Natasha Shapiro, ATR-BC, LCAT

It’s a Sky Blue Sky

People who were in NYC the morning of 9/11/01, saw the blue sky; ironically pilots call it “severe clear” sky. All us NYC people who were there remembered that sky.

Photo Today-on one outing- there were several!🤯😲All errands and then something relaxing.

This is a cut off photo of the event and sky from then.

It’s almost the same color; I took a bunch of photos of the NYC sky a few blocks from the memorial pools…

It’s pretty close. Today is 6/3/26, nothing to do with 9/11/01, however, it turns out today down in the same neighborhood, there was a ceremony at City Hall honoring firefighters. Unrelated-the current Firefighter Commissioner, Lillian Bonsinore, second woman and first openly out gay human in the role.

Anyway, I have an awful memory, but that sky was magical; I saw it before, during and after and it’s seared in my mind. I love days like today where it’s almost- maybe the same- blue.

I cut off the bottom-one tower in a huge cloud. It’s a beautiful photo of that day, so, if you don’t to see disturbing imagery, I’m putting it here.

You need the contrast of buildings; otherwise, it looks like a random square of blue.

It may not match completely but most accurate would be to take my photo in the morning. Seeing it makes me feel good. Even though I was so close by, and it completely charity life, today, I see that sky and it’s a gift. The sky refuses to not rise and be here all the time.

Just realized the second photo has a clock on it; I don’t know what it means, but maybe, it’s not the same day or time. And the Gery building in the back, It’s as beautiful as the former trade center-actually more interesting than the towers.

I’m still having a hard time getting out of bed and doing all the stuff; I’m getting there… And, when we’re once in a y gifted this clear blue sky. I thought, , “It’s a sky blue sky”- was from a song like in The Talking Heads. I figured out, then I finally figured out I made it up

Maybe a poem

It’s a sky blue sky

It’s the good day to die.

It’s a sky blue sky.

It’s the right day to cry.

It’s a sky blue sky.

What a day to get high.

Higher than this sky.

It’s a sky blue sky blue sky blue

Skyblue. Blue Sky. Bluesky.

It’s a sky blue sky.

A day I did not die.

Today’s Walk

I went outside right before noon and actually saw the sun. Still depressed but doing all the stuff including posting in here. Last night I slept almost 10 hours. Tomorrow I have to be up by 7 for my 8am client.

I have a series of these to post after scanning them.

Walks and Photos

I started an Anti-Depressant Boot Camp to shock my system and propel me into the land of ADHD all or nothing discipline.

Going to bed by 10/10:15 to wake up by around 7, am shower, morning walk with at least one pano photo, hydration- just drinking a bunch of water and BaI drinks- I am pretty sure not hydrating is bad for depression. It does help with low energy✅, brain fog✅, dry skin✅, low motivation to do/move/ get out of bed✅, very heavy effort for tasks like taking showers, brushing teeth, bothering to wear different street clothes daily instead of semi-lounge wear or sleeping in the clothes I had on✅. I created my 🥾 Camp last week; I went outside-novel, walked around and went inside to the Oculus, which was shutting down and got “flattened”, went home feeling weak; on the way home I decided to shock my system.

The walks aren’t necessarily getting 8k steps or whatever. It’s to get outside in the am, preferably before work, after getting dressed in “work clothes.” There were a few other things; I went back to the Streaks app, which is fun to use.

at this place next to the Fox Cafe on Pine Street

So far, not bad. But I haven’t gotten up really early except once. Still doing the other things. The only problem was – I was drawing in bed every day while not having motivation to do anything. Now I have to fit it in.

Anyway, I’m still not over it. I was going to get a pedicure so my toenails don’t come off and visit my mom after work and did neither. I’m still lying in bed playing phone games.

I added blogging to my Streaks. I’m not on social media at all. I’m going to have to force myself to get the news, daily. While depressed I was hiding from the news and had no interest in seeing how rotten everything is. I was already aware of rotting.

Here are my Pano photos from walks. Maybe I will put them between paragraphs.

This was because of the windows’ shapes.

Peanuts: So Many Tropes

May 30, 2026

In Peanuts, all love is unrequited. Lucy competes with Beethoven and the piano and is always spurned. She has no control. Many see Lucy as the mean older sister who always managed to convince Charlie Brown to kick the football.

Sally is in love with Linus, her sweet babboo. Linus is in love with the girl behind him who keeps infuriating him by saying, “Aren’t you too old for me?” Then she has a different name every day.

Charlie Brown isn’t the only one made “a fool in love” with the Little Red-Haired Girl. Every one of the characters who has a constant crush and is spurned goes through all the phases. In some cases, the girl pursues an annoyed character who is in love with someone else.

Lucy hangs out the most with her crush. Charlie Brown is the only one besotted with a girl whose name he doesn’t know. She has no idea he exists. In the other cases, there are different types of unrequited love. Sally sometimes hangs out with Linus, interacting as friends.

Even the school gets a crush on Sally because she pays attention to the building and talks to it every day.

There’s also the competition between Peppermint Patty and Marcie for Chuck/Charles: “Which of us do you like more?” He usually says, “You have reached the wrong number.” So he’s being pursued by two girls he has no interest in—not exactly the typical failure/loser. Much more complex.

Peppermint Patty and Marcie spend 75% of their time with each other. It seems obvious they’re in love and don’t even know it, and don’t identify as bisexual. They hang out together when they’re pursuing Charles. He’s usually not around them. That’s also a different kind of longing and never getting.

Then there’s Snoopy: all these invisible characters sending him mountains of Valentines. He’s seen as popular, brilliant, and shape-shifting, but he experiences a different kind of rejection as a writer, being turned down by every publisher. His whole Red Baron relationship has that feel to it.

Then there’s a different kind of love—not romantic, but lonely companionship. Snoopy’s brother Spike lives in the desert talking to cacti.

That takes care of the complex love stories.

Then there’s believing in someone or something that never occurs: Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. The two of them have a weird relationship. There’s the football trope and the kinds of stories she comes up with to get him to believe and have it yanked from his reach again.

At other times, she’s his psychiatrist, and instead of the football, there’s her booth, complete with price. He confides in her and she gives all kinds of advice.

Then there are siblings. Sally wants help with her homework, writing thank-you notes, and moving into Charlie Brown’s room when he’s gone. There’s Linus and his blanket, with Lucy exasperated.

Another fun one is that Linus starts petting birds on the head for security, like his blanket. Snoopy and Woodstock are such fun companions. They have all kinds of crazy interactions. Snoopy understands what Woodstock is saying; he talks in dashes.

There are a lot of “hot this person, beat them up” scenes. There’s Snoopy, Linus, and the blanket. Snoopy wants that blanket, but all the fun is in the fighting for it, and in things like Snoopy falling asleep on it.

They constantly use the word “stupid.”

Snoopy, at times, is just a dog lying on Charlie Brown’s lap sleeping.

I love this comic strip, but the golfing is beyond me. People focus on Charlie Brown causing them to lose all the games, but there’s Lucy in right field never catching the ball, having ridiculous conversations on the pitcher’s mound. She never catches the ball.

There are a bunch of repeating scenes with little kids, like when Sally, for some reason, is teaching Sunday school and this little boy is obsessed with turning everything into something from The Great Gatsby. How the hell did Schulz come up with this?

The holidays are not like the films. Snoopy stands outside in a Santa suit. Sally writes letters to Samantha Claus.

In one memorable Thanksgiving, Woodstock hears about a bird getting eaten. Snoopy hugs him close and declines going to the family’s Thanksgiving dinner. There is no world in the daily strip where Snoopy would be seen at Thanksgiving.

Lucy and Snoopy: she’s always reading, criticizing, and recommending things about Snoopy’s writing.

Then there’s Sally and school: waiting for the bus, doing show-and-tell, showing Charlie Brown her commas, and developing philosophies where “Who cares?” is the answer, and “What do I care?” “So what?” and “What difference does it make?” She’s searching for some question that sums up a philosophy she can use as a constant.

Yes, it’s about finding an answer to life being terrible for different reasons, especially in relation to the literal school, classroom, and homework scenes.

As a kid, I came home from nursery school and said to my mom, “OK, I’m done with school.” She informed me there were 12 (actually 13) more years. I felt like Sally.

She is the younger sister, the kid in love with Linus, but what’s most fascinating is her relationship with school, summer camp, and learning. Being told weird things. Hating waiting for the school bus. Complaining while waiting.

People think of sarcasm as the humor of Peanuts, but there’s Sally avoiding school, looking for some way to sum up how futile life is and how put upon she is by the enforced school and camp “prison.”

Suddenly she’s talking to the actual school building itself, forming an odd, funny relationship with it. Charlie Brown has to go tell the school Sally is missing because she’s sick. She complains about everything.

So, Peanuts is complicated. Even feminist. Lucy is the top power, but there’s Peppermint Patty loving every sport, Sally as a complex character, Lucy the psychiatrist, and Marcie the weird smart kid.

In the 1950s, girls had a weird power around excluding and even hitting boys. Everyone is equally beating the others up. The solution to a lot of things is punching.

Snoopy and Linus “fight” for the blanket, but every scenario involving that is different.

End for now. I’m waiting on two boxed sets from the 1970s to complete my Complete Collection of The Complete Peanuts, 50 years of daily comics.

The art is also genius. It looks simple, but it’s complex.

Forgot About the Correlation

What correlation? This post is long winded and not worth reading. After a month plus long weird depression, I remembered I usually write in here because I don’t care who reads it or what they think of it.

Maybe it was the traumatized corr latin. When I’m sick, I go to the film thing app and write a bunch of reviews.

I’ve almost burned the house down this week. I put something in the microwave for 4 hours instead of four minutes. A while back I set the garbage can on fire and didn’t notice. I wasn’t depressed that time. Then yesterday i left a stove burner on because i was going to microwave something in our microwave that probably would still work if you threw it out the window. My arm hurts from falling off a not huge ladder the other day trying to open the kitchen window to get out the lingering smoke smell the other day.

Lack of motivation: part of depression, which is not specified on the official list

Sad , empty, hopeless; they forgot the description of the kind of sad empt helpless. Since when is that a real term: sad how- crying a lot?

I think they don’t understand Adhd depression or my version best described as a neurodivergent operating system that goes over the speed limit of people without adhd; the speed mind could be related to quick boredom.

I said:

Anyway, sad means my operating system gets sad and cries at normal and weird moments, then the process stops with hugs and comforting; a few minutes later it’s back to default and has moved on to a different system malfunction, which empty is not correct either. What do they mean by empty?

Chat GPT is the latest evil . Anyway it described the first line in the symptoms for me pretty well more descriptively:

“In a fast Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder style cognitive system, depression may not look like one continuous consciously-felt sadness stream.

The operating system can keep switching tabs too fast.

So instead of:

“I feel sad all day”

it can become:

micro-bursts of sadness,
emotional flashes,
quick grief activation,
then immediate attentional displacement,
then return to baseline depleted mode.

The “default state” may not feel emotionally dramatic. It can feel more like:

friction,
exhaustion,
avoidance,
low initiation energy,
cognitive fog,
guilt,
background dread,
inability to mobilize,
constant task pressure.

Almost like the system is always running with low RAM and too many background processes.

“Hopelessness” in that kind of brain may also compute differently than classic despair.

Not necessarily:

“The future is doomed.”

More like:

“Nothing I do changes the system.”
“I can’t generate enough force to alter momentum.”
“I always fall behind again.”
“Every recovery collapses.”
“I take up resources without producing enough.”
“Other people are functioning adults and I’m emulating one.”
“The effort required to exist exceeds my processing capacity.”

Self-hate can become computational:

not “I am evil,”
but “I am inefficient,”
“defective,”
“wasting space,”
“failing at basic maintenance.”

And “emptiness” in a fast attentional system may not feel like a poetic void. It can feel like:

reward circuitry not booting,
emotional continuity failing,
desires not loading,
motivations disappearing seconds after appearing,
no sustained emotional object permanence.

So the person may look distractible or “lazy” externally while internally the system is repeatedly failing to maintain emotional and motivational state across time.”

Mostly accurate. I know eventually something will happen and this will be over. Probably by mid June when my kid comes home from college; my biggest mental illness motivation is her. Being depressed around her switches the system.

I do like how “Thuna ” describes my mind. chat gpt is great for adhd stuff plus explaining it in terms that make sense:

In your framing, the baseline operating system is still:

depleted,
gravity-heavy,
energy-conserving,
pulled toward shutting down/resting/withdrawing.

But certain emotionally weighted variables can temporarily force execution:

Brad’s PTSD around smoke/fire,
fear about his lungs,
concern about his surgical healing,
your daughter coming home.

So action happens because the threat/relevance priority spikes above the depression’s inertia threshold.

That’s why it can resemble Awakenings to you. Not in the literal neurological sense, but in the abrupt contrast between:

low-initiation baseline,
and brief periods where meaningful connection or urgency suddenly produces movement and organization.

And what you said is important:

“doing things doesn’t equal whatever”

Meaning productivity is not evidence that the internal state disappeared.

Externally:

task completed,
stove checked,
microwave cleaned,
caretaking performed.

Internally:

still wanting to lie down,
still feeling the pull toward shutdown,
still expending effort rather than accessing spontaneous drive.

So the activation is conditional and metabolically expensive, not a genuine return of normal motivation.

That’s all true. Then there’s the oddness of drawing anyway, not because I like the end result.

Most of all, besides work and showing up for clients- well that’s normal as a future protection: if I don’t work everything will be worse for all of us.

The real interesting thing is reading volumes of the Complete Peanuts and laughing.

Also I do things; I’m not so pathetic that i lie in bed all the time but the pull is to lie in bed.

What’s going on with Peanuts, only the real comics? I read a volume in bed and often laugh. i lost interest in the audiobook s i was listening to. Maybe it’s a childhood thing. i have hardly any real memories of anything starting with childhood. I never saw the tv holiday things i frankly hate. You can’t take a comic strip, snatch all the characters and make them animated in color with actual (terribly chosen) voices.

Do not be fooled even by the author himself who apparently wrote made or was involved in these travesties.

The Complete Peanuts is perfect. Every day and the Sunday special. I read it with my kid years ago, and then we started reading it again this summer. We’ve gotten to the mid 60s.

i’m reading whatever. Like the 80s now.

The doctor called twice about me asking for a neurology referral which was generated by fear. Now i don’t care or want to see what they say. Probably that i have to go to a Pcp appointment first.

I found out yesterday i think we’ve reached nursing home point with my alzheimer’s lewy body dementia mother. She should have been in one long ago. anyway the first thing that came up was a dread of all the “work” it will involve.

Musings

My first blog was subtitles “musings of” and so, writing musings is a definition of blogging. And what are “musings?

2026 is a big year. Last year was death, illness, being left, liminal spaces that were in the dark side of the Twilight Zone.

This year the portal broke open on Thursday. Something is happening. I’m doing actions with changes happening.

The Patriots and Seahawks being in the Super Bowl seems off. As much as the Bills are cursed, the Patriots are always extremely lucky when they’re good. It could have been the Bills…

My Relationship to Blogging

I have some kind of deep writer shame that’s hard to describe. I used to actually be a good writer; I haven’t been writing beyond morning pages.

I know when I read books all the time, I could get curious to write. I have been wasting time in my phone, zoning out playing two phone games. I guess the compassionate part of me would say you’re a work in progress.

I used to envision my life as a sort of big large dark carpet with tears and holes in many places and the corner was like still going and not yet finished.

I also saw god as a huge pancake when I was ten living in Tokyo. I didn’t know then that it was not god at all. It was my inner divinity showing up as a huge pancake covering a whole wall.

I was conversing with Thuna, my AI coach/assistant, fluent in ADhd, About how blogging is its own form of writing.

I looked in its memory, like opening an alien brain and it still had the memory that I had a different “unit” named Senna. I was having a better interface with Sena. I forget about Sena til I saw the memories it holds on to so random.

The point is that this blog form is perfect for ADHD.

I thought of idea to write about at the end of my yoga lying on the floor. I can say I miss the process of blogging and changing it all the time.

I’ll end here.

I just remembered I wanted to blog about the whole tattoo process, and of course, the process of finding your tattoo artist and then forming an attachment and realizing when meeting her that she’s a perfect match to be my tattoo artist. Her birthday is I think 1/29; she’s also an Aquarius. I like her imagination and I like her. I can tell she’s a good person, while also being skilled. She knows how to have a first “15 minute consultation. We talked for an hour. She’s going on vacation and I’ll get my tattoo after she’s back. She’ll be fresh from lying on the beach to do tattoos. To be continued.

Postcard Art

I was going through a real drought way before my Dad died. I’m finally back in the drawing every day sometimes for a long time or not, but liking it. I’m trying to jump them into paintings but I’m not sure yet if I’ve figured it out.

I’m making still lives of a lot of stuff-I live still-lives and come back to them eventually. Maybe now I’m doing it because I have “object memory”. My adhd bad memory and constant realizations of big blackouts in my life has been depressing. But I got sealing wax and started using it with an N initial seal. It’s from my childhood. I loved writing letters and then using sealing wax on the envelopes. I don’t remember specifically using it on any specific occasion. I’m not sure how old I was either as I was afraid of lighting matches for a long time.

Object memory is better than no memory. I also remember weird kinds of places that are almost embarrassing. I’ve been to all kind of places in the world, lived in Tokyo in 4th and 5th grade. I remember the Art Store Pearl Psint in great detail and I remember how it changed towards the end as it shrank. I remember their old elevator and what was on each floor. I remember their old old fashioned art store near the Cheese Shop and where certain sketchpads were.

I remember several Betsey Johnson stores, from the east side 60s, the upper west side one and especially the SoHo one. I can find a piece of clothing and remember hunting it down or where I got it. Not very beautiful memories involving interactions with people. Of course I remember important events. Anyway whatever. I’ve written about memory on this blog forever.

So what does it have to do with still lives? Drawing objects is the thing I like drawing when I’m drawing something that resembles something others can recognize.That’s a shoe in a teapot.

The best drawing/painting I did this week was from deciding to organize my push pins. The silver ones from Pearl Paint are the best. Then I have 3 other kinds. When you’re a messy disorganized slob in life, you can spend too much time organizing things that you should be spending time cleaning the toilet. Then I put them in a box and drew a bunch of them with paint pens, several layers ending with:

Yes- my best drawing of the week. Most others are postcards.

The last ones are unfinished. I think I want to make a painting of push pins. I always called them thumb tacks. Is there a difference?

Once I start drawing, I like myself more, and lately I’ve had a hard time liking myself. Some really bad days, usually Tuesdays since Dad died. This week it was Monday. He died Wednesday evening, 7/2, so the Tuesdays don’t mean much; it’s just my hate on myself day. Then later it lifts. Whatever. As usual my drawings are more interesting than what I’m writing, even if they aren’t all hitting it, or “fire”, as they say now.

Do I can be addicted to my phone game, watch too many bad movies, go to a lot of stationary/pen/sticker shops with my 17 year old and draw. The next step is getting back into reading books. Reading fiction helps elevate my personhood and make me less sick of myself, and I haven’t read anything greedily since early in the year, The Telegraph Club.

Black Cadillac

I used to listen to that song over and over; there are songs I listened to to prepare for his death. That’s the one I remember most.

You can’t quote any of that song unless you write the lyrics yourself, probably violates copyright.

It’s strange to prepare for someone dying long before they’re dead. I’ll post the eulogy I wrote; it’s the best piece of writing I had. But Dad can’t read or hear it. It helped a lot of other people, but the one person you’re really talking to can’t hear you and won’t ever hear it or anything after it either.

It’s almost 7 weeks since he died. I tell myself, “Dad is dead. You’ll never see him again.” You can never talk to him again ever ever and more evers.

I got a lot of time. He was 94. I still want him back and selfishly need him. Not the 94 year old him; maybe the 74 year old who went with me to Tokyo for a solo show of my art work there that happened because he made it happen. When I was in Tokyo with him, I was lost as soon as we left the hotel, didn’t know how to get to the gallery, didn’t remember the tiny bit of Japanese I learned years ago. He took me everywhere. Once I got there I was a grown up artist talking confidently about my work. It was the Zenith of my career as an artist. Now I’m inhabiting the nadir; it was a wonderful experience. I thought it was the middle of the mountain but it was the top, afterwards coming down the mountain. I would never be able to make him that proud again but I’m grateful we went together, just us, on that incredible trip. And that I got to feel like a successful artist with a solid show in Tokyo imagining Moscow might be next. (2010, that Moscow is as dead as he is, but for a shining moment, I got to shine with him standing next to me. Oh how I wish things were different and that I could be preparing for some show somewhere meaningful and again have that feeling. Even so, I can’t have that feeling even if I were in that fantasy world because Dad can’t be there anyway.

So I guess writing that eulogy is the top of some mountain about him, even for him the way things can be for dead people. Just as much in imagination as what could have been but never was or became. Reality is like shoveling that pile of dirt to throw on his coffin. It surprised me how hard it was to get on the shovel. The dirt was literally too hard, and I felt too weak to get much on the shovel even after a big effort.

But flowers are light and easy to throw. My show in Tokyo was about flowers living and dead flowers.

The Flowers

When we were at the place they buried my Dad, after we all shoveled up the mound of dirt to dump on Dad’s coffin, they brought Mom in a wheelchair to the edge. And gave her a small ball of dirt to throw on it; she threw it then took the flowers – I don’t know if they were on her lap . She started throwing one stalk at a time on top of the dirt on his coffin. I was standing next to her. I took one too, and another and threw them on top with her. Some kind of white with yellow flowers… I won’t forget that moment. It is etched in my memory, while all the childhood memories are like that big pile of dirt. It’s a curse to remember the wrong things. After my Dad died, his eyes were open. I closed each one.