I think we have a new quote of the millennium . . .

I used to think the world was broken down by tribes, by black and white. 

By Indian and white. 

But I know that isn’t true. 

The world is only broken into two tribes. 

The people who are assholes and the people who are not.

- Sherman Alexie, 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.

Haiku Tuesday

The thief failed to take it -

The moon shining

At the window.

                                             - Ryokan

(photo)

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

What a lovely secluded spot to sit for a moment and rest, away from everyday demands, with a book, a cuppa, or just your own thoughts . . .

Something appropriate from Anne Sexton in this, the month of both Mother's Day & Mental Health Awareness ...

The Double Image

- Anne Sexton

1.

I am thirty this November.

You are still small, in your fourth year.

We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,

flapping in the winter rain,

falling flat and washed. And I remember

mostly the three autumns you did not live here.

They said I’d never get you back again.

I tell you what you’ll never really know:

all the medical hypothesis

that explained my brain will never be as true as these

struck leaves letting go.

I, who chose two times

to kill myself, had said your nickname

the mewling months when you first came;

until a fever rattled

in your throat and I moved like a pantomime

above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,

I heard them say, was mine. They tattled

like green witches in my head, letting doom

leak like a broken faucet;

as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,

an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I’d thought.

The day life made you well and whole

I let the witches take away my guilty soul.

I pretended I was dead

until the white men pumped the poison out,

putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole

of talking boxes and the electric bed.

I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.

Today the yellow leaves

go queer. You ask me where they go. I say today believed

in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,

love your self’s self where it lives.

There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,

why did I let you grow

in another place. You did not know my voice

when I came back to call. All the superlatives

of tomorrow’s white tree and mistletoe

will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.

The time I did not love

myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.

There was new snow after this.

2.

They sent me letters with news

of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.

When I grew well enough to tolerate

myself, I lived with my mother. Too late,

too late, to live with your mother, the witches said.

But I didn’t leave. I had my portrait

done instead.

Part way back from Bedlam

I came to my mother’s house in Gloucester,

Massachusetts. And this is how I came

to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.

I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.

And she never could. She had my portrait

done instead.

I lived like an angry guest,

like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.

I remember my mother did her best.

She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.

Your smile is like your mother’s, the artist said.

I didn’t seem to care. I had my portrait

done instead.

There was a church where I grew up

with its white cupboards where they locked us up,

row by row, like puritans or shipmates

singing together. My father passed the plate.

Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.

I wasn’t exactly forgiven. They had my portrait

done instead.

3.

All that summer sprinklers arched

over the seaside grass.

We talked of drought

while the salt-parched

field grew sweet again. To help time pass

I tried to mow the lawn

and in the morning I had my portrait done,

holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.

Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit

and a postcard of Motif number one,

as if it were normal

to be a mother and be gone.

They hung my portrait in the chill

north light, matching

me to keep me well.

Only my mother grew ill.

She turned from me, as if death were catching,

as if death transferred,

as if my dying had eaten inside of her.

That August you were two, but I timed my days with doubt.

On the first of September she looked at me

and said I gave her cancer.

They carved her sweet hills out

and still I couldn’t answer.

4.

That winter she came

part way back

from her sterile suite

of doctors, the seasick

cruise of the X-ray,

the cells’ arithmetic

gone wild. Surgery incomplete,

the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard

them say.

During the sea blizzards

she had here

own portrait painted.

A cave of mirror

placed on the south wall;

matching smile, matching contour.

And you resembled me; unacquainted

with my face, you wore it. But you were mine

after all.

I wintered in Boston,

childless bride,

nothing sweet to spare

with witches at my side.

I missed your babyhood,

tried a second suicide,

tried the sealed hotel a second year.

On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this

was good.

5.

I checked out for the last time

on the first of May;

graduate of the mental cases,

with my analyst’s okay,

my complete book of rhymes,

my typewriter and my suitcases.

All that summer I learned life

back into my own

seven rooms, visited the swan boats,

the market, answered the phone,

served cocktails as a wife

should, made love among my petticoats

and August tan. And you came each

weekend. But I lie.

You seldom came. I just pretended

you, small piglet, butterfly

girl with jelly bean cheeks,

disobedient three, my splendid

stranger. And I had to learn

why I would rather

die than love, how your innocence

would hurt and how I gather

guilt like a young intern

his symptoms, his certain evidence.

That October day we went

to Gloucester the red hills

reminded me of the dry red fur fox

coat I played in as a child; stock-still

like a bear or a tent,

like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

We drove past the hatchery,

the hut that sells bait,

past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall’s

Hill, to the house that waits

still, on the top of the sea,

and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.

6.

In north light, my smile is held in place,

the shadow marks my bone.

What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,

all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone

of the smile, the young face,

the foxes’ snare.

In south light, her smile is held in place,

her cheeks wilting like a dry

orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown

love, my first image. She eyes me from that face,

that stony head of death

I had outgrown.

The artist caught us at the turning;

we smiled in our canvas home

before we chose our foreknown separate ways.

The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning.

I rot on the wall, my own

Dorian Gray.

And this was the cave of the mirror,

that double woman who stares

at herself, as if she were petrified

in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs.

You kissed your grandmother

and she cried.

7.

I could not get you back

except for weekends. You came

each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit

that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack

your things. We touch from habit.

The first visit you asked my name.

Now you stay for good. I will forget

how we bumped away from each other like marionettes

on strings. It wasn’t the same

as love, letting weekends contain

us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,

wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.

You call me mother and I remember my mother again,

somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

I remember we named you Joyce

so we could call you Joy.

You came like an awkward guest

that first time, all wrapped and moist

and strange at my heavy breast.

I needed you. I didn’t want a boy,

only a girl, a small milky mouse

of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house

of herself. We named you Joy.

I, who was never quite sure

about being a girl, needed another

life, another image to remind me.

And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure

nor soothe it. I made you to find me.

from: The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton, Copyright 1981.

Toby Allen shows us some Real Monsters

They are much easier to read if you go to Toby's site,

Zestydoesthings.

Quote of the Day

The Flat Earth Society actually does claim to have members all around the globe.

- Bruce Norbeck. Take all the time you need . . .

Once Again . . . Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.*

* from: Tears, Idle Tears, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

BookRiot has published a list of 100 Must-Read books on mental illness.

I've found BookRiot to be a wonderful source for inspiration and information for readers. And the original post on BookRiot contains helpful links for information on and purchase of each book.

  100 Must-Read Books About Mental Illness - BookRiot

1.  72 Hour Hold – Bebe Moore Campbell
2. All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven
3. All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness – Sheila Hamilton
4. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
6. Awakening Kali – T. S. Ghosh
7. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
8. Beloved – Toni Morrison
9. The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide – David Miklowitz
10. Bleeding Violet – Dia Reeves
11. The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating – Kiera Van Gelder
12. By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead – Julie Ann Peters
13. The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives – ed. Vanessa Hazzard
14. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
15. Crazy – Han Nolan y
16. Darkness Visible – William Styron
17. Dragonfish – Vu Tran
18. Every Last Word – Tamara Ireland Stone
19. Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon
20. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – David J. Morris
21. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
22. Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
23. Find You in the Dark – A. Meredith Walters
24. Flowers From the Storm – Laura Kinsale
25. Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger
26. Furiously Happy – Jenny Lawson
27. Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder – Rachel Reiland
28. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
29. Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life – Melody Moezzi
30. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
31. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
32. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened – Allie Brosh
33. Imagine Me Gone – Adam Haslett
34. Impulse – Ellen Hopkins
35. It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini
36. The Last Time We Said Goodbye – Cynthia Hand
37. Keep Me Still – Caisey Quinn
38. Let the Tornado Come – Rita Zoey Chin
39. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
40. Look Straight Ahead – Elaine M. Will
41. Looking for Alaska – John Green
42. Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl – Stacy Pershall
43. Made You Up – Francesca Zappia
44. Madness: A Bipolar Life – Marya Hornbacher
45. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie – Jennifer Ashley
46. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
47. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought
48. Manic: A Memoir – Terri Cheney
49. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me – Ellen Forney
50. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
51. The Memory of Light – Francisco X. Stork
52. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
53. More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera
54. The Museum of Intangible Things – Wendy Wunder
55. My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind – Scott Stossel
56. My Heart and Other Black Holes – Jasmine Warga
57. The Nest – Kenneth Oppel
58. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression – Andrew Solomon
59. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
60. Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression – Monica A. Coleman
61. A Note of Madness – Tabitha Suzuma
62. Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self – Sara Shandler
63. Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Mental Illness – Rebecca Shannonhouse (ed.)
64. Paperweight – Meg Haston
65. Polarity – Max Bemis
66. Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel
67. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness – Daryl Cunningham
68. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness – Lori Schiller
69. Reasons To Stay Alive – Matt Haig
70. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
71. The Salt Eaters – Toni Cade Bambara
72. Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within – Gayathri Ramprasad
73. She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb
74. The Silver Linings Playbook– Matthew Quick
75. Skinny – Donna Cooner
76. Sparks Off You – Anita Felicelli
77. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy – Sonya Sones
78. Stranger – Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
79. The Surrendered – Chang-rae Lee
80. Swallow Me Whole – Nate Powell
81. A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
82. Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide – Darryl “DMC” McDaniels
83. Therapy – Kathryn Perez
84. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
85. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament – Kay Redfield Jamison
86. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath – Sylvia Plath
87. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B – Teresa Toten
88. An Unquiet Mind – Kay Redfield Jamison
89. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
90. Your Voice is All I Hear – Leah Scheier
91. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia – Marya Hornbacher
92. When Reason Breaks – Cindy L. Rodriguez
93. When We Collided – Emery Lord
94. White Oleander – Janet Fitch
95. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
96. Willow – Julia Hoban
97. Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey through Depression – Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
98. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
99. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
100. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'm surprised to find that I've only read ten of the books on this list, even though I have been reading books dealing with mental illness for many years. (The ones I've read are in bold type.) This leads me to believe that the list could easily be expanded.

Here are a few suggestions for books that I would add to the list: 

1. His Bright Light - Danielle Steele
2. The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic Depressive Illness - Thomas C. Caramagno
3. Poets on Prozac - Richard M. Berlin, Ed.
   On Being Ill - Virginia Woolf
4. Sunbathing In The Rain - Gwyneth Lewis
5. I Never Promised You A Rose Garden - Joanne Greenberg
6. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds - Paul Zindel
7. Feeling Good - David Burns
8. A Brilliant Madness - Patty Duke
9. Moodswing - Ronald R. Fieve, M.D.
10. Manic Depression: Illness or Awakening - Robert E. Kelly

How about you? How many books on this list have you read? And which books would you like to add to the list?

 (Photo: Pinterest)

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

We are not alone.

We are legion.

We can overcome.

Also,

World Health Organization:

(Videos about depression)

I have had a black dog hounding my steps for quite a while now.