Planning Something HUGE as a Mentally Afflicted Person

Nerves and butterflies are fine - they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager. You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick. ~Steve Bull

Of all that 9-1-1 imbued in us, one outstanding lesson was how we plan. How we plan something as typical as a business trip or as special as a long-distance vacation.

I was pretty sure I was well prepared and more than capable of planning anything, as I was raised by a parent who had shit mapped out not only weeks or months but years in advance. When I was in diapers, it was decided who and what I’d do as I toddled, went to kindergarten, and made it through elementary school. When I was in eighth grade, I knew what I was intended to do about college. When I was starting my career as a teacher, I was made aware of the immediate necessity of a nest egg and retirement plans.

But how we plan as people with a mental difference—Asperger’s, ADD, Bi-polar Disorder—is a whole nother phenomenon, trained/prepared for decades or not….

So when I began, six months in advance, to make notes for moving back to my home state after living in California for thirty years, one of the things I began to get anxious about was the planning for the plane process.

Did I need to carry on my external drive, or would it (with its years of writing/files) get wiped out going through the x-ray machines?

Did I want to pack all hard copy files, notebooks, and writing tools and accessories in a second allowed carry on, so that the only way they would be lost would be if I went down with the plane, too, and therefore wouldn’t care about poetry from 1985?

How much could I handle toting through an airport in the Midwest during the too-short period of layover time—having what I recall was typically less than a half an hour to scurry and trundle through a long labyrinth of gates to get to my connecting flight gate?

That brought me to the next level of obsession—what layers to wear, in case I got too hot, too cold, and at the same time avoiding being too bulky for sitting and moving or too unequipped in case we went down and needed to survive in the high Rockies with just the carry on supplies and what we were wearing.

This made me fixate on how much neon emergency paint I could smuggle aboard for SOS signs, or how much chocolate and water I could secure in case we began to starve.

Then the question of what—of thirty years of amassing—I could do without, could not bear to part with, and could deal with compartmentalizing not only in separate regulation-size baggies in the luggage but in requisite baggies, identifiable containers, non-leaking containers, and right, left, center pockets in carry-ons, jackets, and jeans…, for all that would have to be RE-compartmentalized as it came out of said packed locations and was put into designated and SEPARATE airport security bins (which are actually restaurant bus tubs, as far as I’m concerned), and then RE-compartmentalized as it went back into the luggage, jacket, and jeans—along with the watches and jewelry back on the arms, the clothing back on the body, and the shoes back on the feet, all, I anticipated, in time to NOT hold up the passenger behind or NOT be ripped off by the questionable traveler back there where the laptop, cash bucket, or ID baggie gets snagged on the rolling treadmill of the security machine.

Oh, the anxiety of planning. Anxiety you can minimize only to a certain degree by 1) keeping in mind so much is out of your control you have to TRUST it will work out, and smoothly; 2) keeping some sense of balance, of humor, as you are stripped and shuttled in lines like a prisoner deserving the dehumanization; and 3) realizing that you cannot PLAN an outcome, only how you might respond to the outcome…or to several possible outcomes or scenarios. Anxiety you can reduce only to the degree to which the powers that be have control in the form of acceptable policy and logical organizational strategies they have PLANNED in advance and planned well.

When, after 9-1-1, I would take the small chance of risking the emotional upheaval that even a quick weekend trip to Vegas would incur, I found the airport process severely unnerving…even when I had little to plan, pack, carry on, or carry off. I was careful to limit luggage to one piece, with no sharp shit or questionable liquids involved (never mind that still, some six years later, secret service personnel are stinging the hell out of airlines as they miss the easily smuggled explosives and sharp instruments aboard…when you or I have a big hour-long hold-up if we forget to remove our knitting needles or sewing shears). I wore slip-on shoes. I closed my eyes when they did the wand. And I spoke up when they shuffled my containers with the lap top and the keys, insisting I keep an eye (MY eye) on them at all times, as they had to go back in their assigned pockets and pouches immediately after scanning. [As an ADDer, for example, I MUST keep all frequently used or needed valuables in the same place: putting them back in the same place every single time so that each occasion I go to retrieve them, I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE THEY ARE. Far too many hours are wasted for the “where did I put…, where is that…?” scenes I long ago did away with.

When I packed for what I suspect is the rest of my life in a new location (or the location of childhood), however, I started the hamster wheel of concerns over planning and packing for the plane. I studied the Southwestern rules and regulations and suggestions pages online at least once a day, reminding myself how many packs of matches (in books, not in boxes) I could have, how much toothpaste (for God’s sake) I could have, or what exact type of plastic baggie (Ziplock, LARGE only) I had to use.

Going through the first, then second, then third (because I needed to go OUTSIDE the layover terminal to smoke, of course, requiring I go through the security process AGAIN, thanks terrorists) security measures at two different airports, though, after asking my best friends to remind me again how smooth a process it is these days, I was surprisingly stoic, calm, and confident. I took no shame in removing my overcoat and pullover sweater. I had no problem taking shoes off to reveal bare feet that were bloated and ugly. And I kept my composure as I very meticulously lined up four grey bus tubs, unloaded into them all the rightly placed gear that would make up my new life, and then patiently re-loaded the contents of all four tubs BACK to their rightful pockets and pouches and compartments.

Not because I had obsessed, but because 1) the airport system is much tighter yet smoother; 2) the airplane and flight personnel will not leave without a ticketed passenger, so there is no need to freak on being late because of the lengthy security process; and because I had PLANNED to respond as sanely as possible to the insanity-inducing dynamics that are, in this case, traveling regimes.

Whew. Still fully relieved that kind of demand on my psyche is over…for now, anyway.

If it won’t affect you five years from now, let it go now. ~Dan O’Leary, my wise high school Latin teacher

We Wanted NEXT to Be over Our Heads. It Wasn't

Next was stilted, stiff, stifled, and stifling. Next was a promise of telepathic symphony, one which in all its complexities and abstractions should have had us still querying, quizzical, and coo coo over the depth of the concept and delivery.

But the only time[s] we tilted our heads like Rover and went, "err?" were those times we didn't get it not because of the film's multi-dimensions but we didn't get it because it was too insubstantial, too limited in development, too weakly constructed to get.

In one set-up for what was obviously going to be an action scene, for instance, Cris has given Liz an exact time to trigger an avalanche of artifacts (which happen to be car- and train-sized antiques). The crashing and tumbling vehicles and parts are rushing down the mountain-side after the FBI agents who are after Johnson. At the bottom, at the road where a cruiser is parked, FBI agent Ferris [a usually stunning but here blah Julianne Moore] is inches from apprehending Johnson. The foreshadowing [for the characters] of rocks a tumble-crumbling lends itself to what one would think would be a "let's get the hell out of here/duck and cover" respnse from FBI agent Ferris. Instead, she stands stock still, as if she has had no crisis-intervention training whatsoever, and says, "Are you just going to let me die?" This prompts Johnson to grab her and protect her and etc., when she should have had the brawn, the balls, the busto gusto to save her own ass.

Just out of context were so many moments like these and so many concepts otherwise SF thriller, PK Dick, mental magic movie fan worthy elsewhere (in other films).

My point here is that with 1) a Philip K Dick piece; 2) the concept of telepathy, time travel, and parallel universes/multiple worlds; and 3) far-reaching performance skills of the likes of Nic Cage, Julianne Moore, and Peter Falk (!), this movie could have been deeper, denser, richer and more a water cooler movie than Blade Runner.

With number 2) alone, consider the possibilities--given the cinematic technology within reach, what we know and have yet to know, and what Philip K Dick has provided in the most brilliant of SF literature:

Cris Johnson has a psychic gift that is not triggered, per se, and is not an affliction (except when it is leeched upon by the FBI). The opening casino scene, with Johnson eluding by way of knowing--up to two minutes in advance--establishes a beautifully timed series of moves, ducks, dashes that set up the premise so engagingly. The diner scene, wherein Johnson revises his interested in Liz approach several times over, also offers some depth of psychic possibility. But then the overreaching (and redundant) plot--with the terrorists armed with a nuclear bomb planned for L.A., et. al.--clunks up the concept and we move further from the mechanisms of a telepathic psyche and into the action scenes that do little more than replicate screeching tire sounds, suddenly-appearing on the building horizon FBI copter images, and ho-hum foot-chase movements.

Johnson's psychic gifts in action could have been more developed--and hence, more interesting, even fascinating.

Lines like the one about changing the future every time you look at it could have contributed so nicely to a deeper template, ala the quantum theory premise that what is being observed changes by being observed.

And character affects such as Johnson's ability to split exponentially [to search for Liz] could have been used earlier, elsewhere, and in better, more suited contexts. (If Johnson had the ability, that is--assuming it didn't suddenly, conveniently develop--he would have been better served by it to, say, escape that Clockwork Orange contraption or elude the token bad guys earlier or later.

I have always adored Cage and will continue to do so--for several reasons. But Next didn't do him justice, didn't do anyone justice, especially not Philip K Dick, the best SF writer to date.

Thank the thinking gods, just get down on your movie-viewing-room carpet and praise the Hollywood heavens that the same filmmakers have not dared touch The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Now that's one Nic should consider doing with a genius team such as Ang Lee and David Lynch in collaboration. That would make for a great SF, Thriller, Action flick we would be scratching our heads over for decades to come.

Mental Illness in Film

FILMS with MENTAL ILLNESS THEMES or FEATURES [YES, OFTEN BASED on the BOOKS]

More will be revealed/discussed for each of the following:

Angst (1983)
Antonia’s Line (1995)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
As Good as it Gets (1997)
Beautiful Dreamers (1990)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
The Best of Youth [La meglio gioventu] (2003)
Birdy (1984)
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Bug (2006)
The Brood (1979)
Canvas (2007)
Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter (1994)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
Dialogues with Madwomen (1994)
Donnie Darko (2001)
Down Came a Blackbird (1995)
Fit to be Untied [Matti da slagare ] (1975)
Frances (1982)
Gaslight (1944)
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
The Green Mile (1999)
Harvey (1950)
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not [A la folie… pas du tout] (2002)
Herrenpartie [Stag Party] (1964)
Hide and Seek (2005)
I am Sam (2001)
In My Skin [Dans ma Peau] (2002)
Infection [Kansen] (2004)
Innerspace (1987)
The Last Supper [Posledna vecera] (2000)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Man Facing Southeast [Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste] (1986)
Marvin's Room (1996)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Mrs. Dalloway (1997)
My Name is Allen, and I Paint Pictures [documentary] (2007)
Mystic River (2003)
Nell (1994)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Ordinary People (1980)
The Other Sister (1999)
Out of the Shadow [documentary] (2004)
Persona (1966)
Primal Fear (1996)
Prozac Nation (2001)
Psycho (1960)
Rain Man (1988)
Regeneration (1997)
Reign Over Me (2007)
Repulsion (1965)
Respiro (2002)
Rozwoj (2001)
Shine (1996)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Tarnation [docu-drama] (2004)
Tehzeeb (2003)
The Shining (1980)
The Snake Pit (1948)
The Son's Room [La stanza del figlio] (2001)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Thin (2006)
The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Vacation [La vacanza] (1971)
Warrendale (1967)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Mental Illness Literature

FICTION and NONFICTION BOOKS about/FOCUSED on THEMES of
MENTAL ILLNESS


AUTISM
Gradin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with
Autism.
(recommended by the NDCWU**)




CHRONIC DEPRESSION/SUICIDAL DEPRESSION

Casey, Nell. Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar.
(written about and by a young woman--and a stunningly adept creative
writer--whom we lost when she successfully committed suicide after
numerous attempts)

Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America.
(the title says it all, but the writer covers even more--in great, even
severe, depth)





CUTTING and SELF-MUTILATION
Greenberg, Joanne. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
(again the desperate need to feel/escape the mind)

Jameson, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet Mind: a Memoir of Moods and
Madness.
(an exploration of the insidious highs and trenchant lows that resist
treatment and at the same time cry for it, written by a Ph.D. with Manic
Depression)

Kettlewell, Caroline. Skin Game: a Memoir.
(revealing discussions and descriptions of what is to be a cutter, one
who is compelled to cut herself to gain imperative relief)

GENERAL MENTAL ILLNESS
Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted.
(memoir of young woman institutionalized for mental imbalance,
written with a dark humor that is subtle, penetrating, and brilliant)

Milford, Nancy. Zelda. (biography chronicling the life and descent of
multi-talented, multi-afflicted Zelda Fitzgerald)

Sheed, Wilfred. In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery


MPD, MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER
Chase, Truddi. When Rabbit Howls.
(powerful rendering of the evolution of a child growing up with MPD,
Multiple Personality Disorder)

Schreiber, Flora Rheita. Sybil.
(the definitive MPD story)

OCD, OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER
Sedaris, David. "A Plague of Tics." In Naked.
(utterly hysterical short story told from the point of view of a boy with
OCD--who licks light switches to keep his disorder content and
counting)
Styron, William. Darkness Visible.
(Styron’s memoirs on living with and around depression.)

Wilensky, Amy. Passing For Normal: A Memoir of Compulsion.

Handler, Lowell. Twitch and Shout: A Touretter's Tale.**

Morgan, Emma. A Stillness Built of Motion: Living with Tourette's**

ADD/ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER (a.k.a. ADHD)
Brown, Dale S.. A Guide to Planning Your Career and Finding a Job for People with Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Dyslexia.**

Emery, Dr. Kevin Ross. Managing the Gift: Alternative Approaches for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Jameson, Kay Redfield. Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

Kelly, Kate, and Peggy Mundo. You Mean I'm Not Stupid, Lazy, or Crazy?!: A Self-help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Nettle, Daniel. Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature.

Phillips, Deborah, et.al.. Writing Well: Creative Writing and Mental Health.

Traustadottir, Ranveig, and Kelley Johnson. Women with Intellectual Disabilities: Finding a Place in the World.

Weiss, Lynn, Ph.D. ADD and Creativity.

Madmen, Madwomen

WRITERS DETERMINED/CONSIDERED MENTALLY DISTURBED

deBalzac bipolar disorder
John Berryman
Art Buckwald depression
Charles Dickens manic depression
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald
Goethe bipolar disorder
Ernest Hemingway suicidal depression [in later years]
James Joyce
John Keats
Robert Lowell bipolar disorder
Nietzsche
Eugene O'Neill clinical depression
Dorothy Parker
Sylvia Plath suicidal depression
William Styron
Tolstoy
Tennessee Williams clinical depression
Virginia Woolf bipolar disorder

ACTORS CONSIDERED MENTALLY ILL

Drew Carey depression
Tony Dow depression
Patty Duke [Astin] bipolar disorder
Margot Kidder bipolar disorder
Vivien Leigh bipolar disorder
Rod Steiger depression
Tracey Ullman bipolar

MUSICIANS, VISUAL ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, and OTHER WELL-KNOWN MADMEN and MADWOMEN

Lionel Aldridge paranoid schizophrenia
Diane Arbus depression
Beethoven manic depression/bipolar disorder
Daniel Boorstin bipolar disorder
Kurt Cobain
Winston Churchill bipolar disorder
Gaetano Donizetti bipolar disorder
Kitty Dukakis bipolar disorder
Thomas Eagleton depression
Einstein
George Frederick Handel bipolar disorder
Frida Kahlo
Abraham Lincoln suicidal depression
Gustav Mahler bipolar disorder
Michelangelo
Isaac Newton
Vaslov Nijinsky schizophrenia
Georgia O’Keefe
Jimmy Piersall
Bertrand Russell
Robert Schumann bipolar disorder
Ted Turner bipolar disorder
Vincent Van Gogh depression
Sol Wachtler bipolar disorder
Mike Wallace depression

More Madness

Pablo Picasso “The Tragedy” (1903)




Vincent Van Gogh “Corridor in the Asylum” (1889)
















Vincent Van Gogh “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” (version2, 1890)
















Eugene Delacroix "Torquato Tasso in the Hospital of St. Anna Ferrara" (1824)



















Vincent Van Gogh “Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear” (1889)

Madness in Art

Pablo Picasso “The Old Guitarist” (1903)










Edvard Munch “The Scream” (1893)








Francisco Goya “Courtyard with Lunatics (1793)











Theodore Gericault “The Madman” (1822)

Sources on Mental Illness and Creativity

INTERESTING ARTICLES on MENTAL ILLNESS and CREATIVITY



Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives
NC Andreasen

Considering Creativity: The 'Sylvia Plath' effect Deborah Smith Bailey

Mental illness meets creativity in new journal of literary arts Laurie Davis

Creativity & Mental Illness: Are Writers Quite Possibly Out of Their Minds? Sherri Granato

The Mad Gene: Creativity and Mental Illness Aia Hussein

The lunatic is in the grass…. Pink Floyd

INSANITY/LUNACY

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

~Soren Kierkegaard

For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; the worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

~Alexander Pope

The difference between genius and insanity is measured only by success.

~Bruce Feirstein

I'm a nut, but not just a nut.

~Bill Murray

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

~Jean Dubuffet

I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.

~Desiderius Erasmus

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

~T.S. Eliot

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

~Albert Einstein

Perhaps a lunatic is simply a minority of one.

~Oscar Wilde

I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs, or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

~Hunter S. Thompson

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.

~ R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

What is madness but nobility of soul. At odds with circumstance?

~Theodore Roethke

The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is merely a literary cliché, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there is not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there and the sick are in here. For example, you are in here because you have delusions that sane people are put in mental hospitals.

~ Tom Stoppard

I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and not know it than to be sane and have one's doubts.

~ G B Burgin
You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
~ Robin Williams

A man who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

~ Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit.

~Nathaniel Emmons

Sanity is madness put to good uses.

~ George Santayana

A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are.

~ William Ellery Channing

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

~John Lennon

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

~ Angela Monet

MADNESS/MENTAL ILLNESS

MADNESS

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

~ Aristotle

I teach that all men are mad.

~Horace

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

~Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”


There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "On Tranquility of the Mind,"

Today I felt pass over me
A breath of wind from the wings of madness.

~ Charles Baudelaire

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

~Samuel Beckett

Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.

~ Diogenes

Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.

~proverb

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.

~Antonin Artaud

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

~ Mark Twain


Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

~Baltasar Gracian


MENTAL ILLNESS

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

~ Rita Mae Brown

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.

~ Marcel Proust

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.

~Ludwig Wittgenstein


MENTAL DISORDER

He who considers disease results to be the disease itself, and expects to do away with these as diseases, is insane. It is an insanity in medicine, an insanity that has grown out of the milder forms of mental disorder in science, crazy whims.

~James Tyler Kent