Today is about taking back power, and you may interpret that as you like. Sometimes things are better coded, close, and as secret as the inside skin of a wrist, slipping out of sleeves only if you are close enough to see. (And if you are, then you should know my undertones are gold and green.)

Now, a webby friend has created this award and asked that it be collected rather than accepted, and I could use a little recognition today. You can participate, too!

These are the terms:

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

1.  How many bricks do you own?

2.  How many Cumberland sausages can you fit in your mouth without chewing?

3.  What is your most inventive way of using biscuits (or cookies if you’re American)?

4.  If it was made compulsory to have a mental illness which one would you choose and why? (If you have a mental illness already you have to choose another).

1. There are four (recently vacuumed) bricks in the study, which do a good job of holding down the floor and up the music. A few weeks ago I noticed a brick under a hedge nearby, which I intend to remove to one of the spots inside that would be improved by a brick; bricks are not that easy to come by in a city with very few alleyways. (Next I had planned to mention the people who are bricks, but we do not own people.) I also have several crystal balls, good for massaging cynical or engorged chakras (it is said) (or just for hoarding), and for bashing NewAgers who step too close to my skin, staring and trying to get me to weep.

2. I do not eat sausages unless they are made vegetarianly, but I can fit my whole hand in my mouth (the hand is a bit collapsable).

3. This is a hard question tempting me to invent falsehoods; now I am a bit miffed about biscuits because all I do is boringly hoard them.

4. Dotty, I think this is a trick therapy question designed (un/wittingly?) to make us aware of our deep attachments to the ones we have! In some circles this would lead to the probing question, “So what is between you and mental health?” (A version of this question was first asked me at about age seven; now you can purchase such like in various affordable formats (good little masses, have some opiates!), including CDs, DVDs, books, retreats, and seminars. YOU CAN ACTUALLY LEARN TO CREATE YOUR OWN REALITY, and MANIFEST THINGS, for example: houses, cars, necklaces, matching purebreds, probably even a TIGER, as well as whitening for teeth, a lot of fun dancing with very, very young men, and adventure not including unfortunate mishaps like hookworms or kidnapping; if you get those then you did the manifesting wrong and it is your own fault for hating yourself.) Because: truthfully, I am most comfortable with my own mentality, fraught as it is; I know it/them pretty well now and I am taking care to name them when they need names, and not drive them away, and not let them drive (they crash) every time they ask, and just trying to LOVE THEM MORE and stuff like that, even if it ruins my reputation. Good one, Dotty! Respect. The answer, in jargon, is this: what is between me and mental health is leaving behind all my little monsters. And if I’m being honest: a) they are not ready (they can be really sweet); b) I am unconvinced that removing the in-between can be done.

Why shouldn’t there be something between? There is a gap, after all. Has it not been established that the gap can’t be closed, and can only be crossed by a spark, that Platonic bane? That living light in the eye of the soul flicking forward from bellied fire where warm jewels grow like fruit on the chasm trees? What is between me and me? Rubies and pearls dropped from the hand in my mouth. Great emerald seas where the water is sweet. Porcelain salamanders, darting always, never seen. Strike the bell and bide the danger; climb the wall and kill your beautiful friend.