the soularium

Testing the frontiers of transparency

2025-05-03T13:03:00.001+02:00

How transparent should we really be?

Ancient wisdom

2016-10-16T20:32:00.000+02:00

Slightly surprised and very pleased to come across not one, but two of these chaps today. I understand they are a good omen for our focus groups which start tomorrow. Foretelling the future, knowledge, patience, and protection. Thank you world for the precious symbol today.

Life post Psychosis

2016-07-09T17:35:00.000+02:00

Five episodes, ending over five years ago, when I was diagnosed as bipolar.

The diagnosis somehow still sits uneasily with me - I show no outward signs now - and I wonder whether the medical profession has this continuum wrong. I don't think I'm bipolar now but the psychosis was certainly real. Many deluded moments when reality departed. This blog and my tweets occasionally reflected that. For my privacy, I moved many of my posts back to being drafts and I deleted my twitter account even though I had amassed a following. Many of my Facebook posts met the same fate.

But time has since moved on. This month, I got a new job. I start in August. Suddenly I feel as if the challenge is awakening me. Returning to old skills but nurturing forgotten ones. Today I even picked up an Economics textbook.

But when I think about life post Psychosis - I think about my husband. It's a truly valuable, cherished thing in life to have someone who loves and supports you completely. I feel very lucky and fortunate indeed. He's been away overseas this week and is about to come home. I'm excited.

Velocity is just one step away from Vertigo

2011-05-03T07:13:00.000+02:00

I’ll never forget once sitting down with Charles – my next door neighbour who was a Production Director at Velocity\Vertigo I forget the name now.

One evening we sat and watched a carefully selected video of adverts.

Just adverts.

No film. Nothing else. Just adverts.

Some date?

In truth, it was actually a really entertaining evening.

I laughed. I was shocked. I was surprised. I was entertained. I was totally engaged.

Conditional beat (first written in 2007)

2011-05-02T18:26:00.007+02:00

No marriage, no children, and no smoking allowed,

Nor tears, nor emotion. Compassion not aroused.

Destruction. Diminished. Depression yet again.

Another wrong choice from the multitudes of men.

No stability of place, of space, or of time,

And no certainty now, for this future of mine.

Little trust, none left: just heartache, sadness and pain.

A soul now bereft; and alas, with minor gain.

Not important, you thought: my hopes, my needs, my quests,

My beliefs, my therapy, let alone the rest.

All this and my work, you frequently undermined;

Attacking my being, not knowing it’s entwined.

No problems really shared;

Few desires even paired;

No softness in bed, only backs to each other.

Another night fighting my supposed Lover.

Pressure for me to be

Someone other than me,

With no celebration

Of my incarnation.

No respect, I suspect, for even your own self;

what about your own health?

A Diet of Convenience, your marriage the same;

And you really wonder why you sit with such pain?

Blackened thoughts of my sister, you shouted into the street:

Damn, and be damned, as I walked that particular beat.

You knew too little to remotely understand.

Yet you pushed: I was bloody. And You? Underhand!

I was hurt. I was angry. Everything had changed:

Our relations were far worse than just being strained;

No more the truth uttered even in passing;

Is absolutely nothing, ever, lasting?

Perhaps I am sorry, for my role, for my part,

For the wound I might have now cut into your heart?

But it’s time to admit to the final defeat:

I will no longer walk to your Conditional Beat.

There is a difference

2011-04-24T12:42:00.001+02:00

Recently I received a diagnosis which I believe is probably spot on. It's taken years for me to accept it; and I have indeed been in some state of denial. But.

The change is that I have at last been given a label for my condition, and I choose that term deliberately. Not label - condition. It's because I can at last accept what the doctors are saying. After all, five episodes is enough of a message. However, I do not believe that this is an illness.

Time for change

2010-03-20T13:29:00.006+02:00

Owing to recent circumstances, I have decided to migrate this blog to another website altogether.
Should you want to know where my new website is, please feel free to contact me at soularium@sky.com or through one of my other personal email addresses if you have it.
It's just - for my own protection right now - I have decided to extricate myself from the uncertainty of knowing who may or may not be reviewing this blog, and thereby potentially contributing in some way to making me feel - in any sense - vulnerable.

...

meantime - thank you to the people who have helped me through this last week. whilst i have met some petty tyrants and others who are full of good intentions, I have also worked with quite a few people who have helped me understand some things about both my Self and my Mind. To everyone, even the threshold guardians, thank you. It has been an incredibly insightful week.

oh eff it - i deserve more!

2010-02-26T22:07:00.004+02:00

Well don't I???!

If you don't agree, #takeahike.

A tale by any other name

2010-02-19T14:18:00.001+02:00

Adora was the archetypal woman who had it all: beauty and brains, wit and wisdom, and “a voice to die for!” as her boss would say. By anyone’s standards - she was the perfect catch. She also had a flourishing career in radio, an alpha Romeo for a lover, and drove a sports car with not a dissimilar name.

The day Adora decided to move to Herwit’s End, she was equally thrilled. The cottage looked as fabulous in person as it did on paper. ‘A double storey, round house with seven long, narrow windows that bathe both floors in light, and a witch’s hat for a roof, which clatters when it rains,’ it said on the brochure. The fruit trees in front also sang, as the letting agent said they would, and the lawn was so luscious, it too had a bounce to it.

It was about at this point that Adora’s hitherto perfect life started to unravel. Her astrologer, Ephemeris, had said it might, some two years previously, but it was long enough ago that Adora had now forgotten his enigmatic words. “There will be an occasion in your future,” he said, “when you will pursue a path so curious that you will open up a veritable can of worms!” He added with some seeming delight, “but it will make for quite a story!” Unbeknownst to Adora, she had already started down that path a few months before she moved to Herwit’s End.

“I’m downsizing,” she told her boss, as she handed him her resignation letter. “Selling my house, and freeing myself up to explore other avenues. Perhaps I’ll pursue my painting,” she mused. In truth, Adora wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do, but she knew deep inside that her work had ceased to be the same source of contentment it once was, and she needed something more. And so it was that Adora came to venture down the path of the unknown and renting the round, double storey cottage in Herwit’s End, at the bottom of Erasmus’ garden.

One morning, slap bang in the middle of Summer, Adora was up with the larks. She was intent on capturing the early morning light as it fell on the fruit trees. She opened her narrow wooden box, and took one of the smallest brushes in her hand. She dappled some tincture across the canvas. Sometime later, she was still standing in front of the easel when Erasmus appeared. He had seen her painting from inside the main house. He carefully studied the illustration. “How intriguing,” he said. “It’s as if the light is alive in this painting, Adora.”

Some six months later, Adora was still standing at her easel, but she had become disheartened. She had tried working with all sorts of techniques and ideas but there was a growing stack of unsold canvasses. It seemed she would never make a new living. That evening, Adora put down her brush.

For some time thereafter, Adora tried to return to the radio. She was well networked, after all. But as with her painting, it seemed her efforts were in vain. Almost every endeavour ended prematurely, and the eleventh hour always seemed to hold some unexpected turn. After twelve moons and many reversals, Adora despaired, enraged and angered by her poisonous lot. Even Romeo had met someone else. Adora shouted at the heavens. The larks perched silently now and Adora cried a river of tears.
Then one evening, after the clouds had stopped clapping, Adora heard a tiny twitter from the fruit tree. She walked outside. As she did so, Erasmus also appeared, to listen to the growing song. As if reading her mind, Erasmus said, “Don’t fret, Adora, as you have all that you need: talent and skill, a creative's blessing, indeed. It’s just that once you opened your paint brushes' box, didn’t you realise, your demons, too, were unlocked? In truth, you've only now arrived at Herwit’s End, and only now can you really begin again. It’s as if you'd been blessed by the great Pandora, and all that's left to grasp is hope now, Adora!”

Thought for today?

2010-02-16T19:27:00.000+02:00

imaginary whorls

2010-02-16T14:39:00.000+02:00

has anyone else noticed how eyes have suddenly brightened on magazines
how whorls and circles, spirals and shell shapes have taken off
the ad whorld is all aflutter methinks
with this promise from the roundness of things

big brothers eye will be the next to depart
take on an african style
the zeitgeist is indeed saying

we need to go back to the land.

resistance is futile, you said

2010-02-14T20:25:00.002+02:00

So - it seemingly is.
But something is up and I am beginning to get your measure.
I can see you in my dreams, just.
I can hear you.
I think I know who you are.
Because you con-
verse with me.

Random play?
I will overcome
and your seeming protection will shatter.
The veil no longer invisible.

special places

2010-02-09T17:59:00.001+02:00

Haven't reached the acclaims of fame yet
But today a child on a bus waved and waved and waved at me.

I the land of the giants

2010-02-09T17:57:00.002+02:00

In the land of the giants, I remember I could hide under tables.
I remember seeing a smoking dragon on the opposite hillside
I remember running at one point and being scared
But it eventually transpired we were treated as equals.

In the land of the giants, I remember I could hide under tables.

space walking

2010-02-07T23:54:00.001+02:00

i verge between the here and the now and sometimes, I'm not entirely sure where I am.
Seems things have changed.
the animals are talking and listening again
and by all accounts i should have lost my marbles
except that the worlds within them
are probably just as legitimate.

nearly 40 and not married

2010-01-23T23:16:00.004+02:00

I must be dysfunctional.

The diagnosis?

2010-01-10T20:27:00.003+02:00

Way way way too much time.
On my hands.

Oh what a lovely depression

2010-01-10T19:15:00.011+02:00

It's strange.
I look back on some my thoughts of last year and realise just how insane they were.
At the time, I would have contested.
I'm not mad, I'm seeing literal sense.

The irony? I was probably seeing
things that were probably not there.

It's an odd thing though
to realise
that madness is really only a very small step away.

On the surface, unrippled.
Underneath a 'strom.
Admittedly I am prone to icing over,
but much like nature, it doesn't last long.
Another passing. Another pattern.

And now?
How to live on a budget,
how to exist in a bubble.

And yet I want my grass to be a different hue.
Meantime my reality: my shadow.

Irony is ..

2009-12-19T17:56:00.003+02:00

the breath is enough.

Breathe Breathe Breathe

2009-12-19T17:53:00.002+02:00

You may be really hurting and really angry.
But hey.

Anger.
It is not doing you or anyone else any good.
Let go.
What are you gaining from it?
Sweet eff a.
Let go of that disappointment.
All it does is carry around in your soul.
Unnecessarily.
Breathe through it.
Breathe
Breathe
Breathe
Breathe

Now scream!

Meteor shower tonight

2009-12-12T19:34:00.002+02:00

Magical apparently.
Off to watch at 10pm.

I wrote this in July for something else. Balanoe.

2009-11-27T19:03:00.005+02:00

in hear im rebeooa over there im phoebe must be the oe oe ooeoeeoeoeoeoeoeo or maybe the ph or possibly just the be what am i saying im certainly uncertain somuoh ambiguity but im going with the flow hear to find out more so many multiple layers with the oonoept of olosing the gap no ooinoidenoe symmetry toit perfeot balanoe balanoe lovely word balanoe off to float in my balanoe oanoe sea the words naturally i have amyn people i wish to say amyn toooooo

Changing behaviour

2009-11-27T11:10:00.002+02:00

For some reason, last week, I decided to delete my feeds/email subscriptions.
This means the feeds will run for a few more days and then stop.

As to why I did it?
Well. In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure.

Anyway, in the spirit of enduring change - this is my favourite theory concerning the steps involved in changing habits. Alongside Carr on the easy way, it has helped me give up cigarettes, and now I'm even contemplating losing the booze for good.

1. Oblivious
2. Contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. Maintenance

James Prochaska PhD

Just dew?

2009-11-20T22:26:00.005+02:00

Magic

2009-11-20T07:00:00.002+02:00