"Catholicpalooza"...

I'm having my first independent art show in September!  Opening reception will be on Tuesday, September 15th at 6 pm at The Show Gallery (978 Queen St West), right across from the CAMH campus.

The name of the show is "Catholicpalooza", a collection of my (mostly) Catholic inspired pieces.  Art will be priced lower than average for this show, so if you want to buy a piece of art, please try to bring exact change (prices range from between $100.00 and $400.00, depending on the piece - I will have a bit of float money), but know that I also will take eTransfer.  I will also be selling a handful of back issues of Asylum Squad comics.  Sadly, I am virtually out of (Complete!) collection copies of "The Jung Ones", but I still have plenty of copies of "The (Complete!) Monster Hospital" and "In Solidarity" for sale.  The curator wants me to sit in the gallery most days, I will try to be at the gallery often, if anyone wants to chat.

There is a lot of prep work to do, I am getting on it right now.  The show will run from September 14th through until the 20th.  I have selected 17 pieces to go into "Catholicpalooza".

More to come as this show draws near!

-Saraƒin

Shrink rant...

I had taken it down a while ago because I felt vulnerable leaving it up, but I had done a psychiatrist call out post about several bad shrinks I had.  Because I am very afraid of psychiatry's power over my life, I chose to remove it.  But now that I'm beyond that world, I feel like talking about some things again:

I am now so afraid of psychiatrists because of what I sense is wrong with my file that the idea of working with one again sends chills up my spine, and passing by the CAMH buildings on the streetcar fills me with horror.  The rogue psychiatrist that I knew who agreed I was experiencing spiritual emergency was the exception, but in the end, I didn't even need a psychiatrist at all.

One doctor I brought up before was Dr. Langley.  I sensed a falseness to this man that I can't quite describe, the kind of feeling you might get when dealing with someone trying to sell you an Apple product, or something else where they're just not exactly being forthcoming with you.  This short in stature Neil Tennant lookalike contestant potential and former professional trombonist gave me the sense that he wasn't paying attention to a single thing I had to say for myself.  At one point, when I made an argument for spiritual emergency, his response was: "if that's what you want to call it in this office, I am willing to call it that" - erm, big deal, because if the file remains the same, it doesn't mean shit, and I don't care.  I am not sure what he wrote down about me, but I suspect it might have been unpleasant.  It's bizarre how little he cared for the patient's opinion, while still remaining so "nice".  When I proposed the kundalini as an example of part of what my true condition was, in all his psychiatric whiteness, he dismissed these mere brown ideas as unscientific, which would sound ludicrous to several other groups that I could name.  I'm also unsure if his lack of knowledge of the existence of the dimethyltrytamine molecule was sincere, I imagine it was a lie fabricated to deflect my argument.  Being a doctor I found it surprising coming from him.  I have no idea who he was, but to me, he was one of the bigger fakes, as pleasant as he was.  He's what's wrong with the "nice guy shrink".  Others have been bad to me as well, but Dr. Langley for sure should be called out again, because this man won an award for - get this - "compassion", so I'm suggesting that it's kind of absurd, based on my experiences with him.

I have decided I can't possibly trust a psychiatrist ever again unless they are particularly brilliant, self aware (and I can tell when they are because I can read eyes), a wounded healer of sorts, and willing to take down the man to protect or help a patient.  I am also not sure about baby shrinks (younger doctors), because I feel it takes a ripened mind to fulfill this role well.  What I liked about my Jungian analyst was that he was the real deal, and would even drop everything and take an emergency call if I was in crisis.  If wisdom is not involved in the practice of psychiatry, terrible things can happen to a file, and thus a life.  My life is an example of this.

Now that I am free of Latuda and away from the system and all its abuses, I feel relieved that I have accomplished this, despite what others thought was possible, and I am never looking back again.

-Saraƒin

Downloads about Sekhmet that make me wonder...

I often get pretty profound things through channeling about the state of affairs in the world, and what it might mean.  Astrologers love chiming in about planetary alignments and how they are influencing things, but I don't feel particularly moved much by this information.

One thing I keep receiving (and perhaps this is one reason Sekhmet became a major deity for me) is that She has become Queen of the Earth as a goddess of the times, and is exactly the reason things have gone completely insane.  It's not because of the death of David Bowie, it's because of the rise of Sekhmet.

Sekhmet is a war goddess who sorts humanity out, often by destroying them.  She is not a devil, She is however wrathful, and destroys horrible things.  I have downloaded that She has made several influences in the world absolutely bizarre in order to sort the humans out.  We have become a strange burden to our planet, and She's controlling us now.  The good people of the Earth might not have to worry under this.  The message is - behave immediately, or be fucked up by Sekhmet.

People in the Left Hand Path have suggested Lucifer is the one doing this.  I am suggesting, based on my downloads, it's actually Sekhmet.  Even media is getting odd, perhaps to present the notion that we're not making sense, and should watch ourselves.  Money is getting weird too, because we need to learn from that.  Technology might become so sophisticated, we need to decide what we want to do with it.  Madness will be everywhere, and it will be a right of passage to go mad to solve oneself.  It's as though a war goddess is saying to us: "Well humanity, what do you make of what you've created?"

I am once again assuming the role of the beautiful, glistening, gold plated, diamond studded total cow to make one more bold statement about two nitwits who seem to lack decency with the mentally ill.  If I ever crawl my way out of low income living, if I become one of those rich whites one day, I am going to hire that nightmare attorney who represented Jian Ghomeshi and I am going to cream you in court if you in fact slandered me in some weird way with embellished information to get me into serious trouble with the law to do away with me because you refuse to be reasonable.  I am going to insist that you be made into two ridiculous looking taxidermy Toby mugs, and I will lock those Toby mugs in a glass case, amongst the tiki mugs I have collected overtime, and every time I look at those mugs, I will delight in what I have accomplished, despite it all.  And when those mugs start to oxidize and go off, be it by some foul odour emanating from them or something else, I will take those mugs out back and I will smash them, or at least donate them to a Salvation Army to be some other poor schmuck's problem.  And only then will I be satisfied with the shit I have had to endure in the city of Toronto because of dingbats like you.

Ok, that's it!  I think I need to find my Zen!  Today I drop off some art, and enjoy myself at a goth picnic.  That should do the trick.

-Saraƒin

More reflections on themes in Asylum Squad...

I was contemplating themes from my comic a bit again.  Because of my terrible problems with memory, it's possible I've discussed some of these themes before, but I might as well share some recent musings, in case I missed something:

I think that if I had used the old idea for the plot twist (which insinuated that Armananstantanu the horse demon might have been real), there would have been a strange tone about the theme of love by the end of the comic.  Because Liz Madder and all other characters never find love with a partner by the end of the series, there might have been a bad message about love itself, with all the pain in the books.  This is likely influenced by my own problems with what love seems like to me, having lived a life of many strange things.

Contemplating the plot twist, I realize that Liz does find love - it's with God, as a nun.  The symbolism of things going wrong with the strange heart object she assaults in the dream sequence around the time she's dating Josh Lyon demonstrates she is barking up the wrong tree with love.  The message is - even if you can't know love with a person, there is a greater love you can know with Heaven, because Liz's destiny is to become what amounts to the next St. Dymphna, which makes the symbolism with the statue even more interesting.  I thought a message of cosmic love was a great way to close the series, suggesting hope for those who are suffering.

Not having a regional psychiatric care system that makes any sense for my specific situation, I had to rely on the spirit world's hand to be my therapist, my nurse, and sometimes my orderly.  Working with spiritual dimensions while in need, I was able to heal myself enough to get beyond Latuda.  I am still profoundly weary from trauma and abuses from both the psychiatric and legal systems because of the slandering of my intentions while unwell, and of course because of my conflict with the entity.  I have been fucked with by terrible white people who are as insufferable to deal with as the Weimaraner couple in the movie "Best In Show", if not worse, and I have absolutely no idea how to combat their power.  I don't think I am going to tackle certain problems with how I was handled because I just don't know how to face solving them.  Trauma can really screw with you, you feel too crippled and shocked to do anything.

In other news, I am going down to The Show Gallery on Queen St West today to talk to the curator about having a one person art show with my work.  This gallery caters to those who have suffered from mental health problems or physical disabilities, and I have never shown with them.  Now that I'm back in the art scene, I figured it was time, because I'm doing well at Super Wonder Gallery.

Tomorrow I drop "God Save The Queen" off for The Rock & Roll Masterpiece Show, which will be happening next weekend.

-Saraƒin

Two NIMBY twits in Parkdale - bad middle class handling of the mad...

Alright, maybe I'm not done discussing a certain person after all, there is a bit more to say about my frustrations because of someone taking me out of context and committing what amounts to a variant of slander, at least in my opinion.  I have decided I have no choice but to transform into a total cow - a beautiful, glistening, gold plated, diamond encrusted total cow, who has very strong opinions about having been wronged by the Toronto law and mental health care system:

It had come to my attention in conversation from a mutual friend (who is now passed, he was also a teacher) that this guy, who did often seem pleasant to me, despite it all, actually felt very little for me, and saw me as a stalker.  For whatever reason, this fucked up my 20 something heart, because I was still hoping this misinterpretation of my confession at grad could be resolved somehow, it triggered unfortunate states.  This was also around the time when I began having strange spiritual problems, so it was just adding gasoline to the fire.

I became fixated once again on trying to solve it, I discovered what his phone number was, and in the oddness of my state, began opening up and babbling about things over the phone.  Again, none of it was particularly provocative, perhaps just a bit strange, and I opened the vault somewhat about my traumas from abuse and my personality.  These attempts at contact were the result of desperation because of something closing in on me, not an attempt to be weird or clingy.  The strangely territorial woman in his life, let's call her The Iron Vagina (which I guess sounds a bit like a sexy Margaret Thatcher thing, but I'll go with it anyway) perhaps had a hand at that time in getting shit started where my character would become stranger looking on file, because she had the coldness of a glacier the final time I attempted a phone call with him, and what followed made my head spin... I am assuming she's a bit like the Trunchbull from "Matilda".  I am also assuming this man has no genitals, possibly because The Iron Vagina sawed them off, made shepherd's pie, and spoonfed it to him in some bizarre honeymoon hazing ritual, thus breaking his desire to be more reasonable with the awkwardness of youth.  I say this (and I also suspect pedophilia in her, BTW) because for some reason a former principal from my old high school (one who wasn't even a principal there anymore at the time, which is really strange to me) was called forward to become involved, because this is what my mother told me when someone blasted the situation to her in an email, which I find rather infantilizing, the tone of high school people becoming involved in my life again I mean, considering I was a 23 year old adult.  I'm also just seeing that she's guilty of some particularly weird shit when I read the Akashic Records, stuff like child molestation and possibly infanticide.  She delights in fucking with young women and girls, while desiring to fuck little boys.  Take it or leave it, at my level of development, that's just what I saw.  (I am also reading that this woman is delighting quite a bit in what she is getting away with when it comes to screwing with my reputation in the medical, legal, and educational systems, that while she is the saboteur, he is simply the enabler.  This woman is not Karen, she is Karla.)  Based on how "nice" I have heard this guy tends to be, I found it strange coming from him, because most decent people would probably just get I was in crisis, and the response wouldn't have been this bizarre and heavy handed.  Whatever was said, my mother exploded at me, and I was forced into hospital.  I was discharged soon thereafter, disappeared for a while, living on the streets, and when my bank balance went to zero, I attempted suicide from the stress of everything while in a homeless shelter.

When I was really gone because of the entity (and I guess this is where I start to look pretty guilty to people who are not gentle with the mad), I found out where he lived, and I went to him to try to talk things over.  His response was to look at me with the eyes of a man in fear at the sight of me, and proceeded to turn and walk away.  I decided to leave this problem alone for a while.

At the time of the first arrest, I am wondering if details of my behaviour were not in fact embellished a bit, because the tone in court was freaky about what the crown saw in my character.  I am not sure if it was The Iron Vagina who is responsible, or if it was my "friend", the hairless nightmare.  I also wonder if this form of slander, if this is in fact what one might call it, added to an argument for mania that shouldn't have existed, even though everyone agreed there was absolutely no need for me to take lithium.  I have neither the sexual promiscuity traits, nor the excessive spending habits, nor any other kind of manic trait, of a person with bipolar symptoms, nor was I even depressed at the time.  I had an intact hymen, (I still do, BTW) having never been broken (raped, yes, but anally, not vaginally - and yes, a gynecologist, or perhaps even 5 minutes with a fucking Xerox photocopier, could prove this... can it please be understood why this argument for sexual promiscuity is going to glitch out after a certain point?), and I am also pretty darn good at making money last, so I find arguments ludicrous that this was some manic promiscuity thing with him, when I am not even sexually active, and that there was any mania to suggest schizoaffective disorder at all.  The arguments for mania, as I have said, would remain on file for over 15 years, even when I pointed out the obvious, and I am assuming it might have something to do with what people thought I was doing when I was arrested.  Again, the psychiatric profile probably would reveal all to me if I were to look at it, but I am still feeling far too vulnerable to do so.  The patient perspective is often ignored in psychiatry, in favour of what the doctor, and in this case, what the legal system saw.  No one in the system would ever reveal to me at any point any details of what these two mentioned to get me in trouble that would cause both the law and mental health care systems to treat me so horribly, trauma caused me to fear what it was... hence, I can't yet bring myself to look at my file.

And then this dude had the audacity to tell my lawyer to tell me that this was all "just to get me help", when it destroyed my life.  It was at that point that I decided to pick up a pen and start writing webcomics.  Because there were two charges, I was forced to move to "protect" this man, so I had to live in hospital for a year until equally shitty subsidized housing came up elsewhere.  It is perhaps all this and more that keeps me feeling unwell about everything that followed when I, at 19, had the "audacity" to admit feelings for him while in crisis.

At this point, I don't even give two damp shits about a friendship with him, if I could know compensation for my pain and suffering somehow because of what the system did to me, that might help with healing, but I doubt anyone would fight for me, it would probably be said that I don't have a case.  Maybe it's an autism trait, but I am obsessed with observing patterns in things, and there seems to be a pattern of the world not giving a shit about me at all with certain matters, defending many things that have happened to me as what I perhaps had created or deserved.  Because no one has helped me with the perverted duo of Parkdale and their hand in ruining my life, I had to pull some Egyptian shit... no idea if it's working.

There are levels of responsibility I must take on for looking bizarre when unwell and the results of how that might affect my life and the lives around me, but when I put it all together, I still can't help but feel it was a bit much.  It's something that simply exploded with time, and came down to this.  I think others might have gotten a pass, but I didn't.

The result is the beautiful, glistening, gold plated, diamond encrusted total cow that I have become, who simply wants to tell more of my backstory, to get feelings off my chest.  It's become clear to me, that in Toronto at least, if you are poor and mad enough, slander against you might get a pass, if it is coming from the middle class or higher levels of society.

With that it mind, I mostly keep my head down, but I will be writing about what I see in things.

-Saraƒin

A couple more things that irritate me...

Ok, I really need to calm down about this subject matter, but there's just a couple more items that make me a bit nuts about you know who:

Firstly (and this was mentioned by a former student, when we were both still in high school) I heard that a certain person had discussed with her products from Northbound Leather.  For those who don't know what that is, Northbound Leather is a fetish store in Liberty Village, Toronto, that sells both streetwear and kink gear.  Kinda weird to be discussing that with a teenager, I think?  Again, this is another student mentioning this to me, maybe it was just about the streetwear section, maybe he's in fact more of a Winners guy, but I still find it a bit weird.  Why is it that I'm deemed the strange one?

The next thing I heard that feels funny to me is that this guy gets together with former students and plays video games like old buddies.  I am not upset with this information, I am just annoyed that I was not permitted to level with him when I gave a shit, because it's considered a crime if it's coming from me.  He seems to be about mixed messages, because at one point, he insinuated that it was ok to stay in touch, but once I proved to be someone who had challenges, that changed.  I suppose this might be a case of not only ableism, but elitism?

So with that in mind, I am not impressed that, according to the Toronto law and mental health system, I have to be the one who is considered creepy.  It would be nice if more people fought for me, I am glad that the scientist did when it came to SCID, I am not sure what I am hoping for at this point with dingus, only that I feel profoundly outraged when I can't even be heard from the patient perspective when I have a problem with how I was treated.  I now not only hate psychiatry, I am afraid of it.  It's not a science, it's the power to make a person look however they want, on paper, based on what amounts to a Buzzfeed quiz.

I feel a bit like a character from Orange Is The New Black, trying to get a life going after serving time, with the amount of horseshit I have had to deal with, and the repercussions of dealing with the law.  It has come down to learning to be better at frugality, maintaining order in all levels of life so that nothing gets out of hand, living small so that I don't overspend.  There is absolutely no way I know how to escape this financial situation, because it seems to be my fate.  I went mad because of too much bullshit, some systemic, some metaphsyical, and there's not a lick of a chance of a higher education now.  My plan is to put away as much coin as I can scrap together, invest, and play by the rules, so that when my teeth fall out, I can afford the fancy dentures, not the Mister Ed talking horse level crap.  I simply lost time and opportunity, the world is too expensive now, and I have things to say about what life has been.

Okay, maybe that's all the venting about that for now.  Time to chill out, enjoy the rest of the summer, and get ready for my next art opening.

-Saraƒin

Reflections on accusations from the past...

This one will just be more musings on how things went wrong with a certain accusation and its long term impact on my self image.  Here we go:

So, as I have mentioned before, it was a different time in the early 2000s.  Mental health awareness trends had not yet taken off, and though there was Kids Help Phone and public service announcements that encouraged young people to reach out to older adults when in distress, the stigma of mental illness factor meant one's suffering could still be taken out of context when doing so, and my tone at the time was definitely awkward, being a silly 19 year old.  The result, in my case, was a snowballing effect of accusations of promiscuity that went so far as to make me feel self-destructive (there was a touch of sexism to what happened as well).  People didn't get it, and I began to see myself as ugly.  I didn't end up going to college or university, feeling as fucked up as I did (I went to Max The Mutt Animation School for a year much later, but dropped out).  My obsession, as I have said, was not about a person, but instead about solving something that went wrong after I was accused of coming onto him for admitting I had a crush while I was in crisis.  In my youthful mind, I was not yet self aware enough to see it for what it was, so I blamed myself, deciding that I was a bit of a creep, and I would occasionally physically abuse myself over it.  I was also not yet wise enough to realize that trying to provoke a conversation with this individual to resolve the misinterpretation was going to lead me into trouble.  You simply can't force someone to do something for you if they just don't want to, but try convincing younger me of that.

I am concluding that this is really just a case of something aging badly, and me still being neurotic about it.  My analyst pointed out to me that I have an obsessive mind... as a result, I am prone to suffering from playing old tapes over and over again.  All levels of psychosis and spiritual pain have been resolved, I don't self-injure anymore, yet how I was treated in the past still feels fucked up to me, considering its impact on my psychiatric profile, what the law thinks of me, and how events influenced certain narratives in my comics, and thus my public image as a mind.  I am not sure what the response would be to something like what I went through at grad for most young people at this point, I must remember it was a different time, and these sorts of things were not yet being called out as much.  Therapy couldn't solve my very strong feelings about it, but maybe time itself will heal all wounds.  Now that I'm in perimenopause, I am seeing my personality strengthen in many ways, so maybe even this will be something I can get over completely.  It's up to me to be strong when people prove that they just don't care.  I am also now apologizing to myself for all the times I have harmed myself with my art when ideas put in my head by mental health professionals influenced a distorted image of what my true intentions were.

I am not even sure I want a conversation with this individual anymore, because at this point, it might feel incredibly embarrassing.  I have absolutely no idea who he was, who he became, if his pleasant demeanour is sincere or superficial, it's a mystery.  Right now, I just want this fucking complex to go away, along with any lingering ideas out there that are false about me or my intentions with him.

Also, I want to mention that this man has more tattoos than a submarine fleet, which looks like it might mean one of several things: there’s an iguana he’s serving, a weed grow-op in his basement, he owns black leather furniture, a motorcycle, or there is some serious hanky panky shit going on.  Why on earth are people so shocked at the notion of a counterculture teenager having a little crush on him?  I wonder how many other awkward goth girls have gotten fucked over by him for being too honest.  My behaviour was no worse than any young woman's behaviour if they were not well.  I have been accused of being an outrageous stereotype of womanhood, and it's gone too far.  Some of us are just young and foolish, and sometimes we put our foot in our mouths... I long for a world that understands this.

The other thing these accusations of promiscuity did to me is destroy my trust in knowing a meaningful relationship with any man.  Because man has been so strange to me, having been my rapist, stalker, abuser in the dental chair, having felt me up, having assaulted me, having failed to protect me, and in this man's case, having accused me of coming onto him obsessively, I simply don't have crushes on any of them anymore, and haven't in decades.  The trauma from this and other things led me to believe it's impossible.  Again, I must insist I have no interest in being involved romantically with a married man... I am disgusted that this is what people in the system thought I was trying to do with him, that my name is associated with this kind of behaviour, it is simply not true.  I sensed a brother in him, I honestly just wanted to stay in touch, it is shocking what this became.  Though asexual, I used to have romantic crushes, I fear dying alone because of what this complex did to me.  I am no femcel - I have plenty of wit, charms, and fine social graces, but I turn everyone down, because I feel no sparks at all.

I will not be naming who this person is for these two reasons - I am a class act, and from what I understand, he is an absolute lunatic when he is angry, and he might go after me in some way... him or that fucking psychopathic pedophile wife.  I am never going to fuck with the middle class ever again. Also, it seems that in the end, all he cared about was his privacy… I’m honouring that.

In other news, my dear uncle recently passed, and I was at his memorial yesterday.  Good to see extended members of the family that I don't often see.  I get the sense my uncle recently visited me along with the soul of my father.  I was given a bookmark with my uncle's image on it, and placed it on my ancestor's shrine, which is where I put mementos of relatives and pets who have passed on.

It's nice to be able to have conversations with the other side.  The dead are sometimes lovelier than the living.

-Saraƒin