Tags
Broken Monitors
Painting and story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
There can be a time when what’s going on in the world does not match up with what is going on in your head. It is a time of broken monitors. There is a discrepancy, it is disturbing. Automatic functions get a bit haywire. Maybe sleeping, or remembering the things you have to do. Or even eating. Maybe those automatic functions though automatic were not steady and systematic. Maybe they were a bit erratic. Now they’re truly erratic. Each time one of those comes unstuck it bounces around disturbing the others until most of your basic functions start to interfere with the smoothness of your daily life.
You could call that the broken monitor. But not a monitor like a computer has. A monitor like a classroom has. The one who looks after the milk, or the books. That monitor is refusing to do it’s job. You never realized what a job it was either. Life becomes a struggle.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Now I’ve read your story, I can certainly sympathize with how you feel; I know that feeling too Lehan and when you get to feeling like that it is all too easy to allow oneself to slip down that slope into a dark pit of despair; at all costs one must not let that happen. My advice would be to get plenty of fish oil and to not try to do anything more than the basic tasks for the time being… not until your ‘monitor’ is fixed!
Try to do something nice for yourself… and make sure you tell yourself you deserve it!
🙂
LikeLike
Yeah, Lehan, and if you don’t listen to yourself, then listen to Asty and me: you deserve it!
Plato, of course explained the work of these monitors. In his, what modern scholars call “the simile of the line”, (Republic, Book VI?) he talks of a group of “people” in our soul that makes sure we have a grasp of what is “real” and what is “belief.” But he makes the whole bloody exercise of living far too complex an intellectual exercise, bereft, really, of any emotion; or rather, rejecting the potency of emotions.
I go through lots of fish oil AND a lot of fish! Keeps me… lovable, at least to Mrs Ato!
LikeLike
Ah, fish, the universal panacea! Good for preventing heart attack, stroke, arthritis, depression. Our whole family consumes enormous quantities of the stuff!
LikeLike
Fabulous image again Lehan.
LikeLike
Exactly the word which sprang into my mind too, Warrigal! Wonderful, Lehan! Absolutely fabulous!
🙂
LikeLike
Sometimes, by way of comparison between what’s going on in the world and what’s going on in the head, it’s important to not adjust your set; normal programming will resume when the outside world has rectified a temporary technical fault…
LikeLike
Painting like that proves not all that much is broken.
LikeLike
I like this one better than the picture that was there yesterday, very, very good, Lehan.
LikeLike
Automatic functions go haywire. I think that says it all. Disrupted by events outside the body, earthquake, trauma, divorce, it all seems to upset equilibrium. Sometimes the mind takes a while to regain the auto functions, sometimes it needs retraining. Most of the time one doesn’t know until one is on the other side.
LikeLike
“Sometimes the mind takes a while to regain the auto functions, sometimes it needs retraining”
Mate, don’t I know it! I get the two happening simultaneously sometimes!
Thoroughly undisciplined, my functions are! Totally anarchic!
Brilliant observation, again, Lehan, with an equally brilliant work of art!
Though warmest the cochlears of my heart! (As a king once said to one of his daughters)
LikeLike
Atomou, we’ve had a few incidence in life that have robbed the mind of automatic functions, one, was my youngest sone being diagnosed with moderate depression in the same year that Mrs M’s niece took her own life, after an adult life of depression. Working in the hospital we’ve both heard the worst; self harm/suicide vs mind altering anti-depressants that aren’t designed for a young mind.
A couple of good things happened; a good GP who screened for the organic sorts of things that cause depression, and who gave our son good advice about diet, exercise, etc; and a good psychologist who, in spite of not being adolescent trained, was fabulous. He has finished his course of counselling, and, in our minds, is off the danger list. The only problem now is the, “Don’t push me too hard with homework….”
The other concern is that Mrs M has had ongoing treatment for breast cancer. She had a suspicious ultrasound of the surviving breast, but the biopsy today was all clear.
We’re all cheering at the M house!!
LikeLike
Our heartiest congratulations to all the M’s. And a special hug for Mrs M, from our First Mate.
LikeLike
Flowers for the lovely Mrs M…
Bad enough having a sister with a breast cancer, and a brother-in law who is a certified nut…
According to one of my sister-in-laws , all Oosterman boys are ‘uncertified’ nuts…a bit harsh if you ask me.
LikeLike
That cheers us up bigM. Good news. A big bunch of flowers for Mrs M which I’ll pinch from the back of StJudes at Bowral when no one is looking.
Good news about your son too.
LikeLike
Thankyou all. Mrs M’s been downplaying the whole biopsy business, but had a huge sense of relief, so we are all very grateful! Had some of her Mexican beer and some wine.
LikeLike
And I’m cheering for the M house, Big one!
Great news, indeed!
The crap that the gods can toss at us poor mortals is infinite in number and infinite in suffering. They’re bastards them gods. Unfair bloody bullies.
The tragedians -probably reflecting echoing the mortals on the street- would say, “what suffering has not visited me/us?”
When they come, they come in storms and tempests and sometimes we founder, other times we manage to sail through them. It’s then, we realise the value of even a moment’s clear weather.
Well done, Mmmmmms!
LikeLike
A heartfelt thanks from Mrs M, for the flowers, the hugs, and the good wishes!
LikeLike
M, I’m glad to know that Mrs M is in the clear. It’s cause to celebrate.
LikeLike
As Buddha said: dukkha is,life is suffering…
LikeLike