F*cking Cool

I wish I had thought of this. Michael Black created a time lapse video of the snow accumulating during the Eastcoast blizzard yesterday from his patio in Belmar, New Jersey. It gives you a very good idea of what it looked like outside our backdoor. Still blowing like a bandit, but the sun's out finally. Street still has yet to be plowed - don't know when we'll be able to get to our mailbox. Not that the postman will be able to get up the street ;) Enjoy! Via Laughing Squid.

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

 

Thinking Ahead...

I hope everyone (who celebrates) had a great Christmas yesterday! I had a wonderful couple of days with my family and dogs and am now settled in with my new iPod staring out at the blizzard that's just starting to blow outside. They're predicting 40mph winds and up to 16 inches of snow! So happy we went out and bought a snow blower a couple weeks ago :)

Of course I can't just relax and watch new dvds and look at the pretty lit up Christmas tree against the snowy window. No. I have to start thinking ahead. To Valentine's Day.

I know, I know, YOU guys just want to relax and that's totally cool. But I kinda thought some of you might like to know what I've decided to do for Valentine's Day this year. Last year I released the limited edition mounted prints of "Kokoro" which sold out. And many of you have been emailing me about making more, which I can't, because a limited edition is a limited edition.

But I decided that I COULD make an open edition of an 8 x 10 giclee print of "Kokoro" and hopefully make a whole bunch of people happy in the process!  That's worth a little prep a few weeks in advance, isn't it? And I thought I'd try something else new and put them up for pre-order in my shop right now. This way you're guaranteed a copy will be ready to ship to you January 17th, you've got a jump on your Valentine's Day shopping and I get an idea of how many prints to make! Sound good?

So click on the photo below to go to the shop and have a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year! I can't thank you all enough for your support and kind words over the past year -- I have the best fans!

Feeling Alive Again

The official video for the single Alive from the album Head First by Goldfrapp. Ed had shown it to me way back in May and of course, I'd forgotten all about it. He showed it to me again this morning and it was just way too appropriate NOT to post about here.

I do feel alive again. I don't remember too much, but I'm happy dammit! I've got three more treatments, once a week and the memory issues should lesson after each one. I'm really hoping to get back to painting within a month or two at the most.

Enjoy the video and thanks to everyone for sticking around. I promise I'm going to kick some major art-ass this year!

Sh*t/Shinola

...this year. Actually, Ed bought me this, showed it to me and I completely forgot about it! I can't believe how awesome it is. Kirk Demarais is the artist and he created a whole series of colored pencil portraits for the Crazy 4 Cult art show at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles. Each is a family portrait based on a family from a different cult film.

Of course with "The Jerk" being one of my all time favorite films, I had to own, The Johnsons.

Last Day for Shopping

Just a quick reminder that Thursday, December 16th will be the last day to order anything from my shop and get it delivered in time for Christmas!

Happy shopping and a happy, healthy holiday for all!

Thanks everyone :D

Point Reyes, California

Just saw this over at National Geographic, it's their picture of the day, and I can certainly see why:

(click the photo for the full shot)

From NatGeo,

"Photograph by Anton Barmettler, My Shot

This Month in Photo of the Day: Travel and Adventure Photos

Point Reyes, California, near the top of the cliff, under fog. The windswept trees forming a kind of tunnel, the sun piercing through the upper layer of the fog and the limited visibility provide for a very special effect. It appears quite unreal. Kind of spooky, especially considering that there were very few people around.

(This photograph was submitted to My Shot.)

I'm Going To Disneyworld

I'm still having trouble remembering things today but they just got a whole lot better: Ed booked us a little trip to Disneyworld in January!!! SOB made me cry! We haven't been on vacation in...well, I honestly don't remember but he tells me we haven't been to Disneyworld in six years. So all this bullshit will be over and we'll be able to have some fun :D Now all I need to do is try and focus on those three days in Jan to get me through the next couple treatments. I'm pretty sure I can do that!

And I'll write it here so I definitely remember it: the memory loss/confusion is only temporary. It seems like I'll never get it back then BOINK! it's back again and I'll feel great. And after all that, I'll be going to Disneyworld!

So even with the shitty hand I was dealt concerning my emotional state, I more than made up for it when I found Ed. Thank goodness that sneaky bastard can't keep a secret for more than an hour :D

I love you honey and I can't wait to go to Disney <3

Shock The Monkey

I'm really not sure where to start. I guess most of you already know that I've been suffering from severe depression for most of this year. I went through the entire range of medications and nothing worked. Then briefly, I felt like myself again. I wasn't crying for no reason, I didn't feel hopeless, I wanted to go out and do things. I thought it was over. I had beat it.

People would ask me "How are you doing?"

Me, hesistant, "...better. Yes, I'm definitely better than I was a few months ago. Yes."

"Well that's great!"

"Well, I'm not 100%..."

"Well, who is!" hahahahahahha....

Yeah, so I guess I was better and since no one is 100% I should just feel lucky I'm alive. Sure. No, I mean, yes, definitely yes. If I'm only sobbing from the depths of my soul for 20% of the day, that leaves a whole 80% that's spent NOT sobbing. That's awesome, isn't it? Yes, that's just hunky-dorey awesome.

Ed said to me this morning that my brain is like an empty swimming pool that I'm skateboarding in. The very bottom is the blackest part of my depression so I keep riding up and down and up and down. I'm never out of that damn pool and I'm always using every bit of my energy just trying to stay above the bottom. It's exhausting.

I had one month where I felt great. People kept telling me how great I looked. "No meds! And I'm happy!" I'd say. I figured I beat it. I did it. I was strong enough to kick it in the ass and keep on trucking.

But then it started again. The fear, the despair, the sobbing at nothing. No thoughts in my head but black. There is no thinking your way out of that. There's no amount of exercise, supplements, or self-help books that will get you out of that. I wanted to kick myself for not being able to do it on my own but I finally admitted that I needed help again.

And for a few weeks I thought that talking to a therapist would help. Then even she said there wasn't anything she could do for me. I saw her partner who is one of the head doctors at Carrier Clinic a couple weeks ago.

"You've been through so many medications. There isn't much left we could try." she said. Whew! I was afraid that she would put me on a new course of meds.

"ECT would be your best option."

Shit.

That's for crazy people. That's for people who can't even get out of bed in the morning. I'm fine. Really. I'm just going to go now and get some ice cream. I'll be fine. I'm at 80%! No one's at 100%, I'm doing awesome! Bye bye!

I can do this on my own! I'll take a yoga class! I'll train for a marathon! I'll eat vegan organic bean sprouts for the rest of my life! I can do it!

And if you were sitting across from me while I was saying this, you would have seen a broken down, sobbing, desperate woman clinging to the thought that she wasn't sick at all.

-------------------------------------------------

Yesterday was my 8th ECT session.

So many people we've spoken to in the waiting room at Carrier all say the same thing, "It's a miracle."

I went every monday, wednesday and friday. I was put under anesthisia for about 30 minutes and then up and out the door. At first they tried uni-lateral which is only on one side of your brain. That was easy. A little headache once I woke up, but I remembered everything super-clearly. I felt a bit better within the first 3 treatments.

Then I had a down day so they switched me to bi-frontal treatments on friday. That took a bit more out of me. Much more confused, temporary memory loss and all those bad things you've heard about ect came flooding back to me. I forgot Thanksgiving, but I didn't forget Ed or my family. And over the course of the weekend, my faculties came back to me. By yesterday morning, I was just about myself again. Just in time for my next treatment...

And my memory is shot again. I'm having trouble remembering what paintings I've done and what prints I have made up. But the funny thing is...emotionally I feel amazing. I'm taking in everything around me as if it were brand new. My house, my business, my husband, my family, my fans.

And they're giving me a little break before my next treatment on friday. Then it will probably be a whole week before my last one.

So I wanted to take the time (even though I'm floating in never-never land right now) to let you all know what's going on. First off so if I screw up any orders for the holidays, you might give me the benefit of the doubt. But second to let people know what ect is all about. It's not a torture device. It's a proven way to treat severe recurrent depression. Just how it works is still being debated, but it has the highest success rate of ANY medical procedure. How can anyone argue with that? And although I would have liked to have stuck with the unilateral and kept my short term memory intact, I can't discount that I feel better now than I have in a very long time.

How many of us get to experience a miracle? I think I may be in the process of one right now. And I'm not alone. Friends of our family have gone through it and said the same thing - it changed theirs lives. So I'm thinking that I may not be the only one here whose gone through it either. Maybe by writing about it I can help to change someone's thinking about what ect is.

The Mayo Clinic has a very straightforward definition of what ect involves here. What also helped me is thinking about the famous people who have gone through it:

Antonin Artaud, French poet and playwright
Richard Brautigan, counter-culture figure, poet and novelist
Beverley Callard, English television actress
Dick Cavett, American television talk show host
Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist
Kitty Dukakis, wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis and author of Shock, a book chronicling her experiences with ECT
Thomas Eagleton, US senator and vice presidential candidate
Roky Erickson, American singer, songwriter, harmonica player and guitarist
Carrie Fisher, American actress and novelist Fisher speaks at length of her experiences with ECT in her autobiography Wishful Drinking.
Janet Frame, New Zealand writer and poet
Judy Garland, American actress
Harold Gimblett, British cricketer
Peter Green, English blues guitarist, founding member of Fleetwood Mac.
David Helfgott, Australian pianist
Ernest Hemingway, American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Nobel Laureate, short-story writer, and journalist
Marya Hornbacher, American writer
Vladimir Horowitz, Russian-American classical pianist
Vivien Leigh, English actress and second wife of Laurence Olivier
Oscar Levant, American pianist, composer, television and film personality
Michael Moriarty, American actor
Sherwin B. Nuland, American surgeon and writer
Robert M. Pirsig, American author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Sylvia Plath, American writer and poet
Bud Powell, American jazz musician
Lou Reed, American singer-songwriter
Yves Saint-Laurent, French fashion designer
Edie Sedgwick, American socialite and Warhol Superstar
Gene Tierney, American actress
Tammy Wynette, American country music singer
David Foster Wallace, American writer
Townes van Zandt, American country singer-songwriter

So I'm not alone. I'm a little confused, but I'm not scared anymore. The staff at Carrier Clinic has been amazing and I don't think that I could have asked for a more caring crew of people to take care of us through this frightening time. They are also a non-profit organization and accept donations should anyone be so inclined. Ed and I are hoping to get their waiting room repainted and some new artwork up for the patients once my treatments are over.

Well, that's it. I've been struggling with this information for weeks now and felt that it was time to share. I hope that at the very least, it helps someone else out there who may be struggling with the same decision. ECT is not a torture device. It's a proven medical treatment for severe depression.

And it's a miracle.