Nadia

By Paul D Robertson

Pastels, 80 x 45 cms.

Sold

I invented this girl, and I guess in some ways she is an ideal to me. Why I made her holding a plate I don't remember - not supposed to be a commentary on dishes or housework I am sure.

There were dramas when I sold it. It was on the first night of my first solo show and I had gone pretty deeply into debt in order to have it.

The guy running the gallery (who shall for now remain unnamed) did not know how to process the client's credit card even though he had tried to pay on the spot. Not that I didn't trust him but I really needed the money. It costs a lot to frame 20 or so pastels plus a variety of otter media.

It was two months before I got paid and though I was not forced to go without cigarettes in that time, I did go hungry.

Lesson learned: don't let fussy arty people handle finances!

Look... I swear a lot. And my life is... complex and slick and splippery with irresistable bipolar, omnipresent and pantheistic. Some of the stuff I write about is ugly as hell. If something upsets you, let me know and I will send you a terrorist holding flowers. Um ok that was insensitive. I have a chronic mental illness which hurts. I write about it and i AM NOT ASHAMED. If it is hard for you to read, don't read it. Complain to me, I don't mind. So here is some more >:-)

This is kinda a continuation of the stuff on SIMPLE NUDE and RECLINING JANE and MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

Yeah had a bad night last night.

i finished some work (paintings? drawings? anyone?), recorded some new tunes i had written and finished the story that i just posted.
Expiation, catharthis, oh hell yes, but what at its end? its TERMINATION???

Well exactly.

This mixed state has yes differing ingredients: though i am still high a deal of the time, or at least energetic alacritic fucking vervacious full of verve and nerve.
the dread increases and now has pieces of real despair scattered around like petals at a wedding or confetti at a funeral.

I couldn't sleep, no sleep. took clonazepam. no sleep. wrote more played more considered painting but did not want to get paint on my roger ramjet jammies. no sleep.

there are external, shall we say extraneous factors? I am under a lot of pressure - new works in new places for higher prices. if i don't sell i will be squish-ed. It is a risk i must take. i no longer have a studio, which sucks a lot.

So last night.
i dunno
it just felt like there was nothing left. got my knife n switched on my webcam without any lights except from the monitor (if u want to look really ugly to yourself this helps.)

And i found some veins and cut them. then i remembered (i was pretty benzined out by this stage remember) that ARTERIES are what you really want. So i got all clinical; i know where they are and dug around trying to find some but i think it was cuz i was so clonazepamed i couldn't get the coordination together to find any properly. So i just ended up with a bunch of messy wounds and a lot of blood. Wrong colour, though, crimson alizaran deep maroon not cadmium red bright and arterial.
Fell off my chair, became aware of just how fucking stoned i was. felt ill.
taped paper towelettes to my wrists.

over.
Feel like hell this morning, benziate hang

swing up and swing down and i still sound more rational (to myself at least) than any of the folks in the normal wolrd that i frequent on occasion when forced to.

Haven't done this for nearly four years. No OD's, one self-harm, but no sUIcidal intent. twas there this time all right. So different from my more recent trouble oh vicissitude the spice of life no? Anxiety and nausea have taken a backseat to crushing despair and i have real pressure to do real things which i thought i had managed to organise my life WITHOUT.

Call your pdoc huh? well i just spent three hours on the phone trying to find the bastard. I have an appointment next week but if i swing low sweet chariot i may well not make it i guess weird to think about, particularly since it is SUCH A NICE DAY.

Checking myself into hospital is not really an option. I am very serious, it is not my innate dislike of such places, but if i am not around to organise and perform at functions openings and to actually paint drop things off and fill in competition forms i will lose THOUSANDS.
I can delegate to the best of my ability and have been doing so though my delegation abilities are impeded somewhat if not my delegates.

OK now for a tiny bitch. I do EVERYTHING i can i take my fucking meds every day i don't DRINK i don't do ANY DRUGS, i research and read

I have read stuff on neuropsyche by fucking Francis Crick (him and watson discovered the dna double helix in 1953. he has since dedictaed his enourmous mind to neuropsyche.) At one point he jumps around saying "you can't even prove i'm conscious!! i can't even prove YOU'RE conscious!"

There is no answer!!!!!
Give me something to make it go the fuck away!!! just for a respite a little sanity holiday where i could paint a white picket fence and mow a lawn without being so INTENSELY aware of it and its innate true and ultimate futility.

Do i sound depressed??? desperate? the word desperate for those with etymological inclinations has been corrupted by contemporary vernacular: it is an affix tacked on to despair. despair-ate.

It is not even from self-loathing. I LIKE myself. i think i am COOL. I dunno i don't understand it it crawls into my mind and i want to die; efficaciously. little mess as possible. i wouldn't dignify clonazepam with taking the trouble to OD on it, though i took enough last night to try and make myself STOP that i feel like hell today.

"Can you stop him?"
"I don't know.
"with these weapons?
"I don't know."

um this is a quote from terminator one, reese says it to sarah connor in the car in the carpark. it felt approprite.
fuck.

I might go and stay with a mate for a while. who knows?

there you go. rantery. blech. all sore and bloody.

Now for more on me (selfabsobtion subjective universe solipsism anyone?).

The highs of the last few days have been non-existent. The depression was extant. Now i am being a wanker again what i mean is that it was always there.
But hell my god my god i feel myself sliding nothing to hold onto. Some metaphors are so accurate they STING. I have been trying to work all day, i have worked it has worked but not because of inspiration but just long hard-aquired skills and application. And i think that it sucks and that everything sucks and my heart, my heart HURTS it actually DOES there is physical pain.
I mentioned in one of my rants before: Fuseli's "the nightmare". It is a painting of an imp (christ i read too much an imp is the lowest in the orders of demons... am still trying to get a hold of a copy of INFERNO or the divine comedy but hunting thru bookstores isn't something i feel like doing right now. Dante not a bestseller.) The imp is on the chest of a sleeping woman and there is a blind horse looking (?) on.

For a visual metaphor, that about sums it up.
After i recovered from my benzine hangover - or am recovering - the half-lfe of those things is vicious. I got up early played with my computer fixed some stuff felt pointless set up my newest piece drew for hours felt worse and worse went back to bed. Hated it though i did sleep, everything reeks of ATROPHY all i can see is DECAY.

Now i am alone again. i should call someone but the idea of entertaining the effort of concentrating on conversation is beyond me. I am not physically sick. there is that. i am still strong.

I am not going to cut, not tonight, no. Though the temptation is there why i do not understand it i do not what draws me to it?

harbingers i could feel this coming this mind sickness of a differing twist. "i will stare the sun down until my eyes go blind". But it's not like that there is no volition, no chosen choice for despair. I am not a teenager, i am a MAN i have proved that i am strong so many times in so many ways. I do not revel in this, though i believe that i did once or something like it.
All washed in black.
I tried again to find my doctor, finally got a secretary who knows me and has insensible hair she was kind and she tried very hard to find him.
Kindness. It breaks my heart when someone does the smallest of kind things for me when i am like this; makes me want to cry.