bubbles of creativity

today's flavor: B A S E L I N E
anxiety : 0
agitation : 0
unwanted guests: Drowsiness and fatigue.  This may seem like a depression, but I can tell it's just regular, run-of-the mill drowsiness caused by cough medicine and fatigue from jam-packed vacation.

I've recently received a couple of "potential opportunities" that might be enough to keep me cheered up despite perturbing circumstances.  I'm not quite bubbling with excitement, but I feel like I can't be weighed down.  It's a definite hallelujah.

Here's something funny: an incident occurred that was similar to the one I mentioned in the previous post, in which someone said something that I could have interpreted as a slight.  Only this time I didn't take it so hard; I didn't take it anywhere close to hard at all.  It didn't end in fear and loathing, simply because I'm not in a depressive ep.  Plus there are the aforementioned "potential opportunities" to contemplate. All is good. Alles gut. Sehr gut. 

Très bien. Très, très bien.

Also, I am quite pleased with myself that I managed to take some nice photographs.  It somewhat satisfies the artistic need in me to create something that others think is beautiful.  (Much how that previous statement satisfies my need to create awkward, run-on sentences).

I'm not really that great with the camera.  Maybe just good.  I know how to use a camera to come up with something pretty.  Plus, I admit these pictures have been freshened up - not majorly doctored okay (I'm too proud to do that), just given minor edits for more visual appeal (But uh, that last photo, the one with the girls - THAT had a bit of work.  I had to edit out this big white guy stripping in the background, by the far rock)

I kind of think photography is a cop-out art medium for me, because anyone can make good photos these days.  I mean it's a cop-out especially for me, since I'm supposed to know how to draw and paint and sculpt but haven't done much in that department because I'm not exactly willing to spend on art materials (Yes, the camera cost a lot of money too, but it was a gift, so it hardly counts).  I'm thinking that I should make it my goal this year to make at least one painting.  At least one. As in a real one, on canvas, with real oils or acrylics, not digital.  I keep saying that I'm supposed to be some sort of artistic genius, so I should have something to show for it aside from the stuff I made when I was a student.

I should maybe consider an exhibit.  And that's my excitement-bubble showing.  I should maybe calm down and make an inventory first.

the pregabalin goblin

today's flavor: S L I G H T D Y S P H O R I A
anxiety : 1
agitation : 1

With the power and internet connection down for several hours during the recent typhoon, I was able to do a lot of reading and drawing, whoopee!.  But see how funny this is: Now that I'm almost done with the prescription for the impinged nerves on my hands and wrists, I'm beginning to feel pain in those areas again, I suspect because of my drawing-spree.  :(  The stiffness in my finger-joints returned, and may be due in part to the cold.  I just can't work with my hands for hours anymore.  :(

Still, I'm looking forward to clearer thought and increased energy after I'm done with the Pregabalin.  I'm hoping I don't have to extend or take another form of Rheumatologist-prescribed torture.

(Goodness, I need a rheumatologist now?! I feel like a grandma, and I don't even have kids yet!)


This is how I feel on Pregabalin:

 

It feels more like the Pregabalin is on me.  I imagine it would look like a giant blue doldrum, only without the goo.  Okay, that's not exactly a goblin in the Tolkien sense of the word, but more like an anthropomorphised giant sack of potatoes. Come on, it's easier to draw an anthropomorphised sack of potatoes.

And this is what I look forward to:

Pwning the damn thing, after stabbing the wretched goblin in the eye, scrambling its brains with the stabbing implement, strangling it with its own entrails and not having to put up with its heaviness. Though I don't necessarily have to be dressed like a hooker while doing it.

Looking forward to brighter days,
miratemplen

.

code yellow

today's flavor: S L I G H T E L E V A T I O N
anxiety : 0.5
agitation : 1


Exactly as I thought, what I called a "depression" the other day was a fluke. It was a weird, incidental occurence brought about by the allergy tabs and the painkiller + carpal tunnel relaxant. I failed to take doses for two days straight, so when I started on them again I felt the full force of their combined fringe benefits : drowsiness, listlessnes, fatigue, the despair commonly brought about by muscle pains. But I was fine the following day.

In other words, it may have felt and looked a lot like depression, but it was not.

By now I think my body's gotten adjusted to the anti-allergy + anti-nerve-twisting combination; I hardly feel any side effects anymore. Well, it's either that or the tabs I've been drinking are expired. :p I mean I begin to feel drowsiness a few hours after taking, not immediately like before. If I've gotten a good night's morning's sleep (I just remembered I don't really sleep at night, tee hee), I wouldn't feel woozy after rising. I'd have sufficient energy to complete the day, not like when I was first taking, in which I'd be cemented to the bed and I wouldn't have even bothered to get up in case the nausea turned into a full-blown upchuck.

Now that I don't feel much of the drowsiness et al, my current episode is revealing its true identity. It's really an elevation. As I am becoming less and less quieted by the Cetirizine and the Lyrica, my thoughts are beginning to chase each other. Just chasing though, no tripping over each other yet - it's but a slight elevation. Without the side effects of the current doses, it likely would not be so slight.

I'm feeling antsy again, and I've become a conversation monopolist.

As for the creative landslide that comes with every Code Yellow, the rocks have begun to trickle downhill, i.e., my mind has conceptualized several possible projects all at the same time. So far I have ideas for the following:

• A cheesy novel with unconventional but clever, non-chronological storytelling, about a girl and her coming of age
  
• A sequel to that novel in which the girl is all grown up
  
• A stylized painting
  
• A companion to that painting
• A mural
  
• Alterations to existing drawings
  
• Another crossword puzzle
• A poem
  
• A new blog layout
• Several blog entries
  
• My ArtFire store
• An alternate online store/showroom site on Blogger, because those programmers at ArtFire didn't think of making their site's interface a little more idiot-friendly
• A couple of conversations I'd like to take place
• A pair of earrings
  
• Wine glass charms
• Pesto
  
• Tomorrow's merienda
  
  

So, good luck to me. I probably won't complete all those things before the next depression arrives - which isn't so bad. I will likely forget most of them unless I make thumbnail sketches with annotations. I don't like drawing anywhere except my sketchbooks, but I am decidedly snobbing both my sketchbooks right now, so I won't be picking them up anytime soon (Why am I giving my sketchbooks the cold shoulder, you may ask? One is messy, nearly dilapidated and its contents have no organization whatsoever; it's an utter eyesore. The other has an embarassingly failed drawing that I would like very much not to see anymore. I know it's totally not their fault but I jut can't handle opening them at the moment).

And now the sleepiness is kicking in. No way!? It's not even morning yet!?

what stole my sleep this week

today's weather: S L I G H T N O T H I N G
anxiety : 0
agitation : 0


It's a different kind of creative rush, me thinks.

I must say that making a crossword puzzle is much more fun than answering one. I think I've just stumbled into a new hobby - a non-artsy, rather unconventional one.

Wouldn't I be so proud to share that with people when they ask me about what I enjoy doing: "Oh, I construct crossword puzzles," and more emphatically, "for fun". More ammo in my arsenal of pretentious BS that would make me seem so smart and unique. And boring. Hahaha.

I love that I'm so talented, and in a both-brain-hemispheres sort of way. ;) Tsk.

But seriously, I did have a lot of fun. I wrote more about it here and here.


I enjoyed it too much, in fact. Whenever I'd finish a section of words that lined up perfectly, I would find something I'm not entirely happy with, erase all the affected squares and fill in new words. I did that over and over across the entire puzzle. I mean, both the puzzles I worked on. It was borderline perfectionist and obsessive-compulsive. I'm sure it hadn't crossed over to something unhealthy because I was still having a lot of fun.

If the Hubby hadn't made me promise to sleep, I probably wouldn't have bothered. I stayed awake two nights filling up the grid and writing out the clues, and come this morning I still felt alive enough to go right into the day. But a promise is a promise, so I napped until noon.

The Vegetables and the Horror Vacui Tell Me So

today's weather: S L I G H T E L E V A T I O N
anxiety : 1
agitation : 1
today's guests: an urge to draw in horror vacui


For the past few days, I've been feeling so good and believed I was on baseline, but as of last night I became pretty sure I am now in an elevation. The vegetables told me so.

No, no, no - I'm not having hallucinations. The veggies didn't literally tell me anything (and I just need to make sure to state that plainly so you won't wonder if I were going crazy..er).

Here's what happened: I decided to fix myself a fresh salad last night. As I sliced the vegetables, I caught myself merely chopping them into random-sized pieces, not neatly and meticulously dicing them into fairly-equal squares the way I usually do. I also found myself ripping the bell peppers open with my hands instead of using a knife. I was doing everything so hurriedly and clumsily, like I was a contestant on Top Chef (though immensely less artful) trying to beat the time. I paused and asked myself, Why the heck am I hurrying? There really was no reason.

I also noticed I made a major mess in the kitchen - seeds, stems leaves and water everywhere, including the floor. All about a single serving of salad.

I wolfed down the salad in the same pace, not minding the kitchen mess that I was extending onto my person. Seeing the irregular trapezoid tomato slices and the jagged-edged bell peppers peeking out from between the curly lettuce, I noted I must be in an elevation.

I should have taken a picture. It was a funny salad, it even had nata de coco in it.

When I woke this morning, it took me hours before I got off the bed. Not being able to get up out of bed is usually a sign of depression, but not this particular time, because I was detained not by my sadness but by my sketchbook.

Images mine

I am back in horror vacui mode. I had this obsessive urge to fill every white space on the page. I just kept on going and going and going, sitting in a nest of rumpled sheets on the unmade bed.

Luckily the Hubby stayed home today. He came into the room at noon to tell me it was time to eat. As we talked, my hand just kept scribbling. I had to ask him to take my sketchpad away so I would stop; it's not that I couldn't stop, I just kept finding white spots that I had to fill.

(As I look at the images above while making this blog entry, I keep seeing more spaces I want to violate when I'm done here, this time with an orange pen perhaps).

He took away the felt-tipped pen I was using, and told me to come out and freshen up. As soon as he was out the door, I grabbed a drawing pencil and started on a new page.


See, the Hubby's mistake was that he took the pen when I told him to take the sketchbook.

A while later, the Hubby came back into the room and told me it's been an hour, and he was still waiting for me, and he was hungry (It couldn't have been an hour - I'm pretty sure he was exaggerating!). He caught me in the middle of another drawing, and we just had to laugh at how pathetic I was being. Serious about my getting out of the room, he grabbed the sketchbook this time. That's why the third drawing is so bare.

Sketchbook very addicting today, yes yes.

Before the day is over, I want to color a line-drawing I made previously, and tint another one with watercolor pencils, and another one with colored pencils (if I can find them). Oh, I just want to draw and draw; I don't even care if things turn out nice, I just want to make something.

Paper-winged Ideas

today's weather: S L I G H T .E L E V A T I O N
anxiety : 0
agitation : 1
today's guests: paper-winged papillon ideas


I love elevations. In an elevation, I feel happy and healthy and pretty and energetic and overall positive. I feel like all things have a very good chance of going right - and if they don't, everything's still hunky-dory.

My mind keeps uncaging little ideas and possibilities, setting them free to flutter about and orbit around my head. If I don't catch them soon I lose the little lovelies. I want to catch them - no matter how trivial and irrelevant they are - and pin them into shadow-boxes for showing off, but sadly my hands are hardly ever quick enough.

There's that constant feeling of "antsiness" and discontent. If I had canvasses and paints, it would be a nice idea to mill out a few "whatever abstracts" that just happen to be outbursts of excess energy but might turn out to be something meaningful to someone else.

I mused about buying painting stuff but decided against it; it's unwise to make big purchases at this time that we're saving up for a trip.

I thought about creating new necklaces and fashion accessories but realized I still haven't recovered from my tendonitis. I could keep forcing my right hand to work, but I know I shouldn't.

I settled for drawing in my sketchbook. It didn't quite have the satisfaction of filling up a big canvass, but it was fun still. My hand movements were limited by the pain of tendonitis, so I can only make big, sweeping lines. I'm going to have to fill in the details later on when my hand is okay.

I thought about writing poetry, but I found no inspiration. The thing about elevations is that it's kinda hard to focus, and I can't seem to access the depths of my soul (During depressions though, writing poetry is as easy as giving myself a manicure).

High on Antihistamine last night, while my conscious mind was engaged in watching West Side Story, I let my subconscious write. I forced the words to flow out onto the paper as quickly as they flowed into my head, blocking out rules or logic and grammar. As I remarked how flawlessly airbrushed Tony and Maria looked, made fun of the phony "Puerto Rican" accent, and imagined how spectacular WSS would have looked on the stage, my right hand scrawled this on a sketchbook page:

if i knew how to reach it with
the tiny arms i have
and nothing but a dream
perhaps i could
even without

if it were so

and if i didn't know how far
i still might

something so beautiful
desirable
deserves a dream

wounded as my hands may be
something so absolutely wonderful
must be sought
outside the dream
i take it in my hands
and make the dream mine

Jagged and disjointed as it is, it still kinda makes sense, me thinks. A little later I'll polish this up a bit, switch the lines around and make it presentable for "sharing" (i.e., turn it into a "poem").

The process reminds me of a time when I was younger and I'd write while I was drunk or hungover. It often produced interesting verse in a pretentious style that hoped to emulate e.e. cummings.

I quite enjoy letting my mind flow like that - no thinking, no editing. It gives me a glimpse into what's really in my heart. Maybe I should do it more often, maybe have a small notebook dedicated to it. Looking at what I came up with last night, I seem to be fixated on the fulfillment of a dream.

zzzz(idea)zz(obsession)zzzz(thawt)zz

today's weather: SLIGHT DYSPHORIA
anxiety : 1 | agitation : 1

I have to give my fingers a break; they look swollen and my nails are chipped from my latest creative rush. But my imagination won't let me rest. Even as I close my eyes to sleep, ideas keep flowing and they tickle my fingers to produce something.

Even after I exceeded my target number of necklaces, I submitted to the creative monster in my head yesterday. Sorry, sore fingers. It's either that or I obsess over the jolting images I saw in the docu about the Maguindanao Massacre on History Channel (footage and info not presented on the local news - quite informative though disturbing). And I'd really rather not replay those grisly images in my head.

Come bedtime, I solved a crossword puzzle as usual (checking and rechecking the items and the spelling, tracing and retracing each letter like a good obsessive should) while I waited for the Benadryl to kick in. I've resolved to not "work" when it's time to sleep so as to ensure I catch a sufficient amount of zees, tempting as it was to continue the necklace I left unfinished. I felt drowsy enough while on my second puzzle. I curled up under the sheets as I submitted to the diphenhydramine.

And then the stuff I'd watched on the Maguindanao Massacre played over and over in my head. Good grief. then sprouted a lot of thoughts and opinions on it that I wanted to blog about, but then i realized that that particular topic won't fit any of my existing blogs.

I remembered that I started blogging in 2004 partly because my head was rich in random musings and obsessions, and it helped me to focus and quiet my mind to write things where I know they might just be read by someone other than myself. Sometime 2008 I made several separate blogs, each assigned a different theme / topic because I couldn't stand how everything was all hodge-podgey in my old site. Now I have thawts that don't go with any of my existing blogs and I don't want to create a new one.

EDIT: I got over the Maguindanao Massacre docu after watching a show on Jack the Ripper, also on History Channel, also with shocking photos of mangled bodies. Those mangled bodies. It wasn't my first time to watch a feature on the infamous Ripper, but it was my first time to see one with uncensored photographs of the victims. Tonight, I should watch something happy and wholesome. Happy and wholesome.

the creativity has to go somewhere

today's weather: B A S E L I N E
anxiety : 0 | agitation : 0

La la la la la. I challenged myself this week to come up with several sellable fashion accessories to post over at my shop / site. I hadn't posted any new items for months, and since my online "showroom" display is almost depleted I decided it was about time to produce new stuff for posting. I don't want a bare gallery because there's something about it that says I shouldn't bother having a shop/site if I don't have enough merchandise, i.e., I should have at least 10 items visible for shoppers and visitors. MUST. FILL. THAT. PAGE.
Now at the point of writing, I realize that's just another expression of my obsessive-compulsive behavior.
To take myself more seriously, I placed a note on that site saying something like "posting new stuff next week; be sure to check it out". It may or may not have been noticed by anybody else; the point is I knew about my deadline and there's no cheating especially since there's the possibility that someone might have seen my note.
Of course I'm disciplined enough not to need any external pressure. In fact already I pressure myself too much, so I don't need anymore external pressure. That's why I can't stant being supervised, followed up or incessantly egged on.
The reason I hadn't made anything new in the past few (or maybe even several) months is that I thought I needed to buy new materials. Well I actually do need to buy new materials. But I currently don't have the budget, the luxury of time and the willingness to trudge through the more-crowded-than-usual-at-this-time-of-the-year streets of Quiapo. I then decided to make do with what I had.
I hoped to make 10 new pieces to bulk up the gallery. 5 would be too few. 6, 7, 8 0r 9 would bee too awkward.
I made twelve.
All I needed to do was just take another look at my stash of supplies and get creative. As soon as I got started on the first piece, I seem to have opened a creative tap and inspiration just came rushing, rushing, rushing.
I was soooo tempted not to sleep again, but oh, I'm so proud of me, I got my Zs. With the help of Diphenhydramine of course.