Favorite Things: The Golden Teapot

I've been giving a lot of thought to the balance of things.  Because I am without a doubt a person who was coded without a natural mental balance it has been immensely important to attempt to impose balance on my brain and on my emotions artificially.  I have done this mostly with cognitive behavioral therapy, music, writing, and an incessant  monitoring and adjusting of my personal environment.

I've said many times that it's the little things that sustain us.  I believe this is true for all of us, whether we have a mental disorder or not.  A relatively balanced brain doesn't have to work so hard to maintain its sense of place, time, importance, and equilibrium.    I have worked hard to cut out of my life those negative and wildly unpredictable forces so that I can live more peaceably.

I have been thinking a lot about what balance feels like, what it looks like, and what it means.  I have been thinking about how I survived so long without taking psychiatric medications and I'll be honest, it was exhausting work.  Medications, when they are a therapeutic dose and are the appropriate kind take the intense daily struggle out of your life and give you the ability to function largely like a normal person does with only the need for general maintenance. 

Before I had the incredible asset of help for my brain I had to constantly micromanage my moods, my mindset, and my environment.  Now that I can't afford to see a psychiatrist regularly and I am stranded with a mediocre medicinal regimen I am really out there on my own again. My support is minimal and the hopelessness is a weight I find difficult to  unload.

Every time I take Kung Fu class I seem to be opened up a little more.  I promise this is all leading somewhere.  While I'm following exercises in Kung Fu class I am simultaneously using my body in unexpected and fulfilling ways (such as kicking the crap out of a punching bag or administering wicked kicks to the pads a partner is holding, hoping to make them crack like a whip with the strength of my aim) and also experiencing epiphanies about place, balance, being, and violence.

I get calmer.  I become focused in a way I didn't know I could be with both my body and my mind engaged in one task.  I am fully present in my own flesh.

It also constantly brings me back to the question of balance.  Whatever exercises we do we always do them in a balanced way; if we start with a right hand punch we end with a left hand punch. 

Then I wonder how to apply that to my everyday.

Balance. 

This blog is a true reflection of myself.  It is a precise chronicle of my moods, my daily life, and my mind.   So I realized that what's missing is the balance.  Just as it is missing from my life.  As I am working on self discipline I  remember how hard I worked everyday to achieve some semblance of balance for most of my life.  Yet I have gotten so far from it to have lost most of my hope.  There is a message in this to myself:

So I have asked myself how to restore it, because I know the answer is already here in myself, just as it is probably in you too.  I stayed afloat through an exhausting parade of positive self talk*  (pep-talks) and by reminding myself every single day of those things that give me small pleasures that lead to the cumulative collection of goodness that weighs against the dark and gives me the oxygen to breath in a world that feels airless to me.

I have an entire dissertation in my head about the infallible design sense of people with OCD and anxiety in general, which I keep meaning to regale you with, because I believe I'm on to something rather important, but which I haven't got the energy to formulate.  The most important thing is that people like me, Philip, and Max are connoisseurs of the religion of function and form.  We worship at that altar and the smallest object, if designed well, can give such joy and satisfaction as to render a bad day good.  Like magic.  We celebrate the invisible details and how they make everything in life worth living.

Objects.  Favorite things.  Form and function operating in unison is the most beautiful thing on earth.  I used to constantly (and intentionally) notice the beauty around myself in objects and nature because it was calming and gave an order and a balance to the dark I inevitably experience.  I may lose track of the big picture, of the goal of living a long life, but I can focus on the gorgeous details and appreciate what's in front of me right now.

This has proved to be a sustaining exercise. 

I want to practice it here.  On my blog.  I want to intentionally appreciate the beauty, the design, and the arrangements all around me on a regular basis so that I can remind myself, constantly, that even when life is a millstone around my neck, it is also an incredible homage to the universe's aesthetic. 

I don't shop much and it isn't exactly a huge shift for me because I've never been much of a shopper.  That doesn't mean I haven't found myself in pursuit of specific objects and whenever I've needed to purchase something I give it a great deal of attention and research.  I have to say that there aren't many things I covet in the world that aren't tools, utilitarian in nature, or abstract (such as comfort).  Part of this is because I have so many beautiful things already.  In spite of the attic fire that destroyed many things.  Most of the things in my house are things I acquired carefully like the curator of a museum is careful to assemble a comprehensive and cohesive collection to share with the public. 

Sometimes when I'm down the only spark in my day is that I get to eat my meals on plates that never fail to please me visually. 

I have things I rarely use but see every day that do something to lift me a little, such as the teapot and cup and saucer pictured above.  There is exactly one teapot, two teacups, two saucers, and a peculiar little handled dish whose purpose I can't figure out.  It's like a little ceramic sauce pan.  They originally belonged to my Grandmother.  My mother gave them to me and I pulled them out last winter to drink rose hip tea from them and it was such a pleasure.  I love the color, the earthy brown detail, the rustic quality of craftsmanship, and   the crackled appearance of the glaze which I believe may be more of a function of age than of design. 

These material objects, when I rest my tired eyes on them, give a gentle pleasure that is immeasurable the way a body needs boron in the tiniest quantity so that it seems immaterial to life but without which we fail to thrive.

Think  long on that.

Balance.  I will always be dark wherever I go, this I have learned and am beginning to accept.

But my need and appreciation for the light are also undeniable.  I want to reflect that here. 

So I am going to share my objects of beauty on a regular basis simply for the balance to the dark that they afford.  It is an act of discipline.  Not objects I want and don't have but things that are already here, in front of me.

Most of those posts will be much shorter than this one.

(I think)

C'mon, most of you need this as much as I do.  Let's look around us for the simple and free pleasures so that we can emphasize and acknowledge the gorgeousness that surrounds us even when we feel ugly and small.

Balance.

It's what's for dinner.