On autistic C-PTSD recovery during pandemic

Essay on how shifting from frozen panic to being present with live panic can actually be a window of opportunity if you have the skills. And the value found in enforced periods of intense introverted presence.

Relationships without the saviour complex

It's been a while since I've been writing here, largely because I've been cutting down screen time to allow my eyes to get better. And travels. Being stuck alone at home with exceptionally lousy weather outside (storm warnings) is perhaps the moment to catch up. Via a friend's mention and then a good review on …

Getting half a handle on some basic trauma-digestion processes

I usually don't write about the good times on here because writing is mostly my tool for getting through the tougher times. When I'm well, I stay off screens; I stay outdoors, or around people without distracting myself with electronic devices. Some thoughts have been circulating lately around the topic of trauma healing (in this …

More ropes for traversing despair and depression; perhaps on perinatal trauma

In a "better", by most measures, life situation, still waves of this "post-war" type of apocalyptic depression return at critical moments. I guess I call it post-war because the inner image my eye sees is perhaps akin to how Warsaw after the uprising gets pictured (below an artist's rendering, I believe). The inner image is …

How Berlin converted me to Marxism-Leninism

Well, not precisely. But in one of the cuddling sessions, N. said, matter shapes consciousness – rather than the reverse (or perhaps, much more than the reverse). I have not invested the time into researching whether this line of pop-marxism from the lips of my punk-dyed psychedelic-ingesting Berlin queer friend represents the theoretical plot accurately …

Doctor of philosophy

That's the title of a (Polish) jazz record my guitar teacher made. (In 2014, the time when I was seeking self, meaning and homeland in dusty & martyrological Warsaw and on the side benefitted from spending the British pounds I'd shnorred from the last PhD scholarship on professional guitar lessons with an actual jazz musician …

Urban retreat and nervous system deregulation

Since my partner left on a business trip, I've been torn between doing a silent retreat back in my village, or just staying in the hellish city and trying to do the same – the upside here being that it saves me 2 days of travel and 2 additional days of anxiety/exhaustion around travel.  My …

The fine art of fruitful complaining

On a butoh retreat with many crazy artists in Italy, a Hungarian colleague remarked to me that I'm probably the most negative person he knows – I skilfully find something to complain about in any situation. He said he'd spent time in Poland (my patriotic fatherland) at one point and noticed that Polish people in …

Human, just more so

Having recently talked to an autism educator (at autismmatters.org.uk) and educated myself otherwise on the matter, I learnt that my current life situation seems to be quite the aspie classic: three degrees, three failed PhDs, no job, no house (residence in 6 countries and counting), constant background anxiety and and bouts of depression devolving the …