Reflections On The IOP

I finished the Out-Patient program yesterday. It was an interesting journey, I went in tired and blue and I came out awake and sharp. One part group therapy, one part lecture, and one part popery. It was a rolling admissions group so people could start at anytime with a wide range of addictions(from crack cocaine to alcohol) and sober time(1-50 days). I met some interesting people who I felt a kinship with. That is what made it so helpful. Getting in touch with people who understand where you're coming from and are going through similar experiences. You realize you're not alone. Three times a week I knew I could go somewhere and talk about my addiction and cravings and anxiety to a group of people with no overt connection to my life and they would understand.

People shared all kinds of things which at times I wasn't prepared to hear. Or which made my issues so shallow by comparison it made it much easier to deal with. Failed marriages, loved ones with cancer, relapses, dead-end jobs, despair. When I first went in I was the youngest person by ten years, half way through it was a group of young people, by my last night I was the youngest by a wide margin again. I found I identified with and got more out of the people around my age. People with two decades or more of addiction have a much different perspective, are in a much different place, which towards the end of my tenure I found virtually unrelatable. And if I'm being honest, irritating.

The problem I had was some of my fellow patients talking on and on without really saying anything, going into such minute detail about the minutia of their day, or spouting out unsolicited advise about the right way to do this or that. Most of the time those were the older patients which I guess I can excuse because they were older but more importantly their addiction was older.

For the most part everyone was great and from time to time someone would say something that totally resonated with me and made me feel like 'that's me, they're saying exactly what I'm feeling, they're saying exactly what I need to hear.'

I feel much better now: clear, well rested, stable. And I feel much better equipped to move on.

I'm grateful for the sun, the moon, and the cool cool night breeze.

Day 32

'Martha Marcy May Marlene' A Review

MMMM is about a girl in a cult. Martha escapes at the beginning and stays with her sister to recover. The movie is a series of flashbacks to her time with the cult from the present. I don't know why this movie was made. It's not entertaining or enjoyable to watch. The acting is superb but the subject matter is virtually unwatchable. The cult life is insidiously manipulative and disturbing. Martha's sister is remarkably obtuse. Elizabeth Olson gives an amazing performance but I don't know why. The movie doesn't tell a new story or say anything. The film is simply presented, this is.

Other than the subject matter I had two other issues with the film. I didn't believe that Martha would be brainwashed and indoctrinated into the cult as deeply as she was within two years. I didn't believe she would be so closed off about it while living with her sister. She doesn't mention or acknowledge her time there in anyway. She acts very strangely and it takes a nervous breakdown for her sister to get her psychiatric help. Her sister would have known way earlier that something was wrong psychology with her sister. There's a scene where Martha climbs into bed with her sister while she's having sex with her husband. Duh.

The ending, much like the entire film, says nothing. Leaves us with nothing. No explanation. No reason. No hope.

Don't See It.

Sci-Fi / Fantasy Books

I just finished 'The Magician King' and went to Barnes & Nobel to get another book. It's always difficult to find good Sci-Fi/Fantasy books because there's so many cheesy or bad ones. Here's a list of books I've enjoyed for my genre nerd friends.

Great:
Shadow/Claw, Sword/Citadel, Latro In The Mist, Soldier of Sidon, The Knight, The Wizard, Pirate Freedom, The Sorcerer's House -Gene Wolfe
Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth Stone, The Power That Perserves -Stephen R. Donaldson
Dune -Frank Herbert
A Song Of Ice And Fire -George R.R. Martin.
American Gods, Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, Stardust, The Graveyard Book -Neil Gaiman
The Name Of The Wind, The Wise Man's Fear -Patrick Ruthfuss
The Stand, The Dark Tower Series -Stephen King
Snow Crash -Neal Stephenson
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress -Robert A. Heinlein
The Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia -C.S. Lewis
The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument For Kings -Joe Abercrombie
The Earthsea Series -Ursala K. LeGuin
Harry Potter Series -J.K. Rowling
Gun, With Occasional Music -Jonathan Letham

Good:
World War Z -Max Brooks
Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrell -Susanna Clarke
The Riftwar Saga -Raymond E. Feist
The Shannara Series, Word & Void Series -Terry Brooks
Time Travelers Wife -Audrey Niffenegger
A Clockwork Orange -Anthony Burgess
A Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
The Xanth Series, The Incarnations Of Immortality Series, Apprentice Adept Series, Killobyte -Piers Anthony
A Canticle For Lebowitz -Walter M. Miller
The Repairman Jack Series -F. Paul Wilson

The Change Series -S.M. Stirling
The Hunger Games Trilogy- Suzanne Collins
Battle Royale -Koushun Takami
The Prestige -Christopher Priest
Blue Light -Walter Mosley
The Other End Of Time -Frank Pohl
The Magician, The Magician King -Lev Grossman
His Dark Materials -Philip Pullman
A Wrinkle In Time -Madeline L'Engle
Frankenstein -Mary Shelley
The Death Gate Cycle -Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Dragonriders of Pern Series -Anne McCaffrey

This is a work-in-progress comprehensive list, I'll be updating it periodically.

'In Time' A Review

'In Time' is a great idea for a movie but is incapable of capitalizing on it. The casting is off balance. The best actors are in the smallest parts and the worst actors are the leads. Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, and Matt Bomer all do great turns but they are in the movie so briefly they can't save it. Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried pollute the screen with their terrible line readings and mugging. I will never buy Justin Timberlake as an action hero because of his high-pitched creaky voice, he has no presence, no gravitas.

Like a lot of movies 'In Time' doesn't really know what to do with it's great idea. The world's economy is now run on time, if you run out of time you die. The rich can live forever, while the poor live day to day. A big problem is that there is no explanation as to why this happened or what time period were talking about, if it is even in fact earth. A rich guy gives Timberlake 100 years so he goes into the rich peoples timezone. He's quickly caught and the time is taken away which inspires him to go on a crime time spree.

I would have liked to see what he would actually have done with the time, integrating himself in to the rich peoples society. Instead the movie degenerates into a blatant rip off of a combination of 'Bonnie and Clyde', 'Robin Hood', and 'Badlands'. All originality is lost and a great supporting cast can't save Timberlake and Seyfried's wide-eyed shallowness and unwatchability.


Don't See It.

Dream Art

Beanpole has been working on a series of pieces where he has someone describe a dream they've had, he asks some questions, and then he creates an interpretation. I described a dream to him back in the summer which I can only vaguely recall. This was the end result. The title is "Steven J. Nelson: Live And In Person".

I've been dreaming a lot more recently. It's good to dream.

Day 24

Fall

Seasons change and so do we
anything you'd like to be
become whatever brings you glee
I would like to be a tree.

Roots dig deep and branches wide
the wind grows cold as the trees sigh
change they must but right on time
seasons bind them all in line.

Why can't I be a tree?
O' the things that I would see.

Graffiti 39

I'm not sure what the intention of this is suppose to be. I'm also not sure how I feel about it.

"I have come to cast fire upon the Earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!" -Gospel of Luke

"I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence" -Malcolm X