The Beauty of a Changing Perspective

Got this great close-up of a Common Aerial Yellowjacket Wasp yesterday

Today’s poem:

Garden Crescent

 

Each day of my youth on those crisp cold winter nights

I could see each star, all the stars afforded the place

Where I grew up; a gift of living in the north

 

While walking home from the store; finished with

My noisy spaceship fantasies imaginings banged out

On computers encased in wooden boxes to which

 

I would feed quarters.  There was the big dipper

I was blind to Mars and Venus, Jupiter; even my own

Sign; not the dawning of Aquarius but Saggitarius

 

The big dipper was the only constellation I knew

I almost saw it as one thing, not stars as far from each

Other as they were from me.

 

Often on those days the dancing sheets of light

Would come to amaze amuse astound

It was only one block home but in a young boy’s mind

 

It was a billion light years travel time

And everything seemed so real, so much more alive

In the insignificance of my own existence

 

Stars by the millions light travelling over eons and decades

Some gone before I was even born so I could

Catch their light at the precise moment it reached Earth

 

I wonder then as I wonder now

How so many celestial bodies could exist

Just far enough away to barely see them

 

And not see them in the day

Night was my time then as it is now

This poem my guide into darkness

 

 

Leif Gregersen

May 10, 2016

 

Hello and good morning to all those who like to follow this blog.  I had the most amazing experience today.  I went to teach my Monday creative writing class, and I felt an incredible connection to the adults with mental health issues I was working with at the mental health club where the class takes place.  There was one young man who is brilliant in many ways and always participates in exercises.  He also has a great reading voice.  The sad part is that he lives with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and it has been a huge barrier to living for him.  He told me that he wished the class would go on permanently every Monday not end in a few weeks.  There is a woman in the class who is a bit shy though very mature who didn’t think she could ever write anything worthwhile and in the first class I taught we had a mini poetry competition, and her poetry won.  She has been coming ever since and today brought three pages of beautiful rhyming poems to show me.  The class went incredibly well; I felt like I was really in command of the subject and that we were doing something that benefitted all of us.  It made me want to call my sister who has a Master’s in Education and teaches in Toronto and attempt to describe to her how great teaching makes me feel, but I think she understands.

Things seem to be happening so fast lately.  In just a few more weeks I will be on a plane to London, England.  Next week I will be working on the setup of an outdoor Beyonce concert to pay for my trip and then there is something that I am stressing over a bit, I am going to head to a Junior High School and lead a poetry workshop.  I think I have prepared enough to handle the event, but still I feel a bit nervous.  I have been doing so many public talks and teaching jobs that it really shouldn’t be a problem, I think I will even have fun with it.  I am conscious though of the possibility that I am taking on too much at once.  It really is getting hard to sleep.  Today I got my bus pass and London map in the mail.  At 11:30 pm I got out of bed just to google the Hostel I will be staying in to see if they have lockers.  I think though, that all I really have to do is act like Santa Claus for anything that stresses me like classes or trips or anything.  Make a list, and check it twice.  Then do something I learned from the wealthy people in my hometown.  If there is any kind of a problem, just make sure and throw money at it and make damn sure you have enough.

Aside from all that, I did do something that I think was really helpful.  I needed to get a few things, and I have been thinking a lot about how ripped off people are when they live in inner city areas and need to buy their things at private drug stores, cash their cheques at rip-off finance outfits, and buy their food at convenience stores.  It can be really expensive to be poor in this world.  So I elected to hop on the bus which I knew would take an hour to get to the discount stores and just brought a book.  It was one I bought some time ago that I had put down but not because I didn’t enjoy it.  It is a book about Buddhism called “Wherever You Go, There You Are” and it was such a nice feeling to get away from all distractions and just sit on the bus, the blocks rolling past as I enjoyed looking at my own thoughts and actions from a different perspective.  Reading really is such an amazing, healing process.  Writing isn’t far behind.

LG

 

Growing Up and Growing Old What the F@#k Can One Guy Do?

    A Bit of a Crooked Shot of Edmonton’s River Valley.  This Was Taken a Week or Two Ago and the Valley is Already Beginning to Turn a Beautiful Shade of Green

 

Today’s Poem:

 

April Poem

For some reason, it seems that poems escape me
When I’m no longer in pain

When I don’t feel the wrenching grip of loneliness
I can’t seem to write from my heart

This day was wonderful
A taste of heaven
Cool, sun-shiny Spring day

I met with a friend so close
That I’m not afraid to tell him I love him
And we sat with new friends
And laughed and talked
While the blue sky enveloped our hearts

Why do I get these pleasures?
How is it I can justify to my conscience
This incredible life?

So many of my years before this were painful
So many were lonely, I lived
In desperation
For a little more food
Some better medicine
For all that ailed me

Now I seem to have arrived, achieved
My sweet holy God in heaven I don’t deserve all this

Make me learn poverty
That I can remember to give
Make me learn loneliness
That I can remember to love
Let me know hunger and pain
So I have compassion

Take all of this from me

Oh God, my God I have done so many things wrong
Made so many mistakes
I’m told all of us are sinners
I must be the worst

A good friend once told me
We all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts
But after today
Sipping cold root beer
With warm friends
On a sunny day
I feel somehow as though
A perfect shape has filled my hole
And I want all the world to know

Leif Gregersen
April 17, 2016

Hello, and welcome to a beautiful Spring dear readers!  I took a very long walk today to meet up with a friend and got a lot of incredible surprises.  First of all, my generous friend, who is an internationally well-known author and film producer sat me down and explained that he is going to help me market my books, something I have been hard at work trying to do.  I have some opportunities to do this coming up soon, one of them is that I am going to be speaking at a conference in Toronto this August and at another conference in October in Halifax.  My friend is trying to set up something for me to go on tour in the Northwest Territories, giving writing workshops and also speaking about mental health.  Our Northern communities in Canada have been hit hard with a chain of suicides and I am strongly hoping that I can reach even just one person to seek help that may not have otherwise done so.

I also have a two-hour a week job teaching a writing class to adults with mental health difficulties and I am really enjoying it.  It takes a lot of work and it is a lot of effort to sit down with a group of adults who have psychiatric issues and keep them engaged for two whole hours, but I welcome the challenge as it just may lead to more things.  I like to teach people about the power of writing, the course is actually called “Writing For Wellness”.  We are doing poetry right now and there is a woman in the class who is actually showing some talent, I would really like to see her pursue her poetry further.  Once again, that is the one person, someone who you can make a difference with that makes things like this all worthwhile.

I don’t know if this is going to be a sleepless night, but I am having a hard time resting my head.  I am not following my own rules about sleep hygiene, I should not have let myself sleep in this morning or take a nap after supper.  When you go out and exercise for 3 or more hours, though, it just feels so incredibly wonderful to sneak in an hour of sleep.  I think what I am going to have to do is stay up late, perhaps write  a short story to pass the time, grab just a couple of hours in the early morning and drag myself through my day.

One thing I am really noticing though is that my stress levels seem to have gone way down since I stopped my labor job and started my present job of being an Editor.  I would just love to keep doing this job for as long as I can, it feels great to be a boss and help others to create their best work and put magazines together.  My only real worry is that the magazine may not last as long as I want to be employed by them.  Hopefully, at that point, things will get better though and perhaps I can find an even better job.

So I hope everyone out there is taking care of themselves.  The arrival of Spring is a good time for all of my readers to take enough care of themselves to get a doctor’s check-up done.  I had a bunch of blood tests done and found that my liver is working a little harder than it should and that I have been eating likely too much saturated fat.  All of us who are on medications and those who don’t want to be should be aiming for a goal of 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each day, not allowing themselves to become too sedentary, watching caffeine levels (2 cups a day in the morning, then try and switch to teas), and spending time with family and friends, hopefully going for walks in the park or volunteering or working.  The sunny seasons are a great time to resolve to spend less time in front of a screen and maybe more time living an active life.  But who the hell am I to say?  Actually, just a happy, healthy middle-aged man with good friends who has managed to control his bipolar through good living and medications!

Best,

Leif Gregersen

viking3082000@yahoo.com

Dealing With Anger For Those With or Without a Mental Illness

Well, anger is something that I am sure a lot of people deal with.  I would suppose even people who seem happy and nice all the time must have the problem and somehow suppress it.  One thing I know is that I do, and I wanted to share with you, my dear readers, how I have come to deal with it.

Anger comes into my life in many ways.  One of the worst ways it comes on is when I find myself dwelling on the past, replaying old memories in my head and thinking about how I was somehow wronged.  This is a very unhealthy practice, and should be avoided at all costs.  But how can a person stop what their mind is doing?  I have found that the only way to control what thoughts I think is to cultivate a strong mind, by meditating in the way I learned from a Tibetan Monk here in Edmonton.  It is kind of a simple process.  You set up your body in a way that you don’t have to continue to think about what it is doing, you could be walking or swimming (I love to snorkel in this instance) or you could sit cross-legged or even just lay on your back, and then you simply try to keep your head clear of thoughts.  Clear of chatter, clear of judging, clear of everything.  At first it is nearly impossible, but if you practice each day it becomes easier, and your mind grows stronger.  You will soon find that you can chart the course of your sleeping dreams and control what you think about.  It is amazing what you can do when you cultivate the ability to control your mind chatter.  I want to add a link below to something I found on YouTube simply by typing in the words, ‘guided meditation’.  Check out the video if you are interested.

I found this to be a particularly calming and relaxing one, but there are many.  What I liked about it was the sound of waves and the emphasis that the waves had something of a healing sound.  Last year I spent some time in Hawaii and went snorkeling on a couple of beaches and I can’t even begin to describe what this experience was like.  The water was clear, clean and healing.  The waved felt like they were cleansing my very soul.  There were tropical fish around that I took pictures of, it was simply paradise on earth.

There is more to anger though, there is the kind of anger that a person can often develop when they have been through a lot (I think) or possibly have a chemical imbalance in their brain.  I can recall being younger and experiencing depression and having extreme anger towards people in traffic, at the laces on my shoes when I was unable to tie them, at anything that seemed to upset what I thought was my right.  People ticked me off at every corner.  I want to share another video by an incredible young man who offers a great way to put yourself in other people’s shoes and conquer your anger.  It is below:

This young man, Noah Elkrief, really seems to understand what makes people, for want of a better term, pissed off at the world.  I think he has a number of videos that are geared towards mental health that I strongly recommend.

Then of course there comes a type of anger that you can’t really control by talking, or you can’t manage at first by talking.  One example is of a person I know who was once on steroids.  He apparently beat up someone just because he didn’t like the way they looked.  There are many types of this, one of them happens in some people when they abuse alcohol.  My Dad seemed to have this problem and we used to fight a great deal, though I have to say my own rebellious spirit and my own anger didn’t help the situation at all.  Many times in life we have to sacrifice being the one who is deemed right or deemed the bigger man to avoid situations that can harm ourselves or others, or even just spark off an argument.  I kind of wish I had been able to do this at a younger age.

This type of anger, especially when it involves alcohol or other drugs, needs to be addressed first by detoxification, then by treatment to deal with a person’s addiction or abuse and then it may be necessary for the person to be put on medications.  I know in my case a good deal of my anger was taken away by the use of an anti-depressant, but I also needed to be put on an anti-psychotic medication (once again, I want to stress that psychotic is a state where a person perceives a false reality and isn’t a violent or hateful person while psychopathic is something that is more along the lines of people who don’t care who they hurt or damage in their pursuit of their own goals).  This anti-psychotic medication helped a great deal, but if there are people out there who suffer, I want to note that quite often these medications need to be increased over time, and even need to be changed.  Thanks to modern medicine, new and more effective medications come out, and there is also the factor that your body can become more tolerant of the medication and need more of it to do the same job.

Well, that seems like a lot of doom and gloom.  I hope anyone who has read this will take the time to watch the videos, they are simply incredible I feel.  On a lighter note I have been quite happy because I have been hired to teach a creative writing workshop for the month of June, which may work out to be a permanent job.  Some of the people in the group will be community members who suffer from mental health issues but I am very happy that somehow I will be able to help people better express themselves and possibly create something they can be proud of.  I think I will pass on writing a poem for today but expect one soon, thanks for reading, feel free to contact me as always at: viking3082000@yahoo.com

*** I changed my mind and wrote a poem tonight, look for it below this photo***

A Poem For Those Who Matter Most

 

It seems despite some troubles that my life has become

Perfect in many ways, easy to live and also fun

As a boy hard work never seemed to end

And for a while it had driven me around the bend

 

I wanted so badly then to find that special other

A partner to give my life meaning, help me to recover

From all the crap that life had thrown at me

I thought a relationship would set me free

 

I had to learn the hard way that for love to blossom and grow

You need two people and you need both of them to be whole

But how I longed to find that one to complete my soul

It seemed important enough that I sidelined all my goals

 

And then all at once it seemed that there was one who cared

The first time I talked to her it was so hard not to stare

I dreamed of her and the passion that I thought would never be

Such love never seemed to come real for me

 

At the time I had depression and I was also very shy

It was as though I didn’t like myself and didn’t know why

I seemed to sabotage any relationship that might have been

And when that was over loneliness and pain would set in

 

During a time when I was still trying to make sense of life

I met a sweet beautiful lover who could have been my wife

She taught me that with love and faith there is always a chance

And no matter what your age or problems there can be romance

 

Now that I am whole and I am older I see that life is what you make of it

Despite that fact that losing love and getting older can still ache a bit

I have been through a lot but I’m still ready to reach out

Happiness is out there somewhere I have no doubt

 

When you tally up your totals and all is said and done

The winners are judged only by what they have overcome

I may not have gone so far or earned as much as others have

But for a while I was loved and happy and for that I am glad

 

And it will not matter at the gates of heaven or hell

If my investments and savings had done well

It will only matter that I loved and cared for those I knew

And you my family and friends I truly care for all of you

 

Leif Gregersen

May 29, 2015