The views from the hill next to my olds' place...

This hill here in fact:

On the way up. Looking out:

Looking down:

Looking back at the entrance to Porirua harbour:

At the top. The entrance to Titahi Bay:

Mana Island:

The Marlborough Sounds are off there in the distance.

On a vaguely related note, the effects of the new pills are quite different than the old ones. At first I was a real zombie - couldn't read, couldn't draw - but that's been getting better. I tried posting a couple of days ago but couldn't.

I get these full on panic attacks but (brought on by any kind of stress it seems, even the smallest amount). My hands shake heaps, my heart races, I get all confused, and I can't remember anything. It doesn't help that the vast majority of human beings seem to be selfish assholes.

Oh, and for boring technical reasons I can receive email okay, but sending it is a real pain. There's an easy fix I think, but I'm not up to working it out at the moment.

Strange weekend

I've had a strange weekend. Friday night was not so good. Saturday and Sunday nights were. I've had some really good conversations with friends old and new.

I'm going to stay with the olds for a while, probably from tomorrow.

Catharsis

This one's in response to gothamimage's suggestion:

Pencil, pen, watercolour, and blood. It's all jiggly at the top cos I was holding it at the bottom above the scanner and my hands were shaking a lot. Fight the fockers with sorcery I reckon.

And then my magic art powers failed me...

No pictures today. I did try to sit down to do some drawing but couldn't work out where to even begin. I tried lying in the sun and reading, but that didn't work either - just couldn't take it in. For most of the last couple of days I've been smoking lots of cigarettes and listening to Daniel Johnston, the Fall's new album, the Beatles, selections from Johnny Cash's American III and IV albums (one song in particular over and over), Bonnie Prince Billy's I see a darkness, some Bongwater I used to be into and only recently rediscovered, and lots of classic NZ music from my youth.

We've got people putting up scaffolding around the house. I find being around people difficult at the moment and might have to find somewhere else to hide tomorrow (oh right, it'll actually be later on today).

Bloody life.

Don't know about this one...

Update on previous post

Okay, so I went to the doctor, and he looked pretty freaked out and immediately said we're stopping the medication and trying something else in a few days' time with sedatives for the interim. Apart from that, all I remember of the ensuing conversation was getting really confused and totally losing the plot at one point and him using the words 'acute case' and 'hypomania' somewhere in there. Good thing Rose was there.

Some documentation

I think the term side-effect's a bit of a misnomer. Surely a drug has a range of effects, and what we call side-effects are simply the set of unintended effects from the particular combination of effects a particular drug that's been designed to perform only one or two has. I've started some medication recently and am now about to attempt to document the unintended effects I've been experiencing the last few days.

I haven't been sleeping. I've been stumbling a lot and all jittery and agitated. I've been raving a lot but also really forgetful, often completely forgetting a conversation minutes after it's happened. I've been replacing words with others that sound similar but bear no other relation to the one I meant in that context. I've been making all sorts of stupid spelling and punctuation errors, which is very uncharacteristic. I've been getting obsessively focused on one thing for hours at a time. It's been quite fun to be honest, and useful, but I'm extremely difficult to be around and interact with. I'm putting Rose through the wringer. Hopefully it'll settle down soon.

Paul and I went to and tidied up the studio last night, which was a particularly good thing to do - getting rid of the piles of chaos and beer bottles.

Sitting in the cafe reading the paper yesterday

This morning

I couldn't sleep last night, so stayed up all the night doing this:



Then I went for a walk to watch the dawn:

Dreadful news

Daniel Johnston's been hospitalised for what appears to be poisoning from the medicine that's allowed him to be so productive recently.

(Pic nicked from here.)