A voice travels
in a river
scattered, unshattered
at times
pitchers of flashbacks
picked up from the floor
to the clouds
An estuary's
geometric discords
suspending hands over
blank scores
Choirs recast from
exotic swimmers among
graded flavors
Eroding sand piles conducting
water in crisis
to a deeper embrace
humming unfamiliar notes
In a deafening discourse
a voice returns
or not returns
to an absorbing silence
persisting in vain.
- 10/5/2019, Palo Alto
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Teacher
A teacher
or a door
to an unimagined world
of strange
and stranger
creatures
of a pink sky
or a blue floor
afloat, marshmallow boats
of choreographed molecules
or enslaved shoes
a brain, in mindless moves
a teacher
or a world
over the shoulder
a disappearing
one way door.
7-13-2019, Palo Alto
In memory of Dr. Armin Fuchs.
or a door
to an unimagined world
of strange
and stranger
creatures
of a pink sky
or a blue floor
afloat, marshmallow boats
of choreographed molecules
or enslaved shoes
a brain, in mindless moves
a teacher
or a world
over the shoulder
a disappearing
one way door.
7-13-2019, Palo Alto
In memory of Dr. Armin Fuchs.
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Journey to the West
They sentence him to death
the murderous
Time
From tail to brow
travelers wander
from water
to stranger water
passing through what was left of
drained veins on a
red skull
In the company of windy thoughts
they were lost
in themselves
the wanderers of the skull
Into the past
of a dream foreseen
where lives could never live
wanderers of the disappearing womb
arrive at the beginning
where they've never been
- 5/4/2019, in Palo Alto
the murderous
Time
From tail to brow
travelers wander
from water
to stranger water
passing through what was left of
drained veins on a
red skull
In the company of windy thoughts
they were lost
in themselves
the wanderers of the skull
Into the past
of a dream foreseen
where lives could never live
wanderers of the disappearing womb
arrive at the beginning
where they've never been
- 5/4/2019, in Palo Alto
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Functional depression
I was in the Student Health Center to get some menstrual disorder checked. That was a winter afternoon of 2011. The doctor first let me filled out a tiny piece of questionnaire, apparently about mental well-being. After the exam, she said "I'm not at all worried about your uterus, but I'm very worried about this" waving the piece of questionnaire and asked me to go to a consultant.
I did not, because I knew exactly what was wrong - I was trapped in multiple situations extremely toxic to my mind that a consultant has no power to fix. I knew it when the depression was getting the better of me. I was almost amused how some remote memories of DSM definitions from undergraduate Abnormal Psychology class came back to mind, "Wow! This is exactly like what the textbook said". But I did not feel abnormal, but thought it was a reasonable reaction to the circumstances. In fact, that was the most sobering experience so far in my life. It gave me time to look at myself, accept what I was, and acknowledge that it was okay to not force myself to be something I cannot be.
If you have a local infection on your body, the body begin to have some inflammation in response, to defend the tissue. The doctor would say "you had an infection" and treat you by removing the pathogen, knowing that the inflammation was doing its job. Now if you are in an environment where you were coerced to do things against your nature, and you had a depression in response, then there's something abnormal about you. People would begin to give you different medical advises except to remove yourself from that environment, because they themselves do not respond to that environment in the same way and/or they believe it's beyond their power to change that environment. Why not just disable the defense mechanism and pretend you did not have an infection?
Over the years, I have seen multiple friends or friends' friends experiencing, what I call, a "functional depression" in response to the situation that poisoned them. That is not to say a functional depression won't have dire consequences, just like a functional immune system may not win the battle over every inflection. There can also be dysfunctional depression, just like a dysfunctional immune system may attack healthy tissues. But more likely than not, the system is just doing its job, otherwise evolution would have eliminated the species equipped with such a useless system.
This is just a piece of my unscientific thought on depression. I have to constantly remind myself that when a friend is in distress, first consider what's poisoning them, rather than what's wrong with them. Because it is much easier to regard "everyone is different" as a trivial fact that everyone knows, than to act according to that knowledge.
4-14-2018 Boca
If you have a local infection on your body, the body begin to have some inflammation in response, to defend the tissue. The doctor would say "you had an infection" and treat you by removing the pathogen, knowing that the inflammation was doing its job. Now if you are in an environment where you were coerced to do things against your nature, and you had a depression in response, then there's something abnormal about you. People would begin to give you different medical advises except to remove yourself from that environment, because they themselves do not respond to that environment in the same way and/or they believe it's beyond their power to change that environment. Why not just disable the defense mechanism and pretend you did not have an infection?
Over the years, I have seen multiple friends or friends' friends experiencing, what I call, a "functional depression" in response to the situation that poisoned them. That is not to say a functional depression won't have dire consequences, just like a functional immune system may not win the battle over every inflection. There can also be dysfunctional depression, just like a dysfunctional immune system may attack healthy tissues. But more likely than not, the system is just doing its job, otherwise evolution would have eliminated the species equipped with such a useless system.
This is just a piece of my unscientific thought on depression. I have to constantly remind myself that when a friend is in distress, first consider what's poisoning them, rather than what's wrong with them. Because it is much easier to regard "everyone is different" as a trivial fact that everyone knows, than to act according to that knowledge.
 |
| Land life |
Sunday, February 25, 2018
The Machine
The giant lies on its side.
Blood spirals into
electric rivers
in a breathing box.
New souls are born on
the plastic prairie
now engulfed by fate,
their feet soldered to chains,
their voice turned into sand.
Were not for a paradoxical thought,
the giant would not have fallen
into silence.
Children watch for a hundred years of decay
waiting to live.
- 2/25/2018 in Boca
Blood spirals into
electric rivers
in a breathing box.
New souls are born on
the plastic prairie
now engulfed by fate,
their feet soldered to chains,
their voice turned into sand.
Were not for a paradoxical thought,
the giant would not have fallen
into silence.
Children watch for a hundred years of decay
waiting to live.
- 2/25/2018 in Boca
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Whiskey emergency
Domes of oaks
perching by the water
are mildewed handles of a blue kettle
sitting on a cloud of barks
hunting for haunted souls.
The sun has fallen
in a hole of earth
mutters in a coma
cannot be heard
from three steps aside.
Trees fallen
in a darkness never seen
are flaming mementos of the day.
Shadows ambush the flickers.
A song beats the strings.
Dry tears of a whiskey bottle
roll down the chimney
left lukewarm.
Travelers await voices of the night
and a rescue awry.
Cold fog
descends on a torched face.
An emergency dawns on the sober eyes
a ritual unsustained.
The sun undress
to put down white ashes
and a drained chest.
1/3/2018
to record a camping trip with C, J, & K.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
The game
By the shallow stream
of shaded stones
sit two friends
who is one in one's mind
where the darker
are darker than the brighter
the brighter
brighter than the darker
handful of the assorted
more assorted than what are not
Then the game shall begin
One has the darker move ashore
One has the brighter join the stream
One cannot though
be more elaborate
than the other
whose dream one dwells
One wins over
a loser imagined
who triumphs
in a reign transverse
One left
who are two players
dreaming
and dreamt about.
9/3/17 Boca
of shaded stones
sit two friends
who is one in one's mind
where the darker
are darker than the brighter
the brighter
brighter than the darker
handful of the assorted
more assorted than what are not
Then the game shall begin
One has the darker move ashore
One has the brighter join the stream
One cannot though
be more elaborate
than the other
whose dream one dwells
One wins over
a loser imagined
who triumphs
in a reign transverse
One left
who are two players
dreaming
and dreamt about.
9/3/17 Boca
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