[internautica]

Cherry

art depression article

When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all?

All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess.

The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.

Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.

Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy.

Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do.

It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.

And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.

- Mary Karr, Cherry

art quote disco elysium depression

Who doesn't toy with the thought of suicide sometimes? Or, like, most of the time? Okay, maybe some people don't – like the happy scientist girl named Marie, or Jean-Marc, the superstar whom everyone loves. But you -- when the going gets rough, it's nice to think about your little trap door out of here. Do it. Put your finger on the eject button, see how alive it makes you feel -- the freedom of finality. Think of how much they'll miss you.

- Finger on the Eject Button

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern

art poem depression love

The days I don’t want to kill myself
are extraordinary. Deep bass. All the people
in the streets waiting for their high fives
and leaping, I mean leaping,
when they see me. I am the sun-filled
god of love. Or at least an optimistic
under-secretary. There should be a word for it.
The days you wake up and do not want
to slit your throat. Money in the bank.
Enough for an iced green tea every weekday
and Saturday and Sunday! It’s like being
in the armpit of a Hammond B3 organ.
Just reeks of gratitude and funk.
The funk of ages. I am not going to ruin
my love’s life today. It’s like the time I said yes
to gray sneakers but then the salesman said
Wait. And there, out of the back room,
like the bakery’s first biscuits: bright-blue kicks.
Iridescent. Like a scarab! Oh, who am I kidding,
it was nothing like a scarab! It was like
bright. blue. fucking. sneakers! I did not
want to die that day. Oh, my God.
Why don’t we talk about it? How good it feels.
And if you don’t know then you’re lucky
but also you poor thing. Bring the band out on the stoop.
Let the whole neighborhood hear. Come on, Everybody.
Say it with me nice and slow
no pills no cliff no brains on the floor
Bring the bass back. no rope no hose not today, Satan.
Every day I wake up with my good fortune
and news of my demise. Don’t keep it from me.
Why don’t we have a name for it?
Bring the bass back. Bring the band out on the stoop.
Hallelujah!

- Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Helping

art visual xkcd depression love

xkcd helping

- xkcd

Dante in Sardina

art depression poem

The classics lie to you: there is no romance
to death. I wake up, brush my teeth, and find out
that my friend has hung himself in a public park.
More brandy, please!, the living around me shout, then put
their sunglasses on. He adored this island, the red house
where the pool was covered in wasps and we drank wine
for lunch. We played chess with half our bodies in water
until we got headaches from the sun. He let me win
and only laughed when I recited Dante to him:
Nature follows--as she takes her course—
the Divine Intellect and the Divine Art...
Nature is not like art, he said, because it's functional
before it is beautiful. The black, Volcanic hills
could not sway him. Neither could the gecko
falling asleep on his feet every afternoon. He is ash
in a small jar now, or that is what science says.
Here, the river has dried out, the tomato vines
fouled. Every day the world inches closer
to ruin and still I am astonished that bones and flesh
contain the spirit, and that it can burn.
Volcanic sediment and crushed seashells
have turned the sand a tangy red, lifetimes of everything
contaminating each other. And then emptying the jar
into the clear, green water. Darling, I say to the sea,
a feeling of inadequacy rushing through me—
above us are Dante's inscrutable stars, mocking me
for my terribly human need for connection. And below
is the coast, where the waves are just waves, taking one thing
and returning another: bottle caps, warm seagrass.

- Aria Aber

I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen

art poem depression headspace

Bring me a drink.
I need to think a little.
Paper. Pen.
And I could use the stink
of a good cigar–even
though the sun’s out.
The grackles in the trees.
The grackles inside my heart.
Broken feathers and stiff wings.

I could jump.
But I don’t.
You could kill me.
But you won’t.

The grackles
calling to each other.
The long hours.
The long hours.
The long hours.

- Sandra Cisneros

A Good Day

art poem depression headspace

Yesterday, I spent 60 dollars on groceries,
took the bus home,
carried both bags with two good arms back to my studio apartment
and cooked myself dinner.
You and I may have different definitions of a good day.
This week, I paid my rent and my credit card bill,
worked 60 hours between my two jobs,
only saw the sun on my cigarette breaks
and slept like a rock.
Flossed in the morning,
locked my door,
and remembered to buy eggs.
My mother is proud of me.
It is not the kind of pride she brags about at the golf course.
She doesn’t combat topics like, ”My daughter got into Yale”
with, ”Oh yeah, my daughter remembered to buy eggs”
But she is proud.
See, she remembers what came before this.
The weeks where I forgot how to use my muscles,
how I would stay as silent as a thick fog for weeks.
She thought each phone call from an unknown number was the notice of my suicide.
These were the bad days.
My life was a gift that I wanted to return.
My head was a house of leaking faucets and burnt-out lightbulbs.
Depression, is a good lover.
So attentive; has this innate way of making everything about you.
And it is easy to forget that your bedroom is not the world,
That the dark shadows your pain casts is not mood-lighting.
It is easier to stay in this abusive relationship than fix the problems it has created.
Today, I slept in until 10,
cleaned every dish I own,
fought with the bank,
took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don’t work for salary, I didn’t graduate from college,
but I don’t speak for others anymore,
and I don’t regret anything I can’t genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burned down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
and it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn’t salivate over sharp knives,
or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, “it was a good day.”

- Kait Rokowski

art quote headspace depression

Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.

- Vincent van Gogh