How are you creative? I don’t know. I don’t fall out of my chair any more!? I recline and use my thumb to poke out my thoughts instead of using my thoughts to say that I’m dumb. When I do speak I speak wisdom like a child instead of poke fun at other adults for … Continue reading Graduated Elf
Where did your name come from? I used to go around for years, even as early as a month ago, saying Erich is right after Enoch in the genealogy portion of the Old Testament. I learned a few minutes ago from “ye old AI” that it is indeed false. I’m not sure what I did … Continue reading Know Thy Name
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out? There once was an acid I put in my head. It took years for the molecule to take effect. It eventually did and fit like a fiddle in the middle of a dj set. I tried to poke at the strings … Continue reading One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure
What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like? My feet hit the floor. My knees to the ground. My fingers clasped tightly. My voice whispers “how.” My legs find their footing. My arms in a sleeve. My breakfast is waiting. My book opened to read. My friends are … Continue reading Back to the Basics
Ptew. Now you are gone. I have spit you out of my head. There are plenty of reasons this will not get read. Number one, I’m sure, is the rude beginning. Number two - I am who I am when pretending to be Eric the Red, Eric the Viking, Eric on the wind or the … Continue reading Step One – Socks
I have a big old knot smack dab in the middle of my forehead. It is supposedly calcified bone that I’ve had for about twenty-five years, but I hope that within the next five years the knot will actually open up and blink. Over the past five years, I have transformed my look from boho … Continue reading What I Do Not Know Could Fill A Book
I have found my voice. I will begin to speak as Chief around fire who had a Northern drawl his entire time coming up, planting himself on the outskirts of urban parks so as not to see the skyline burning nor the answer from stars turning towards the question of which light is burning brightest … Continue reading The Rat – A Natural Sophistication
Steady. Steady. Pull. Tearing a bandaid off a tuft of arm hair is supposed to be more tolerable when you have a friend do it. For me it’s not. The moderate pain from ripping the bandaid off will be the same in both scenarios. An element of surprise is better than anticipation when you expect … Continue reading Bandaids Don’t Remove Themselves
Yeah, I can tell everybody why I went back to college. The Grateful Goddam Dead that’s why. In the Fall of 1996 the powers-that-be told me I couldn’t sit in front of a computer any longer staring at fractals on a screen just cataloging my live concert cassettes. So I packed up the tapes and … Continue reading Daily Dose
Sitting on a porch, older, thinking back to what I wanted to be when I was a younger man who could still make things happen for myself I remember I wanted to go into advertising. I wanted to write a catch phrase here and a jingle there that would catch on and get on the … Continue reading “Who’s The Boss Will Be Back In A Moment”
There was a time in my life when I thought I was divine. Imagine how difficult it was to overcome a delusion like that as a young man. And as a middle aged man I still believe some of that to be true because it’s easy to accept that everybody is exceptional at times but… … Continue reading 12 – The Peak
Right on. Say it again. Forget about it. Stage banter. Have a good laugh. Don’t be smart. Say stupid things. Look people in the eye. Spit in yer eye. Stomp your foot. Act casual. Still laughing. Don’t whine. If you can’t say it, write it. Have fun or don’t. Love your recorded voice. Pause. Say … Continue reading My Weekly Colloquialisms!
Jesus…I…look out for…need…(indecipherable)…for…forget it...Amen. That is how well I pray inside my head as I breathe out thoughts I know I don’t need to say in order to be heard by any one force that already knows what is inside my head. When I pray for others I come up with the same broken language … Continue reading Caution – this mental health post has religious undertones
Daddy, where does the world come from? The world comes from lots of places but mostly it comes from the love we have for our children. Why? Because to understand the world you have to first see it through the eyes of a child. But how did it get here? It got here because each … Continue reading Circumventing Science
You were carefree, just being yourself in that photo from long ago, sitting at the table in a fringe coat with long hair and beard smiling like a Japanese bass player with hands clasped at your chin sending reverb over decades in a still shot. You laughed when I showed you the photo saying something … Continue reading I’m Not My Father
“I’ll get around to it,” Jer said when he was asked to go to the laundromat. On his way out a few hours later he looked around for a piece of fruit to eat but quickly gave up, opting instead to stop at Magoos Pizzaria for a slice since it’s on the way. Every time … Continue reading Time – I’ll Get Around To It
The incessant fine line is where the sky meets the sea at the horizon with a clean tear between the lit sky and undulating water. The distance away is what makes it fine. The illusion of melding continuous scenes of movement with stark or sometimes subtle contrasts of nature’s color and depth makes a west … Continue reading Writing Before Sunset
The landlady pinches her pennies and polishes her silver while the addict goes through hundreds of dollars in a day to not feel sick. She’s holding her money, he is going through his. They both need it. He needs something else even more than money. He needs more than a name. He needs to take … Continue reading The Landlady
A little peace of mind goes a long way. I could do anything I wanted now. I could go back to college or I could hitchhike back to Albuquerque where I had probably unwittingly been contacted by spirit jesters when rubbing elbows with strangers who enlisted in the University of New Mexico DMT experiments of … Continue reading 11 – The Contact
Finally I am released from the hospital after a month of progression into a stable psyche with hopes to never again break into a fragmented mess of illusory, mental disturbances. Only after asking the question “what just happened,” as it was happening, am I able to remember enough to later write it down. I had … Continue reading 10 – The Surface
I used to run around in my twenties saying mushrooms are good sport after I went on a heroic journey that left the automatic asshole in me behind only to be replaced by the trigger shy nice guy for a good solid decade. This turned out to be the greatest augmentation of somersaults inside my … Continue reading The Vitality of Being Nice
It was not great speaking to you just now. The way you bring up my thirty year past tells me you have a problem with the way you’re living today. You think thirty years and I’m still the same cat. Get your lips off that beer, talking about health, I’ll have none of that. The … Continue reading Letter to a Friend
Another interesting part of my journey thirty years ago out of acute care that is worth noting is I was able to help others by simply getting better before their eyes. Not only did I recover but I had a positive impact on other patients because of the composed way in which I transformed madness … Continue reading 9 – The Compassion
The “next step” of my hospital stay began sort of like how my life began. I emerged from darkness into a bright and sterile environment with doctors wiping away my tears and cutting the cord to my sustenance. In the dark I could’ve cried all I wanted and nobody would come to wipe my tears … Continue reading 8 – The Birth
They came to get me but it wasn’t in the middle of the night. I was led from the sanitized sanity of the commissary, down the ever encroaching hallway passed the curious closet towards the damned doorway, which finally swung open with precise timing. I passed through the archway and stepped into a room with … Continue reading 7 – The Ward
I woke up one morning to the nurse telling me that my unit rival had moved on. I was bummed because when I got him alone in the same room he didn’t poke at me or ramble on feverishly about being Jesus inside the walls and God walking on air like he would say in … Continue reading 6 – The Closet
After one day I was so comfortable in the ICU hallway I began to look like a cowboy leaning against a post with his head down and a blade of grass between his teeth, waiting for his shadow to rise or fall without moving a muscle. I would sit on the ground with my legs … Continue reading 5 – The Hallway
The type of animal that I saw in the mirror every morning in the hospital was close to the chimpanzee but something more bipedal. The last one in a long line of chimps but first from the right on the chart of evolution. God's favorite. The human being. If God has a long white beard … Continue reading 4 – The Hospital
I was like a disheveled rainbow child whose name should’ve been Rain. I tried to learn from traveling and the streets, the inner workings of the world but I didn’t have a vision or even a simple plan. I had the more complex idea to take another run at college. They said my peers were … Continue reading 3 – The Classroom
The trailer was a lonely man’s hell hole where nobody could escape without invisible wounds. It was my trailer, where the impossibility to study was brought on by disparity in character but also boisterous low flying war planes that would swoop down as slowly as they could while I barely slept, watching the action from … Continue reading 2 – The Trailer
When I was in my twenties I was searching for this one complex man with a familiar face I saw in the college library who was shocked by the computer screen before him. I figured he wasn’t shocked by what was on the screen but in awe of the computer itself. I was intrigued by … Continue reading 1 – The Library
I told my closest friend the other day that the more I like my own writing it seems the less other people like it. This is far from true since I really absolutely adore my writing and I am the only one who reads it. His response was interesting to me as he stated that … Continue reading Faces of Your Past
If what, how, there, and now. This stuff is confusing. I must be trying to lose the few readers I have. It’s nothing new ripping on yourself to let other people know that you know you’re no good. But you are good. And so is the reader because they press on. Press on by seeing … Continue reading The Question Being
The most interesting weekend of my life involved three separate incidents that happened but I can’t prove them beyond a reasonable doubt because they are so bizarre. The first incident involved stones being thrown on our roof, the sound following me from room to room and thought to thought. I remember there being an intense … Continue reading The Most Interesting Read of the Day
“No. I should be able to sit next to the Prince,” I have said never. “Yes. I could use a headline,” I aspire to say. But before I give up my seat and beg for attention I would like to disclose that I have more to say about the metamorphosis from delight into madness that … Continue reading The Dimensions of Wind
When I was younger I always wanted to be a messenger of light. I’d walk around telling an uncle here that his drawing is really good and an aunt there that her basketball game was really fun to watch. But the message I really wanted to deliver was that the chandelier over the staircase was … Continue reading Message of Light
I woke up this morning and I woke up again this evening after waking up this afternoon. I put one eye and one ear, along with half my nose, into my pillow for fourteen hours before I counted to ten, ten times, to get me out of bed. I paced my room back and forth … Continue reading So I Slept
When I drink I’m the smartest guy in the room. Then I realize I’m the only guy in the room in a house that is vacant, in a town that is ghosted, in a country that is strange, and in a world that doesn’t exist. So let there be serenity in this room. Then I … Continue reading Serenity
I walk the line between prodigy and master. And then I wake up, dust myself off, and put my little league trophy back on the shelf. The world is a large place with endless competition and I am the one getting played like a tuba. There is only one of me in a huge ensemble … Continue reading Blow Wind
I was a thirteen year old imaginative kid running around saying that someday humans will put all information and knowledge into a crystal somehow, bury one and shoot one into space, so that when we are gone future inhabitants or visitors will know what we had been up to before our untimely demise. They will … Continue reading Time Capsule
“I can’t think,” is what an elderly lady was saying over and over in the hospital that first time which I like to call the Big Blink. That is where I bit my tongue, literally, for hours before I fell into a state of catatonic slumber for a week, not able to remember a damn … Continue reading The Big Blink
Letters are an incongruent assembly of lines and curves until they become a myriad of pictures. Some people can draw the straightest lines that on there own would seem unnatural but when they are put up against thousands of curves the perfect line becomes an extraordinary story. Some artists use curves and points to fill … Continue reading Dancing Letters
Guilt happens when you have been told your whole life that when you die you will go to heaven but you question if there is a heaven and instead you find yourself trying to explain to friends there is a simulation that makes you immortal across infinite universes but only if you choose to join … Continue reading Infinite Atoms
Each one of us thinks we are very important, as important as the next guy, and we are, but a person is awarded money to purchase resources from the ground for doing good and a small amount of elitists think they do the greatest good. Measuring a person's worth in this way may be an … Continue reading The Universal Reputation
I used to jump off a high drawbridge, which was illegal, testing the waters to see if my cautious side would surrender to the turbulence of fear versus bravery that could be mistaken for stupidity. There was a lot of foreboding brought about from previous mishaps and my cautious side would ensure me avoiding injury … Continue reading Drawbridge At The Center of Town
I like to go running. And then I wake up wondering what was I running from. Was it a giant scythe wielded by a laughing witch seeking mold to make a potion to paralyze me? Could it have been a long winded lecture about a sabbatical gone mysteriously right but instead I get marked wrong … Continue reading Gondola to Eden
I am conceited when it comes to my perfect little hands. I will gaze at them for too many minutes as I scrunch four fingers to the top of my palm, revealing their shortness and sophistication compared to an ape. How shiny my fingernails are, and how many galaxies would I destroy if I were … Continue reading Little Hands
Why do I always have the feeling to hurry along going nowhere? I suppose the nomad in me has never left. It used to be that I would get the idea to go far away with a destination in mind. To meander with purpose towards an ideal outcome. While on my way there I would … Continue reading Hurried To Go Nowhere
I could sit here and listen to a podcast where people discuss AI or ancient civilization but the more I listen the more I understand how science and God are connected which traditionally goes against some moral coding, so I will continue to listen. Listening to passionate people along with an occasional expert rant about … Continue reading The Lure of Podcasts
When I drift into the empty space of my childhood I am reminded how rigid my memories are from that period of my life, as they are so few. A place where my behavior was more sedentary then the chaos that ensued during my more troubled years when I was hyperactive and impulsive. This shows … Continue reading A Spectacle of Ideas
I have been wanting to write but unable to get out of the game. This game has no winners, so losers never quit and winners never play. The game is called sanity - mental order that takes very long to get started and a short time to end, not to be shared or borrowed but … Continue reading The Game of Synchronicity
I sometimes feel backlash from people out in public because I have difficulty joining a society that is changing so fast it is nearly impossible to conclude it is good change we are experiencing. Sure the technology is great, having a robot in your pocket, but the information is so vast I normally don’t commit … Continue reading Guilty of Suggestion
I came back to reality by journaling what was happening around me and so I will trust that this is where I began to make sense out of where I was emotionally, where I was headed. Having been partially successful with the recovery process before, I had decided to finally stop the madness when I … Continue reading The Point of Serenity 1
In this early recovery I am realizing that if I don’t side with the ideology of sobriety I won’t have any friends to share with the fact that I am sober. If I can’t share it, I won’t be sober much longer because of my own persuasion to seek what I know. My reason for … Continue reading Misery Loves Company
I have an affinity for making something out of nothing. I can take a blank piece of paper and with words make a mountain seem not so majestic. I do this by dimming down the description of the land mass, portraying its majesty as an obstacle in my way rather than a canvas for something … Continue reading The Duel
“Memory is sometimes understanding the when, where, who, and what but never the why.” -FEM To understand these questions you need to pick an object, place, or person in time and give them a characteristic and name. Put another way, if you were given any topic in history to discuss, you would have to … Continue reading The Philosophy of Why
“If I had to count the times I didn’t do what I set out to do I wouldn’t count myself out.” -FEM Motivating yourself to continue being stubborn towards setting goals is like training all day to get ready for bed. Training means you have an expectation of where you’d like to be in … Continue reading Motivation
“I practice self awareness when people react to me.” -FEM It’s good to have an audience but it’s best to personify those things that attract attention before revealing to the curious your line of creativity. What better way to know your own material than becoming the maker of the mold not the material. With … Continue reading The Oligarchy of Art
“No book has ever been written that explains the way I think.” -FEM How many of you have read a book by Socrates and have been so enamored by it that you read it over and over again, took many notes and spoke long winded about it to your friends? Of course you haven’t, … Continue reading Silent Book
“The more people you meet the more wisdom you exert and less knowledge you establish.” -FEM I’m not one of these people that go around meeting everybody in the same field nor do I have others coming up to me wanting to shake hands with a guy known for his accomplishments and astute rise … Continue reading Exert Knowledge
“The greatest good that comes from thinking about the past is thinking about it now.” - FEM It’s hard to say that the only time we have is now because there is a timeline of thousands of events preceding this moment that are also owned by us. I think it is healthier to live … Continue reading Spontenaity
“Inertia makes for a decent decade but a wasted lifetime.” - FEM It seems to me if one second was equivalent to one snowflake then rolling around a snowball to make the head of a snowman could contain up to ten years - while the rest of him, packed tightly, could hold a lifetime … Continue reading Inertia
My number one obstacle to success is that I don’t follow through with ideas I have at the most basic level to change my complacency towards wanting success. I am not emotionally lazy by any means, just too comfortable with my basic ideology while navigating through the day. If I had specific instructions on how … Continue reading Now Read This
As a grown-up runaway I found out what “state of mind” means in America. The first person I encountered upon crossing the state line into Michigan was a woman opening a door for me saying rather directly and without question “your dad lives in Michigan…” There were no children around, I wasn’t hearing voices, it … Continue reading Home II – Kindness As A State of Mind
Sometimes when I’m alone I get the sensation that everybody is waiting for me to burst into response to the buzzing in my head which sounds like how I imagine electricity passing through water would be. It is always at the same frequency and from a vast range funneling towards me instead of radiating from … Continue reading Silent Prayer
Let me segue back into this part of my life by saying you carry the blues with you wherever you go. At some point I’m going to have to discuss why my experience with dual diagnosis was not drug induced psychosis. The real simple answer is that I didn’t use drugs but a few times … Continue reading Metamorphosis and Dual Diagnosis
Francis Erich McElroy 