"Life’s so full of pretty lies and ugly smiles. Often best to walk along whistling - with a knife in your boot."

-©Banjk 6.09

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Last night the midnight hour rolled and from the black fell that 39th stone.

A heavy obsidian fucker warning me that I’m out of time. It’s all down hill from here.

It’s there, hissing from atmospheric descent. Squat, menacing, reflecting. A big black eye amongst the field of stones, ruins and structures.

My life…to this moment.

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1. Take the minds of those I love.
2. Drag my sanity through the mud.
3. Cut me open with a knife.
4. Leave me bleeding with my life.

Yeah. That’s the short list!

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Today they came. As the family rolled back from a day at the zoo with friends we crashed into the wall of an approaching line of severe thunderstorms.

For several hours my phone had alerted me to the possibilities of devious elemental surprises. I’ll be honest. There was a twittter of shock in my tiny heart that for once the weather voodoomen were on track.

The storm pulled dust, sand and salt from the desert and blew it east. We drove into a wall of silver backlit by filtered sunlight. Wind twisted trees, flags, pedestrians…debris, everything.

The rain, lightning and thunder followed us home. Now, hours after dark the soaking rains are settling over the desert.

It’s beautiful.

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**Repost**

Spent this week in the reflecting pool looking at the birds.

Curious species with those colorful feathers and lyrical ballads of warning and sex…odd, amazing and tasty all at once.

In case you were wondering, I played the roll of Cat in the reflecting pool this week.  The audience loved it.  The birds didn’t like it…matters not since the critics weren’t either species anyhow.

Throw away the curtain of Metaphor above and add a veil of illusion and I’ll tell you the truth of my speaking.

I was using some plain old exorcism.  Hunting ghosts, tagging them and crossing them down to the fire of Shorokahn.  They should be comfortable there with the other dammed souls.

I rescued a few as well.  Lifted them from the fires, gave them light.  Hopefully they’ll stay well this time and remain free of trouble.  I’d hate to have to go in after them again.

Do you see what I’m doing here, in the reflecting pool?  Watching the sun set down, light the sky with a canvas of forgotten colors?  It’s going to get dark soon, here in Rainland.  I need to prepare.

Tiger’s off far and away.  My eyes are light.  I’ve got my party hat on, and the music’s good.  Behind me is lightning and in front is fire.

I’m Tarot Card magic baby…The Fool, Death and The Magician all on one face.

Let’s play.

-Banjk

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posted Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:04:44 -0700

So, we’re going to take a break from the history here for a while and just talk about the moment. I’m a linear kind of guy. Meaning that I really strive to live in the moment. Unfortunately the Past has me by the balls. I will illustrate this pretty simply by something I like to call: “Banjk’s Better Life Through Television!”

I have this favorite TV show (I’ll give kuddos to anyone who guesses it and puts it in a comment…) that is no longer being run (but it is in syndication…BIG HINT!). In an episode of this show, the main character is trying to figure out why he is so unhappy. Another character keeps taking him through the painful and pleasurable moments in his life, but keeps returning to one of the most painful memories. The main character turns to his tormentor and asks “Why do you keep bringing me here?” To which the tormentor replies simply, “Because you exist here. This is your past, but you exist in this moment.” Now, true, I’ve paraphrased…so forgive me, but hopefully you get the idea.

Why is it that I have such difficulty getting beyond certain moments in my life? They come back and grab me by the neck and shake me like a child until I am that moment and I am feeling those emotions. I am raw and naked in those seconds, those days - and for me time stops and the clock spins backwards and I am lost to the past. Reality is nothing but a split mirror and I have to live with the reflection of what is happening now and what happened then and it’s usually the feelings of then that overwhelm the now.

That is what I am fighting now. The only weapons I have against it are medications that I have to take in times of need and asking others for help. It’s hard to ask for help at 1AM - so help comes in the form of a little pink pill and a keyboard.

Nitey-night.

-banjk

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My parents are wonderful people. I won’t say too much about them except that they did a wonderful job of providing for me. They had their problems, they were old school in the punishment/discipline department, but they were very loving. I do know there were a couple of close calls in the divorce arena and there were some hellacious fights.

What I can say about them is this, they did whatever it took to keep their kids safe.

After I began to detox from my three+ years of drug addiction my dad took a job in Flagstaff, Arizona. This job sent him frequently to mainland China for weeks at a time. We still lived in norther Utah at the time so my dad left us to get things set up. My mom was finishing her Bachelor’s degree and was busy working full time and doing her schooling. I was busy staying off drugs (if you’ve done it, you know it’s a full time job) and trying to keep my moods and my illness in check (keep in mind, I still didn’t know I had an illness, even though I’d been seeing a shrink!)

In time, we moved. It was summer, so I spent a month bouncing around my house in Flagstaff with my older brother (my oldest brother stayed in Utah) utterly bored and friendless. I can say it was one of the lonliest times of my life. After school started I quickly made friends and was finally allowed to get my driver’s license. I joined the Cross Country Track team and got in reasonably good shape. I also joined a band and started drinking…a lot. I pretty much stayed away from drugs - other than alcohol, and my grades improved. But I also hit a wall. My right knee finally blew out (a result of the afformentioned car accident) and I couldn’t run anymore. I had surgery and went into months of physical therapy. During this time I also got some kind of strange infection and went on an anti-biotic called Ceclor. After taking this med for a week I remember walking into the dining room while my parents were arguing and looking at them. It was pathetic, they were standing there bickering. I couldn’t stand it! I turned and just started yelling at them to shut up. My mom looked startled. My dad spun around and crossed the room as if to strike me down where I stood. I just broke down.

The next day at the doctor’s office, they said the Ceclor had probably killed all the “good stuff” in my guts and caused a yeast infection that was causing mood swings…what a load of shit!

From there, I entered a multi-month manic phase. Binge drinking, I stole cars, got in fights, engaged in some very risky behavior, got very sexual and just became a different person. My parents (dad especially) didn’t quite know what to do with me! They had decided to move to Flagstaff, in part, to save me and now I was on another path to destruction!

Insert Rudy…my first friend in Flagstaff. He had sort of floated away from me for a few months. I ran into him again at a party and we began talking about drugs. I was convinced that drugs were all bad…there was no good use for them (he said with a beer in his hand…HA!) Rudy (who was Native American) laughed at me and reminded me that there were times where the use of “drugs” could be of great benefit to expand one’s understanding of life.

Where this conversation led and how it effected my life will be another story all together. Trust me! Suffice it to say, it ended the Manic fringe upon which I was living.

Unfortunately, the diversion in Flagstaff that had been my Junior year of High School, was at an end. My parents had already decided to move back to Utah. Whether they thought I was beyond saving or they thought I was saved…or just beyond hope, who knows. My older brother and I packed up our stuff, jumped in the truck and drove up to our old house in Utah where we would stay with our oldest brother until the parents arrived.

My old friends were waiting for the person who had left a year earlier…what they got was the person who had been altered by a year in Arizona. When I went back to school for my Senior year no one recognized me at first…they had forgotten who I was. When they made the connection between the person I was and the person that stood before them they couldn’t believe it. I guess the year in Arizona had done something for the better. But the problem was that I was more dangerous. I did things that I regret far more…my behavior was far worse.

The project to save Private Banjk had saved the boy…but it had created a monster. And in the cage the Tiger began to rage.

-banjk

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This is a pretty hard lesson for anyone with a mental illness to learn. Most of our lives we go through a cycle of self medication. We are undiagnosed and our minds and bodies are trying desperately to correct what’s going on…trying to create some balance and sense of “normalcy”. Of course, the only things available are what’s convenient. Those are usually illegal drugs and alcohol. For people suffering from Bipolar disorder (like me) the rates of self medication are tremendous. It’s also interesting to note the number of Bipolars who are drawn to practices like Meditation, Yoga and Tia-Chi. Unfortunately…for most, these are just not quite enough.

Beginning at the age of 13 I really went off. My mother’s vow to survive her cancer had worked. She survived. There was always a bank of medications available in the hall closet and I started to pull from those in times of need. I was pretty careful at first. When I noticed I was feeling “too good” I would take something to bring me down. When I felt “too low” I would take something to bring me up. My favorite pills became valium and pain killers. I was also able to con pretty much any of my friends out of anything I needed so I wouldn’t have to pay for anything. By the time I was 15 I was suffering memory gaps and was pretty much out of my skull all the time. I remember waking up in an alley once with blood all over my arms and no cuts anywhere on me. I remember a bed with a tangled knot of naked sleeping bodies and no idea how I got there or what had happened. I remember a lot of events, but nothing leading up to them.

It was funny though, during this whole time I had 2 rules. 1. Nothing with needles (i.e. Heroine). And 2. No Cocaine. Don’t know why I had those rules…guess I didn’t want to become a junky…heheheh!

Eventually, the crash came. It was pretty simple and anti-climactic. I got in a pretty bad car accident while sluffing school. Drugs had nothing to do with it and it wasn’t our fault at all. But I did get banged up pretty bad. The car we hit became a horseshoe, spun across 3 lanes of traffic, hopped a curb, hit a building and then bounced back into traffic. He had pulled out in front of us when we were only 20 feet away doing the speed limit of 55. He’s lucky to be alive. I was the only person in our car to be hurt.

Later that week I was in my Psych class and we were talking about illegal drugs. I started checking the list and I was surprised to find out that there were days that I was taking up to 13 of these per day. Needless to say, it started me wondering what I was doing to myself and why! I was a pretty wild kid who had explosive emotional outbursts and rages. I would go for long periods of time without speaking to anyone and drawing pictures of bad things and writing poetry about death. Then I would suddenly pop up and begin moving at a million miles per hour and become the weird life of the party. A strange chaos generator.

I got home that night to find my mom waiting for me with a very simple question: “Are you on drugs?”

I looked at her, I started to cry.

“Yes” I replied.

-banjk

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Cold morning, Winter. I remember this was in Logan, Utah. My mother had been diagnosed with terminal Lymphoma during the summer and had vowed to fight it…but the woman that had vowed to fight did not resemble the bald, skeletal wraith that lay in a darkened room at my house. I was a child who knew little of life and death struggles, I knew little of stress and I knew nothing of mental illness. All I knew that morning was that it was cold, that the sun was shining and that I was waiting for the bus to take me to school.

I was 8 years old.

How did I feel before the bus came? What had happened earlier that particular morning? Was anything out of the ordinary? I don’t know - I don’t remember. I remember the bus pulling up and squealing to a stop. I shouldered my bag and climbed aboard. I do remember this, I felt nothing as I shuffled to a seat beside my waiting friends. Then I remember turning to sit and a very strange thing happened…I disconnected. I felt like I was floating just a little behind and above myself. It wasn’t alarming, but I must have looked strange because I do know one of my friends asked if I was okay.

That feeling has never really gone away. I can identify that moment as one of the first signs that something was wrong. That was the moment that I left my self behind. The feeling has waxed and waned as the illness has taken me and let me go. Sometimes it’s almost imperceptible and other times its that feeling that someone is behind you, pushing you…or that you’re spinning inside yourself. In the worst cases it makes your hands and feet feel like they’re huge balloons…then you know you’re in for one hell of a ride!

That was the first sign. If I’d shut my eyes in that moment and turned around, I wonder if I would have seen the Tiger…just being born?

That cage just doesn’t seem quite as empty now, does it?

-banjk

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Turn around and look behind you. See that left you took half a lifetime ago? That’s the little divergence (the deviation) which led you from There to Here.

Robert Frost mumbled about it.

We’ve all wondered its ramifications.

Authors muse its many meanings in pages, flickers and frames.

Where did we come from and what led us to this step we’re taking? Will it create another deviation? Another crossroads? Are we going to turn around in that future, look back and wonder the same question we’re all doing now? What’s gonna greet us?

Regret or joy or a tide of something unseen.

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