I AM IN A SOUR MOOD. I'm sitting here, flicking through lists of Japanese characters, thinking about food I would like to eat (except I don't really wanna eat any). Wondering what I'm doing alive.
Do you know I only need learn 2100 characters to be fluent in Japanese.
Kanji are about as difficult to remember and to distinguish one from another as highway code signs. If you know nothing about far eastern writing, you'd assume Chinese characters are uniquely bizarre, each and every one. But they're not. A small number of elements corresponding to the sun 日, the moon 月, women 女, mouths 口, water 水, fire 火, trees 木 and mountains 山, etc crop up again and again combinging together eg as two moons under a mountain 崩 kuzu(su す) (kuzusu) 崩す "to demolish", so it's possible for Chinese and Japanese people to dictate unfamiliar characters to one another over the phone by spelling out the radicals. A character's radical is the unit of meaning, usually on the left hand side, under which it's looked up in a Chinese dictionary. I used my Japanese dictionary to look up the sign outside my local Chinese takeaway. They were most surprised when I came in telling them what it meant (it means a tower of wealth and prestige: in fact you'll see the sign 金 ~ "gold" or money again and again. 金魚 (goldfish) appear in Chinese takeaways time and again, because they're supposed to draw money into the shop. 鮭 this sign says "salmon" in Japanese. Note the fish radical 魚 down the lefthand side. The character is pronounced sake, like the drink 酒 sake. The three drops down the left side are the water radical. Anything with those three droplets down the side is watery, fluid or drink.
I really wish I hadn't slept last night. I slept all day as well and lay there with the telly booming, wishing I didn't have to get up for methadone before 6pm.
I did some
research into sleep that confirmed what I already know. Now this only applies to people with bipolar and bipolar-type disorders (as far as I know) ~ because in normal depression people tend to complain of insomnia. But when I'm depressed I nearly always oversleep ~ once it gets going I can easily do 16 hours or more a day, every day. Not sleeping is said to be both a symptom and a cause of mania. In the past when I've really got going I would stay awake for over 40 hours, then sleep for a mere 5. Then carry on going higher and higher, more and more irritable, more and more excitable and so on. I wish I was dead when I think about this. I would rather be hyper than depressed, but I'd rather be happy than hyper. I'm not surprised I turned to drugs, namely heroin. It's by far the most reliable thing I've ever encountered in life. The problems surrounding heroin are problems in getting the stuff and enough of it. Even the Australian nurse down the druggyclinic told me "people feel better on heroin than off it, which is why people go on and on taking it once they start" so I said, why not sell it with the cigarettes in corner shops, and she just smiled wryly. I am thinking of going back on heroin until I die. Heroin is the only thing that ever made sense in my life.
I wouldn't need to kill myself until every vein in my body is done in and I can't take it any more (I wouldn't smoke it; I can't feel anything at all from smoking it and no it's not bad technique: I take heroin for the intravenous rush; the residual high, that lasts all day, is just a bargainacious by product. If I did want to take heroin for another 10 years I'd need to inject in the femoral, which I don't want to do. Most people I know who inject there walk with limps and/or have holes big enough to stick fingers in up the crook of their thighs. I only know 2 people who actually lost legs. It's all nasty.
Well this is miserable crap. Does anyone read this any more? I doubt it. I think my blog has degenerated to a series of protracted death-bed rantings.
Whenever I think about life in former times I think how lucky people were. Half of all people died before reaching a year of age, so the true horror of life was never revealed to them. Those who lived longer knew however healthy they were, they need only catch an infectious disease to die away. Now those illnesses are wiped out and only nasty ones remain.
The modern concept of mental illness, by the way, has expanded immensely. I read a book by the head doctor at a Victorian lunatic asylum. It's titled
Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia by Emil Kraepelin. The descriptions of my "school report" were also by Emil Kraepelin, but they come from
Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia.
Back to Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, almost nobody I know would qualify as depressed under Kraepelin's descriptions of profound melancholic psychosis. To be hospitalzed for depression in the 19th century you needed to be in depressive stupor, which means you had lost, or nearly lost the power of speech. Most depressives hallucinated and were delusional, believing they had committed trecherous crimes and brought poverty on their families. The worst depression was the agitated type where patients were reduced to screaming and banging their heads on the wall.
I asked somebody I know whether she had ever been so depressed her head was literally devoid of any thought at all (as the book describes) and she said yes, for weeks on end. That was when they ECTd her. I've only been severely depressed for a very short time. I remember afterwards realizing I had gone beyond suicidal. To be suicidal you need a life to terminate. Once you get to the very end, no life is left. Hey but I did come back.
Then I got to the descriptions of mania which were an exact match of mine. Thoughts flying through the head in vast numbers only to evaporate as quickly as they appeared. Walls and floor talking. Fantastical sights everywhere. Great excitement. Yeah I matched that one all right.
And just like drugs, it leaves you with nothing. From what I see the choics in life are: to have happiness without foundation through drugs and/or insanity. Or money without happiness.
To have everything you want in life you need only adjust what you want.
Anyway how did I get on this subject? Who cares.
When I think of all the suffering in the world I wonder whether anyone wants to live at all. I think most people are just conning themselves that their lives mean anything at all. Most people are arrogant, puffed up with emptiness. Think back to the times you were wonderful. In actuality you probably looked shit and people were laughing at you. When I was younger all I wanted was to take a great big bite out of the world. Now I know how sick the world actually is I'm almost glad I didn't. I only regret not making loads of money when I might have done. Because I would use that money to lock myself away from the world. If I were a multi-billionaire I'd live behind 40ft high walls and never ever go outside. I used to want to be clean, but I don't think there's any chance of that now. Darkness surrounds us.
Akkkh I'm starving. I've got to go. If I read this back I know I won't post it.
I'M FEELING WAY BETTER than yesterday and the previous few days. I think finally I have caught up on my lost sleep.
TOMORROW I'M BUYING AN ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE. They cost £8 for a nonrechargable disposable one that contains as many blasts on the nicotine as 30 real fags. I'm determined to get my absolute money's worth by holding in the nicotine as if it's crack smoke. £8 is $12 and almost as much as real fags cost anyhow but I'm determined to give these electronic ones a whirl. I've seen people use them and they look so funky. The rechargable ones used to cost £40 ~ then you have to hunt down a supplier of refill cartridges and of course I'd only want maximum strength ones. I'll let you know how it goes...
