Aggiornate, querida

En slow motion me acerco al inicio, que a su vez es el final. El inicio de algo nuevo, y el final de lo conocido. El inicio de una aventura, y el final de la rutina. Quiero creer. Y ahí está el crack.
Si retrocedemos en el tiempo (o en el blog - sorry not sorry) se puede apreciar que mis vivencias están acechadas por una serie de comportamientos desafortunados ligados directamente a la ansiedad. Y derivados al autoboicot estilo Charlotte's Web, pero versión gore. Es con la expectativa post-incertidumbre que comienza a trabajar este engranaje extraño que se encarga de pisotear cualquier brote de esperanza posible que pueda llegar a surgir.
Ahora, a  menos de un mes para irme, empecé a desmentir todos los proyectos y posibilidades a los cuales estaba abierta hace menos de un mes atrás. Si pensaba en terminar con un buen laburo, ahora voy a dormir en plazas y vender mis objetos personales para poder comer. Si pensaba en hacer muchos amigos, ahora soy la freaky autista que se va a quedar sola. Y no investigué nada de lo que pretendía investigar sobre Polonia, el lugar, el idioma - hasta tratando de escribirlo me aplasta una sensación overwhelming de TANTO (tantos lugares por visitar, tantas cosas por ver y hacer) que termino en off. Y a otra cosa mariposa. Y no. Y me niego a aggiornar la música de mi celular para el viaje, o el disco externo, o la memoria del celu. Cosas que decimos que son boludas, pero terminan siendo importantes.
Me asusta un poco, también, el hecho de que inmediatamente despues de pensar en Polonia, pienso en Italia. Chanfles. La experiencia me dice que ese *atraco* o ese rush, ese querer saltar escalones, no está bueno y te lleva por mal camino. No te deja disfrutar del aquí y ahora. ¡¿Pero por queeeeeeeeé eres así?! Mi Yo y mi Superyo te desafiamos a un duelo, palurdo Ello, ya verás. A tal nivel reconozco la negación que hasta consideré seguir el método de Marie Kondo para darme una excusa y terminar de organizarme (!!!!!!!!!!!!) MENTALMENTE, COF COF.

En resumen -y mi cerebro es reticente a encontrar las palabras para poder elaborar la idea que quiero dejar por escrito y fijate cómo carajos termino creando un chorizo vocabular sin sentido- lo que quiero decir es que mil y una posibilidades pueden surgir de este viaje, y estoy abierta a todas; no sé cuán copado o no puede ser - si es de pro y abierta o si es de veleta, la cosa es que los caminos a tomar se empiezan a multiplicar y se vuelven inimaginables y es como cuando algo se llena mucho y pum! explota y después queda vacío. Pero no sin nada, sino que hay, pero vacío.
Lleno de vacío. Tanto que está vacío. High asfísicacuántica AF.
Ay, que miedo, la concha de la lora.
Ahora me manijeo pensando que esas palabras subconscientes quieren decir algo subliminal y oscuro, como un buitre que me mira desde arriba y se ríe.
Y la ansiedad otra vez.

a.k.a. Depression

1. Un dragón
2. Una niebla tóxica, se cuela en t vida y corroe todo a su paso
3. Una especie de gravedad
4. Muy escurridiza
5. Un filtro oscuro en mi perspectiva
6. Tentáculos
7. Un espíritu esperando ser visto por mí. una cazafantasmas
8. Algo que debe "pasar", como una simple gripe
9. Cañon
10. Con un pie afuera y otro adentro
11. Invisible como el viento
12. Gremlin mental
13. Discutir con el demonio
14. Una ola de mosquitos
15. La huella digital esencial
16. El borde dorado alrededor del aluminio
17. Una duna ventosa y desértica

- Jacqueline Novak, Nineteen metaphors for your depression.

Seeing Her Ghosts

Faye Moorhouse, illustrator

I have anxiety. More specifically social anxiety. I was born shy, and I hated going to school — in fact, I hardly ever went. I hated going out with friends; I would cry and my mum would make up excuses so I didn’t have to go. Now I have to make up my own excuses to avoid going out. And I’m running out of excuses. I’d rather tear off my own fingernails than go to the pub, or a wedding, or a party. Sometimes I have to go out: birthdays, special occasions, etc. I beat myself up so much for not wanting to go, not being normal. The price I pay for it is painful.

I spend days, weeks beforehand worrying, catastrophizing, running through all the possible awkward scenarios. I become hyperaware and paranoid and struggle to think of things to talk about, and then afterward I spend days overthinking, analyzing, and worrying about it. Medication and talking therapies have helped somewhat, but I still struggle. It doesn’t get better with age or the more I expose myself to social situations. And it is a really difficult one for other people to understand. I have a dog. When I’m with him, I don’t have anxiety. If I walk down the street or go to the pub with Bear, I feel calm and free. If I don’t have him with me, I go back to being anxious. The problem is, Bear hates busy, social things, too: he barks, pulls on his lead, and won’t sit still. I like to think he’s just excited, but maybe he’s anxious too. Did I make him anxious? Can dogs even have social anxiety? There we go again, worrying.

Black Dog, 2016.

Sophia Weisstub, interdisciplinary artist

Both my parents are psychiatrists and analysts, so I grew up relating to and aware of feelings, thoughts. The existence of the unconscious was real and present. I myself experienced psychic pain; I suffered from OCD from a young age and later, in adolescence, depression. The depths and the experience itself remain painful and frightening. They will always be a part of me.

Heart Hug, 2016.

Marine Fisch, mixed-media artist

Maybe I was too young, maybe it was already in the making … But since then, I’ve always had to deal with this melancholia, with my hypersensibility — more or less, violently. In my teenage years, I had eating disorders. I tried to fill my body. Then I tried to be a bird. I also used to draw on my body, hypnotized by the blood. Above all, I was ashamed. I tried to hide who I was.

I don’t know how or why, but when I was most deeply lost in the darkest spot of my mind, I began to speak. For the very first time, I expressed myself. And step by step, I accepted my being. I know it’s clichéd, but I believe that art — my art — saved me. Obviously, periodically [my struggle] comes up to the surface, but today I manage. And I try every day to use this sensibility to feel the world. In his very entire poetry.

Illegible, 2016. 

Jessica Scheurer, graphic designer and illustrator

I’m anxious. About almost everything, every single day. Today is no exception: it’s here and now, writing these few lines. Tomorrow, it will be playing piano in front of a tiny audience. The next day, it will be facing my colleagues at work, feeling like a fraud, or on a date, feeling useless. It’s as if my entire life is happening on a stage. I have to perform day in and day out. It’s a premiere every day, and I always want to be at my best. And all the time, I don’t want to be there, in the spotlight.

My mind repeats the most vile things about myself as I go about performing, and I’m often unsure about the script. I’m sweating until I’m soaked and cold. I’d often like to shut myself off, but I can never seem to find the switch. Sleep gives me some respite after my worst appearances. I’d be so exhausted anyway after an entire day’s worth of acting my own part, that I’d let sleep overcome me like my savior. A friendly, welcoming fog, all my thoughts are still there, but out of sight and sound until dawn. Curtain drops, at last.

Recently, I’ve come to find a strategy that helps me a little with my reckless thoughts: I listen to a lot of podcasts. It gives me a break from listening to my own mind driving me into dead ends. It also means I get to be inspired by others and learn new positive-thought patterns and tricks. Because I do know what it feels like to be relaxed, to feel like my mind and body are connected and in sync with the universe, my goal will always be to figure out how to reach — or, better yet, stay in — that mental space, leaving all my nerves at bay. In the meantime, I’m training my brain, like any other muscle, a little at a time, one day at a time.

Brain, 2015.

Marta Claret, artist

In my experience, one of the most difficult aspects of depression is to try to explain to others what is happening to me. This is one of the aspects of my illness that I find most difficult: the isolation that you feel because you just can’t put into words what is happening to you. Something similar happens to Kirsten’s mother when she says: “I still have a great pain in me. I don’t know what it is …” Those words accompany one of her drawings [from which this sculpture is based] because they best express her pain and her anger. I’ve found a strong connection in that: our shared inability to put words to our pain.

Her Rage, 2016.

Roger Ballen, photographer

It is hard to explain or understand the complexity of the mind. I use photography as a tool to locate my core mind, my inner world. It is a very mysterious, enigmatic place that defies words and cannot be defined exactly. I now understand that I will never understand reality.

It has always been important for me to probe below the surface, to come into contact with the deeper elements of human consciousness.

There is never only one answer or one moment. Understanding the unconscious part of the mind is a very essential process in better understanding oneself. My photographs are psychological in nature, and the goal is to penetrate the viewer’s conscious mind and lodge itself in the subconscious. Hopefully, the end result will be greater self-awareness.

Replacement, 2010.

John Brad Wayne Pitt

In the darkened Quonset hut which served as a theater… while the hot wind blew outside… I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, “at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow."

I tell you this neither in a spirit of self-revelation nor as an exercise in total recall, but simply to demonstrate that when John Wayne rode through my childhood, and very probably through yours, he determined forever the shape of certain of our dreams.

As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear.

Qué fácil callar, ser serena y objetiva con los seres que no me interesan verdaderamente, a cuyo amor o amistad no aspiro. Soy entonces calma, cautelosa, perfecta dueña de mí misma. Pero con los poquísimos seres que me interesan… Allí está la cuestión absurda: soy una convulsión.

- Alejandra Pizarnik

De la cajita que hacía mucho no abría

Últimas horas de domingo

El molómano

Compra discos, lee biografías de músicos, colecciona programas de mano. Por sus venas circula música. Y muchas veces ama aun más la música que los propios músicos. Pero llora en vez de tocar.

- Eusebio Ruvalcaba

My body aches for you

when saturday night comes / i will search for you in the mouths / of strangers / and i will drink vodka / hoping the burn in my throat / will burn less / than the thought of you / fucking her / and my friends will cry / as they watch me spitting up blood / mixed with your name

días que

Beer or not to beer

Hace dos meses que junto al tacho de bolsa de verde de desechos inorganicos se van depositando y renovando cadáveres de botellas de cerveza. Si lo tomamos como una metamorfosis suena hermoso, ¿o no?

That is the question.

I am what I am and cannot be otherwise because of the shadows.

- Loren Eiseley

He oído hablar de la suerte tristísima de Níobe, la extranjera frigia, hija de Tántalo, en la cumbre del Sípilo, vencida pro la hiedra. Y allí se consume sin que nunca la dejen - así es fama entre los hombres- ni la lluvia ni el frío, y sus cejas, ya piedra, siempre destilando, humedecen sus mejillas.Igual, al igual que ella, me adormece a mí el destino.

Not yestarday but today

Sitting there drinking, I considered suicide, but I felt a strange fondness for my body, my life. Scarred as they were, they were mine.

Charles Bukowski

Las condesas sangrientas

Y es el día de hoy que no me atrevo a releer los diarios de Alejandra o Sylvia. Todo lo requiere, pero tengo miedo. Tengo miedo de retomar mi propio diario. Tengo miedo de dar lugar a que viejas sombras renazcan, y no quiero un ave fénix lleno de ceniza. 

Y eso me cuesta. Y me duele.