Category: Mental Illness

Ker-Plunk!

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment
"I love it here!"
“I love it here!”

Our dog Jenni is a Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier. The Wheaten was bred in Ireland for over 200 years to be an all-purpose farm dog. They share a common ancestry with the Kerry Blue Terrier and the Irish Terrier. In Ireland, they were commonly referred to as the “Poor Man’s Wolfhound.” The Wheaten was not recognized as a breed in Ireland until 1937. The first Wheaties were exported to the United States in the 1940s.[7] Finally, in 1973, they were recognized by the American Kennel Club. They are loving and very smart dogs i.e. Jenni knows English, Spanish, and Shitzu. She greets everyone in the same way: standing up and licking their faces. Jenni is protective of us, but isn’t aggressive even when attacked by a Rottweiler. And most importantly, they maintain their puppy like qualities throughout their lives. Yay! (Sheesh).

I had no intention of buying a dog, but I was in a manic state. When I’m manic my mantra is, “I get what I want. Period!” I’d wanted a dog for the longest time; ever since FiFi my childhood pet leapt into the front seat of the car holding a one way ticket. Had I known she’d never come back I’d at least been able to tell her how much I loved her, and that I’ll miss her dearly, and I didn’t know why adults kidnap pets which won’t be coming home.  Back then I convinced myself that my toy poodle had been set free in the woods where she could join the seldom seen and subject of many legends, the pack of wild poodles!

What a great day!
What a great day!

Of all the things Jenni is, there’s one she isn’t. She’ll never make the Olympic Swim Team in the 100 meter freestyle. In other words, she can paddle for her life, but Esther Williams she ain’t. It was late spring and the fish in our 500 gallon, 5 foot deep pond were beginning to shed their winter blues by swimming close to the water’s surface to enjoy the warmth of longer days and warmer sunlight. I let Jenni out to explore the Daffodils, Crocuses, and Snow Drops, all signs of Winter’s imminent departure. I always kept an eye on her even though the perimeter of our backyard was fenced in. Then I saw her: She had leaned to far beyond the safety of soil and onto the slippery limestone, her paws slid across the smooth face of limestone and Ker-Plunk, head first into the pond! I ran to the pond to find her circling in the middle precariously beyond my reach. I tried to coax her to the side, but she was panicking and her dog paddling was becoming erratic. I leaned over the edge of the pond, well beyond balance, grabbed her by the nape of her neck, and lifted, with one arm, a saturated fifty pound dog.
I expected that my bravery would result in a flurry of unstoppable wet kisses, but instead was the target of three whole body shakes, saturating me with gallons of my own pond water.

Conventional Wisdom is an Oxymoron!

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

The Truth of your Action often turns to shame which eventually turns to secret(s) which requires evasion and misrepresentations which causes perjury and self incrimination and arrest.

aaa-Conventional ArrestThe penance in 1928 for this path of omission would be swift, impudent, and ruinous to his sixteen year old daughter’s moral character according to Mr. Williams, the father to Miss Williams (confirmed to be with child). The father, H. Didrickson, eighteen, from Green Bay whose moral turpitude shamelessly corrupted his daughter’s moral character, and who would experience the wrath and fury of a politic and au fait Superintendent of a timber railway in Northern Wisconsin after Mr. Williams follows the advice of Conventional Wisdom to relocate his daughter to one of the neighboring counties and corruptly gains assurance of his family’s anonymity due to the handwritten misspelling of the birth father’s surname by the County Clerk. Conventional Wisdom was the modus operandi first employed in 1838 by the ruling class, and which were widely accepted as true explanations or actions by the proletariat even though they were unexamined and unproven. Simply put, Conventional Wisdom was high society’s “rule of thumb” when dealing with the ignorant, common rabble.

aaa-wisdom1It would appear that Conventional Wisdom adamantly insisted that: 1) any scandalous; 2) censurable; or 3) malevolent activity and its vicarious, foreseeable, or misbegotten side-effect i.e. bastard, crime, or hardship be: 1) blueprints; 2) engineered; and 3) dispatched clandestinely as to: 1) disquiet suspicion; 2) stave off defamation; and 3) avoid malice.  Conventional Wisdom’s golden era must’ve been a time when the world loomed large. An age when Europe would never be a destination. A time when the thoughtlessness of Conventional Wisdom empowered mandates set forth by the secretive, dodging, and manipulating rich, powerful, and self-appointed Grand Standers for irrational, ill-mannered, and bizarre vitriol; when men and women became lifetime politicians whose focus is their career not their conscience; and obscenely privately funded think tanks that thumb their noses at Liberty and bring our country to a dead stop simply by pouting and voting “No!”

A time of waywardness, of lost directions, of greed. An environment when citizens witness abject corruption which no longer scurries like insects or vermin, but are embolden and brazen, self-absorbed, and defying, criminals that remain free but those on whom they fed, those suffering their gluttony now face thirty penniless years of old age. A time when the dream to be President of the United States was ripped from the minds of the majority and entertained by those few able to conjure at least $1 billion. These are the times of Conventional Wisdom. Times of turning inward. Times of isolation. Times of blindness, and deafness, and silence. Times of cowardice, of intelligent ignorance: That is, being smart enough to turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a silenced voice. Times of surrender. Times of apathy. Times of villainous denigration caused by rubbernecks, scandalmongers, and nosey parker’s. The time when Conventional Wisdom rose from arcane and obscure backwoods’ breeding to become the basis and keystone of our culture’s moral compass.

aaa-wisdom

 

Dusk Darkens Days; Night Neglects Nary One

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

aaadeath3I stopped living My Miracle of Life seven months ago when
incantations permitted a glimpse beneath a crust delicate
as early winter’s creeping ice across a pond; peering
deep and deeper still to the depth’s of the mind‘s
deep sea trenches only to chance upon a ghostly image, curdled,
it confirmed a tiny grid lock whose ID hid 48 hours;
the mind’s fluid sidesteps this log jam and a storm
surge barged into priceless brain tissue causing
a breaker to trip in this prevailing mild
and coherent character. The surge retiredaaadeath4
dragging its bounty of fifty-eight years, a lifetime
of pleasure, reticence, failure, and small, immortalized
moments of glory into an abyss oft named forgotten. I stopped

dreaming stopped
imagining, stopped
unreasonable and half-wit ideas,
to jump start thinking which held me tight
like a kite caught in a gale and drew me in
lest I be lost to my mind’s struggle of fantasy
against a world of Conventional Wisdom; Wisdom
burdened by pragmatism, a reality of dead-ends, of
darkness, of emptiness, of fear, of inescapability, of
aaadeath1an absent place holding no bearing but a place nonetheless,
void of dreams, man’s anathema,
death.
If imagination is my Miracle of Life,
I must first domesticate my culture’s greatest
fear: an early death forfeiting decades of dreams
and desires.

Related articles

Dark

~ Harlan Didrickson

aaadeath2

 

 

 
Dark
an accusation of guilt due
to my deliberate and
captured words, drawing emotion
in any direction; or,
it’s been identified by those
looking to capture a comet
like summer’s fireflies:
they point with the comfort
of warm blankets, that now is a period
without an ending; it’s a nod or a wink
or deflection enduring propriety; mostly
it’s the haunting of those alive for the
dead’s forgotten.

Life: It’s All Yours.

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 26 Comments

  This post, its contents, and its author are not nor pretending to be healthcare professionals giving advice or suggesting treatment for health issues. 
For help with your health you must see a healthcare professional.

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you’re alive like I am, but you didn’t have a motive like I had, to reflect on what does it mean to be alive while the Life of my brother simply floated away like a freed balloon.  Synonyms for alive include methodical references like: aware, cooperative, and sensible. On the other hand, synonyms for Life imply inventive and daring like: animated, vital, and dynamic.

living1I’m definitely alive but am I Living? Living Life now? Living an animated, capricious, passionate, dynamic, vital, and creative Life? Living Life as though I was purposeful rather than predestined. Or has Life as an adventure, those outwardly foolish, expressive, devil-may-care, and goofy ideas of my arrogant youth been bagged and hung in the back of a closet like an unstylish overcoat? I remember exactly when I lost my nerve and consequently my verve. It was when I had to shelve my life as a creative, curious, and lyrical writer in order to be initiated into a wholly alien and inconsistent corporate culture by getting a job, being supervised or managed, have a steady income, and be a responsible adult. I compromised my true self to evolve into one in herds of others that bought into the idea that business is better than a mind full of zany ideas

The week immediately following my brother’s five minutes of death then resurrected by modern medicine, he spent it straddling the threshold between now and ever after. Rick’s life had become a slippery slope with one treatment jeopardizing another, inconceivable mobility issues, and, like a politician caught taking bribes, his dignity was retired by committee, his independence was incarcerated as he was assigned a room on a floor presently occupied by end-stage, incoherent residents. Considering what he’d already forfeited, I knew that my brother Rick, was going to finish what he’d started seven suffering days earlier: his non-negotiable intention to die, right there, there in a generic hospital bed surrounded by generic strangers. It was, after all, his free will that determined he did not want to live a compromised life.  It was then, in the presence of his own conviction that he would end his miracle of life.

Later that afternoon and well into the night I took a long, hard look at my Life, my unconsciousness of it, what I promised the world at birth, and finally, have I kept those promises? Below you’ll find a list based solely on recalling Rick’s life, his courage and his conviction, and finally my own mortality.  I was surprised (to say the least):

  1. Life is a Miracle:  It doesn’t matter to which, if any, spiritual leadership you follow, the simple fact that you, you, not somebody else, but you, faults and all occupy one tiny spot in a universe few can even imagine.
  2. Life knows its job:  Life knows the human genome and like Mr. Potato Head puts us together in a fascinating display of accuracy and symmetry.  None of my Mr. Potato Heads ever resembled each other.
  3. Boldness and Bravery aren’t the same. Boldness is something you do for your self in order to get noticed. Bravery is something you do for others disregarding your own safety. Men and women that are brave get noticed. Not because they were bold, but their actions were brave.
  4.  Join clubs, gangs, or any organization whose sole purpose is benevolence. They’ve been drawn together in order to help others rather than themselves.
  5. Fail as often as you can. Failing implies you tried something new. Failure is knowledge.living6
  6. Success is fleeting and assigned by others.
  7. Keep secrets secret. Secrets are like boomerangs, they always return to sender.
  8. Be unpopular; popular people spend a lot of time being popular. Unpopular people spend more time on their passions.
  9. All Olympian’s, film stars, and scientists who have won, starred in, or discovered a cure forfeited something very precious to dedicate themselves to their sport, their art, or their experiments.
  10. Whatever you’re undertaking, always have a “Plan B.”
  11. If you’re doing, going, or trying anything new, be sure you know a way out before it becomes dangerous.
  12. Be generous. Sure, with money; but with yourself. Everyone is inspirational. Tell your story to others. Truthfulness is inspirational.
  13. Never compromise your character. It’s who you are. Without it you’re nobody.
  14. living5Fear stops everyone at one time or another. But fear can be conquered: Simply dig in your pocket for your determination.
  15. Never quit. Never. Friends, family, strangers will all chide or mock your idea. Expect it. Ignore it. Mockery confirms they’ve heard or seen it. Which is always better than silence.
Related articles