If I absolutely have to put a name to this state:

I'm either rapid-cycling or mixed, I think. It feels like what is happening now, careering around the mood spectrum. Not extremely, and not so the general public would notice. (So fear not, neurotypicals, she's not about to freak out and scare you!) It isn't important what you call it - which is only really relevant for medication - but it does help me understand what is going on, and helps me know, not to take it too much to heart. It is what it is and this is how it is, now.

What has happened is that I took my mood stabilizer dose down, a while back, because I was in such a dumbed-down brain fog, that nothing in class was penetrating my understanding. I had to do that, to continue my course. But logically, it isn't stabilising quite so well now. It's the dose I used to be on and which worked great before, but now there is stress added on top, and it isn't quite enough. Yet, I can't see what else I can do. Since Wellbutrin isn't used for depression here, my doc doesn't know how to dose it for depression. His locum put it up to the higher dose, and it suits me this way. Since I am in another part of the country, I can't expect my poor doc to treat me over the phone. So I just took the lamotrigine down myself.

So am I caught between a rock and a hard place? Actually, I don't think so. I quite like it here. I'm on the sad side, and highly emotional - all over the place - but this is when I am at my most creative. I feel my emotions so much more deeply. As hard as it can be, how wonderful is this? I've been in this position before, and if I can walk this little tightrope and not fall off, I'll just stick with it. My head is brimming with ideas! Being on the down side, the ideas are a lot of the things I wanted to express while depressed, but was too depressed to make at the time. I have compiled a playlist of sad, evocative songs on YouTube, which I play often, which heightens the emotions, heightening the creativity. Add the daily hypnotic trances to this mix, and yup, I'm on my own "druggy trip" on my very own brain chemicals, while still taking the ones I take to balance those chemicals! Summer holiday is 3 days away; woohoo... you can see where I am going to go with this (possibly a little recklessly, but not toooo much).

Now I have that problem of my medium being too slow for when my mind is moving fast, as far as ideas are concerned. I MUST at some stage, find a faster medium, that I can toss ideas at, and capture as they arise. I could then translate them into slower-to-make textile works once I slow down again.

Meanwhile I can start embroidering the text for the next, after the next, in between the one after that, (a text from an old song by a Danish singer called Christian) on this lovely, mottley, yellowy-beige, Bali fabric background.

... to the backdrop of this beautiful sight and sound:

Deeper and Deeper 2 in progress

... is coming along nicely. I'm quilting it now, so not too much longer and it will be done. 

I found a wonderful picture for the next couple in the series, as the same old spiral is getting a bit old now. :)

Sig nærmer tiden

One of my next works, will have these very evocative words inscribed on them: 
("The time is coming when I must go away.")

I just began today, and will do a translation once it is getting along. And also a bit of an explanation of what is behind it.

Sig nærmer Tiden, da jeg må væk, 
jeg hører Vinterens Stemme; 
Thi også jeg er kun her på Træk, 
og haver andensteds hjemme. 
    
Jeg skulle sjunget lidt mer' måske -
måske vel også lidt bedre; 
Men mørke Dage jeg måtte se, 
og Storme rev mine Fjædre.  

Tit ligevel til en Smule Trøst
jeg ud af Fængselet titter,
Og sender stundom min Vemodsrøst
med længsel gennem mit Gitter. 

  
Mig bæres for, som ret snart i kvæld 
at Gitterværket vil briste; 
Thi kvidre vil jeg et ømt Farvel; 
måske det bliver det sidste.

(- St.St. Blicher 1837)

Way back...

I used to cry to this song, when I was 15 or 16 and feeling lost, alone and afraid, and it seemed that no-one understood. Somehow it helped.

So tired of this rollercoaster

" ...and I, tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I go back to black."   -- Amy Winehouse

Sunday morning

I wake up, though I could have wished for more sleep, I have coffee and then sink into listening to the self-hypnosis recordings I have downloaded from the magical internet.

Rejuvenated,  I open my curtains to this, with a wonderfully cool breeze and birdsong. Life is harsh and unrelenting, but oh! - it is also wondrous and beautiful.

I have homework to be done, but I have neglected my blog, too, so let me update.

I finished the beading on 'Deeper and deeper 2'. I wrote a far-too-long hypnotic script and calculated I'd need to write 3 letters per cm, to fit it all into the 334cm I have. I took many deep breaths, picked up and put down the pen about 4 times, gathered all my courage and began to write. Why all this stress? Because ALL the beading was done, and I could not make a single mistake with the paint on the fabric. Very tensely, I wrote the whole outer ring.The irony of being so tense while writing about relaxation, did not escape me!

Then looked at it and it was ALL wrong. I had to cramp the letters so close together to fit in all the text, that it gave the feel of words-running-into-each-other-spokenfast-and-pressured - ANYTHING but the relaxed feeling it needed to have! Then came that familiar, stomach-dropping feeling of "I put all this work in and now it's ruined"... Bundled the stupid thing up and stuck it on a shelf for a few days!

Now what? The text couldn't be erased. Or so, I thought! I discovered that I could paint over it in black - you can faintly see it was there, but that will be disguised when the new text comes on. Saved! O, happy day.

Then, I cut the text in half. There were 2 parts to it anyway, so that was ok, and it gave me some space to flesh out the first part. Then followed some maths - first simple and then complex, with the aid of my daughter, because my brain is putty.

I wonder if anyone who looks at it, will appreciate the amount of calculating involved, counting words, letters, punctuation, spaces and cms available! As in: 334cm in which to write, 610 characters, 109 words, 119 spaces... AND I wanted the spaces to be bigger than the letters. My daughter created a clever spreadsheet with variables, so I can do this calculation easier next time. For this time, I have 0.5cm per letter/punctuation mark and 0.7cm per inter-word space. This provides a guideline, which I can then adjust while I am writing.

All the calculation is necessary, not only to fit the text into the spiral so that it fills all the way to the middle, not over or under. It's also to know how to space the words out, so that when you read it, it reads with the meter of the person saying the words. This means greater spaces between some words, taking a little longer for your eye to run across, to create the pauses you would otherwise hear. To translate the feeling of the auditory into the visual. This is why the previous, squashed text totally failed.

Last night I finished blacking out the text I had written. Hopefully I'll get time today, to begin writing the new text on.

You can't see the blacked-out text at the bottom, can you? No. Say no! 😁

Onwards, deeper down.

Now working on the second 'Deeper and Deeper'. I've not written the text yet, and there is not space for very much, so what can I write on it? I have just about 300cm of running line space. The first one was an abbreviated induction, with what text I could fit into 336cm. I'd originally conceived the series to be spanning over a whole hypnotherapy session, with each successive work containing the next part, in a continuation. But each work should also be a whole in itself, So now I am not sure what to do, but I have plenty of time to mull it over while I do the wonderfully meditative hand beading.

(I wrote the above about 2 weeks ago. Can't think why I didn't publish it back then?? But I will do so now, as it shows where I was in the process at that time.)