Beauty Caught

I spent a lifetime chasing beauty

All this time, Beauty eluded me.

I thought I could capture her in a phrase,

Or in a cantabile dolce of one of Mozart’s finest

Beauty remained an an enigma

I would daydream of catching her and holding on

Fascinated with what lay beneath the layers of the golden orb

That I could unravel time, distance, secrets of worlds lost,

And all the mysteries of this life and beyond

Only I found, as I gently peeled back leaf after gilded leaf

That the centre was leaden, hollowed-out ebony,

And within it laid this mortal coil.

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

It’s not like I wasn’t trying.

It’s just that if by the age of two

You only knew the clashing voices of loved ones

And the bleakness of unavailable

Hearts,

You settle for the most ridiculous of childhood

Pretend games.

So bleakness curled its tail around me

Until, one day

My father brought home

A record.

It wasn’t any old record

It was a gift for me

That he had scoured the city to find

On the recommendation of a friend.

My father, the tone-deaf, practical workaholic

Bought me a music record Of a pianist

But all I heard was the piano

And of it being as exquisite as a father’s intention

For his daughter I was simply unaware

Of the trap I was falling into

For at the tender age of three

Beauty entered my life

And I knew her by name.

Since then, I have been seeking beauty in all things

And whenever I’ve had to shun it

I become bitter and cynical

Wishing ill upon the many enemies accrued

And wishing that I could just die

But after each drought

I would learn that Beauty never left me

In a way, I always knew she was there

Patiently waiting, alluringly

Like a monument who never ages

But who dares you to look again

Upon her perfect, fascinating face

That needs no jewel to crown

But beckons you to hope anew.

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Thought I’d dredge my poetry collection for some of my faves. Enjoy.

In the beginning

I had all the time in the world

But didn’t want it.

Time is not all that

It’s added up to be.

By the age of seven,

I faced suicide.

At twelve, I realized I could never

Be a good mother,

So Time grabbed me by the womb

And stood still.

At twenty, I fell in love.

For the first time,

Time didn’t matter.

At twenty-one, my lover

Left me to chase his old flame,

Once too spiritual for him,

But, you see, I had brought him

Back

Into the fold,

So, now, he thought he had a better chance.

Time turned black and white, green, and red.

Ten years of waiting and being taunted.

Psychotic church leaders

Who meted out their dole of destruction.

Time was a cheat.

But the worst was the lie from someone

Whom you love

Who once was supposed to have

Loved you back,

Replying when asked,

What helps?

“Time heals.”

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Anger is a miserable houseguest. When it wants to pull you to participate, it does not take much for it to convince. When it won’t leave you alone, it clings like an annoying rival who has used you for its stores of energy and display, leaving you depleted, self-loathing, and frustrated.

Of all of these, the worst feeling is frustration. You have tried to placate it. You have jumped through all the hoops until you were depleted. You have self-sacrificed like a good martyr hoping to win it over while risking your own health. Ultimately, she is a troll. A snake. A crocodile that cries.

In the end, they get under your skin. And like any decent human being, you try meditating. It is pure rubbish. Talk to a Buddhist, and he will wish a vengeful karma on someone he feels has shafted him. Talk to a Christian, and they’ll invariably get fed up with your problems. Talk to a 14-year-old, and she makes Anger look like a sissy. Such are the conditions we humans find ourselves confined to.

Is there any respite? I cannot find it. I have been alive now, not enjoying any moment of it, for half a century. I have a lot of negative self-talk. I have become spiteful, petty, and deeply vengeful. I have become that ball of Anger–that wretched, infiltrating house-pest. I have lived with it for so long, I’m ready to strangle the people now long gone while they turn in their graves.

These are dark thoughts. I am sorry I exposed this side of myself and yet how can I not? If I do not write these things, even should nobody else read them, I am bottling up hate for another season and it will become a poisonous brew. I would rather you normaloids hate what I write and have it strike a chord with 0.0001% of the population than that I never, in my twisted but sensible irony, let Anger go.

A World Without Poetry

 

What is this world

Where we have lost our poetic gifts, the bone

Set to bring us higher

We are lost

Like a dog that no longer knows how to please

And takes no pleasure in its owner’s benevolence

What is this world if

By chance or by design

We cannot transform our rage

With the use of

Words

majestic, magical, magnanimous

Words

Plucked and carefully, lovingly cradled

From the tempest and tarantella that

Only humans

Can, at once, feel and craft,

Far, far away from the fleet of baboons

Tapping furiously away

In the random attempt to reach

Shakespeare’s brow.

 

©️Vic Yeung 2021 All Rights Reserved

It is a universally recognized truth that when it comes to any schizophrenic, at any point of their life, at any given moment, under any institution except a psych hospital or jail, that “perhaps, they just shouldn’t have been there.”

 

This is true, despite tiered governmental policies and incentives towards “disability inclusion” that is done as more of an opportunistic, “nebular” inclusion than a solid, policy and vision driven plan of action. Some things one just never gets around to, y’know eh?

 

Not good enough. But alas, we ARE talking about the mentally ill—underrepresented, unemployable, incorrigible, leeching, bottomless bottom-feeders. Nobody really has the time for them. It’s difficult to argue with that. If I were a normaloid, and had a life with a lot going for me, to stop and understand how the mental patient’s mind works would be psycho-sociological, financial suicide. Some things are best left alone to themselves.

 

Some things are unsolvable and thus left to themselves. Mental illness seems to one of them. Depending on if we can keep the conservative elements out of government, there may be modest or even radical changes in how we compensate the mentally ill. But see, what the liberal element cannot achieve, though they are closer at the federal level to achieving it now than any point in Canadian history, is full inclusion. That, I believe, only the socialist elements can dream of in their philosophy. Liberals, if given a chance, can effect powerful changes of policy; but, they fly the normaloid flag. In other words, they are not misfits, whereas Canadian socialists are. Only misfits can understand the plight of the stigmatized and vulnerable. Middle-of-the-road politicians are doing their best, they are doing good, but the good they do, unfortunately, is still topical and cosmetic change. The far right would simply cut the mentally ill off half to two-thirds of their benefits and commit the so-called functional ones to what would be effectually forced labour. Deep, heartfelt change is not achievable with halfway measures and a modicum of compassion, regardless of the deeply moving, momentary thoughts and prayers that never resonated in the sanctuaries of any Southern Baptist congregations I knew of anyway.

 

The key phrase you hear, from Standford to UBC, of suicide victims and mentally ill students who get victimized, is a euphemistic “They were individuals who probably shouldn’t have been there.” The schools here set up departments to handle such known cases and monitor the rest who report honestly that they are mentally ill. Invariably, when things go south, as is often the case as progress cyclically dips and rises, the person in question must go. In short, it’s not the normaloid’s problem anymore.

 

This theme occurs on Facebook groups, too. Art instructors running classes online through livestreams or patronage sites will thwart your attempts to be included. Some will bait you into wanting to join their “friendliest, secret Facebook group they know of online”, that they emphatically state is open to all, even making a patron sign-up list, only to openly strike you off their enrolment list in the full view of all the other patrons. Others rant on in their livestreams, “Like, if anyone knows about mental illness, it’s ME. MY father was a horrible, untreated, paranoid schizophrenic. He shouldn’t have had kids. I have nothing against schizophrenics, mind you. I just wish they’d build a huge, luxury hotel resort and put all the mentally deranged people there.” This art instructor might as well as said “and let it run derelict, lock them up and throw away the key because, frankly nobody wants to deal with them and I rant on the behalf of all normal society…” She lost my vote of the Almighty Dollar when she proved that underneath that 34-year-old petite blond shell was a 14-year-old Valley Girl refusing to grow up and get over herself. Look around, kiddo. There just might be more to the world than you and your art channel that doubles as a quasi-soap-box-groupie-worship type thingy. (And yes, I can say such things here since this is my channel, after all.). 🙂

 

In such a case, she might as well rant on behalf of normal society. Most normaloids prove irresponsible, cowardly, and egotistical. Do we herein give up the fight? I think in that Scottish play, the titled, Shakespearean Lady says it best: “Nay, if you do not care for me, I do not care for myself.” ‘Nuff said.

©️Vicky Yeung 2021 All Rights Reserved

Coleman ‘should be embarrassed’ for comparing social assistance to Third World incomes

Rich Coleman reveals true face of a government that has failed to help the poor

In case you lose the links, here are the PDF files of those articles for posterity.

If depression is a dark cloud, then schizophrenia is a black box.

It isn’t just what sufferers of schizophrenia go through during psychosis that makes schizophrenia opaque and impenetrable; it is also that during remission, as psychiatrists try to reassure their patients of a total recovery, reality means functionality does not match up with the supposed recovery. There is still a suffering, stigmata, and the daily survival of negative and enduring symptoms such as paranoia, intrusive thoughts, and reduced cognitive functioning. Even watching new releases on the wonderful Disney channel, while your prefrontal cortex doesn’t budge, cannot address these symptoms sufficiently.

In other words, what is it that we want? We can, with effort, manage to bathe every third day, take out the composting every tenth, maybe do something more creative other than watching Netflix, such as colour in a traced drawing or bake bread. Isn’t that enough? Why are we so unhappy? Why are we asking for more when we don’t know specifically what that vague “more” is? Why can’t we be satisfied with “enough”?

Some of those who gravitate to the political right and don’t either have a relative with schizophrenia, yet—nor will address with sympathy what is already happening in their community—call us “filthy rich pensioners”. The fact is that the right-winged provincial Liberals froze our disability income for 16 years while in power, and while it is true that money can only buy sex and ads instead of love and support, it seems that increases in money is all that has changed for the better for us. Stigma still tinges the way nearly everyone interacts with schizophrenics. Even in being kind, people without schizophrenia in their family are still condescending and want to end interaction as fast as possible. If we do not tell others off the bat that we have schizophrenia, they feel deceived when we do tell them we have schizophrenia. But if we tell them in the very first utterance, they mistake us for violent psychopaths, which actually isn’t even something true psychopaths can be blamed for—just restrained. Basically, social interaction in the west coast of Canada is about rejection or acceptance. They want to know so they can reject you straight off the bat instead of wasting their time in figuring you out. Seriously, don’t waste their time. Many are social-climbers after all. They’ve got things to do and places to go. None of them wants to befriend a loser. (I am speaking on their assumed behalf.)

So what gives? Why make a diatribe about the way we suffer, which, put side-to-side with Third World countries, as the former Liberal MLA, Rich Coleman stated in 2013, isn’t even suffering by comparison? Well, Third World countries are still classified as third-world because of the unbearable poverty and deprivation that most of our detractors have acknowledged is terrible. The fact that they wish to compare the standard of living that schizophrenic citizens of his own first-world country have to the standards of the Third World is shocking. I don’t know of any comparison in the First World that is more oppressive than that except for a total dystopia. (Oh, well, we are not as badly off as the precincts in “The Hunger Games”, or as Gilead in the “The Handmaid’s Tale”, duh.) The one thing I noticed is that nobody will give a damn until their own son or daughter becomes like one of us. Is that really what it is going to take? (And when it happens, do you really think we’ll be around to help you or your kids?) And yes, according to the Penticton Herald, Rich Coleman knows very little about suffering these days as he retires with a pension of $109,000 per annum until it accrues to 2.6 million at a fine age of 85. This ex-deputy premier from 2012-17 for the provincial BC Liberals didn’t give a hoot and now couldn’t be bothered by the plight of people like us. So much for the agenda of BC Liberals.

You can corral, cull and kill us all through euthanasia but it won’t stop the march of the disease. As it is abundantly over-stated, “schizophrenia affects 1% of the population” and does not know race, creed, class, character or credentials. It also doesn’t know age. You could possibly be 8 or 80 and still have psychosis lurking around the corner during those 72 years. Even if you were to cull us, new cases will pop up. Just because you got rid of the existing DNA (mind you, most of us schizos are too smart to breed more of us), it won’t stop the disease. It is mis-wiring in the human brain, unknown yet as to how it became that way, and has been around since recorded history. If you believe the Christian Bible even as just a long-standing book that records stories, you’ll see how King David, then a captured youth, saved himself from certain death by acting the madman. The enemy leader asked, “have I not got enough madmen in my kingdom to deal with? Put him out of my presence!” [My paraphrase]. Psychosis, and it’s stigma, has been around us for a very long time. It would have had to have been by virtue of the use of this tactic and its efficacy.

I guess you can keep on killing us either by culling or impoverishment. You can use the stop-gap, fix-the-broken-window method indefinitely even as you detect rogue DNA while still in the womb. Or you can kill us slowly through deprivation. You could achieve this by putting us back into Riverview, or do what some have suggested: put us in resort area that will effectively be like an expanded, long-term care unit, until out-of-sight-out-of-mind gives you complacency, or worse, uneasy peace.

You are uneasy not only because of your conscience. You are uneasy because it could happen to your kids, because you did not do due diligence or care enough to look for a preventable vaccine or a cure. Oh now look, what has just happened?

©️Vic Young 2020-2021 All Rights Reserved