Enlightenment -Don't Know What It Is/ & the Persistence of Memory

It's interesting thing, this PTSD, it was only after about 30 years working in palliative care that I actually blurted out to a colleague the actual witnessed trauma I went through when I was 9 years old and saw a school-friend, a nice friend, a boy, David, de-capitated whilst crossing the street, when his head was hit by a hurtling along white truck's side-mirror steel housing; Goodness me, the quivering sticky splatter of blood and grey matter all over my face. It's still the clearest image in my mind really, and all the horror attached to the witnessing of it is still there within me, although there has been some healing.
So, just blurting this out to a colleague FIFTY YEARS after the event caused me to not be able to ever really go back and work in that unit again.
It was Michel de Montaigne in 1548(?) who said that the best way to remember something vividly was to try really hard to forget it.
So, I think that's the Human Condition in my experience.
Mind you, as for Palliative Care, the Clinical Realm, I'm really glad I'm out of it now. I can teach it, advise about it, pontificate about it,  speak on it, write about it as the brilliant advanced human care it is, for sure, but no more the doing. No more of those sad goodbyes.

"The sad endings you pursue, are simply things complete."

and as for his song "If I was Your Girlfriend" well, um, well...um....no.

I love PRINCE and think he is the most innovative creative musical mind for many many manies...but...

but when he sings Do Me Baby Like You've Never Done Me Before...does anyone really want to visualise that?

the final poem EAST MEDIA from the East Media/PTSD collection of 1982-1984

East Media


the sun is new
and low in the East
a medium announcing itself
and that other living in this one

there is little to say
little to keep
the bodies of green horses
and a hundred echoes
and then only two
two
two

these echoes begin and end in you
the pale projection
fading

the spectred night
no other
other
other...

emptied grace
art: the emptied hand

the golden yards

the rhythm of counterpoint

damn you

tenderness

tenderness once

man surfing a tsunami/OH! I Know That Feeling! That's called Terminal Velocity Voluntary Water-Boarding. I bet the Surfer is eternally grateful to the Guy on the Jet Ski who towed him into that one.

I wonder if the Surfer, just after letting go of the tow rope, thought to himself..."Gee, I wonder if that really was the right time to 'Let Go' of all my silly fears...."

Reflections on PTSD

When working in Mental Health I did notice that some colleagues pointed out to me that in some of my writings I was 'disclosing' things about my life, and that this somehow maybe wasn't such a good idea...and I never really fully understood why.

I know that following disclosure comes a massive 'wave' of blackness as the mind tries to 'take it all back and hide it deep'...and that wave is very frightening indeed and very isolating, somewhat torturous, but at the same time, I think that if you just keep saying the truth about your life, eventually, decades later, you do realise what it is...you actually do 'arrive on the shore' and see the power of that 'Great Sea' of turmoil and isolation and cold fear, but from a distance, there on the warm sand where other people are and have always been.

You can sometimes even lie down on the sunny airy sand, relax just a little, look around and see some really nice looking people there, hear some music, have an ice cream, walk along with someone you love, unafraid, and even enjoy the sound of the Great Rhythms of all the Seas, not just the Dark One.

PTSD The Black Park Poem/probably the most authentic PTSD study poem where the split in consciousness into boy and man in communication, as a survival method, comes closest to Schizophrenia whilst masquerading as Bipolarity from time to time.

The Black Park

 

not certain

how much should be said

how much detained

for further questioning
 

not certain

how many terrorists

still operate

under the guise of common language

and common love.

 

I have listened to you

from where the idea bursts
in the Great Sea

to where the green horses

wash up on a simple tide.

 

I have listened to you

which is, you said, all you wanted.
 

I have visited the Black Park

where the fear begins

and I found no one there but me.