Well Bottom Blues

I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like
It’s got a basket, a bell that rings
And things to make it look good
I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

“Bike” Pink Floyd

I think I was cycling the other day. No, not around the park. Instead I started reading a book of poetry by various authors, stopped along the way to sketch a poem, composed a note to a Facebook friend who’s in the book that turned into a sketch of a poem (which I finished later), determined that life insurance is not part of an estate, that tuition for the UNO Creating Writing Workshop would run me about $45,000 (and so I could take out student loans and just pay as little as I could until I died), and sent a query into UNO about it.

In about two-and-a-half hours, during the time when I often take a nap on a day off.

I’m not having serious depressive episodes. I rarely did. I often told my psychiatrist and the subsequent practitioners that, given the circumstance of my life (in the past) I’d be a sociopath not to be depressed. Life at home is mostly good now, but the world at large is not. That lately transfers to anger, not depression. But I am definitely having hypomania episodes, but unlike 10 years ago I’m under almost-constant adult supervision by my partner and sister who lives with us. And since I dropped off Risperidone, I’ve had the phone number of the Oschner Psych Clinic and the name of my practitioner on a sticky note on the fridge, with instructions for Patrice to call if necessary.

I tried to do the work–to read poetry closely and to write poetry–consistently but throughout the years of Risperidone, I just couldn’t get it done. That was seven years. Now that I’m off I’m writing again, enthusiastically reading and just signed up for The Rumpus Poetry Book Club. The last involves a close reading of a book a month, and a discussion with the author. It was one of the most important self-improvement acts I undertook as a writer when I started about 10 years ago, until I dropped out due to cost meets unemployment, and ultimately Risperidone.

Now that I’m back on the bike again, I notice how hypomania was mistaken for generalized anxiety disorder fifteen years ago. Again today I wrote another poem, revised a poetry contest submission with an old poem from the lazy days when I ignored computer first-line capitalization, found two older poems written when I was still in the Upper Midwest 20 years ago that I thought might interest a journal in the far North together with the new poem, and now my nervous system is trembling inside. So, I notice, is my thumb as I reach for the trackball.

I keep a small supply of Klonopin around for moments like this, when The Big Switch is thrown and I feel productive as hell until my skin starts to crawl with an imaginary static charge.

In my withdrawal note to the journal’s contest, I explained why I was withdrawing my original submission and gladly paid again $10 to resubmit in atonement for my error. This line came to mind and I included it in my note. It led me to finish this post with this: enthusiasm is a demon in the land of hypomania.

Here is “Bike,” if you like… https://youtu.be/POlaR26dD1Y