If I won $50,000 on eBay

I was thinking of what I would do if I won the $50,000 to spend on eBay. I thought to myself well I need a vehicle to get around so way not buy from a company that is based in Michigan. Yes, Ford. If I won I would get a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid.

Next I think, well I would like a house, so I look up real estate and bump into a very expensive house that I would have to win many, many, many times to get, but notice another manufactured home just outside of Ann Arbor. I am sold on the fact that if I win I am going to forget about my promises to spend the money on bonsai and get shelter and transportation.

Then I notice that you get no land with this house, they have to rent the space. The whole point of me getting a house would be to avoid paying rent. Now I guess I am back at spending money on bonsai. Then I think, maybe I can buy some land to grow my bonsai on. I do a search for land in Michigan, but find nothing in my area. Seeing acres in the Upper Peninsula got me thinking about spending the money on land and when everyone is displaced by floods and heat I could have a space for my family, and sale a little to get by.

Then I got to thinking, well maybe it isn't so bad to rent the lot, maybe I could take out a loan to buy the land. I would much rather be living on my own land then renting it. I would look into all this before buying the house. Next, I would plant my garden. All those little bonsai seeds would go into the ground.

If I won twice over (it is unrealistic to think of winning once, but why not) I would buy the equipment to put a greenhouse up on the lot.

A day and a Bonsai almost gone

It has been too long since I made my last written post. I have been working on videos, and a particularly long piece that you will enjoy once it is done. I will just have to figure out what to do with it. I do not think that putting it into audio gives it anymore power. I have tried some short clips and found it disappointing. All and all creating videos for youTube has not increased my traffic as much as I would have hoped. I want to get more people to visit, but I will not bore you with this anymore in this post.

There was another Bonsai tree that I would have loved to have bid on, on eBay. The auction is not over yet. I wanted it so much that I played that “win $50,000 to spend on ebay game.” It is a special that they are running right now. They do this kind of thing every now and then. I, however, didn’t win, and my mom didn’t win either. I just have to tell myself that there will be other Bonsai trees. –Sigh.

Hello again

Fig inside for the winter
Originally uploaded by RedTea

Wow, so much has happened since I last posted. I went to the Bonsai Auction and won some beautiful Bonsai at wonderful prices. Some more seeds come in. A few auctions for seeds ended. Auctions that I won. Things are beginning to get moving. I can feel it. I’ve been cooking a lot, and I’ve eaten out a lot. I missed going to mass with my sister. I missed the trip that the whole senior class went on. I don’t care. I applied for a grant today (now yesterday). That is why my post is so short. I normally would have been getting my fingers moving a lot quicker by now. I am a slow typist. I like to take my time and think things through. I am generally slower at a lot of things then most people. Not that I am stupid. I think my system just is a few beats back from everyone else so time moves differently for me. I need to get my motivation going. I think that getting grants will get me going. I will have something to work for. I will have something to prove again. I don’t care to prove things to the art school anymore. I have done that for three years now.

I have found my footing. I have found something I can do. I am no longer lost fumbling along in this IP project. I am creating. What am I saying? I have no idea what I am doing. I think I need more Mountain Dew to clear my head, Mountain Dew and a lunch. I have 30 min more. Do you think I can make it? I am so very, very… I don’t even know what. My creativity has been flashed out of me. All I want is to go to Espresso Royal and forget about my worries. I could write a couple scripts for narratives and then send them out. Send them out to myself.

I am afraid that my post today is going to have to be very dull. I think I will check craigslist. Check and done. It is the next day now. I am waiting for English class to start. I have written a paper to be critiqued and I hope everyone enjoys reading it. After it is critiqued and I have polished it up I will post it for all to read. Are you excited? You get to read something I actually completed writing. Though it is more of a beginning then an end. I will speak no more of it for now.

I spent a lot of money at Espresso Royale today. I didn’t get to seat down and enjoy my Vanilla Bean Polar Cap though. I just thought of something I need to do. Note to self: Remember to send rough draft to Prof after picking it up and rewriting parts of it. I also plan on working on clay tonight, but that might need to wait until tomorrow. For the first time in a long time I stopped to look at myself typing. My hands move so strangely like they know what they are doing. I was taught to never look at the keyboard only the screen, but I am missing out on so much. I cannot wait to send off the copy of my paper to my Professor. I cannot wait. I am sending my paper out now. There it is sent. Now I will read. No I don’t feel like reading. I should have stick with the potter’s wheel. I got my pants all dirty.

I slept through my alarm this morning for a long time. It just didn’t register in my brain that there was music. I will have to switch to the buzzer tomorrow. I have no choice. My roommate is going to hate me, but I have to wake up.

The Art of Patience

Bonsai
Originally uploaded by RedTea

I am starting my meditation though writing early today. My stomach is empty, and telling me that I should have eaten more last night. My nails are falling apart. They keep on cracking. I had to clip them down to almost nothing. It is a strange world without having long nails. I try to use them to pull about two pieces of paper and they are not there to help. I miss them. I bought a new computer battery yesterday, just thought you would like to know. I cleaned the kitchen as well.

Tonight. Tonight I finally go to the Bonsai auction. I wonder if the IP instructors will understand how much patience it takes to do this art piece. Whether it be Bonsai trees or medication (and even meditation) they grow slowly. I am not skilled enough on a potters wheel to produce what I would dream of. Knowing this I am limiting myself to simple clay pots, and am wondering if I should cross out the clay altogether and make something new. I need to brainstorm what plants can go in other then pots. I know that tastefully clay pots just look better then store bought pots. So I will have to pull my clay skills together and create unless I can think of something else.

I am back. I just completed looking at craigslist for a table I can display my artwork on in the Gallery. I also found a curtain for my studio. Now that I think about it I hope that the curtain has been sold. I can be a bit of an implosive buyer. If I buy it I will have to put it up… that means I will have to spend money on a rod as well.

So far the Dogwood and Juniper seeds have come in. The Dogwood seeds do not need to be wintered (some seeds need a cold period to grow), but the Juniper does. The Juniper is soaking in water right now. Out of the ten seeds how many do you think will grow? My sister recommends I only do ten seed for of each kind of tree I have. I think that this is because over time I will better learn how to germinate trees from seed.

Tomorrow I go to the Sweetland Writing Center for a workshop on the story you have not seen. I already turned in a raw copy to my IP professor and am waiting patiently (again with the patience) for a response. I just finished my Mountain Dew, yah for things that destroy your teeth. Sometimes I fill like I am doing nothing towards my IP, but I am writing, and will continue to write until I have formed a pathway between my fingers and my brain. Or at least that is the idea. I want to write. I want to express. I want this writing to be a major part of my artwork. I want to salvage as much of my idea about the website as possible. I am doing this for your benefit, because despite what my sister says about even sugars impacting my brain, my thoughts are impacted by the medication.

My sister asks why then do I not do artwork on sugars, but everyone has experienced the effects of sugars. I have experienced the effects mind-altering medication firsthand. I was more social while on Geodon and started looking for a boyfriend. On Abilify…Abilify is a wonderful medication that works for many people…On Abilify I became more paranoid and started thinking of killing myself. I do acknowledge that there are other mind-altering things besides medication, like a word very similar to it, meditation.

There are those that recommend meditation as another aid in fighting Bipolar disorder. I examined it in a book on Yoga at the bookstore once...well my sister did. I was drinking a jasmine green tea; I had two sisters with me. One was looking through the book on Yoga and the other Tai Chi. They talked about things they were reading in the books, like the importance remembering how you ran as a child. I was probably flipping through a magazine complaining about how the tea didn’t taste like I wanted it too. (My likes in tea have expanded since then.) I didn’t have the pressures of IP on me at that time. It was a distant mountain the size of a fly. Now it is a whale and it is on top of me.

I have a brother that spends a lot of time coaching Frisbee, working, and doing whatever it is he does. When he is not doing this you can find him at the bookstore reading DC comics. Often when I call him up to ask to do something I end up reading anime.

Lately I have been greatly tempted by the coffee shops in the area. Espresso Royal has a deal where you get 50% off one kind of drink everyday in September. I walk in check to see if it is a Polar Cap (the Frappuccino like drink of that coffee shop) and if it is not I leave. I have this system down perfectly. The barista knows not to bother to walk to the cash resister when I show up unless I stay there.

Did I tell you exactly how incurably happy I am that the Bonsai auction is today. I have asked my sister to return the camera she borrowed and me tempted to bring a video camera, but I think that is a little extreme. Yes I will be missing the support group, but for the art of Bonsai some things must be sacrificed.

Dancing up the silver curtains.
Their shear mass held up by a single black bar.
I swing from the bar, two invisible stings holding up seat.
My hair stands up on my pale arms; clay is plastered on my pants.
I look tonight for the twisted tree.
Sliding like a snake through the air it will unveil its fall colors soon.
On a cold cement deck it will breathe in as I blow on its leaves.
I touch its leaves. I test its soil, still moist.
How long will I keep you?
I saw a Master tree on sell today.
Its owner, sad to part, needed the money.
Tonight I buy a tree.
No, no Master tree for me.

See my hopeless attempt at a poem. I am waiting for an instructor to come around for me to ask a question to and then I can go to the Clay studio. Patience.

Is the day over yet?

meow
Originally uploaded by RedTea

Here I am waiting until the time I can go to the clay studio.

Sliver curtains hanging from a black bar and a melon green blanket on a black chair with matching pillow. In front of me is a room. In back of me a wall. Spiders crawl around the school. I wonder how I got in the school to begin with. Looking at all the skills spread out before me mine look like children’s drawings. In fact I was told once I would make a very good children’s illustrator. That was long ago. Today I made my children’s drawing in a small notebook. A horrible feeling hang over me, and all I could bring myself to do was draw.

Seeds. I wish I had my seeds now. I wish I could soak them in water, put them in my refrigerator, and wait for the cold to make them germinate. I wish I could plant the seedlings in the perfect combination of sand and soil. I wish I could put the little seedlings into pots (pots that I made) and place them around a gallery space coupled with starter plants.

Patience. It is something that I am going to have to learn. Bonsai trees take time. There is an Ann Arbor Bonsai Society that has an auction every year on Sept 26. I will be attending this auction. I hope it is everything that I have been told it is.

I am supposed to be seating here as wonderful things explode from my fingertips. Every key pressed makes a wonderful sound and the song is quite nurturing. It is encouraging hearing that sound. It makes you think things are happening. You are going somewhere. It encourages you to write more bolder, crazier ideas.

It has been a half an hour. Now it has been an hour.

Sketching cats endlessly, such a mindless action. Everyone else has such propose, they have ideas that need to be done right away or the winter will get in the way (or such and such). I decided not to work on the potter’s wheel today because I forgot my supplies.

HA! I tricked you. I went and worked with clay anyway. The story goes like this. I was drawing cats and then trees when I realized that I didn’t want to be in my Senior studios just writing and drawing and doing stuff like that.

I am free! Studio time is over!

To make a bonsai pot

Covered in earth. Clay dried on my pants, Green tea in my fridge. Today is a good day. I meditated today, with my hands molding the clay between my fingers. It span, I tried to find the center. For that sweet moment in time, I found my place. I was there in the clay studio in a way that I haven’t been in a long time for so many forms of art.

Everything made sense. I had big plans on how I was going to continue my practice in Maya and mix oil pastel (a medium from my youth) and digital. Computer animation, digital photography, and oil pastel all blended together in a seamless scene moving breathing. Then my brain hiccupped, and I faced a long drawn out depression. I stopped doing artwork. Then I stopped being able to do artwork. Then I stopped wanting to do artwork.

Part of me misses those two years I let art pass me by. What would I have become if I continued my Maya project. What would I have become if I continued to float just below mania. What a wonderful state. Some people spend years in hypomania, some people spend more time in mania then depression. I guess that everyone is on there own special ride.

I should tell you about my meditation for today. As I slipped my hand into the bucket of used clay slip and pull up a little handful a smile appears on my face. I think back to my first day in a clay art class. Wow that was long ago. FYI Based on my performance today
I will have to put more time into meditating with Clay.

I feel that Clay is a wonderful tool for getting in touch with my Bonsai trees. It is a natural material found in the soil that the trees grow out of.


Oh, oh so far I have collected the following seeds all very fresh:

10 American Wisteria Seeds (the American is supposed to be easier to get to bloom then the Chinese kind)
100 Chinese Elm Seeds (I have no idea what I will do with all these trees, of course not all of them will become seedlings)
30 Liquidambar Seeds
30 Judas Tree Seeds (with a name like this I am assigning it to Geodon)

I am biding on:

30 Japanese Cedar
7 Variegated Japanese Red Pine
5 Japanese White Pine
30 Trident Maple
30 Red Maple (one of the many kinds)

P.S. Today is my Birthday!

The Tree of Yoga

I found a wonderful Book, The Tree of Yoga. A world famous yoga teacher wrote it…in 1988, but do no think it is out of date because such books do not become out of date. It was B.K.S. Iyengar who wrote the book. What I love about the book is how its title alone (not even counting the rest of the book) supports a part of my Senior Project.

I have decided to take you on a journey. A journey of my mind. A journey that yes includes my path in dealing with my illness, my idea on how to fight the stigma of mental illness and try to find ways in which to fight this illness along with my medication, but this is not the limit of my journey. You will stumble around with me as I walk through the world of Senior Projects trying to find illumination, illumination through meditation.

You might wonder why Yoga and fighting the stigma of mental illness go together, but as taught in the book, the point is not withdrawing from society, but being an example for society. If you do not drink alcohol and your friends ask you to go out to drink alcohol with them tell them you will go with them, but will not drink alcohol. That is what the book says anyway.

I am not done reading the book yet; right now it is comparing the different parts of Yoga to the different parts of a tree. To me the tree of yoga has to be a Bonsai tree, because it is a tree of such art and care.

A certain passage in the book stood out to me (a number of them did). “I am within and I am without.” This is about being a part of society and yet being different in that you do not drink alcohol. It is not the meaning that stood out to me, but it triggered a memory. When I was locked into a small room at the mental hospital I came to the conclusion that my sin in life had always been locking myself in. I had stayed in my house more then I should have, I had spent too much time reading/watching/drawing in my room and I had willingly walked into this small little room. This is interesting in of in itself, but when I got out of the mental hospital I was laying in a bed and I heard in my head, “She used to lock herself in now she is locking herself out.”

I am locking myself in again today. I have decided to stay and work instead of going with a big group to a reuse center to get furniture for our Senior Studios.

The first step of my journey is in clay. I am buying 100 seeds to put into the refrigerator until they spout life. At that point in their journey they will need pots. I could buy 100 pots (if I count my eggs before they hatch), or I could make them one by one. Making the pots would look better, and be cheaper then buying them.

I am afraid however that this is a project that will take time to grow.

For new readers (that would be almost everyone) I am trying to grow Bonsai trees and transferring through meditation the essence of my medication (I have Bipolar disorder) into the roots of the tree. I have some left over medications from changes in my cocktail, and someone suggested that I use real medication. I am really looking to transfer just the essence, but I will think about this.

I will also be creating the essence of new medications by planting seeds. I may not have the education to create my own medications to battle the world’s illnesses, but for those who want to be cured, I can send positive energy their way.

Drawf trees aka Bonsai

I have started my quest for Bonsai trees. So far I have collected two saplings and will be putting up pictures of the cute little babies soon. I have yet to figure out how to get my outdoor Bonsai to survive the Michigan winter, but I was thinking of my parent’s breezeway, or planting them in my parents yard.

I have started the never-ending quest of exploring my Bipolar disorder. I will hit this problem from every angle. I was told that if I did parts of every project I would be spreading myself to thin, but if I took one unifying theme and pulled a string from each project it might just work. I therefore am going to try to continue on with the website, and develop my course as I am walking along the path.

You see part of my inter-self is my mind, and the medication that flows through my veins interacts with my brain in ways that are not completely understood my science. All I know is I act differently on different medications. On Geodon I was reaching out to the world looking for a soul mate… on Abilify my mind wondered to dark and unpleasant places. With Zyprexa Zydis a bit of my passion for life has come back, but mostly I no longer cared. This medicated not caring combines with the actually warn down felling of entering a senior year. The combination is toxic.

I received a message from my pDoc today telling me that I needed to have a medication change. It was something about my lab results. I am glad that the change is happening at the beginning of the Semester where, if I start falling asleep in class, I will not lose everything.

Good news…another day has passed, and the only change in my medication will be a decrease in the Zyprexa Zydis. Sounds wonderful right. As long as I don’t start hearing things or backing away from society and so forth the news is wonderful indeed.