Moon River, Wider Than a Mile

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.

Sara Brightman sung by Danny Williams

Gee, I think I've finally figured out how to post on this Blog! Now that I've got it all customizized and set up all pretty like. This is my fourth Blog. Here are the links to the rest of them:

Living in the edge of Madness is my Blog about Madison, Wisconsin. MadTown, USA

The Crones Daily Groan is about my personal life. You know, about my kids and grand kids and hobbies. Just stuff I do in my everyday life.that doesn't quite fit into the Madison Blog.
If it Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother my therapy Blog that gets really really heavy.


I'm also posting over at Helium. I didn't know I had so much to say. I think I'm making up for lost time when I didn't write publicly.. I wish I could type faster and more accurately. I think what really got me going was that the local media in Madison started linking to "Living in the Edge of Madness" and suddenly I started believing that I was a real writer who had things to say that people might want to hear.

Polar Bears and the Moon. It's a funny combination don't you think? It came to me one night when I was watching a man who lives in the same building as I do pace back and forth in the courtyard a few nights before the Harvest Moon in 2004. In case you're not aware of it, the Harvest Moon is the second full moon in one month in the fall.

I didn't know him well at all but I had a strong suspiscion he was bi-polar because of the way he was pacing back and forth, back and forth. I later became acquainted with him and I was right, he is bi-polar. Something about the way he walked back and forth, back and forth under that bright moon resonated with me. I was feeling pretty jittery myself that night. I sat down and started writing a poem about Polar Bears waxing the moon later that night..

That's how I deal with the early stages of mania. I write. Prolifically. When I'm going into a full blown mania I will write 20 hours a day and it's good stuff. The best stuff I have ever written has come from manic driven writing. The words flow like water from a fountain.

Other people go off into lunacy and write drivel that makes absolutely no sense but for me and a few other people I know, the higher we go into the phase of mania the more in touch with our talent for stringing words together we get and the wittier we become. Medicating that potential to be great authors away seems cruel but inevitably it is the wiser choice.

Someone in the throes of a mania is dangerous to themselves and others because their ability to make deciscions is severely impaired. They have extremely poor impulse control. It's as if they are operating on the level of a two year old: see it, want it, do it without thought for the consequences. They are happy as a lark one moment and irritable and irrational the next. Their ideas are grandiose and outrageous It is usually useless to try to reason with them because they are generally completely out of touch with reality.

Having been on both sides of the fence in dealing with Bi-Polar mood disorder I can tell you that if you're trying to deal with a manic Polar Bear it's better to just grin and bear it. And call their psychiatric doctor ASAP. The sooner you can get your manic Polar Bear medicated the better.