Brian Pollard @ The Association of British Naïve Artists

I found this picture with "Milk Cow" (direct translation from Chinese) by Brian Pollard on the website of The Association of British Naïve Artists.

Check out this website for more Naïve arts British style...

As you might be able to tell, what really attracts me in this painting are the resting cows....

Happy: Purple Cow Grade

As I was moving around on my day off, trying to take care of the business... I found myself... happy... so very over-joyed that the energy seems to be overflowing...

I can't stop smiling... smiling so happily that I can't close my mouth... 8-O lol

I can't tell you why... maybe it has to do with my having drinking a cup of green tea and two cups of coffee...

Maybe it has something to do with that fact that... wow... now I could walk back and forth between buildings like any other ordinary people... Now I could do it...

And, funny enough, I just can't make myself annoyed by the other way of perceiving the situations... I can't make myself feel annoyed by having to walk back and forth between buildings on Columbia Campus...

This kind of happiness is like the kind of happiness I feel when seeing the nice purple cow... 8-O lol

It is some fairly biased worldview I would say and I can't help, at least today, seeing things or life in general from this perspective... (nothing bad except for incurably biased....)

This, again, leads me to ask this question...

How could the mood swing cycle this fast?

How could I be in a depressed like being hit by a truck kinda state 5 days ago and switch to so content and happy a state so quickly? (And.... OMG... am I going into the Manic phase.... 8-O 8-X)

Milanden Dolovski @ Vigi Gallery for Croatian Naive Art

So, it was yesterday when I visited the website of Croatian Naive Art gallery. Today, I landed at the Vigi Gallery where I found more artworks by the same Croatian artists and others.

If my guess is correct, this is the newer version of the Croatian Naive Art gallery.... at a new location...

The painting to the left is titled White Snowballs by Milanden Dolovski.

Please check the following link for the story behind the artworks and the gallery.

You could also find more of the nice paintings by many more artists on their website.

Hope you enjoy the pretty and innocent paintings as much as I do!

Scary dream

I have been having some really strange dreams recently.... and, I had this really scary dream last night....

In my dream, I came face-to-face with the end of my legal status to stay in the US...

One thing I recall was...

I was looking for my flight ticket...

I looked anxiously all around for that round trip ticket of mine... on, presumably, the day of departure....

After a whole lot of looking around....

Finally, at some point, I found this paper ticket that I used when returning to the US from Taiwan....

And, it was an absolutely relief for me to find that... the ticket was for the trip coming back only... not a round trip ticket... (in other words, I would not lose the money I put into buying the ticket... 8-O lol)

I was anxious... very anxious...

Yet, at this point, I am not even sure whether the anxiety has to do with the need to depart or the inability for yours cheapskate to find the ticket I thought I had already bought.... 8-O lol

P.S., It is very interesting how, in my dream, I was still using paper tickets.... since it's been years since I started using e-tickets only... In addition, why didn't I just log in to my account online to print out another copy of the boarding pass? 8-O lol

On a second thought... unless... what the dream tells me is that... I now am going back or have to go back the papers... including them papers.... 8-O lol

Yet, senseless to be wondering about the illogical events in dreams.... 8-O lol

Verbal diarrhea

If verbal diarrhea is some kind of symptoms of whatever it might be, it is getting ever worsening recently....

For reasons unknown, whatever comes across my mind would simply come out of my mouth.... no sensorship at all...

If I thought I had a big mouth before, I gotta say that I knew no squat... 8-O lol

Franjob Vujcec at Croatian Naive Art

Winter by Franjob Vujcec at CroatianNaiveArt.com..

Check their website for artworks by many other Croatian artists...

Da inverse thing...

As I was going monkey around doing God knows what, this strange head of mine switched itself suddenly back to doing some research on activities of daily living... ADL...

Thereafter, this thought came up to me...

Speaking of da inverse thing... perhaps, and, perhaps I have said it before...

That propensity of mine to reinterpret things... might be the manifestation of da inverse thing for neologism.....

Interesting....

What this means is that... the writing style or thinking style itself is symptomatic....

No wonder... so many a time, people told me my thinking is strange... and, of course, it's gotta be strange for my thinking to be symptomatic.... 8-O 8-O 8-O lol

Mark Frost

Apple Pond Farm, Winter by Mark Frost, an American Artist...

Sexy beginning

What prompted me to start thinking about them sexies?

Got off from work early today and I did some browsing looking for Sakura Gel Pens... the kind of pens that allowed me to add some 3-d touch to the holiday cards I made...

After I found them in sets for sale at overstock.com...

I sighed and thought to myself... man... how sxxy...

And, it was then and after when I realize...

I find sexiness in strange objects...

What exactly does it mean for someone or something to be sexy?

How do you define it?

Would it be possible to figure out my definition of sexy through looking for the themes emerged in these postings?

Does it mean you like it so much that you want to own them all?

Or, is this another manifestation of Maxine Greene's words of wisdom... "the confusion of interpretations..."

Perhaps, it is yet another manifestation of a common problem faced by psychology, if not social science in general, that people use different words to mean the same thing and, at the same time, people use the same words while actually assigning these same words with different meanings...

Unless, it is simply neologism--- a psychotic symptom having something to do with the invention of meaningless new words (or the inverse...)? 8-O lol

Some other kind of sexy...

When I put my hand on the following dataset containing 21574 records in total.....

My heart almost melted... and the first thought came to my mind was...

Oh my God... man... how sexy.... 8-O lol

NLTCS

This data set is an extract from the National Long Term Care Survey (NLTCS). 16 binary variables in the extract are functional disability measures: 6 activities of daily living and 10 instrumental activities of daily living, pooled over 1982, 1984, 1989, and 1994 waves of the survey. The Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University, gave its permission to redistribute the 2^16 extract via placement on StatLib under the NLTCS Data Use Agreement. If you download the data, please provide the Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University, with your name and contact information (e-mail NLTCS@cds.duke.edu).(149k)

Sexy 2-- them 20 something..

Then, I found these guys--- 16 gig USB drive only 20 something...

PNY 16GB Attache' USB 2.0 Flash Drive Price: $29.99







Kingston 16GB DataTraveler Mini Slim Black Price 24.99







Yes, unfortunately, them 16 GBs are no longer as chic as they might have been... Now, 32 GB flash drives cost only around 50...


CORSAIR 32GB Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Flash Drive After Rebate(s): $53.74









Centon 32GB USB Full Speed 2.0 Waterproof Rubberized Flash Drive Price: $49.99





Kingston 32GB DataTraveler 100 Flash Drive Price: $51.99






Not to mention.... the 64 GBs....

Kingston 64GB DataTraveler 150 Flash Drive Price: $115.99


Then, I thought...

How did I miss that phase when 8 gb USB drives were hip?

Then, I realize...

It might have been the time when I shifted my attention to focus on crafting.... 8-O lol

Sexy

As I was looking for a hard drive enclosure the other day.... I came across all these hard drives with price under or around a hundred...

Looking at them 500 GB or 1 Terabit hard drives... I couldn't help feeling...

Man... how sexy.... 8-O lol

LaCie 750GB USB 2.0 7200RPM Desktop External Hard Drive - Design by Neil Poulton Price: $88.24








Cavalry 500GB Hard Drive - Dual Interface (USB 2.0 & eSATA) External Hard Drive Price: $90.24






392. Western Digital Elements 640GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Price: $99.99






Ok... the above are only relatively sexy.... The really sexy ones are actually them 1terabit or 1.5 terabit hard drives that would cost you only a bit over 100...

Cavalry 1TB Dual Interface - USB 2.0 & eSATA External Hard Drive Price: $125.99







Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Black Price: $114.99







Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 1.5TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Price: $152.99







Fantom GreenDrive 1TB USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive - 2 Year Warranty Price: $129.99 After Rebate(s): $109.99







Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Price: $137.99







Hard DriveFantom 1TB G-Force Hard Drive - Dual Interface (eSATA & USB 2.0), 7200RPM - External Hard Drive Price: $127.33 After Rebate(s): $107.33






Terabit external hard drives at this price?

I could pass out for their sexiness.... 8-O lol

And, yes... now that I know the multiterabits are at this price....

How Am I Supposed To Live Without You multiterabits.... at the same price I paid for my 500 giga bits? 8-O lol

Selling off

I have been putting things on ebay for sale...

A whole lot of craft items that I have acquired during my disability era when I was out of work...

Now that I am back to work and I am looking for a job, there is not really too much leisure for me to do the crafting stuff...

So, as I was listing a whole collection of scrapebook paper... I thought...

Wouldn't it be so nice if I know where I am going to be less than 5 months from now... because I finally come to the realization that I do like them nice looking stuff...

Years after year...

The same question I have for myself...

Where am I going to be?

Funny enough...

The best thing I could do for them nice things is to sell them off for pennies only to find them a good home...

And, if you ask me why so much stuff?

The answer is... try to live a life...

Year of cow or ox

Coming up is the year of cow or ox

Check out the happy cow eating the unforbidden apples by Juan Kelly...

GINA: Gallery of International Naive Art

I went to visit the Gallery of International Naive Art (Gina) located at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and 82th street today to see an exhibition titled "Naivism: An Ode to Innocence."

The picture in the left is one of the paintings in the current exhibition titled "Good News" by Danielle Bonniol-Ferrus.



On the gallery's website, you could also find pictures of past exhibitions like this one on the left titled "A Winter Wonderland" by Maria Terzi.

I don't know about you... personally, these nice pretty pictures make me feel very happy... :-D 8-O lol

Depression?

I can't tell you how many a time I went into depression...

That depressive state within which I wish that pain and weight on the chest could go away.... That state when you would use a pen to pin your own thigh so that the physical pain could make that psychophysiological pain, comparatively, weighting less...

It was a chronic state... at least that was what I believed.... until recently...

This has been happening...

I would be diving down to the worst of the depressive symptoms.... into the abyss... or the dire straights... if I could call it...

Yet, the symptoms would be alleviated after I did my swinging exercise... an exercise I do for the sake of doing it.... just an exercise... just letting the body move itself... with no expectations and no intention to really know what it is for...

So, it hit me bad that day...

And, it hit me bad yesterday... with the symptoms lingering on till I did my exercise for the second time in the day...

If you have seen me walking down the street trying to get home to ship them rubber stamps I sold on ebay...

My body was in pain... and I was, regardless body or mind, simply in pain...

So in pain that I could not help showing on my face them painful expressions...

At some point during all these depressive states... I actually thought of the possibility of getting back to my zoloft.... letting the antidepressant to take my symptoms away...

Then, I got home... and started to do them body movements again...

And, I felt better...

And, I remain to feel better the whole day today...

I actually walked from the 82 street down to Lincoln center and walked from there back to 110th.... feeling all energetic...

I feel fine and so fine..

It was as if the depressive symptoms I experienced yesterday never ever happened....

It is this kind of inconsistency that drives me to think...

Crazy life and crazy me... I would say...

How could I cycle in and out of depression within one day without the aid of pharmaceutical intervention?

How could anyone live a life as such... relatively inhuman... I would say...

And... what exact is the etiology to my depressive symptoms... anyway?

(At the same time, just so that you know... I am still taking my seroquel... it is not like I have forsaken modern medicine...)

Henry Giroux

The Artwork of Henry Giroux....

Copy cat

As I was doing my exercise in my room, I saw Brian Greene appearing on NY 1...

Two things he spoke of caught my attention...

First, he is not really a proponent for the string theory (remember that 10 dimension thing) since it has not been proved.



Second, he translated science into common language...

So I thought...

First, am I a proponent for the xi, qi, or chi? I am not quite sure since all that I do is letting the body moving itself and there is no proof that it is really the chi, xi or qi moving my body... (and, God knows, provided shall God exist, whether it is but an alternative interpretation for psychosomatizations although God knows, again, what psychosomatization really means... 8-O lol)

Second, for all else I have not accomplished.... at least, what I have done with my verbal diarrhea is to translate all things I try to describe into Bad English.... 8-O lol

One thing I know is that...

The trip home was a difficult one because the whole chest etc was making me feel really uncomfortable....

Now that I finished doing the moves for the second time in the day....

For reason unknown... both of my hands are freezing cold... and the feet are getting really cold as well...

In any case, I suspect I am in a better state because I am finding them 8-O lol in my writing again.... which, in the meanwhile could be argued as the placebo effect, provided there is anyone who give a rat's ass about what had come out from my mouth to be making an argument... 8-O lol

The exercise

So, after the previous posting, instead of looking for a job, I went ahead to do about 40-50 minutes of my swinging or shaking activities...

The kinds of movements involve the shaking of the hands, arms and the chest area.

See... 5:43-6:58 and 9:22 to the end in the following video.


In addition, the moving of the middle 3 fingers in both hands.

After the exercise, the symptoms alleviated big time though they have not gone away total. The head also feels might lighter... or not as tight...

It is interesting how these symptoms could be alleviated through these violent kinda body movements.

As I am proceeding with my job search.... I am allowing the shaking to continue with my legs... which also sort of involving the upper torso...

Body and mind

As I am sitting down, though lower in energy level since the beginning of the day, still quite capable of browsing through the job postings listed in the chronicle of higher ed...

All of a sudden, it hit me again...

Psychosomatic symptoms which take charge of the majority of my cognitive processes...

While in dasein, let me describe to you this state of my body and mind...

So, it is heavy around my chest.... and it feels as if something is pulling my chest inward... then, at certain point, it feels as if something is tearing me inside of my chest or the place you might called the heart...

It causes pains... real physical pains... from chest on to the other parts of my body...

It also feels so heavy and tight... so heavy that it seems to be causing me problem breathing... so hard to breath that led me to take deep breaths in order to get some air... This, at the same time, reminds me of the experiences of anxiety attacks or panic attacks...

So, it is painful when the forces pull my chest inwards...

At some points, it does the opposite... the chest gets pushes outwards and painful feelings, both psychological and physical, remain... In this kind of condition, it feels so very empty inside....

The cognitive processing power, through out the whole time, involuntarily becomes dedicated to perceiving all these physical symptoms... while, at the same time, it feels as if the head is all tightened up...

At points, it also sends out signals reminding me that... it is not only my body... I am also in a depressive state of mind...

Now I am done describing the symptoms... I think it is time for me to go do some of my swinging exercises...

Etiology

This thought comes up time and again nowadays...

How funny it is...

The longer I live...

The less I know about my conditions....

Ratology Reloaded as opposed to Down with Meds Recovered....



Called it another manifestation of my delusional thinking...

Could there be something more to what we believe as the etiology?

From Verbal Diarrhea

I have no idea why...

Recently, I find myself failing to refrain myself from speaking out what is exactly in my mind.....

Most of the time, believe it or not, despite my propensity for verbal diarrhea, I would try to be "adult" about things and ignore them.

However, nowadays, it felt as if things just come out freely as it flows....

So... it was yesterday or the day before when I thought to myself.... maybe now I am becoming less delusional since, in the worst of my delusional state, I have to be good because each every move I make, each every thought incurs, and, each every word that comes out of my mouth is broadcasted in some ingenious ways....

Then, this afternoon, I was asked....

"Why are you complaining so much?"

This question led me to this realization....

If there is such thing called energy and if what I sense is what one could called as energy...

It is somehow.... overflowing and, at times, it feels as if it is coming out of my chest.... (as long as you don't ask me why so many psychosomatic symptoms I experience are associated with the chest area)...

I have no control over it... not too much of control...

And, I don't know why....

Anne Marie Bost

This is the art work of Anne Marie Bost titled Partie de plaisir ou Les ébats sur la glace, on exhibition at the International Museum of Naive Art.

I also found some of her art work at the following locations:

http://www.arttremblant.com/fr/bost.htm

http://www.editionsdevillers.com/artist.php?artiste_id=31

Happy Cows: Slavko Stolnik

Look at the beautiful purple cow... purple fence and purple roof.... in the painting of Slavko Stolnik--- Cows Coming Home, 1957

So I read, even though I don't like to read... 8-O lol

This kind of artistic style, like that of Grandma Moses, could be called.... Naive Art... Primitive Art...

From THE question

So, when I started going to see my psychiatrist now, I told him that I have a blog... and gave him the link...

Then, one day, he told me that it is interesting... and asked me THE question....

"Have you ever gotten any comment?"

Good question...

From Jan. 2005 to today, 4 years later, I have gotten only 3 comments for my verbal diarrhea... with one of them sort of like a spamming message.... 8-O lol

This, of course, led me to wonder... how do other bloggers lead people to make comments on their blog? Or, how could I lead people to my blog and leave comments? Are the contents so boring or the English so bad that no one ever reads it?

What about it... some buy one get a few free kinda incentive.... leave one comment and get one Ratprincess and other mes for free? (The benefit of having a diagnosis starting with schizo...) 8-O lol

Fine weather for depression

The winter time is the perfect time for depression to come out and play...

I have always felt that there seems to be some strange correlation between the level of depression and the change in the weather pattern such as air pressure or the availability of sunlight....

Then, something strange happened these past few days...

It started with my observing an increase in the frequency and intensity of the psychosomatic symptoms, such as that heavy, tight and some indescribable feelings surrounding my chest... That indescribable feeling, more specially, feels as if there is a black hole in the chest and it is sucking the chest inward and inward... and inward... and, resulting in something that could be called... some kind of painful kinda feeling... 8-O lol sigh

Then, all of a sudden, yesterday, by the time I got home from work, I found myself in such a depressive state... in pain, in lack of energy and wanting to do nothing more than going straight to bed to do nothing more than being swallowed by my own depression... Personally, such is the worse of the worse state of depression I could ever imagine...

Yet, I hang on and did my regular swinging activities...

After almost an hour of exercise, those symptoms went away--- at least temporarily.

I was able to get rid of the physical and psychological symptoms... and... felt fine... as if all the symptoms I was experiencing an hour earlier never existed.

Strangely, today, the symptom level drastically decreased...

To be more accurate, at some point in the afternoon, I realized that my problem for today was this sense that... energy was overflowing...

So very overflowing that I didn't even know how to control it...

So, I decided to check out the weather... and to start a log to see whether there really is an interplay between air pressure and the change in the severity of my depressive symptoms...

And, following is a form I created using the form function of google doc.

Any information you submit through this form will be inserted into the spreadsheet at the following location.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pk80UZ6qMgJ2g82bp9kwGEg

Grandma Moses

The paintings I like look sort of like this kind of style... a painting by Anna Mary Robertson, aka Grandma Moses...

The aweful thing is that... I could find most of the information I need through simple research over the internet... Yet, don't know where else I can find artists with styles alike...

And, guess, at least, I find something I don't know how to find.... especially when the information is conveyed via visual channel... 8-O lol

Love lost

I checked almost every corner in my room again today... looking for the postcards I picked up from a gallery in Montreal for my kind of art... the artwork of the lady who painted beautiful houses and happy people....

I spent hours... opening all boxes I could find with my stuffs in... to no avail...

Then, I thought...

I must have thrown them out when cleaning up my room... and chances are I would never find them again....

How funny that we often fail to realize what we love until that love is lost...

Then, I decided to do some simple sketch in memory of the love lost... and following is what I got.... 8-O lol



8-O lol

Santa Fe Art

This and the next mouse pictures were in exhibition at the Hahn Ross Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico...

My kind of art

I was told the other day that my drawings are very much in juvenile style...

So, today, I made a mission to search for the gallery that exhibits juvenile style kinda art; yet, da gallery had I found not...

Then, I thought back at the kind of art work that attracts me most....

The paintings of a female artist whose exhibition I found somewhere in Montreal...

I thought I have some postcards of her somewhere in my room... Yet, mission failed again da search for the pantings of beautiful houses...

Then, I found the artwork of the following artist...

Under starry night
Houses behind
A happy doggie...



Please feel free to let me know, though, if you come across other artwork with paintings of beautiful houses... because it is driving me crazy that I could see the paintings in my head but can't find them...

When nightmares turn true....

There are a few nightmares in my delusional world... with one of them being.... air crash... for the past few months...

It is not a fear associated with me being in an air crash... It is simply a fear for accidents involving airborne vehicles... An accident having nothing to do with me....

When the condition is worse, all airplanes flying around in the air give me a scare...

Then, Thursday afternoon, the aircraft crashed into the Hudson River while, miraculously, all individuals on board were safe and sound...

While all passengers et al thank the pilot for the masterful landing, I, someone with no connection at all to the incidence, owe the pilot even more... 8-O

It is one of my worst delusional nightmare and one of my deepest fear turning true.....

How many a time, when spotting aircraft flying over the sky, I had this "premonition" (delusional) kinda feeling that a crash is in formation...

Then, regardless whether I believe in God or not, I pray to God... to let the delusional fear be mine and mine only and let it be only the scare in my delusional world... and bless them all...

So many a time... God bless..

Then, the crash came and everyone is fine...

Laugh at me all you want.... regardless how illogical it appears...

Yet, it felt as if I was the lady who dropped the candle when Titanic sank...

In any case, thank God... so I think again and again... thank God....

For... with one of my worst nightmares turned true.... no one is harm...

What a relief... my fear and one of the deepest delusional fear... with them dasein moments I am incapable of articulating... came true... but damage not so bad....

Thank God...What I see are not necessarily all that bad... delusional or not....

And, hopefully, this irrational fear could cease from now on....

(Did I mention about my low-latent-inhibitionness recently with the art of developing a delusional system involving seeing the interconnectedness in independent events? 8-O lol)

Friday afternon party music

Great old dance music... even Ratprincess Junior who is 12 years younger than yours grumpy old hen knows them... 8-O lol

Maxi Priest - Close to you




Maxi Priest wild world

What a nice song...

But if you wanna leave, take good care
hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad everywhere

I guess this is what I called unconditional love....






That Girl by Maxi Priest feat Shaggy

Results: Dance of disability and spirituality

Boswell, B., Hamer, M., Knight, S., Glacoff, M. & McChesney, J. (2008) Dance of disability and spirituality. Journal of Rehabilitation, 73 (4).

Based on the analyses of participants' interviews, the authors identified the following 5 major themes:

1. Purpose
2. Awareness
3. Connections
4. Creativity
5. Acceptance

Please check the article itself for more detailed information.

One question I have in reaction to the results is that...

Do the respondents ever have doubts about their opinions?

If not, how do you or what does it take to get there?

Unless...

Doubts

This morning, I went back to see my orthopedics doctor.... unfortunately, in a far worse state than I would have loved to be in...

OK... pain and herniation lesson 101, the cold, the humidity and the period are three of the killing factors to our physical condition.

Since misery loves company, the cramps never cease to marvel me in its ability to summon the insurgence of nerve pains in all other locations.... 8-X

I might be doing all different kinds of strange movements when doing the swinging exercises....



Yet, on the examination desk, when needing to lift my legs at my own free will, I failed...

I was able to move my legs up for about 10 degree.... then, I had to stop due to the stiffness and the pain in the lower back.

Back to the clinic again....

That was a shock...

Regardless how flexible I might be during the swinging sessions, I was unable to lift my own legs much.....

That was another big shock....

Yet, I walked out back to the cold, with one and only one mission in mind.... getting back to work...

After work, I went hanging a bit at the bar, partially because I thought I would meet up with this nice gentleman who helped me looked over my resume for a job I am trying to apply to in the United Nations.... (and believe it or not... it was one of my childhood dream to work for the United Nations... just don't ask me why...)

While sitting there, I started working on my juvenile style of drawing, if not nursery grade....

From Ratprincess Drawing

From Ratprincess Drawing

A happy drawing.... so I thought.... a drawing of the past... Where I search everywhere for Ratprincess while she was searching up and down for Ratology...

The year of cow is coming which is to push the minor inconveniences in life I have seen away and further away...

At the same time, I was once the major league control freak; yet, these days, that sense of control or the ability to control itself seemed to have.... oops... flown over the rooftop....

In the serene background, two turtles were searching for each other.... or, I was search for myself... except for.... at the speed of slow and stop, it might take much longer a time for them to meet up....

At some point, the image of one of my older drawing started to come to my mind with the other one lurking in the back of my head....

It was one of the two paintings I made in club meds earlier last year.... during a time when minor inconveniences in life were like rain drops falling on my head..... 8-O 8-X

From Ratprincess' painting in club meds

From Ratprincess' painting in club meds

So, after I showed my drawing to many others, they came and helped me added some nice features to the painting.... with one of them made the comment... what a happy picture.... everyone is happy inside... and everyone happily added something new inside... except for one... who seemed to see something more in my nursery grade drawing than I did...

Then, I got home and turned on the computer...

All of a sudden, I found myself bursting into tears staring at the pictures.... and, I asked God, shall God exists.... again... this same question....

"What have I done so wrong so far in life?"

"What have I?"

And...

"Why?"

So I wept and I stopped...

Then I wept some more and I stopped.... with this voice inside of my head saying, perhaps...

"Let it out and let it pass..."

Then, I thought of that quote...

And, I wondered to myself.... has the narrator ever been weak or does he or she always have a belief so very strong?

So, I thought of da serious look in this friend's eye... and, I thought... how funny... yet... how does one see my pain and weakness before I? Or, perhaps, to blind to see... the only one... I....

Perk

As I was sitting there processing my bills, I thought of this email sent to me by a friend concerning the extended OPT for people in the STEM disciplines.

Having majored in the STEM disciplines, I thought it might be an option for da immigration dilemma of mine... 

So, I went to the office only to be told that... by law... regardless my major in either instructional technology or measurement and evaluation, my affiliation with a school of education makes the STEM extension inapplicable...

I happily chatted with the nice people in the office and got out already having da spark of hope mostly forgotten...

So I observed and so I thought...

The perk of being delusional... I don't have too many of them illusions... 8-O lol

Sort of like...

No it don't mean nothin'
Till you sign it on the dotted line 8-O lol

Tautology

The other day, as I was talking to people about the analyses I ran on some disability and functionality measure, I got a response like the following...


"That is your kind of thing. You also think of the sad things..."


Today, I happened to talk to people about my age of disability....


Someone made a comment like the following...


"You have to let go of the bad energy and forget about the past."


These responses, surely, illicit this sense of curiosity in me.... or bring back out this question I had for myself before...

Why do I speak or think of my mental and physical conditions so much?


Well, I guess, it might have something to do with the fact that... they are the conditions I am in and, like my rubber stamps, I am not quite sure what to do about them... 8-O lol

At the same time, this comment of a friend about the TV program "House" came to my mind...

"It is so depressing because they always can find a cure..."



No truer words... I could give away my rubber stamps or try to sell them off, unfortunately, there is no way to let go of the incurable state of both my body and mind and neither would I give it to someone else anyway... 8-O 8-X


Then, I recall this interesting comment I made about my speaking of my even more disable era... something like...


"Things happen for a reason and there is always a lesson to be learned."


In retrospective, I came to the realization that... what had come out of my mouth is a belief that somehow got developed through out all these times...


At the same time, it is a belief that I have to consciously retrain myself from embracing without hesitation for fear of magical thinking under construction.... 8-O lol oops...

So, I try to understand a bit more, other than attributing all to PTSD or OCD, what might be the driver for the recurrent thoughts about my health conditions?


I thought of some articles I encountered right after the accident and when I was a much more fledgling handicap... involving keywords such as "disability" and "spirituality"...


And, I did a simple google search and came across articles like this...


Granted, what is spirituality? A concept whose definition I am still not quite sure.... Yet, for the time being, the following seems to be good enough...

"... spirituality is viewed as one's inner beliefs or world view about the meaning and purpose of life and/or the quest for understanding these concepts (Thomas, 2000)."

And, I came across this quote from someone in a much worse condition than me about the purpose...


"... this is probably just not a freak accident that I became a quadriplegic. But that has some purpose for the world I live in, and that I am not just here living out the lift of a quad because of fate, but there's some reason, ... or some purpose that God intended to fulfill through a disability."

Then, I realize, personally, if ever anything out of my mouth could touch anyone as much, I could call it right there... the purpose of my conditions.... them some strange conditions I have been in...

Many a beautiful quotes could be found in the writing.... with may a familiar theme...

So, just when I was rereading, if not rethinking, about the quotes....

This thought occurred to me...

Perhaps, these concluding quotes did not come without deliberation at all....

Perhaps, there could come to be a point when what is considered sad or bad turns to be simply a state....

And... what it be like if it is through tautology do we get to spin ourselves out of inconvenient kinda states...

New Year's day

Early evening in upper westside on New Year's day...

Painless

While I was in pain, I was also on heavy dosage of pain killers....

Since the pains were bad, I was not quite sure whether the pain killers were working or not after some point...

Then, about a year after my accident, I finally was physically fit enough to be taking the airplane home.

The first time I did after I got home was to go to the dentist because this tooth of mine cracked months back yet it was too far a trip for me to get to my dentist in New York...

Ended up, I had the root canal and the whole 9 yards...

After I lost that tooth of my to the crown, I came to realize...

Perhaps, the pain killers did work.... and it was because of the painless state did the tooth get to be in such a sorry shape.... for no consistent tooth aches to alarm me of its sorry state of being at all...

So ends my remarks about my painless loss...

Pains

So I thought of this strange concept called pain...

What exactly is pain and how exact do we know that we really are in pain?

For the longest time, I feared that I was imagining up the pains I sensed.... since it is something unobservable... and... to be honest... unmeasurable... (sort of like... on a scale of 1 to 10, how painful is it? Yet, how am I gonna give you a number now that I have been in a scale of a million and more?)

That was the time when I started to ponder about that prolonged sense of I don't know what...

It is not until I came out from that painful state do I realize that...

I was in pains... chronic pains...

Thank God... while I did go crazier than usual... I really was also in some really bad pains... 8-O lol

Disability and functionality

I have been working on finishing up this report about using multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses to analyze a dataset about disability and functionality.

Finally, the draft is done... (hope the cleaning up won't take too much longer)... the day I broke my USB drive... leaving it in a state of, sort of, broken but still, sort of, functional...

So is the life's story...

Give and take... I guess... 8-O lol

BTW, what did I learn from this project?

First, the experts defined functionality and disability using the following 16 measures with the first 6 of them classified as Activities of daily living and the remaining 10 as Instrumental activities of daily living.

Second, based on the dataset I had, I ran some analyses trying to see whether I could recreated the two factor model for these 16 items... Yet, what I came up with was much different from how they had things classified.

So I decided to answer these questions based on my recalls of the past... with 0 indicating healthy and 1 indicating disabled...

Activities of daily living

1. 0.00 (Y1) eating: At the beginning when things was worst, I could eat as long as the weight of food plus the bowl was not heavier than I could handle.
2. 0.00 (Y2) getting in/out of bed: The first few days were really bad. It took quite a bit of work to either get out of the bed or to lay down. Yet, I had never been unable to get in or out of the bed... regardless the speed or the amount of effort..
3. 0.00 (Y3) getting around inside: Thank God that the floor in my room is flat.... Yet, when I went to the federal building, I could barely move my feet because the floor... was not flat... At the beginging, it was bad... I basically was able to walk from my bed to the bathroom... and that marked all the exercise I did for the day....
4. 0.00 (Y4) dressing: It took me longer time to get dressed because of the pains all over. However, I was able to dress and undress myself.
5. 0.00 (Y5) bathing: Something I luckily never had problem with... other than needing to be ware of the floor for slippery when wet.

Instrumental activities of daily living

1. 0.00 (Y6) getting to the bathroom: One thing I had no problem doing... other than... slow... slow...
2. 1.00 (Y7) doing heavy house work: Couldn't even carry a bowl of soup from the kitchen to the room... can't carry much weight either at work up to today....
3. 1.00 (Y8) doing light house work: I don't really know what light house work meant... one thing I knew was that I even had problem carrying more than one plate or so from my room to the kitchen at the beginning.
4. 1.00 (Y9) doing laundry: I didn't know doing laundry was difficult until my mama left New York to take care of my sister in Taiwan. It was difficult but I tried.... I never knew that the act of throwing each piece of clothing into the washer in the basement could be so strenuous. I had to take breaks in between the pick up a garment and throw it into the washer activity... or, I had to take many breaks to load my clothes into the washer.
5. 0.00 (Y10) cooking: This question is difficult because I don't really cook... I just put all thing in the pot and bring everything to a boil... Yet, one thing I knew is that... I was in no condition to cook gourmet food either...
6. 1.00 (Y11) grocery shopping: Half a pond of cherries were already too heavy for me to carry. After my mom went back to Taiwan, for a long time, I depended on the nice people I know to help me carry grocery weighting more than 1 pound back to my building, if not my kitchen.
7. 1.00 (Y12) getting about outside: The road has to be flat for me to walk on. My walkability decreased exponentially when the pavement or ground is slanted in the least slight fashion. Even when the condition got better, a lot of times, I might have no problem getting out.... the real problem was to get back.... How many a day... I, one step at a time, tried to make it back....
8. 1.00 (Y13) traveling: Sitting in a car, bus, or subway train kills me because of the worsened nerve pains. (Therefore, forget about long trips in moving vehicles such as in airplane.)
9. 1.00 (Y14) managing money: It did get to the point when it was sort of difficult to manage money when you don't have squat to manage... That's why I put an 1 for this item... although I am not quite sure whether this is why they mean by managing money... 8-O lol oops..
10. 0.00 (Y15) taking medicine: To be honest, I was really good in popping my drugs except for I stopped taking Vicodin a day or two later because of its side effect.
11. 0.00 (Y16) telephoning: I was capable of making phone calls and talking on the phone. However, when the nerve pains were really bad, the same volume sounded louder, ordinary speed seemed too fast, and, both contributing to increased nerve pains and slowering down of cognitive processing speed. Yet, I give it a 0 because, regardless, I was still physically cable in either making or answering telephone calls.

So, what else do I learn about the 16 measures now I have responded to them all...?
Maybe the items I responded "0" to should go together instead because they seem to be easier tasks to perform and I would have to be in a worse condition to be disabled in these items... at least, for me, a half-baked handicapped... (Gott Sei Danke...) (and, of course, this opinion is nothing scientific.... resting on the recolletion of my dasein moments only... 8-X)

Classics with 齊豫

夢田--- a great song sang by two great singers 潘越雲 and 齊豫... lyrics by 三毛-- one of my favorite writer in Teenage... Don't we all have a dream that we could not wake up from....


夢田

作詞：三毛　作曲：翁孝良

每個人心裡一畝　一畝田
每個人心裡一個　一個夢
一顆呀一顆種子　是我心裡的一畝田

用它來種什麼　用它來種什麼
種桃種李種春風　開盡梨花春又來

那是我心裡一畝　一畝田
那是我心裡一個　不醒的夢

橄欖樹


橄欖樹
三毛詞 李泰祥曲 齊豫唱

不要問我從那裡來 我的故鄉在遠方
為什麼流浪 流浪遠方 流浪
為了天空飛翔的小鳥 為了山間輕流的小溪
為了寬闊的草原 流浪遠方 流浪
還有還有 為了夢中的橄欖樹 橄欖樹
不要問我從那裡來 我的故鄉在遠方

為了夢中的橄欖樹

Another classic recording of 齊豫... amazing voice..

你是我所有的回憶


你是我所有的回憶
李泰祥 曲﹐侯德建 詞

雨在風中 風在雨裡
你的影子在我腦海搖曳
雨下不停風 風吹不斷雨
風靜雨停 仍揮不去想念的你
看小雨搖曳 看不到你的身影
聽微風低吟 聽不到你的聲音
眼睛不看 耳朵不聽
你是我所有的回憶....

蘇芮

Some nice classics by 蘇芮...

一樣的月光


蘇芮 -《一樣的月光》

1983年臺灣電影《搭錯車》主題曲。

作詞：吳念真/羅大佑 作曲：李壽全

什麼時候兒時玩伴都離我遠去
什麼時候身旁的人已不再熟悉
人潮的擁擠　拉開了我們的距離
沈寂的大地　在靜靜的夜晚默默的哭泣

什麼時候哇鳴蟬聲都成了記憶
什麼時候家鄉變得如此的擁擠
高樓大廈　到處聳立
七彩霓虹把夜空染得如此的俗氣

誰能告訴我　誰能告訴我
是我們改變了世界
還是世界改變了我和你
誰能告訴我　誰能告訴我
是我們改變了世界
還是世界改變了我和你

一樣的月光　一樣的照著新店溪
一樣的冬天　一樣的下著冰冷的雨
一樣的塵埃　一樣的在風中堆積
一樣的笑容　一樣的淚水
一樣的日子　一樣的我和你
一樣的笑容　一樣的淚水
一樣的日子　一樣的我和你

是否


是否這次我將真的離開妳　
是否這次我將不再哭
是否這次我將一去不回頭　
走向那條漫漫永無止境的路

是否這次我已真的離開妳　
是否淚水已乾不再流
是否應驗了我曾說的那句話　
情到深處人孤獨

多少次的寂寞掙扎在心頭　
只為挽回我將遠去的腳步
多少次我忍住胸口的淚水　
只是為了告訴我自己我不在乎

是否這次我已真的離開妳　
是否淚水已乾不再流
是否應驗了我曾說的那句話　
情到深處人孤獨

And, of course, the familiar sound of

酒矸倘賣嘸


歌名：酒矸倘賣嘸 (Any Empty Wine Bottles For Sale?)
主唱：蘇芮
作曲：侯德健
作詞：侯德健


酒矸倘賣嘸 酒矸倘賣嘸...

多麼熟悉的聲音　陪我多少年風和雨
從來不需要想起　永遠也不會忘記

沒有天那有地　沒有地那有家
沒有家那有你　沒有你那有我

假如你不曾養育我　給我溫暖的生活
假如你不曾保護我　我的命運將會是什麼
是你撫養我長大　陪我說第一句話
是你給我一個家　讓我與你共同擁有他

雖然你不能開口說一句話
卻更能明白人世間的黑白與真假
雖然你不會表達你的真情
卻付出了熱忱的生命

遠處傳來你多麼熟悉的聲音
讓我想起你多麼慈祥的心靈
什麼時候再回到我身旁
讓我再和你一起唱

酒矸倘賣嘸 酒矸倘賣嘸...

多麼熟悉的聲音　陪我多少年風和雨
從來不需要想起　永遠也不會忘記

沒有天那有地　沒有地那有家
沒有家那有你　沒有你那有我

多麼熟悉的聲音　陪我多少年風和雨
從來不需要想起　永遠也不會忘記

酒矸倘賣嘸 酒矸倘賣嘸...

To love someone

So... as I was exercising, the man related communication came to my vacuous head...

I thought of the limited number of ex's I have had so far....

Did I love them?

Yes, I did.

Do I still love them now?

No, I don't think so...

Yet... was it really who they were that I loved or did I fall in love or love the images I build for them in my imaginary world? (This ex of mine actually begged me to get back on Depakote, possibly, because who I was when getting off Depakote did not really match with that image of mine in his imaginary world... 8-O lol)

Then, why do we still feel hurt and why do we still have problem letting go of them boys of the past... long time after even after we want them back no more?

Frankly, the reason that we still feel hurt might have more to do with that little boo boo that we got from receiving love from the other party no more... Ouch...

Or, perhaps, it simple has to do with the concept that we want what we love to be ours... just like the rubber stamps that I love.... yet, to be honest, we might be not quite sure what to do shall they be ours...

Then, this head of mine thought...

If you really love someone, you should be able to set them free and let them go....

Like what could be find in many a song...



And, many a quote....

“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.” Richard Bach.

Sounds nice....

Then, I performed a reality check.... and realized that... them boo boos still hurt hurt.... even though, happily, I want to let them go so that they could find what they really love... 8-O lol

Unless... I am again barking at the wrong tree... perhaps... it is me that I need to set free.... (as long as you don't ask me how... 8-O lol)

The man issue III

So... as I was engaging in some chit chatting today, this question came up...

"What is your New Year resolution?"

"Find a husband and make a baby or two, perhaps, since my perfect eggs are getting older with me each everyday..." 8-O lol

Another question might have been... "Why do you want a husband?"

"Long term meal ticket..." So I responded.

So... such candid responses led to this other question....

"What kind of man are you looking for?"

Good question... not quite sure whether I have gotten all of them criteria figured out...

One thing I am really sure was...

"He brings home the cupcake and I provide the frosting."

To help me clarify my unarticulated criteria... this friend of mine asked this other question... something like...

"Are there common traits among your ex's?"

That probing intent didn't go too far... indistinctly, I responded...

"They all are jackasses from hell." 8-O lol

The man issue II

As I was going out the other night, with this friend of mine, we somehow started speaking about this boyfriendless state of mine...

So I spoke of that jackass of mine who went for a trip in Bali with the boys and who, since then, over the rooftop... disappeared...

My wiser friend told me then...

"You need a man... not a boy..."

So, later, I thought to myself.... good point... I need a man... not a boy.... 8-O lol

The man issue I

On my way to work this morning, I stopped by the deli to get my morning coffee where this question came up in our conversation...

"When was the last time you had a boyfriend?"

Well... 3-4 years ago, I would say... since it's been so long that I have stopped counting the years...

So was the response I got... something like...

"You got used to it after a while."

Then, I thought... uhhhhhh.... interesting... No true words...

In addition, before June 19th, 2007, I was busy at work everyday... the 24/7 kinda schedule doesn't really leave me too much room to be lamenting about a boyfriend...

After June 19th, 2007, I was busy learning to walk and dealing with my nerve pains as well as fixing up my mental state.... that doesn't really leave me to much advantage into fishing for a boyfriend... 8-O lol

Collateral damage

On my way to my friends' house for a dinner, this friend of mine said to me...

"Don't eat too much." (OK... message taken...) 8-O lol

Arriving at my friends' house, mama of the house looked at me and said...

"We gotta start losing weight..." (OK... the sign is everywhere... I see... 8-O lol)

So as we sat down for the meal, somewhere along the line I made a comment like...

"Gotta really lose some weight... It's looking like it is 9 months old..."

Then, I thought the number is a bit too much of an exaggeration... and as I was to perform some self-correction... Papa of the house and I spoke at the same time...

"More like 5 months old..." 8-O lol

So mark my story about the "collateral damage" of the holidays.... 8-O lol

In my head

Just came to this realization as I was coming home...

The majority of times, there is nothing really in my head... other than the hallucinations and delusions that come up on their own free will and on their own schedule.... 8-O lol

Such as...

As I was trying to fall asleep last night, this voice went on and on like a broken record...

"Dissolve the fear... Dissolve the fear...."

with the fear referring to all the scary things residing in my psychotic imaginary world... unless more general.... except for I didn't ask about the specifics of the fear that is targeted to be dissolved... 8-O lol

At the same time, it felt as if my hallucinations were trying to hypnotize me... 8-O lol

Facebook again

So, I went back to see whether I could get motivated enough to start my facebook adventure under my true identity...

Then, I got stalled again...

And, I had this insight...

I might have some identity crisis right there... for I can't quite see what I am going to put down under my real name... 8-O

So, I thought of continuing using my pseudo name...

Again, I found myself staring into the page... not quite sure what else I could do with a book with my face on it.

Then, I thought to myself...

Can't teach an old dog new tricks....

I am already locked down by the google applications... (just when I was starting to believe that, the older I get, the less sticky I become... 8-O lol)

==> My brave face... 8-O lol

The theories

Some days, I can't fight this feeling that I am finally about to circle out of the past and this is why the past just kept on coming back to my low-latent-inhibition mind...

Other days, I see myself simply having to many issues and these are but issues that I could not put behind...

How would I know which of the competing theories holds true...

Could only tell in time...

And... with the support of loving intentions from all...

Fresh air

It's been a long long time since the last time when I, be like a good girl, stayed home... and stayed in... without getting out...

Then, just when I about to break that record of mine...

Something told me that... I need to get out to get some fresh air...

Then, as I was waiting for the elevator.... so I thought..

I know I have a whole lot of issues... with this one almost forgotten...

Other than a Sagittarius always needs to get out to the big world for some fresh air...

I had been locked in behind gated bars... in the nuts house, I mean... 8-O lol

Perhaps, this is why... I need and cherish the free will to get out when I could, at my own free will, get my fresh air and get out....

Unless, it is simply... about getting some fresh air and getting out...

Single as Lucy... a... hhhhh

Lucy and I shared some pretty good time together back in them nights in Vancouver...

She used to pick me up after midnights from the Buchanan building after the computer lab is closed. Then, the two of us would be going downtown hitting the dance floor...

Both Lucy and I could have gotten married years ago but the real act of marriage never took place... 8-O lol

This is the kind of relationship that I have when two friends hardly contact each other but the friendship remains... and, we could always simply pick it up from there...

So, as I am watching the replay of Sex and the City, I got this text message on Skype...

It is Lucy...

After greeting her for a Happy New Year, I went directly to this question wishing for a specific response....

"Are you married?"

What came with the response I got was the sinful sense of relief....

"No, single as a bird... U?"

"Was hoping for that answer.... 8-O lol"... ending the quotation with a demolic looking kind of smilie face...

So...

We spoke of the fish in the sea, my preferences of shellfish, her love for abloni, and, how "ladies in our age should be happy to take anything that swim"...

Then, I thought of how, in the episode of Sex and the City, Miranda was getting this phobia about being single and having to die alone.... and how she fought off her developing phobia about singlehood by simply telling people that she was "single"...

It was then when I realized that...

Perhaps, it is not only me...

Perhaps, it is not only about girls and their perception about their single/not single status...

Perhaps, this is a sentiment shared by all single people, be it men or women...

Perhaps, it is some kind of social taboo to be single and it is such an internalized belief that drives us towards that evil wish... to ascertain that there is more than ourselves on this lonely planet....

And, perhaps, it is only... Lucy and me...

Facebook

It seems like that everyone is busy doing the social networking kinda thing nowadays... from myspace to facebook....

So I heard so very frequently nowadays... including these two ladies I met up last night...

I did create an account for either of them...

Yet, I never really have the time to work on them...

Why...

A question I asked myself...

Then, I realized that...

The answer is simple...

I have been working on a faceless presence through my blog...

There doesn't seem to be anything I could offer anyone at my face value.... (though God knows whether there is anything I could offer at all...)

Cow

Some people might call it ox... for me... it is going to be the year of the cow... 8-O lol

What I envy most of the cows is that they have 9 stomachs...

In other words, they could go to one of the all you can eat sea food buffet, eat all they want, and, retrieve all the food from one of the 9 stomachs for all the days to come....

So mark the one of the most ingenious thinking I have for the first day of the 2009....

And, hope you like my nursery grade of cow drawing.... a purple cow with 9 stomachs... 8-O lol