drawing on paper   zhang dun

I first saw this work on the cover of Reay Tannahill's classic book, Sex in History, (1992, required reading) and have adored it ever since.  While historically some commentators have attempted to frame the imagery within christian terms of reference, good luck with that because it's hard to imagine anything more pagan. 

The six male figures are supposedly the half-dozen famous 'lovers' of the European tradition; Achilles, Tristan, Lancelot, Samson, Paris and Troilus, not really the first candidates that spring to mind when I'm compiling my own historical to do list.  Paris the twink caught my eye because he's all like 'hi girlfriend', which, as the more worldly amongst us know, doesn't necessarily disqualify him.  Achilles and Troilus seem particularly cuntstruck but then the former has a lot of misogynist miles to make up for and the latter was pretty much born with that expression, by all accounts.  And then we have Venus, ascendant, with her velvety black wings and attendant cupids.  Those man-taming rays of incandescent awesomeness pouring from her ladyplace is the kind of superpower I'd sign up for tomorrow.  That the artist placed her in a medieval millefleurs field of the type usually containing some sort of horn'd equine while all this ador(horny mesmerism)ation was going on always makes me smile.  As do those infernal red cupids, their raptorial feet and smug expressions prompting me to think Mr A di Michele had felt those fucking arrows a few times himself.

My first thought on seeing this image was 'err... is this a real thing?'.  I love so much that it is.

Why is this place suddenly heaving with frivolous bullshit, you ask, peering over your glasses, perhaps a bit purse-lipped?  Because its getting towards the end of winter for us and I am going just a little bit insane and decided to do something femme and fancy.  So its wall to wall gurl for a good week, with another TBO serialization episode on Friday.  *simper* 

Lipstick.
There is no why.

Like the Kraken, it is powerful and often frightening, but the true devotee has risen to that challenge, and walking around looking like a dysmorphic and possibly homicidal mime is just the haute part of the Way.  The Way of Glamour.  Lol.  Haters gon hate, but haters also cry the desolate tears of an envious fool in private.  

Is there even such a thing as lipstick fail?  One's inner eye wanders almost immediately to the striking and seemingly eternal chiaroscuro of downlow brown encircling frosted nude- a lot of look, to be sure.  From there, we might consider bruisy-purple lipgloss against fading orange hair, or perhaps the deathless goldy-copper sparkle over highly-pigmented lips, enhanced by a subtle ring-of-death effect after one too many chai lattes.  But I don't know if we can call any of these stumbles on the road to glamour worse than chapstick vanilla bromide.  The natural look happens post-mortem as far as I'm concerned.  So no judgement here.

Anyway, here's my current collection.  I like a major lip situation and do not own nudes or neutrals because what's the point?  These are straight from the tube, maybe three 'passes' each, on a redhead-white arm under winter daylight.  I backed off the focus a bit (it helps with high contrast colour) and corrected them in PhoSho afterwards, but as soon as you post them the jpegs take a hit.  Never mind- you get the idea.  Rebel and Film Noir are probably the glossiest, the infamous Ruby Woo and Smoked Purple definitely matte ne plus ultra.
(Please respect my copyright on these pics since they took all day to put together.  Cheers.)

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All MAC.  Everyone knows Russian Red so I'll use it as the reference in these swatches.
1 Film Noir- Difficult to keep the ring of death at bay, even for an old hand at monster lippy.  Will bleed.  Bittersweet Pro longwear pencil solves most of its problems.  A very vintage look.
2 Hang Up- The absolute ultimate berry, but will bleed.  Vino pencil fixes most of its migration issues.  
3 Strong Woman (LE) Not easy to pull off, but I warm it up with Beet lip pencil and it's fine after that.  A very graphic suede-y matte, both long wearing and comfortable.  A tad grey, but nothing that can't be amended.  
4 Smoked Purple (Pro) - DRY.  Uneven.  But superdramatic.  Good for butching up and matting other shades but you'd need to surveil this constantly if you were to try and wear it alone.  Pretty niche, really.
5 Prince Noir (LE)- Perfection in a tube, worth every cent.  A deep, complex, velvet jus shade, much nicer than it appears here and seems to magically adapt to your colouring.  Wears endlessly and faultlessly.
6 Rebel- Just okay.  I always end up mixing in something else like fuchsia lipmix or Beet pencil.  I'd love it more if it were matte and more saturated.  I wish Rebel + Strong Woman would breed.  Will bleed.
7 Sin (Pro)- Fucking awesome darky smoky wine without being brown and the best mixing shade EVER.  Sin+Ruby Woo is the ultimate vintage goth red.  Why was it DC'd?  Damn you, MAC!
8 Absolute Power (LE)- Strong, cool raspberry red; demi-matte.  Not for the faint of heart- it can go eye-fucking mad on a pale face so only for peeps who like that sort of thing :)  Will bleed slightly.  Unique shade.
9 Ruby Woo-  Yes it's dry.  Add some balm, haters.  Brilliant china red retro OG; you will get stares.
10 Russian Red- I'm a bit over RR.  Maybe it's too classic, too MOR, too polite.  Fantastic formula, though.

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All MAC.  10 is Russian Red again for comparison.
11 Ruffian Red- Another OG red.  I've reviewed it here.  Sublime.  Bought a backup while it was still around.
12 Chili - A great strong, old skool paprika; it's not red though, by a long shot.  Comfortable matte formula.
13 Full Fuchsia- I wanted it to be brighter still, but that's just me :) A tad warmer than GAT.  Will bleed.  Fabulous with Beet pencil if you're going darker, or Fuchsia lipmix to double up on the PINK WHAT.
14 Girl About Town- Very slightly cooler than FF, but a pretty, flattering candy pink that is somehow more demimondaine than Barbie.  Lovely comfortable formula.  Will bleed a wee bit on a hot day.
15 Party Parrot- Somehow PP is more photogenic than it deserves to be, and I suspect that's why everyone raves about it.  Very difficult to pull off on dark lips like mine.  More milky yellow-pink than coral to my eye.  I hit it with some fuchsia lipmix to take the edge off, or smudge it out.  Nice silky matte formula though.
16 Party Line- Practically the natural colour of my lips lol.  For big-eye days.  Nice matted down.

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All MAC unless stated.
1 Crimson lipmix- These are pro items.  Slightly cool true blood red, dries matte, will 'clump' a little if worked too much on the lip.  Salvages those pedestrian reds you paid too much for ie Guerlain.
2 Fuchsia lipmix- Your passport to awesomeness.  Rocket fuel for the face.  Deeply saturated true fuchsia.
3 Orange lipmix-  A bright, clean, matte orange orange.
4 MAC Morange- Slightly cooler than the orange lipmix, very difficult to wear successfully.  Makes nice corals mixed. Will bleed.
5 Chantecaille Tigerlily- I know everyone wets themselves over this brand but it's a mediocre colour and formula; buy the Revlon version and save yourself forty bucks.  A lot duller than it looks here.  Will bleed.  Brick pencil will oomph it up a bit.
6 MAC Brave Red-  Everything the previous one was trying to be; some call it a 'starter' red and while it is sheerer than the others, it's not for the beginner because it can migrate like a bitch.  Anchor it with Brick pencil.  Warm, extremely flattering, uniquely beautiful 'ideal' gloss sheen.  Not quite as orange as it looks here.  I really enjoy it.
7 Max Factor Night Valley Red: Everyone should be wetting themselves over this range because it's fantastic and was almost completely ignored upon release.  Deeply saturated blackened ruby red.  Quite a good dupe for Sin in that the effect is the same.  Will not budge.  Superlative almost-matte formula, cheap as chips, probably discontinued.

I agree that MAC seems like a brand in decline.  There used to be so much to love: its creative, industry-standard products, cruelty-free stance, Viva Glam AIDS charity and inclusive, unconventional collaborations.  Its takeover by corporate munter Estée Lauder means I don't often buy it off the rack now, preferring to pick it up second hand in order to keep the few dollars I have out of EL's pocket.  In New Zealand it's prohibitively expensive to source a lot of indie makeup brands, but if that changes, I'll be on it.  MAC is still cruelty-free outside of its new Chinese market, where animal testing is mandated by law, for fuck's sake.  It's my view that if we buy retail, we should support any brand that bothers with ethical considerations over the ones that don't, reinforcing the message that the buying public notices and cares.  Estée Lauder may be all about the bottom line, but that line is in our hands.

Welcome to the world, young Rita.

We apologize in advance for the state it's in!  Maybe you guys can do better when you get the chance.  
Une grande enfant, not yet terreebluh.
And sorry about the cake; could not resist the picture.  You exited stage left anyway!

X X from both of us.  

Languid dub rebounded on the plaster walls and fell in through the windows from a silver ghettoblaster rattling in the shade of an antique canvas lounge.  The bumperball echo drew Susan from the hall into the only room that she had left uncharted, a plate and cup of tea in both hands.  The double doors rode inward to reveal a mighty gallery or ballroom, its south wall overlooking the defunct parterre through a cortége of picture windows reaching almost to the ceiling, the latter's vast white acreage reflected in the floor where it retained a polish.  Toward its eastern end a virgin canvas large enough to face a covered truck had been fixed to the ruby-papered wall with a nailgun, as though crucified; a red enamel toolbox stood padlocked on the floor before it and she sipped her tea while pondering them both, wandering on toward the windows where the view recalled the abortive encounter she had fled the night before, chagrin souring her cup.  

Down in the pool William floated, sun-warmed, on a blue and white striped air bed, winged sunglasses obscuring his gaze, his hair tied in two ear-like sheaves atop his head.  Intermittent smoke drifted from his nose over the water as though he were some font of minor, lackadaisical volcanism.  Susan sat down with her back to it in the windowsill and gazed at the griddle print on her toasted sandwich, cheated of its enjoyment, the tactics she had devised to beguile the morning failing to efface the prospect she so dreaded.  She shook her head, set down her lunch and walked with some resolve toward the doors, wiping her hands on her pinafore.

A capacious garage had annexed a portion of the original servants' quarters, the remainder fashioned into a primitive laundry and warren of utility rooms linked by a sequence of doors painted shiny absinthe green.  An impressive consignment of furnishings and objet trouvé had half-filled the garage since her arrival, like ballast drafted in against the vacancy of the house itself; she threaded through them, arms raised where they narrowed the way uncomfortably.  Only by keeping the building's exterior in mind did Susan rediscover the portal to the windowed passage traversing the rear of the ground floor.  At its end she paused before another door and listened carefully before tapping at its recessed panelling.  The slice of room beyond was lit by one dim source; knocking again, she stepped into the midst of a private library, a carefully-assorted cache of thick, reptilian volumes, bound folios and journals and the green tobacco smell of hand-worked hide, of rag and linen paper.  The collection stood in shadow, much of it enjoying the security of the locks set into the glass-faced shelves, and she frowned at such a measure.  

Susan could not stay the hand that leapt to her breast as she finally perceived the figure seated in the rear third of the room, behind a black Directoire desk.  Her intrusion had stilled him in the midst of excising shagreen from the handle of an old square-bladed knife, the procedure performed upon a piece of leather faced with the intimate grain of an animal's skin.  He did not smile at her intrusion.  In his imposing shape and unaccountable ethnicity he was as surely William’s brother as she was not.  She cleared her throat and forced words from her mouth.

“Mr Lamb, good morning... I'm Susan Christabel, your housekeeper.  We... um, met last night." she reminded him when he evinced no sign of recognition.  Edward's attention proved coldly metallic, like chain mail draped across her throat and shoulders, flushing her face with swathes of high colour.  She coughed into her hand, using it to look away from him.  “I’ve already talked to... to your brother... he said you won’t be needing me to cook.  There are chefs, though, at the agency... they’ll do macrobiotic... I can have them send you a li...”
"I didn't engage you." he told her.  She nodded slowly, then frowned and shook her head.
"Well... I didn't just wander in... somebody hired me..." she reminded him.  He rose unexpectedly, and she stepped back through the doorway, letting go of the frame.  "There's a trial period, a month... we get paid for that..."  

Edward slid back one of the glass partitions and extracted a slim wooden box.  The ensuing silence threatened impasse until he turned to study her directly, forcing her to brave the weight of his unqualified attention.  In watching her, the colour of his gaze was necessarily revealed and she saw that some conspiracy between shade and aversion had cast it in an aureate, fimbriated bale.  She stepped back again into the passage, her hands finding and clasping each another.
"Mr Lamb, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding last night... you did surprise me, and I didn't mean to be rude.  But once we're signed on to a place, we get the..."
“Submit your account details." he muttered, returning to the table in a gesture of dismissal that did little to relieve her, even as she walked back along the windowed corridor.

Her sandwich had cooled by the time she reclaimed it, its layer of oozing cheese turned to greasy rubber.  Cursing, she bore it back into the passage, intending a return to her rooms, but caught sight of a figure hunched before the doors to William’s suite, a woman rattling the lock with something she had worked into the keyhole.
“Can I help you or something?” Susan called, blowing a tea leaf from her tongue.  The stranger straightened quickly and began to stalk toward her down the hall, blond hair streaming back over her shoulders.
“You are?” she quipped.
“The housekeeper.  Is Mr Lamb expecting you?”

Rachel hitched up the golden chain strap of her handbag and cast a withering eye over the new arrival; Susan lifted the sandwich to her mouth, crunching noisily through its brittle crust.  The large gold letters emblazoned on the glasses propped atop the woman's head were repeated on her bag and in the printed leather of her heels; her breasts challenged the fabric of her tawny tank-top with their distracting amplitude, their proportions answering the tanned hips so tenuously contained by the brevity of her custom-distressed jeans.
“Where is he?  I have to talk to him privately.” she insisted, sighing loudly and staring at the ceiling as Susan began to reply.  “You have food in your mouth... I cannot understand what you are saying.”  Taking a moment, the latter wiped a crumb from the corner of her chin and took a quick sip of her cold tea.
“Mr Lamb's downstairs.”
"Where, downstairs?”
“It’s sort of... like a cave."  
Rachel glared pointedly.
“Are you going to show me, or are you just going to keep on eating whatever that is?” she exclaimed, throwing an open hand at her repast.  Susan swallowed unhurriedly and shook her head.
“I’m on a tea break.  It's down there, through that door at the back... just follow the hall.”  Disgusted, Rachel stalked down the stairs alone, the jarring clatter of her heels dying away to nothing.  

William swapped his phone from one ear to the other as the breeze blew him toward the end of the pool, chuckling at his caller’s reportage.  He barely heard the aerodynamic disturbance accompanying the object stabbed down into the pillow by his ear, but held his phone clear of the water as his craft deflated beneath him.  His brother’s expression was far less scenic than the clouds it had replaced.  Edward shucked the tines of the gardening fork from the airbed and thrust it into the grass. 
"Macrobiotic.”  The single word sunk under the condensed weight of his antipathy.
“I know it was dumb... you sprung this on me.  She was asking about food and I couldn’t think of anything.  What the fuck.” William sighed.  Igniting his cigarette with a table lighter at the water's edge in the shape of a jewel-eyed carp, he smiled and stretched out again on his back, floating unassisted.  Taking the folded newspaper from under his arm, Edward dropped it onto his face; the gossip section rewarded the recipient's curiosity with a lurid description of his own conduct at the avant-garde event the night before.  “Promiscuous flotsam floats quite conspicuously." he explained.  "And three weeks running is something... it’s not nothing...”
"Paris."
"C'est naze.  Why not just lock me in a fucking room full of burning tyres?  And Susan's staying.  I've already told her that legally, she comes with the house as a chattel and that I was going to keep her here, secluded from the gaze of others while I alone knew her flesh in marathons of sweaty, freaky shit til one of us, and it wouldn't be me, called time.  She wanted to go right there, but I said child, I will give you a night of prayer and contemplation so that you can come to me in a state of readiness.  But Kala'amātya, if you don’t like the way I handle things, fucking deal with it yourself.”  He let the paper darken and submerge and lay his hands on his stomach, thinking better of the suggestion.  "Okay, so maybe... don't do that.  But fucking Opal sent her, so that's on you..."  His brother's irritation prompted him to lift his arms in an expansive gesture.  “We’re the upper ten thousand now, mahatma... it’s totally appropriate and necessary to have a household full of buxom maids of easy virtue.  She's been undressing me with her eyes ever since she got here." William laughed, intensifying Edward's displeasure.
"Was anything ever more redundant?" he muttered bitterly.
"At least buy her contract from Opal.  You've seen her... she's friandise.  She won't last a hot minute with that fucking old crocodile handbag."  He received no reply.  "Whatever.  We're keeping Susan.  I like her.”  
“You liked Rachel.”  Edward spoke with such distaste that, for once, his words influenced his expression, his teeth appearing in the midst of an involuntary grimace.  "Gas gangrene..." he added, the association as powerfully impulsive as it was obscure.
“I never said I liked Rachel... I just asked her to stop pitching rufies into my piña colada but apparently that came out as stalk me til I lose the will to live."  Gazing up into the sky, William smiled in beatific gratitude.  "She was here and you scared her away, didn't you?  Je t'aimie tellement..." he sighed.  "I didn't tip her off about this place, so it must've been Opal, and don’t come crying to me about your evil overlord... you're her little punk bitch now.  Better lube up and grab a chesterfield... get some wood between your teeth.”  Edward looked toward the fork standing in the grass.  “I can live with your art thing... you're a creative, they couldn’t beat that out of you, and christ only knows you need the outlet... but you're letting neckfuckers up in your business, et putain de merde... Opal’s the worst.  What do the dogboys say?  If three rounds won't put it down, don't unzip...”
“Visible means.”
“Say what now?”
“Open an account.  Discover modern insolvency.  Become an OFAC superstar.  Report back to me with your single designated phone call while black helicopters land on the roof.”   
"You're just mad because I'm in your swimming pool and you don't know how that happened.  Kala'amātya... allez.  You are the only creature with my bloodtype on this entire fucking landmass... well you were until a week ago, B and Ny are here now... and you're always looking at me like the history's all bad, when it’s not... it’s chequered.  That’s not the same thing."  He sighed again at the protraction of their exchange.  "Fucking say something or I'll book you an open casket."
"I live alone."
“I know that.”
“Then why persist?”
“Because you’re so unhappy.  And I just want to sit in a room with someone I don’t have to explain myself to.”  He did not read too much into his brother's silence.  “You're totally harshing my buzz right now, but did you notice how many words you just said?  You're opening up like a beautiful flower.  How fucking theraputic am I?"
“No reggae, no inflatable plastic.  If I find evidence of conjugation I will hire a bitumen truck."
"Susan stays."
"Sachiin..." Edward warned, his stare falling toward him.  "Don't ever make her think she feels the ground tilting toward you.”  

William scowled after him as he walked back toward the house. 

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
(To read previous installments just hit 'blackthorn orphans' in the sidebar ARCHIVE links)
BUY THE BOOK & YOU WON'T HAVE TO WAIT.  $3.99 NZ.
© Céili O'Keefe.  Do not reproduce.

coromandel cacti have just posted loads ofgreat new stock, Aloes galore iiieeeeeeeee!  Look here
I just picked up a marlothii, aristata, another vaotsanda, a choice mitriformis seedling and a reitzii.
They do export outside NZ on request so if you're looking for something tasty, check them out.

Feel like you need some perspective today?  This is a picture of Earth, taken by the Cassini craft orbiting Saturn.  We're the blue dot to the bottom right.  BBC News.

So much discussion of depression is centred around lamenting its personal and cultural impact crater, and grieving, sometimes gratuitously, those who fall under the wheels.  Undue attention is paid, in my opinion, to the mechanics of suffering at the expense of any serious communal effort to understand or circumvent it.  The stations of depression's cross are leant far too much romantic lustre by a media that battens on the spectacle while its subjects wither under scrutiny, as if society was determined to wring at least diversion from the phenomenon.  We don't need to take an album more seriously because the vocals bled out in the bath.  Death signifies nothing.  Depression and its dreadful sibling, substance abuse, do not enable.  They erase and retard; they frustrate and deplete.  That's not to say the shape of your personal creative visor doesn't influence the nature of your output, and few of us would give up informative experience, no matter how unpleasant.  But the sooner society at large accepts that depressives play and write and paint like that more in spite of the condition than because of it, the sooner we might gain a constructive consensus.

Joy is beautiful and worthy and profound and nothing moves my hand to create more than the depth and breadth of its mysterious, empyrean harmonics.  Experiencing joy is my greatest personal achievement; conveying it is the epitome of my expression.  If that sounds less hardcore/esoteric than posting x-rays of my colon bulging with the vintage typewriter keys I choked down during my latest opiate-soaked crise de nerfs... oh well.  Our cemeteries are full of dead cool people.

E N T E R   T H E   D R A G O N

About fifteen years ago I lost my shit quite badly and really bottomed out.  I was damaging my health, consigning my life to a landfill and torturing my partner, none of which I felt I had a right to continue doing.  It was a choice between, basically, self-euthanasia and remedial action.  Having run out even of resistance to the idea, I crawled on all fours into state-funded counseling.

Cognitive therapy, to be precise, and I credit this fortuity (I had no choice as to the kind of help I received) with the pleasures and freedoms I enjoy today.  Cognitive Therapy (CT, CBT or REBT- rational emotive behaviour therapy) is, in short, the provision of a new script.  If depression is essentially imbalance, CT offers a framework of ideas and inquiries that headbutt its droning dogma and allow a gradual return to balanced observation; the re-adoption of logical, rather than lopsided, batshit conclusions.  For every negative thing you can come up with, your counselor responds with what amounts to either a direct or rhetorical challenge, slowly compelling you to comprehend the unilateral nature of your own assertions.  Personally, I could only sit through so much of my own bullshit before it began to piss me off; rebalanced by patient, consistent suggestion, you begin to rebuild your bombed-out mental infrastructure, reinstating the processes that lead to emotional recovery; to the recovery of balance.  Both the challenge and the raw mechanics of engagement jumpstart the deadlocked brain and resuscitate its potential.  CT is all the better for being administered by a disinterested stranger, someone you cannot load with the spurious baggage you'd assign to an intimate acquaintance, but it can also be handily reinforced by your companions once they have learned its very basic principles.

Well-administered, Cognitive Therapy works its magic even (and perhaps especially) on the solid gold bitch and terminal smartarse; the sarcasm mavens like me, the ones with an answer for everything, so intrinsically refractory that our noncompliance will torpedo other treatment pathways.  I urge every wild-type antisocial depressive to attempt CT; don't worry- you can hate the process and still benefit from the results.

There is a sort of cultural relativity at work here, an appropriation of our most difficult attributes into a useful arsenal.  My skeptical, oppositional bloody-mindedness comprises an ethos that does not accommodate passivity or victimhood.  Such tendencies can exacerbate depressive episodes, but once engaged and mentored by the Cognitive Therapeutic process, they can lend their massive horsepower to recovery.

For me, it took three years of once and sometimes bi-weekly sessions for CT to really stick and find its niche, but it has served me ever since and I regard myself as a particularly intransigent case. 

L I B E R T Y,   E N F R A N C H I S E M E N T,   E N T I T L E M E N T

I was right about not being entitled to ignore chronic, acknowledged depression, any more than I should expect to be allowed to nurse a gangrenous arm for years on end.  From an ethical perspective, it's not cool to do nothing.  Those around us must get to vote too, if we value their company and their autonomy, their right not to chained to something gnawing on its own tail.

Value yourself.  You're here- you might as well enjoy it.  To suffer something as grotesque as depression is a prospect that should enrage the free and liberal.  If an outside agency knocked on your door and attempted to impose its conditions and limitations on your private life, or tried to insist that you consume occult pharmaceuticals, what would your reaction be?  
Exactly. 

S Y D N E Y   S M I T H,   E S Q U I R E.

A generation ago I would have faced involuntary committal or even indefinite detainment.  But now we are at the opposite end of that paradigm and help or intervention of any kind is sometimes impossible to obtain.  Under current monetarist regimes, most Western health systems have under-resourced psychiatric care, effectively denying it to a group that can be relied upon to accept absence and paucity.  While I am, as stated, a convert to the cause of professional intervention, what should we do in the face of institutional inadequacy?  Outside extremis, we don't have much choice but to stay punk.  Engage brain.  If the D is a bad witch, maybe she's trying to tell us something with that fucking broom; at least she reminds us that the cognitive can access the emotional.  She's also a hoary old bitch; let's locate the accounts of those who have gone before us.  So much has been written and discussed by so many; everyone from Aretaeus of Cappadocia to Virginia Woolf to Russell Brand have farted out their two cents worth upon the subject, and there's something of benefit for everyone to be found in the experience of others.

I found some particularly germane advice by accident, in a book from 1908 entitled The Beaux of the Regency, Vol II, containing illustrated accounts of various society wits and reprobates from the era in question.  (It deserves to be examined in its entirety, and one day I'll get round to doing so onsite.)  One of the personalities discussed is a certain Reverend Sydney Smith, 1771-1845, a rotund curate who could count Byron and Lady Holland amongst his intimate circle.  In 1820 he wrote a letter to a female friend detailing his advice on the treatment of low spirits, which he confessed to suffering himself.  Though I would not normally cross the road to piss on someone invested in the institutions of monotheism, the fact that he was an impolitic, arse-biting dissenter famous for his defence of the poor and eschewal of corrupt advancement should tip us off  to the value of his wisdom.  Here 'tis, slightly condensed and rearranged, with my notes included.

"Live as well as you dare.  Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.."
Self explanatory, vitally important.  Always attend to your modus and your domicile and never let things slide too far.  There are few things more guaranteed to precipitate depression than being faced with a shitty job and a horrible residential situation.  Do anything you can to keep them humane and comfortable; one can alleviate the impact of the other if its not possible to achieve both.

"Go into the bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight suggestion of cold.  Be as much as you can in the air without fatigue."
This is strange but true.  Slapping yourself in the face with a challenge to your physical comfort can short an impending depressive circuit.  Freeze your arse off with a walk in the middle of winter.  Go to the beach and wade out til it's up to your knees.  As for exercise, I'm as lazy and homeloving as they come and that has always been to my detriment.  Note to self- get out more.

"Avoid poetry, drama, music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.  See as much as you can of those acquaintances who respect/like/amuse you.  Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you."
As tempting as it is to put Faith or Unknown Pleasures on a loop and lie on the floor with a bottle of vodka, that is, in my experience, extremely unwise.  The first stages especially of depression seem to solicit mournful stimuli but you should never feed the troll, and I aim this counsel squarely at the young, who have so few defences anyway.  The jeune should also be aware of depressive cheerleaders, a peculiar species of acquaintance deriving secret, voyeuristic pleasure from the condition's perceived dramatic values and even stoking it in their thirst for more.  They are often young themselves and lack a true grasp of their impact, but I have met this creepy phenomenon in those well old enough to know better.  While I personally cannot engage with other depressives when I'm there myself and have to instate a cordon sanitaire, some peeps find perspective in that company, so maybe ask yourself what works for you.  

As for drugs, the uncomfortable truth is obvious and overwhelming.  Addicts know addiction and depression are best mates.  You don't have to be dependent for depression to start skewing your limits and tolerance, even of the stuff everyone considers harmless.  Overconsumption of cannabis has kept more people depressed for longer than they needed to be than anything else I know of.  Apart from antidepressants themselves, lol.  That's an unpopular opinion in some circles, but I did say overconsumption, and if smoking a fucking bowl is the centre of your political universe, you need readjustment anyway. 

It's my unshakable opinion that we should question lengthy recourse to antidepressant medications, particularly unsupervised, given their dubious history and pharmacodynamics; if you are offended by this suggestion, at least ponder why so many people both oppose their use and cannot seem to function without them.

"Short views of human life- no further than dinner or tea.  Be as busy as you can.  Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.  Struggle by little and little against idleness."
Human contact and activity can be difficult to manage when you're not feeling either, but make the effort.  Bake a cake and force someone to eat it with you.  Walking yourself like a rusty robot to the shops and fake-smiling at the checkout girl may not be orgasmically pleasurable, but it does not please or facilitate depression either.  Neither does volunteering somewhere worthy, or putting yourself in a situation where you cannot reasonably stare at the wall and grunt/weep in response to engagement.  Attempt things that will remind you of your own worth.  If you can't deal with yourself, try to deal with something else. 

"Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion."
Sydney was a 'tolerating' christian and a dedicated humanist so I give him a pass.  I am intensely dubious about the value of religion in dealing with depression, but don't let me shit on your parade.  If you believe in any sort of god, they owe you big time.  You are perfectly entitled to demand meaningful answers from your nominated creed.  Personally, I worship life in a sort of animisty kind of way and find the contemplation of my fellow organic arrangements immensely consoling.  That I have no more cosmic significance than an icecube or a takahe or a supernova has abolished hubris and denial, granted me a robust sense of self and the lateral connections with the natural world that are so supportive of sanity and the deep-pocket comforts of empathy.  

"Compare your lot with that of other people.  Don't expect too much from human life- a sorry business at the best."
Word.  Particularly relevant to the young.  The worst and the best thing about being young is the blinkered, attenuated immediacy of that condition.  It's awesome to be ignorant of the kind of shit that turns old people grey, but remember also what it's like to live inside each day when there is no notional escape from its transfixing horrors, when you don't know, in your head and your heart, that it's not the end of the world.  Depressed teenagers so often misunderstand oblivion; they take it literally, get the arse-end and aggress or destroy themselves instead of absorbing the perspective implied.  Remember the painful realities of youth, learning the discretion and secrecy that are passports to adulthood, how little your guardians knew of your influences and activities and how few defences are at your command.  How acutely attuned you were to cant and hypocrisy, if nothing else.  In dealing with a depressed child or teen, we need to think carefully about our own experience and speak to them with authenticity and sincerity, so they can relate it meaningfully to their own.  Depression is so lonely; we should intrude on that, oppose its exclusivity with compassion, reassurance and the promise of a chance to feel differently.

If only I had really known that all things pass when I was eighteen.    

"Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely- they are always worse for dignified concealment."
Another thing which makes me link depression with cognitive function is the fact that I am now both older and wiser; that as I have become more reflective upon my own value and defects, I suffer fewer bouts of active, unchallenged depression.  I am as pessimistic as ever, acutely conscious of the environmental and social hand of death that we are dealing ourselves, for instance.  But I remember the vivid horrors of depression without perspective, of being an emotional Prometheus, every day bringing the same terrors as the last.  I'm hardly ever there these days.

From the hopeless verbosity of this piece and its predecessor, you might have already concluded that I've learnt to talk about this crap and found solace in that process.  Do talk about it yourself, even if you don't know what to say at first.  Telling other people you're not doing well invokes the ancient magic principle of naming your adversary, and the idea withstands a lot of scrutiny.  It's not like you're ever the only lunatic in the room.  Everyone's defective in their own special way.

I remember something the late, stupendous Lux Interior once said about eschewing self destruction in favour of sticking around long enough to piss people off by pretending to be deaf, and that is the challenge that faces the chronically depressed.  Not just the sticking around part, but finding solid ground on which to be whoever the hell you are.  It may be smug and probably is tempting fate to say that this place exists, and that I'm standing on it now, but there is so much in the ether suggesting otherwise that I feel bound to declare it here. 

Ex nilhilo nihil fit.  Given the opportunity, we should all at least try to shift for ourselves and help others toward the same.

earthlynation  giraffe plush

What's not to like about a giraffe?  They are so much more amazing up close than from a distance with their foot long lashes, purply serpent tongues and tufty horns.  Giraffes are proof there is no god.  I love them for that too.