In a Gift From Adam and Finding My Way Out of a Mental Breakdown

By Scott Vanya

In 1990 I had my first of three mental (schizoaffective) breakdowns (the other in 1991 and 1993) and signed myself into a mental hospital for what would turn out to be a long stay. Very confused and basically in the dark about everything that was going on (having been taken there by my brother and parents), I needed some footing to the Reality that was apparent to all those around me. My best friend at the time, Adam, brought to the hospital for me a medium sized (standard poetry issue) unlined, black cover journal and wrote a poem (which i have included as the Preface) in the cover which ended with -"I'm here to snag you back from your travels." He knew as he knew me, that I would use the journal to slowly but surely piece my broken mind back together again. Little did he know I would need and use it for the subsequent 2 episodes.
I publish this work for two reasons: 1) the poems are filled with a desperate need to recover which I think has been a universal need of Mankind since the beginning, and as the story of the journal progresses you can see that steadily and surely the writer's mind comes back together again and does Make Clear the previously Insane World around him, and 2) to inspire compassion for yourself if you suffer from such a plight or for those you know (or have only heard of) who may be going through similar times in their life.
It is offered with the Hope that it might be a doorway, by which others understand the mentally ill as well as offer them a helping hand or even just a little black journal as the case may be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Vanya
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311277077

Scott Vanya

I've been writing for a very long time, what seems like my whole life, taking it seriously from the time I was about 11. Now, at 46, I think I may be starting to get the hang of it: Say what you feel, as passionately as you can, but always with an ear turned to those who are listening.Most of my more serious work is done at live performances, which i do totally extemporaneously, channeling the mood of the room as my fingers play on the guitar. You can see some of that if you go to "my" website. (Open Mics Austin is a platform I created to showcase the Spoken Word scene here in Austin, TX. Only a small role in which i play.)As far as I can tell what makes good writing is LOVE. Love ,plainly simply, and with no strings attached.I put these words/books before you, not so much because I want something back from it, because I think and feel like I feel my bones and my soul, if you were to see the world, experience it like it do, for even a brief moment, you would walk away from that happier, more alive, compassionate and in tune with all those around you.Peace, good will, and harmony. Let those be your guiding light.Agape forever,Scott VanyaPublication Credits:Stepping Stones Magazine, The Main Street Rag, www.carcinogenicpoetry.com, Texas Art Initiative, Phoenix New Life Poetry, Walt’s Corner, Manna, Perigee, Chicago Literary Review, Mobius, Cosmic Trend, Pitchfork, Romantics Quarterly, Artisan, Pegasus, The Neovictorian, Red Owl, The Story Teller, The Blind Man's Rainbow, Atlantic Pacific Press

Book preview

PREFACE Opening poem written on the cover page of the journal in which all of these poems were written.

We're Divided, Together

Scott,

  Don't Go Away

I can't follow

your steps

your thoughts

My pillow

is unlike yours.

Mine harbors

no villages of

feather men,

no cosmos within.

I do not fall

to sleep

feeling I am all.

Though I'm sure

I am

I cannot know

the answer

to this un-question

but only feel

the glimmering,

invisible threads

of truth.

The road that

shimmers with

chaotic beauty

into one-ness

is not for you

to travel,

but to imagine the travelling.

We can not merge.

You can touch me,

I can touch you

But we're so much

in the world.

I touch you,

you touch me.

We're divided together

and continue

with enlightened acceptance

of the grasp of worldness

upon us,

our only eye,

    I love you, Scott

      Adam

      1/4/91

P.S. I'm here to snag

  you back from

  your travels.

---

Previous:Next

1-1-1991

The opened fields

Bluebird sprung above the yellow tipped grass

The forest fluffed above the leaves

The bluebirds floating above the seas

As the wind tips the feathers

And I stare down to the fish below

Out over the coast

I have seen the forest

The touch of that sensitive word

And the stroke of desires

Comfort the experience of offer,

Lived upon the skin

The work of the word comes down to page

In the meeting of hand and eye

-

The great calling

The hand writing

to see again

The story of his life continues

Each note and sound looking

The blackness of this written world

To be Life above Light

The transparency of wholeness

When together the space Opens

And reveals the most human of natures

The enlightened, elongated tapestry

Floating from the poles

Flapping the breeze so open

Headed to the many reds and blacks

yellow crimson spider patterned

The Lady's tale within the forest

We play and play continuing

The journey of our listening

He is beauty, my brother

Sprung about the cavern

In this home your own,

Looking always to the butterfly

That flutters amongst the trees

In this land called peace

Continuing on in the land of sound

Where the brook ripples

taps upon the rocks

crescendoless

rumbles

The bubbling of the spring's rain adding

To this flow

The continued rhythm

That across the stone erodes

For so long I have looked at the roots

I have forgotten the luster of the limbs

The forward motion, procreation

The scamper of the toes so many miles down