Ill
306 creative works found
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A ward full of beds in an abandoned mental asylum.
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Matron’s just let me try one of the new prototypes. simper The specification is truly splendid. They’re meant to keep my knees from shrinking, keep my ear wax production in check and (this is the bit I’m most excited about) prolong that feeling you get after taking one of the pink and yellow pills. I can hardly wait. dribble looks at dosage advice on the side of the crate "Adults should take 37, every hour. To be taken with weak lemon drink. Failure to drink weak lemon drink may result in elbow itching. Do not eat. May contain nuts." Nothing out of the ordinary then. Splendid.
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Hey Dad, I'm 40
by mstraceYou embed your trust into an anvil and tie it to my guts.
This is a short-story/open letter of a sort. It marks my first completed attempt at writing about a subject I have struggled with for many years. Thank you Bell for the inspiration. And thanks to those of you who read it, because my Dad always wanted everyone to read. Dad, this is for you.
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This elderly woman sits at the window and contemplates the world outside. She does not see far beyond the window frame because her world has diminished considerably. Two years ago she was officially diagnosed with dementia after a life threatening surgery and long hospital stay. However, her family and friends noticed a difference in her personality over the last several years. Once a proud and hard working single mom, she raised two children during the 60’s and 70’s at a time when single parenthood was not as widely accepted as it is today. At present, she is reduced to little more than the passive demeanor of a quiet child. She is aware of the reduction in both her mental and physical abilities. She also understands that she is helpless to change anything. / It takes great courage to face the inevitable. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia; it accounts for 64 per cent of all dementias. For example right now in the US, Alzeihmer’s has surpassed diabetes and is the sixth leading cause of death. As baby boomers are rapidly approaching the age of retirement it is believed that 10 million baby boomers will develop Alzheimer’s in their lifetime. Currently, there are more than 24 million people in the world with dementia—this is estimated to rise to 81 million by the year 2040.6 / Statistics taken from both the Canadian and American Alzeihmer’s Society.
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not sure about this effect, would love some feedback!thanks for looking.
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The nurse walked into her seclusion to find that the patient in room 33 had given birth by herself. There is more from this series at www.cjphotography.co.nr sorry if i offend anyone with this piece. all the stories are true and i have spoken to the people involved with the story.
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These are made of plaster and painted with cheap kid water colors. The plaster was poured into a rubber mold I made myself from one of my sculpted faces. available plasters
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drawn/sketched pencil / color and texture Photoshop CS a tale of my recent experience with mysterious,chronic pain that the doctors / cannot explain…...one can only wonder and be left to the horrors of the imagination. i want my life back. :(
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If Heaven and Hell decide / That they both are satisfied / Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs If there’s no one beside you / When your soul embarks / Then I’ll follow you into the dark - Death Cab for Cutie Enjoy!! _
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The Ill Magician
by madeleineThe first sign that the storms were receding came on the fifth day, when the rat left the shanty through one of many holes in the walls. ...
The first sign that the storms were receding came on the fifth day, when the rat left the shanty through one of many holes in the walls. The sudden absence of its small, grey body was at once a relief and a shock to the two women living there: it was as though the logic of its shelter-seeking presence had masked from them all the fears of a foreign climate. The departure of the rat coincided with the final day of rain – though it would not be until the following day that they would find the boy. / The walls of the shelter ran about nine paces by four, and were of a thin corrugated iron fused with rust at the corners. For days the true barrier against the sluicing brown waters had been seven flour bags, stuffed with clay from the pit, a muddy wound in the shack’s centre. Three times each day one of the women would lean in, plunging her arms so deep into the mud that her chin skimmed its surface, while the other held the sacks ready, their unfamiliar script stretched wide and ugly. These bags were then humped against those walls most riddled with holes, to pause the deluge until the clay itself was washed away through the fabric. The clay was fed by rapid arteries back to the pit, ready for re-collection, so that they must begin again. The women’s arms were permanently discoloured, their lips blue with cold. Veins and blemishes bloomed violet on their faces like curdled knots in milk. / Then came the day the rains ceased. Hugging each other about the middle with joy, the women emerged from the shack. A pale sun touched their faces. / And there was the native boy, sitting upon a rock. / They offered him their last scraps of rice, wrapped in flaking newspaper, and he shovelled it into his mouth with quick, brown fingers. The fairer-haired woman pushed the hair back from his face, and tickled him under his chin. It was suddenly as though he had always been there, perched in the dark, damp hay in the corner of their home. / Do you believe in fire? he asked. / Of course, the women laughed, and he looked crestfallen. He snapped his fingers and a small blue spark flared its head, burning from his inner wrist. They were startled. / How did you do that? Show us! How are you doing it? they cried in delight. / The native boy showed them a tiny stone and flint, hidden beneath the folds of his sleeve. The women laughed and clapped. Go to sleep, they said. / He lay his dark head on the coddle of clothing they had made for his pillow. Every few hours, however, he would wake them, black eyes burning with the white fires of the heavens, to ask them if they believed in something, if they truly believed. Always his question would be delivered with an action – always a charm, a veiled unreality. Did they believe that he could conjure up a herring? That he could cause a tree to grow between his toes? That he could walk on water? / Each time his tricks quivered with all the allure of those of a penny magician. His dark skin would glisten with sweat. / One day the darker-haired woman was gathering clay for the sacks when she found the boy hovering over her, peering with his sad, haughty eyes. / Do you believe, he crooned softly, so softly that she had to strain to hear him, That I could make the world? That the world would hear my footfall and laugh with fear, behold my age, my newborn’s beard, my breasts made milk, my pearl-black foot? His voice, strong and unfocused, shook with the timbre of low things, of growing things, of soft grubs in the soil and tangled blind roots, interconnecting deep, deep down there, below her feet. She shuddered. He came a little closer. Do you believe, he asked, That I could make for you a world without clay, without these walls that creak and without these bloated sacks? This waste? Her mouth seemed sucked dry and arid; she said nothing. The woman and the boy gazed at each other for a stoppered moment, before, shoulders slacking, his eyes drifted from her face, and he shuffled beyond her to his bedclothes. / The woman was much perturbed. Thoughts swirling like sand in a water-filled cup, she gathered the remainder of the clay, the renewal of the latest barrier, and went to her companion. She found her busy grinding seeds to make flour, a trick the boy had uncovered the day before. A glance revealed his still body, half covered by a thin blanket. All he did was sleep, and when he slept he didn’t dream. She could tell. And when he woke, he would show them his tricks, his feathered fancies, before falling back to his unshakeable stasis, back to the bed. At this moment he simply lay there, watching her, the whites of his eyes like duck eggs in the gloom. Her head was full of worms; unreason clutched at her heart. She turned back and, hushed, the two women gazed into each other’s eyes, seeing not what they had seen there for months and years and days, but a wholly new appetite, a heresy of avowal. He turned over, exposed skin like a smooth, dark pebble. / The boy soon presented with a curious ailment. His tongue had turned black like his body, and swollen like driftwood on sea foam. The women peered at him and prodded and fussed, but could make no sense or rhyme of the matter – and in any case he could still talk. He still moved from one, to the other, to the sleeping place, asking for their belief, performing his false miracles. / Do you believe, he asked the dark-haired woman, That I can turn this stone to food? She watched as he picked a stone from the earth and patted it in his horny brown hands, blowing the excess earth from its skin. And behold – in his hands now it was a potato, pale and speckled, like a very large snail. She watched, and she saw a potato where before she had thought to see a stone, and the doubts eddied and coalesced in her mind. The fairer woman passed, and kissed his stubbled cheek. / The storms began again in earnest, slapping and pummelling at the little shack. / Before long the boy’s left leg had gone lame. They didn’t see how he could possibly have done it – there was nowhere he’d been the previous day, no hard labour done, no heavy pans to trip over – but there it was, all the same. They set him to rest in the driest corner of the hut, where he could stare out the gaps in the walls as through a window. The sinews above and below his knee protruded, stark and ugly purple and cramped up with pain. He shuffled about the shack with his useless leg and fat, dumb tongue. / A mysterious string of afflictions set upon that native boy. White sores appeared on his body, from the corner of his mouth to his scalp, and under his hair. His left hand grew puffy and infected. One of his eyes lost its sight and constantly roved, mad and milky, over the walls of the shack. / Still he shuffled about, wracked like a scurvy-ridden sailor, mumbling his questions of unfaith. In one woman grew the seed of yearning, a hunger – in the other the spores of doubt. / As the rains grew harder, they blew and blew against the sides of the shelter, causing a deluge of water under the clay sacks. Ochre streams poured into the pit, to rise and cake on their faces and in their hair. / The women decided that they couldn’t take it anymore. Boy, called the fairer. Boy! Will you take these things outside, sweet, so that they don’t muddy the floor? They’re doing no good here, any longer … / The boy looked at her, his sickened front revealing, to her, a mute grimness of the soul. His mouth opened and, wounded though it was, spoke the last question, the final trickery – but his voice so quiet, and the thunder so very loud, that the others could not hear him. His speech was silenced. / He dragged the heavy clay sacks outside, one by one, and lined them in neat, funereal rows beyond their doorstep. He sat himself upon the rock. Vivid white lightning seared the sky as the great storms were unleashed upon the world. Heads of Spinifex grasses were tossed and danced by a mirthful wind, the violet sky mated to a youthful, growing green. / The waters eddied and rushed at the shelter. With a shriek of metal, muffled by the eternal rain, the shack groaned and folded, washed away immediately by the warm, brown waters. His flesh burned, healed and gleaming in the flood.
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Or journey of the lost soul…I guess every day is a failure. I fail to live up to my own life. But I will die trying! I’m ready to make a leap of consciousness. The old struggles are no longer interesting. They do not engage my mind. My energy passes through them-they are mirages. I once sought big monuments of proof that I existed-no more. For me going deeper is better. Deeper insight is all that I seek…and a beautiful cup to drink from.
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A young man I shared a few minutes with in Rwanda.
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Everyone likes a sticky beak. I reckon this might be a great card for many occasions : Now I’m not one to gossip, but I’ve hear you’re having a special birthday…. / Now I’m not one to gossip, but someone told me you’re getting married….again! / Now I’m not one to gossip, but a little bird told me you haven’t been feeling well….. There’s a myriad of uses for this smart-alec bird. :-)
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need prayers for a friend....
by Christopher EwingWho would have ever thought that 3yrs ago, while I am just starting my photography career seriously. I join a photography website in hop…
Who would have ever thought that 3yrs ago, while I am just starting my photography career seriously. I join a photography website in hopes my work will sell. That this woman who happened to comment on my work and started giving me tips would end up helping thru the years in my photography. Surely not I. She has been such a true and real friend, which is so hard to find now a days. She is the one who has helped me improve and progress. I cant put into words how much her friendship means to me, and I am sure anyone else who’s path has crossed with her, feels the same way. She is an angel in disguise, willing and having helped everyone that she has come to meet. Im sure there are so many people that can probably tell the same story as myself. Not to mention an awesome photographer herself, and a Master in Photoshop (best I have ever seen). Friday she started bleeding internally, of course she had to go straight to the hospital immediately. After losing 3 pints of blood, and dozens of tests, they finally found the problem this morning. She has a hole in her colon along w/ a blockage. Today she had to have emergency surgery to try to fix this problem. So Im asking that anyone and everyone that reads this, and a lot will probably know her, since we all at one time were on the same photography site. Her name….Marianne Venegoni So along w/ those of us who had the honor of hanging out w/ her just at the beginning of this month, need help in more prayers sent her way, so this problem can be fixed, and she can get back to a halfass normal life again. It breaks my heart a person like Marianne has to go thru this, it just isnt fair. Why does it always seem the good ones always have to go thru such terrible things. I dont think I will ever understand that. Im not a real religious guy, yes I do believe in God, but…I dont believe in churches. I know I have asked for the strength for her to pull thru this, and I’m asking others to help me out. For those that do, I’d like to thank you now. She needs all the prayers she can get right now. It’s really hard especially when she is hundreds of miles from me and the others. If I could get away with it, I’d head down there. So it isnt like I can just go hang out at the hospital. Sometimes this internet is a good thing..but on the other side of the coin, it’s frustrating as well. So once again, to those that do help us out in sending some serious well wishes…..I cant thank you enough, my words wont ever express what your help really means to me. All I can say…is …thank you.
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Ducked out this morning for bread and papers and found this new peice of graffitti had sprung up overnight. And I just love it. I had to turn around and go home and get my camera and come back and capture it before the tidy town people find it and paint over it. So here’s a picture of hope and tolerance on a special Sunday morning. God bless the mentally ill and keep them safe. And a very happy Fathers Day to all the Dads out there.
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Darling Don’t Feel Blue / I’ll Be There For You
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A picture of part of a ward in an abandoned mental asylum. I think this picture is given an extra spooky edge and a bit of a story by the fact that one of the beds has a pair of shoes sitting waiting at the bottom as if the occupant may be back any minute.
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A single person dorm room in an abandoned mental asylum
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After losing all faith in life, she decided neither her or her child were worthy of life. She carried out what she thought was right with a pair of scissors. There is more from this series @ www.cjphotography.co.nr thank you for looking.
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Teddy in hospital
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Taken in 1966, this is one of my favourite images of the 60’s of the iconic DJ, Sir Jimmy Savile OBE. I took the shot when I was 20 during my assistant days at 1:15 am, after a long advertising shoot for a petrol company with my boss, top fashion and advertising photographer John Cowan. I asked Sir Jim if I could run a couple of rolls of film for my portfolio. True gent that he is, Jim said “Sure!” even though every one was pretty tired after the 5 hour gasoline ad session. Anyhow, this is the result and it remains one of my favourite pictures to this day as it shows Sir Jim as he really was and is – a strong and generous human being who did not take himself too seriously. You are a true professional Jim, and I am eternally grateful to you for giving me this opportunity. Technical Details: Camera: Hasselblad 500C / Lens: 80mm Planar / Film: Tri-X / ASA: 400 rated at 200 / Exposure: 1/125 sec at f/16 / Lighting: 5,000 Joule Strobe in perspex light bank. © 1966 – 2008 John Hooton
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Mariposa-Portrait of my daughter / (the story is cut off a bit …I put it in my writngs) / When I was in my teens the sign of insanity begin to show. / Maybe they were always there… I just could control then better I don’t know. / There were days often months of feeling like everything was perfect …the world seemed brighter …I felt I could dream anything and make it possible….at those times the world seems to hold magic. / And then there were the times (the ones I tried desperately not to show anyone) the times when the lights went on and I could see how messy my world really was. The constant voices I tried to ignore …my unhealthy obsessions with God. The crushing sadness (my ugly balance to the euphoric happiness); these are the times I wanted to die. I wanted to reach out and tell someone but how do you say to people I can’t seem to go on (most will not find it to their liking to listen anyway) ...so I pretended on bad days. For awhile anyway. / I moved and began a steady decline. My weight fell .I lost my taste for everything including life. I had a few good days but for the most part I was just in an unhealthy hopeful existence that things would get better. This is when I met Miguel (that story will come later) he took on the roll of caring for me and trying to make me better. When most only wanted me for my inspiration and the feeling I gave them. He wanted to make me feel life again. He started with food …he said one must live to eat ….not eat to live. And slowly things started looking up .A few ravenous fights in-between but I thought because we both had horrible tempers. Within the year I had my daughter. / After her things declined again .we fought all the time .because he said I needed help .I was still in denial but he could see the signs .he always said this is the reason in all my cruelty why he couldn’t hate me because he saw i was sick. The voices got worse .My obsession with God was tormenting I begged him to make me better. It never happened. / But in all the chaos I loved my daughter more than anything. Never hurt her .I was a good mama…and Even Miguel would agree to that. She was my only reason for wanting to go on. And trying to be better. But it became more and more difficult to control myself. / Miguel insisted I make an appointment after too much chaos .he said that he didn’t want her growing up with me like this. / I went and saw dr after doctor .they final outcome after many referrals was that I was schizophrenic. Because I was so young it had not fully set in .they showed me the faculties where I would be living .that after awhile I could not raise my daughter because I could hurt her and I would not be capable mother. I remember sitting in the office the doctors telling me they would give me something for now to calm me down. I start to cry and I asked what was I supposed to do now? They had no answer for me / I spent the week taking that in ….called God a fucking asshole a million time .Every time my daughter laughed etc .my thoughts went to God ...you fucking asshole how could you do this to me after everything I have gone though. That is God will saying that everyone loves to say in times of chaos and tragedy pissed me off like nothing else. / I remember her and I spent the day in the park .She was blowing dead dandelions she loves those ….and I thought she is not going to remember me in a good light .Miguel will not move on as long as I am alive. That I will be a constant sadness in there life. That I will be lost to insanity. I hated God…for taking the most perfect love away for me .it was like a cruel joke was being played on me. / I decide to take my life …Miguel saved me….I guess he always thought I was worth fighting for(he always said that just wait someday you will come together and you will see how perfect you are). I am blessed that he did. I thought it would be better for them .I now know different. I began to pray after that ….my one constant God please don’t make her me. I hope he listens this time. / I was eventually diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and manic depression. I have come off all pills and paint everyday .I try like hell to make everyday liveable for everyone. I am the same person I always was but now one with hope and purpose. And I have days again where I feel immaculate happiness. / She was my reason for everything life and death because I would do anything for her to make her life better… I would give up anything. She was the reason for on the worst of day for me to get up. She was the reason I wanted to be a better stronger woman one she could look up and beyond too. I had someone to make happy .I had someone who needed unselfish love…..and needed me to show her that the world was indeed full of magic.
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These people had been run out of their village by militia and had just returned when we arrived in North Kivu province Democratic Republic of Congo. They are just some of the millions of displaced Congolese driven by fear of the horrific crimes carried out by the roaming militias. When we arrived it was chaos. People return to homes that no longer exists, and victims who are no longer as they were. HEAL Africa has started an initiative whereby the leaders of these communities from Muslim, Christian and indigenous religious groups come together to try and rebuild the community. Yep that’s right a Christian group working with others in a non judgmental socially progressive way. I just had to point that out :)
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