Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
After dragging their feet for 3 months, the state of California finally issued me a salvage title for my car. And as of an hour ago when I signed over that title to the salvage yard, “my10AE4216″ is now just a Mazda Miata 10th Anniversary Edition, #4216. Nobody ever understood how much that car meant to me or why it did mean so much to me. It was a part of me. I bought it brand new, and I sincerely believed I would own that car forever. I believed that my10AE4216 would live forever. It carried me from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, New York City, and completely across the country from California to Maine and back again 7 times. That car was more dependable, exciting, trustworthy, and passionate than nearly any human being I have ever met. Indeed, it was a dynamic love affair I had with my10AE4216. It absolutely broke my heart to have to finally say goodbye today. The thought of never driving her again, never again blasting the 200-watt BOSE sound system at maximum volume and singing at the top of my lungs while feeling the intense bass vibrating all through my body. She never let me down. Never disappointed me. It may just be the best relationship I’ve ever been involved in. It was an honor. I already, and will continue, to miss my10AE4216 terribly. There are some songs that when I hear them, I just can’t help being instantly drawn into a sort of time warp—time passes in slow motion—while I let my memories envelop me with the sensation of being in an amphitheater on wheels, exceeding 100 mph with the speeding pavement a mere 6 inches from my ass. God I loved that car. Always will. Thank you for 9 years of companionship, entertainment, comfort, excitement, and of course, transportation. I will keep your badge forever.
My 1999 Mazda Miata 10th Anniversary Edition #4216 – Bought: 9/25/99
And because of that asshole in the beat-up old pick-up truck, Totaled: 11/22/08
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Monday, March 9th, 2009
Can a person actually die from sleep deprivation? I’m not referring to the ‘only getting 2-3 hours a night’ variety. I already know from my own experience that variety can be sustained indefinitely. I’m asking if there is an actual threshold in existence—any reputable research that can offer the total number of hours or days a person can maintain consciousness before involuntarily passing out, thereby ensuring their survival? Or does the continuous state of uninterrupted wakefulness—I mean never sleeping, not even for a minute—cause the gradual degradation of the body’s organs, eventually resulting in massive system failure and death? It’s been 4 days since I’ve slept, yet I don’t really feel that bad, I mean in the pure sense of simply feeling tired. It’s not that I don’t want to sleep, it’s just that I’ve been so busy that I have just not bothered going to bed. Maybe it’s because that “second wind” finally kicked in, and I just don’t notice it. I know I could dodge at least one more night of sleep, as I really want to finish working on most of the stories I began writing while still hypomanic. It has been a rather long process due to both the sheer volume of pages written, but also because there are several instances where something I’ve written doesn’t make sense or where my handwriting is illegible.
I took a short break and did some searching. As I suspected, a person can certainly go without ANY sleep for an extended period of time. The Guinness Book of World Records in its 1978 edition stated that: “The longest recorded period for which a person has voluntarily gone without sleep is 449 hr (14 days 13 hours) by Mrs. Maureen Weston of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire in a rocking chair marathon on 14 Apr.-2 May 1977.” The Guinness Book of Records has, however, since withdrawn its backing of a sleep deprivation class because of the associated health risks. That doesn’t surprise me. There is an abundance of medical opinions available, but no unequivocal evidence that sleep deprivation can actually be fatal in and of itself. People often cite Fatal Familial Insomnia as basically death due to lack of sleep. But insomnia is completely different from sleep deprivation. Simply put, insomnia is trying to sleep and not being able to. The whole difficulty in falling asleep and difficulty in staying asleep resulting in only getting a few hours of sleep per night crap. That is not the same thing as going without any sleep at all, and doing it purposefully, which is the definition of sleep deprivation. From what I’ve been able to find out, results of experiments using completely sleep deprived rats indicate that very prolonged sleep deprivation could result in death in two to three weeks, but this has never been observed in humans. So my question remains without a definitive answer.
That twisted side of me thinks it would be interesting to find out just exactly how long I could voluntarily go without sleep. Why? I think Amelia Earhart said it best: “I want to do it because I want to do it.”
Filed under: Observations by cindy
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Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks hypomanic, and the flight of ideas that I’ve experienced have been above all else intensely gratifying. Note that I described the experience of having them as providing gratification. The ideas themselves have ranged from brilliant to nonsensical, and their speed reached a new high last night that compelled me to begin writing a few comments about it in my journal. What began as an effort to document the experience of the flight of ideas and the effect it has on both mind and body, launched into a 39-page pseudo personal narrative that is best described as void of focus. I’ve decided to include some excerpts from those pages here for the entertainment and bemusement of anyone who happens to stumble across this post.
“Suspense is the mental equivalent of foreplay. Suspense can also be tormenting at high levels. As can foreplay. Music takes on the power and ability to consume me—mind and body—and refuses to let go. The repetitive movements in sync with each successive beat are addictive and provide enormous pleasure that rivals orgasm. The music must be turned off, not simply down, for me to be able to stop and do anything else—even hold one thought in my mind. The most potent of this variety of intoxicant? DJ Tiesto’s “Lethal Industry” (2007 Richard Durand Remix). Hands-down. It turns my body into a machine… with mechanical movements rising and sinking precisely at each beat. Some of the sentences that come into my head when I feel like this are exuberant in their magnificence, the craft of creation. Everything is flowing—thoughts, blood, time, air—I can hear them in unison; even though they make no audible noises, they are anything but silent. Proving to be particularly challenging right now is being able to catch and hold on to—even briefly—every thought that creeps, slides, runs, flies, or races into my mind. Oddly enough, none of them approach with a pace that could be labeled as walking. That would be too casual, too simple a form for transporting themselves. My mind is caught in a rainstorm. But instead of droplets of water falling, thoughts are falling—randomly and rapidly. An idea for a new high-risk sport just came to me: Extreme Descriptive Writing. Think about it. It has proven both dangerous and reckless. Casualties often include cohesion, conclusion, and climax, just to name a few. Motherfucking Sentence Structure! Look at it! It is literally littering these pages, turning them into an oozing wound… The pages are the wound, and the littered sentences plastered all over them is the pus oozing from the wound. Sentences and pus share the same goal: They just want to get out. A Doberman and a Poodle are the same thing. In that they are dogs. Not just dogs, but dogs first. The breed is simply a variety of the (one) species itself. Oh my God, I just had to slam the breaks on the thought exploration vehicle. Upon writing the word “species” it began careening down the human body tunnel. I would have ended up overwhelmed with the wealth of material there. Again: Sentence Motherfucking Structure. Notice it. A flood has officially (wait, all of a sudden I have no idea what a flood does. It floods. It is one of those Mr. McShifty words that is of dual purpose and nature.) I’M DONE. I’m rendered incapable of using words that are simple, words that function in only one capacity, or have only one definition when my mind is like this. Thought process is one of the many casualties of mania; other early victims include judgment and sleep. Flood is a word casualty. Fatally flawed by dualism and definition abandonment. I am going to begin honoring specific words in recognition of their simplicity. And the first Simpleton Award goes to: the word ‘door’. Well done.”
Filed under: Mania by cindy
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Friday, February 27th, 2009
More like a rough outline of what I’d like to see this site evolve into. It will be in large part personal ramblings, but I’d like to eventually include various sections for short stories and poetry I’ve written, current favorite music (already up and running), random quotes, personal photography, as well as educational information on mental health disorders such as ADD, Bipolar I Disorder, Psychosis, Alcoholism, and Bulimia along with referrals and links to find help. This is my second attempt at maintaining a blog/personal web site, so my primary intention is to be more dedicated to regular posting and updating in a timely fashion. Albeit the road to Hell is paved with good intentions… I’ll do my best to avoid becoming another casualty. Special thanks to KBM for encouraging me to give this another try. 
Since my 1999 Mazda Miata 10th Anniversary Edition (#4216) convertible was totaled by a reckless asshole in an oversized pickup truck on November 22, 2008, my previous domain name is no longer fitting for me, and thus I’ve moved on. May the original sapphirebluemica rest in peace.
Filed under: Uncategorized by cindy
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