Tag: bipolar

  • Checkup at the Asylum

    Checkup at the Asylum

    It’s been five months. The break from reality began the second week of December. Insomnia kicked in first. Then came the tremors. As the winters days turned darker, the moods thickened. A mention of Christmas, the black hole in my existence, put me in a rage. I could howl the roof off the house. Then […]

  • As a Professor, Sometimes I’m Pretty Stupid…

    As a Professor, Sometimes I’m Pretty Stupid…

    I was worried the past few days. I was getting sick–again. The manic depression that had hurled me into a psychotic attack in December nearly did me in. My family and I got through it, but it was a dangerous time. Bipolar is a progressive, organic brain disease. And it’s a killer. The brain deteriorates […]

  • Ode to Instagram

    Ode to Instagram

    I stayed away from the thing for a long time. To me, it was just another waste of entire days, something that got in the way of reading poetry or having coffee with a real human being across the table. And, it is, or it can be. But, that’s a question of self-discipline. I stayed […]

  • Our Guns, Our Madness

    Our Guns, Our Madness

    Dear Reader: This is from the archives, I wrote it after the massacre in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, it’s a timeless piece, and will remain so until this country gets rid of its guns. I know madness. I have manic depression and have been hospitalized when paranoia seizes me from the shadows without warning—the belief that […]

  • The Writer’s Life: Journal Writing

    The Writer’s Life: Journal Writing

    My first girlfriend, Nancy, gave me a journal when we were in high school. That was in 1977. Forty-one years later, I now have forty-five tomes on my shelves, over ten thousand pages that chronicle my life and the lives of those around me. They are a wealth of information. All my notes for my […]