from his mate's. His body had dropped to the ground and is going into convulsions. Like Eve his hair is braided in a design crowning his head, and to emphasize his masculinity, he has a curling mustash above his lips and goatee on his chin.

Again, its hard to see the details, but on the grass with Adam and Eve are different types of flowering plants.

In my mind's eye the forbidden fruit is bright red, and the leaves are shades of green, the sky shades of blue, and the Dior an ensemble of white and Black. And of course, Adam and Even are peach nude.

I can't describe the exhilaration I felt when I finally finished the drawing yesterday. And a small part of me felt afraid of what I had done. It looked, well, mad. So much energy. So much design. So over the top. I don't think I could have made this design on a greater dose of medication. At least that's my fantasy. That less medication is more Karen. And Karen is unbound by the rules of most mental convictions. I suppose that this could be a definition of simple creativity and not mental illness and schizoprhenia - Having a loose, unconventional mind is a typical artistic type. Or is my Adam and Eve more conventional than I realize? I don't know, its always a problem to me to compare myself to other artists. I start seeing categories of better or worse - dangerous to my tattered ego. I have a strong ego with deep cracks, that's the problem.

I was discussing the most recent book by Mark Vonnegut with my therapist several months ago. Mark is the son of the famous author Kirk Vonnegut and has had some battles with mental illness. However, he is mostly a successful pediatrician. Most of his book was not about mental illness but instead about being a doctor. Mark is also a firm believer in being creative to maintain mental health, and he paints. Images of his paintings are printed through-out the book. I said with pride that I was a better painter than Mark. My therapist shot back that Mark was a better doctor than I. Score one for the therapist!

Last session with my therapist disturbed me for several days, and then I put it out of my mind. My therapist said that he saw signs of eccentricity in me on the lower dose of medication, but at our current meeting there was no doubt in his head - I was flat out eccentric. He was concerned my medication provider, who I see in March and who did not exactly approve a lower dose of meds - she wanted to do it more slowly and in the distant future - would reject me. He thinks she and I are not a good match and wants to avoid the pain of me being rejected for being me! The message I got is that HE will accept me as eccentric, but he has doubts that SHE will. And to discuss I don't know what else, he wants a meeting with my husband and I on this Saturday.

My therapist was keenly interested (as he hasn't met my husband yet) how my husband perceived the effect that less medication had on me. I only know of one comment. My husband said that I can't lie to my medication provider and tell her I'm on the same dose because she will immediately be able to tell that I'm at a lower dose. He said nothing critical or rejecting - just, you are different and it shows. Oh yes, he said I was more fragile. But that never got much explanation either. He said that everything I needed to get done, got done. Art, showering, training and walking the dog, being his companion, all the important ingredients to a good life are still present. And no psychosis, no suicidal thoughts.

I asked my husband what he thought my therapist meant when he said I was eccentric and my husband was baffled. Yeah! My husband doesn't think that I'm eccentric. I mean, he really does think I'm normal. Or if I'm different, he loves what is different about me.

On some days I will admit I feel crazy. But there is no psychotic thought, nothing but this anxiety that I'm going out of my mind. Is like a mood, the idea that I'm crazy comes and goes. I do nothing crazy, I say and think nothing much crazy, but I feel crazy. I told my husband that it is like an energy in my head, pushing my head apart.

He said when you feel like that it might be a good idea to walk the dog.

But I prefer lying in bed and shutting my eyes. Eventually I feel as bored as hell. And yes, eventually the craziness passes.

Is Crazy Bad?

I had two paintings that were both wet, taking up space on my two easels. When this happens, and you can't paint because you are waiting for paint to dry, the good thing to do is to start planning your next painting. I go through a planning stage that involves a detailed drawing. So when it isn't possible for me to paint, I draw. Starting out with a new vision on virgin white paper is a mighty challenge.

I have a nice art library. One of the books I hadn't cracked in several years had the title "Angels". I opened it and after fifteen pages realized that the author intended to go through the bible and represent angels in art as they appeared in stories from the religious text. It was funny, the editor must have been a fundamentalist Christian because he or she kept on showing art and detailing how the angels depicted pictorially differed from the scripture - artists will invent of course, and the editor thought it was important to spell out how this or that was not a "proper" type of angel! As far as I got the first night with "Angels" - Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. I was thrilled because here was a story that I could make the central theme of my painting. Early in the process of creation I need to grasp onto a direction, and with lower medication it seems even more important to my mind that I depict some sort of story.

This drawing was especially important because I've been telling everyone that I'm intimate with that on a lower dose of meds, I feel more creative. Problem is, all my drying paintings were started on a higher dose of meds, and don't really represent what I consider now my full potential. The drawing of Adam and Eve would be a test - am I more creative, different, or are my enhanced powers a product of a deluded mind? Would the images flow to me with vibrant and swift energy or would I have to drift, root around, and pull and pull things tediously and slowly out of my imagination?

When I first started making art seriously I was on a very low dose of antipsychotic medication. That was over twelve years ago. Many times I've had a vague sensation that my first work was my best work. I can mature as an artist, but nothing came close to the energy of work done on low medication. I've made good art on medication - but it was art that looked like it was done by a serious, mainstream artist. Words like "quaint" "odd" "energetic" and "primitive" no longer applied. And the work no longer had the otherworldliness of the best of outsider art.

Its been a little over a week and I'm still working on the drawing for Adam and Eve. After working on it for two days I realized that I had imitated a hairstyle for Eve that originated in a self portrait of Frida Kahlo, (about six months ago I read a book that was illustrated with her paintings) and I had to ask myself a serious question; do I want to reference other artist's work or go for the gold, invent completely new visuals for myself? Do I want to copy? Hell no! I wracked my brains and while eating salad in a restaurant with my husband a new head of hair for Eve popped into my mind. Problem was that it involved two birds, and to fit those two birds into the composition, everything had to be erased, figures moved, start over again with a blank page. Grr, arg, it was a hard decision. But now I'm really glad that I did it. The painting will be better because it was started over again. And it will be all a Karen Original.

So now what I'm doing is details of leaves and flowers - what is the garden of Eden without plant life? Its hard work, to make everything look flowing and balanced, but its more a case of composition and less creativity. Still, the drawing requires intense concentration. I can only do a little every day. Of course when the drawing is finished I'll take a picture of it and post it on my blog.

But this morning I felt flat out crazy. A little confession, since I lowered my meds I've been spending more money on clothes and jewelry. A little bit of self control has been abandoned. I keep on telling myself, this is it, the last purchase for a good long while! Last night I cannot begin to describe the amount of mental fixation I had on a necklace I saw online. The picture had burned itself into my head and I wanted it like a thirsty man wants water. I honestly don't know what I thought this necklace would do for me, make me a more beautiful woman I guess. So this morning my will was battling whether or not to take money out of savings for this necklace. (And a dress too to go with the necklace!) Of course I would do it without my husband's knowledge. And that is really what was making me feel crazy. I wanted, I lusted, I needed, but I was going to do something immoral to obtain the object of my fixation. Money matters are usually discussed between my husband and I. I know in my heart he would not approve of the amount of money I've spent this last month on myself, since January 1st when I went down on my meds. In fact he would be shocked. It would cause an enormous fight. We have heating bills to pay, car repairs, dog vet bills, new eyeglasses - all these things that are necessary and that it would be prudent to save for. I've acted like an ass. I was so ashamed for the money I've spent that I wanted to get drunk. I mean, at 11am, knowing that I was going to go to the bank and move our money around so that I could get my necklace, knowing that I couldn't stop myself, I simply wanted to get drunk to escape the shame and trepidation and stress. My behavior is putting our very household's survival at risk.

It was no surprise to me that the way I obsessed about Eve's hair was completely similar to the way I obsessed about this necklace. I've got a friend who is schizophrenic who is not taking any antipsychotic medication at this time. He noticed that the desire to drink (he is alcoholic) was diminished during past times when he took medication for his schizophrenia. So as it appears for both of us, medication makes us more responsible adults, more in control of our impulses. My imagination is my best friend and my worst enemy.

I don't want to be reckless. I don't want to cheat financially on my husband. I want to be moral. I want to be in control. But I like my creativity the way it is. I don't want less medication, yet neither do I want to go back up on medication. I like my drawing of Adam and Eve, even though, and here is another confession, it is wearing me down, the intensity and seriousness I feel towards this project. On more medication life was more of a dream. My attitude toward making art was at times robotic. Repetitive. Hive worker drone like. Now, almost, its like I'm at the edge of a life or death situation. Is this what it means living with passion? I'm not yet at the point where I'm burning myself out but clearly I'm getting into a wee bit of trouble.

Welcome schizophrenic girl to the human race. Many, many sane people find, because of their impulses, that they are in hot water and their life is out of balance.

I'm going to see my therapist tomorrow and I'm not going to draw tomorrow. From here on out, for a good long while, I'm not going to amuse myself by browsing online stores. Like an alcoholic, I've got to not step foot in the bar.

Rembrandt the painter died pretty poor. It wasn't that his work wasn't appreciated or that he didn't have patrons. Its just that he had a wee bit of trouble controlling his spending habits.

Anxiety

I've just endured four days of tortuous anxiety. My husband had to go on a business trip and I was home alone with the dog. While he was away I had two simple goals every day. One, walk the dog, see to her physical needs. Two, go to meetings in the evening.

The first meeting was a dog training class. I've been with this trainer before and he asks a high level of commitment and practice. Like, you repeat the command 50 times a day with the dog. I'm a lady who has a hard time taking a shower, because it involves will power and motivation that my schizophrenia has robbed me of. So I'm going to find the energy to be an authority figure to my dog and make eye contact and do the tricks with her, me who suffers from negative symptoms? Yeah, I tried my best. At the most we did the command 30 times a day. Class was good, I was on, present, focused, and damn near impossible to tell that I suffered from any type of mental illness. Of course before class I spent two boring hours doing almost nothing so that my brain was fresh.................I listened to music or I sat in silence on the sofa staring off into space. My dog had to preform I had to preform and by God I did it. But the whole day was planned to lead up to that point so that we both would be at our best. Engineering time. Manipulating stress. Enduring boredom. And of course, doing no artwork, because that is mentally draining.

The next night I had to go to peer mental illness support group because we are in the process of turning the leadership over from me to someone else. I haven't gone in three weeks and I promised to be there. There were about 15 people present, so the group is needed in our community and can't sink into oblivion. I had to do a lot of talking about what it took to be a leader and not try to make it sound too scary. I had to preform again. I had to have all my wits about me and when the semi psychotic man said mean things to a group member I had to interrupt and tell him that he was being mean. The leader keeps the peace. And I had to not alienate him or make him feel bad either, because he can't help who he is and what comes out of his mouth. The group was really positive, people felt safe and helped, but my God when I came home I was so tired I wanted to cry but I was too drained to shed a tear. That's partly why I don't want to be leader anymore. I am arranging my life so that

1. I can be less medicated, because I'm more creative on less antipsychotic medication

2. I can lessen stressors so that my main stress in life comes from making art. Making art exhausts me. Using my mind exhausts me, on or off medication, it makes no difference. In fact I can concentrate on my artwork for longer periods of time on a lower dose of medication (surprise, surprise!)but then I need recovery time too.......

3. I must have the willpower and motivation every day to get outside and walk the dog. Much harder than painting. But I need the exercise and she needs the exercise so its a win-win situation. Have to take care of my physical health and my commitment to walking the dog is my strategy. I am trying hard not to be the statistic that I die 25 years earlier than the rest of the population in my state, like most schizophrenics. Scared of strange people? Yes. Less than perfect behavior from the dog? Yes and yes again, no situation for daydreaming, must be alert. She's a german shepherd and wants to herd other dogs, people, cars, bikes, skateborders and joggers. She's currently getting intensive training because she's a challenge, she's what is called "reactive" and has less than perfect behavior. The other dog in our class bites people. Scared of the open sky above? Yes, always since I got schizophrenia. Hard to move my body? Yes. Wish to stay in bed all day and this isn't because I'm doped up on meds, this is because the schizophrenia causes me to be socially and physically withdrawn. Don't get me started on nature and the outdoors. People find beauty and peace in it I'm told..................well I find OVERSTIMULATION. Too many trees is hell for me, I end up with eyes on the ground.

Since my husband left I have had the hardest time eating. No problem drinking coffee, tea and fruit juice, but solid food is really really hard to eat. This is not my usual problem with stress and eating. Usually, when I feel stressed I eat sweets and things that taste really good but aren't particularly nutritious. I can only remember two other times in my entire life, besides having the flu or a cold, where I've lost my appetite. The first time was when I was a freshman in college and I was studying for finals. I wanted good grades, I was in a competitive school learning alongside fiercely intelligent and hard working students. Well, some of them were so freaking smart they didn't even have to study much. But not me. I earned my grades the old fashioned way. I studied and I couldn't eat. Shocked the hell out of me, that stress so extreme could cause me to lose the one thing that seemed so steady, and at times, so strong and out of control.

The second time in my life I lost my appetite was when I ended up in a homeless shelter. I was very grateful that the shelter took me in because I had no place to go, and all I remember is gratitude mixed with shock (it was an inner city homeless shelter and I was the only white woman - yeah a very different culture from what I was used too, there was a knife fight while I was there and people doing heroin), but I guess the stress of being homeless caused me to lose my appetite. So here I am, twenty years later from the last stressful thing that ever caused me to lose my appetite, and its my husband being absent for several days. Does the earth revolve around the sun? I revolve around my husband. I call him my sunshine. Because having schizophrenia for me involves near daily suffering (suffering that I roll with naturally and have no ill will towards, we are kinda a team by now I'm an old pro at living with mental illness and having a mind that misfunctions every few hours) and having my husband means lots of hugs, lots of back rubs, lots of companionship, and since he's a happy goofball by nature, a lot of laughter and smiles.

So I see my husband again tomorrow and I'm like a kid expecting Christmas. The pain of anxiety, of feeling that somehow I'm in a life or death kind of situation, is interspaced with little spasms of joy.

And the day after he returns I'm back to making art. The painting is waiting for me on my easel and every now and then I fantasize about the color green that is going to go over the yellow and blend into it.......... I know exactly where my brush will touch down after this self imposed absence.

Touch of the Flu

These are two images I got from a search with the term "outsider art".

What I like about both images is that they were created from a place of sincerity and concentration of vision. These artists were seriously committed to their art.

What I found out about the first drawing is curious;

“Charles A. A. Dellschau (1830-1923), a butcher from Texas whose obsession with flight yielded notebooks of double-sided watercolors that have the luminosity of stained glass.” ROBERT A. SMITH
“…what is still fascinating about some of the best outsider art is the feeling you have that fantasy has become so powerful as to eclipse what most people take for reality. Charles A. A. Dellschau, a butcher in Texas, created thousands of wonderfully fanciful pictures of Jules Verne-style flying machines.” KEN JOHNSON

It seems that Dellschau creates in obsession and obscurity, not even knowing what he is creating is art. That is one facet of outsider art, work that is created for reasons only known deep within the mind of the creator. What I love about this picture is the color and the pattern. Recently when I imagined the painting that I'm working on everything gets covered over with spots and lines - I have to restrain myself to leave portions of flat color. Decoration isn't for prettiness, it seems to have hallucinogenic pull and fantasy is made up of more and more detail. As my meds are lowered I imagine my paintings with more business, more chaos, more motion, more colors at odds with one another, more alteration, more more more decoration for the sake of decoration rather than making literal sense and sensibility.

Must the pants on my little painted men be striped and the shirts pokadoted? YES! And put five colors on their tiny hats.

The second image is Morris Hirchfield, prominent in my library's books of American Folk Art, it seems strange that he is considered an outsider artist on the internet as well. Hirchfield was in the business end of the garment industry for most of his life. When he retired he started painting. It is said that he got his feel for pattern from textile prints, but I think that pattern is simply a means to building complexity and depth in his paintings. Pattern is a tool to an end. Pattern makes up for lack of technical art school instruction. Pattern is very primitive. Its a place I go for when I'm really reaching.

What I like about Hirchfield is the density of his painting. He doesn't skimp, he doesn't rush, he's detailed and trained himself to do the boring parts of a painting that involve repetition. Some painters are fast and spontaneous, they are expressionistic. That is not me. I like Hirchfield am the opposite of this. Where Hirchfield and I part company is in the use of color, I like to use many different colors in one painting. His leopard family also has a serenity that my work lacks.

As I painted today my throat started feeling funny and my upper body muscles began to ache. I've caught a bug from somewhere.

My therapist cancelled my last appointment due to bad weather. Over the phone I reported to him that my thoughts seem normal and I have no schizophrenic symptoms since I saw him last. I did however twice last week get a stress headache. It was a headache that even taking ibuprofen couldn't eradicate. It seems that I'm more vulnerable to them on a lower dose of antipsychotic medication. Since it has only been about two weeks at a lower dose I think that my mind is still going through a process of resettling itself and finding a new chemical balance.

The thing of course that I have noticed the most is a change in my artistic vision. I am very happy with the change. The first thing that is affected is my concentration; I'm able to concentrate for longer periods of time with less negative feelings after. I can paint longer and it takes less time to recuperate and go on to the next activity. I still hit a wall where I know mentally where I want the brush to go on the canvass but I lack the willpower to physically move it. This I think has something to do with my schizophrenia. The longer I paint the more "spaced out" I get, staring for long periods with little actual action until I reach a point where I'm frozen in place. This happens at the end of three to four hours. Then I go to bed (even in the middle of the day) and lie down and shut my eyes. Usually mentally I am obsessed with my artwork and I think about it intently in bed, going over the image and what I've just done again and again. I'm cured and relaxed when other matters creep into my mind and my mind wanders away from the painting I was working on. One my mental grasp has eased I can do a different activity; usually it is walking the dog while it is still the warm part of the winter day and there is light out so the cars can see me.

Painting is far more fun than walking the dog. I hate being out in the world. It takes an enormous psychic push to get me outside. Usually the dog gets walked, this is how I know that I have willpower that is stronger than my schizophrenia. But I think that only a mental illness could make something so simple as walking the dog a Herculean task. One that I have to emotionally prepare for, and then after, recover from.

Don't know how bad the flu is going to get, the dog may not get walked tomorrow.

Before I go to sleep at night I usually visualize what I am going to paint the next morning. This morning it was hats on men playing musical instruments, tomorrow morning it is blue swirls in the sky on a different, mostly virgin canvass. I've never painted a swirling sky and when I planned the painting I was on a higher dose of medication and the sky was supposed to be graduated flat blue. Now I want to add different colors to the blue and have far more movement and complexity.

All different size swirls in the sky.

I'm a bit taken aback by trying something new.

And should I add that I'm terrified of going mad? Watched a movie last night with Joan Crawford having a schizophrenic break down and got a mild stress headache. Have seen this movie about 4 times before, it is in my collection, and I never reacted negatively to it before.

It was like I was watching my worst nightmares come true as Crawford hallucinated and emotionally writhed in pain. She ends up killing a man she was romantically obsessed with. Perhaps the lower dose of medication allows me to identify with the character on the screen more than before. I'm more sensitive. I'm more involved. I'm more influenced.

And right now, I'm on high alert, having just lowered my medication.

Lower Meds

So far been at a lower dose of antipsychotic meds for four days. At first things were trippy. I used to take 4 pills, now I take 3 pills a day. According to my meds nurse this puts me at the low end of a theraputic dose. 120mg of Geodone.

The first day I woke up and the thoughts in my head were loud. I mean loud, and it lasted all through the day. I was thinking too much and at such an insistent volume, I thought I was going nuts. But it was tolerable. And nothing I thought was weird. Just ordinary ruminations. Songs going through my head. The second day I woke and everything was blessedly normal. Since then, the volume of thought in my head hasn't gotten so loud again. Or if it is loud, it doesn't last for very long.

What I've noticed is that creatively I'm more aggressive. Pictures form more easily in my head as I plan my future canvasses. Where once the canvass had been gently gradating color, now it is swirls of color like Van Gogh's starry night. I want to put color everywhere. I look at work I've done a month ago and say "shit, I should have blended more colors into that." I can see more complexity than I was capable of.

My basic design of the oil painting I'm working on was set by a drawing months ago, but over the past several days ideas come to tinker with what had been the plan, for instance, instead of one row of green diamonds across a man's shirt now I paint two rows. Flat blank spaces of color will not remain that way, I want to decorate everything, even if it is just with the common dot.

The enhanced creativity makes me really, really happy.

Also I'm not suffering so much after I stop painting. While I used to paint and then be in mental pain, now I just run out of willpower and have to rest. Two days ago I painted for three hours, up from my normal of two, and I've been hovering around two and half to three hours every day, I never dreamed that my concentration could increase on a lower dose of medication. Two days ago, after I painted for three hours, I lay down in bed, and while being perfectly still with my eyes closed, I felt like I was flying. Tired but euphoric. Went for a walk and came down from my high, but I felt weird and cancelled on my peer support group. I had no interest in seeing people. Plus I felt weird. Not anything I could put my finger on, it just seemed prudent to take it easy in the evening after the strange high of tired euphoria in the middle of the day.

I've noticed that I'm more sensitive to my husband's emotions. They seem very loud to me. His alarm clock dropped on the floor and he beat it a bit because it stopped working. The frustration with with the alarm clock not working affected me negatively, I didn't like my husband very much for making so much of a fuss. He seemed childish to me and I got mad at him and ignored him for a bit. The reverse is true too, when he's happy I cringe inside because it is like the sun is shining too brightly. His enthusiasms, about news stories that concern him, mostly geeky tech and computer and science things, aren't my enthusiasms, and it is hard to tolerate it when he goes on and on about them. I should be happy because he's happy, but this hasn't been the case on a lower dose of medication. Its funny, he hasn't changed, but on a lower dose of medication he seems different, and I'm not good at tolerating it. Usually by the end of the day I'm tired and cranky. Mostly I just stay silent, because to unload my negative reaction to him would be mean. This isn't much different from my normal crankiness when I get overwhelmed, on a higher dose of medication I regularly say "moron" in my head, its the one word that pops into my head when I'm pissed off at him. But saying it out loud would be mean and might constitute emotional abuse.

I know that I was emotionally abused as a child and have to be very careful not to fall into patterns of behavior that I witnessed as a child. There's that old circle of the abused becoming the abuser - I don't want that to be me.

So, no mania, no depression, no psychosis yet. My husband still loves me and thinks marriage is a boon to his life so I must be behaving myself well.

Two nights ago he had a dream where a woman named "Rose" committed suicide. She was no one he recognized from his real life. When he got to work, and looked at his computer, a picture he took of me several years ago came on as his screen saver. It was my head surrounded by roses. He then connected the woman's name "Rose" with me. So the dream was a worry dream.

I talk to my therapist tomorrow. I know, after only four days, that I don't want to go back on the higher dose of medication.

I'm too happy with the creative boost.

What every artist dreams about, a creative boost.