Fear – Candice Louisa Daquin — FREE VERSE REVOLUTION

Fear for a child is very different to the adult and exactly the same the child inhabits another decade, in the past, another life before they knew they were who they become the child wets the bed because she misses her mother who is beautiful, ethereal, slender and absent the smell of her still lingers […]

via Fear – Candice Louisa Daquin — FREE VERSE REVOLUTION

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My frayed sleeve / collab w/ Jane Basil

Janebasilblog (Jane Paterson Basil) and thefeatheredsleep (Candice Louisa Daquin) collaborated on this beautiful poem of Jane’s called My Frayed Sleeve.

For two decades

(Time parlays reason)

your salt-paste lies piled up

(Resisting calls from outer world’s)

like pancakes on a cracked plate,

(Accumulating as sea birds watch unloaded catch)

while you hammered at my heart,

(The ring around my throat that is you)

delighting in the blood

(Sampling my intention to survive)

which seeped

(Sounds like silence reaching over years)

scarlet

(Capturing your purchase)

through my frayed sleeve

(As I push the hair from your face)

Even if you’d believed

(On a windy day when salt stung air)

I would leave,

(Did you plan then on your meal of me?)

you would not

(Carving trust into lean cuts)

have been kinder to me.

(Pass the condiments, tight wristed and stranger)

I scribed you into history

(With my pen I wrote your existence)

long before

(Predetermined and sharp like forks lost in pockets)

you ceased breathing.

(Holding our breath we exhaled and then)

Each shred of regret morphed into relief,

(Day gave way to scratched music playing in locked rooms)

so there’s nothing to grieve –

(I could not spoon you out of my mouth)

leaving only a thin breeze of pity.

(You stayed, a jam capturing season)

.©Jane Paterson Basil/Candice Louisa Daquin

Check out Jane’s amazing work on her blog: https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/29649962

TLDR is bogus / we should read, we should care and take the time

TLDR is now in the dictionary (which I think is pathetic). Unfortunately this post is going to be too long and you don’t have time to read it fair enough but I’m writing it anyway because I have to.

…

Today I found out a very lovely girl I recently met (nothing is random) has Gastroparesis. It really affected me. See I had put all the awful horror of last year and the early part of this year into a box and avoided it. That’s what you do when you feel traumatized and are just trying to get your life back. How lucky am I to even have that opportunity?

…

Seeing those who continue to be sick, year in year out, through no fault of their own, makes you so grateful for any renewed health. After getting suddenly and violently ill last year in March with a suspected Noro virus, I got better quickly but remembered the awful feeling of unending nausea. I had two more brief bouts in May and June the last one sent me to the ER for the first time in my life because I had what felt like heart palpitations. Then in August of last year I got violently ill out of the blue, half way through the day, and didn’t get better for nearly a year. One of the hardest parts is how badly let down you can be, by people you thought cared about you, but on the upside, you also find out who really loves you and who doesn’t and that can be powerful and freeing.

…

I had to quit work for the first time in my adult life, I went into massive medical debt and I was suicidal for the first time in my life. I’m not saying this to make anyone feel sorry for me,I feel lucky. I’m saying this because I didn’t know ANY of the stuff surrounding this before, I was taking my health for granted, I thought being healthy living meant I would avoid bad things, it doesn’t always work like that.

…

It is thought Gastroparesis and other similar extreme illnesses are primarily caused by either Diabetes, complete breakdown of your autoimmune system, physical causes like gastric-bypass surgery or something you are born with, but most commonly is considered to have NO CAUSE. However if you do some research it becomes clear that VIRUSES cause the latter onset. Why women get it 9/1 over men and why pre-menopausal young, fit, healthy women get it, is also unknown, although studies show having a full Hysterectomy can reverse it so it clearly has a link with ESTROGEN.

…

I was told after being so violently ill for months without ANY cause found that I must have Gastroparesis. Gastroparesis is actually very rare but has become a catch-all umbrella term for anything the medical industry doesn’t understand. Supposedly the ‘gold standard’ test for this is the gastric emptying test but I found it is very unreliable and can vary from day-to-day. I was put on REMERON which is supposed to help a bit, if anything it made me worse. Fortunately for me, the city where I was at that time living in, San Antonio has one of the best Gastric Research Centers in the US I was able to see them and what I was told was life-changing.

…

My doctor told me I definitely did NOT have Gastroparesis and that in his experience 8/10 people diagnosed with non-diabetic Gastroparesis don’t have it. I had an EGG which showed my stomach was literally flipping and lurching and not emptying fully because it was ‘dumping’ too fast – this is called Gastric arrhythmia and is almost the opposite of Gastroparesis. I was horrified that they could have got it so wrong.

…

I was put on a very low dose of a medication that slows your stomach down. I’d lost so much weight it was dangerous, I couldn’t eat, I was throwing up all the time, I had constant diarrhea (which interestingly most Gastroparesis patients don’t have but they completely ignored how illogical it was to have constant diarreah despite this being almost the opposite of what you’d think of when you imagine a ‘frozen’ or non-working stomach which is the definition of Gastroparesis). The medication changed my life.

…

I had been suicidal for the first time ever because I decided if this didn’t get better I would not want to live. It was too awful. I didn’t have any family support, I felt so alone day in day out, that’s the worst part about something like this. That’s why my heart bleeds for those who are going through it. I had so much medical debt and couldn’t work and was nauseous (really, really severely not a little bit) 24/7 it ruined my life. The medication changed everything I’m still sick but I can finally work again, I can eat normally although my appetite never came back and I have to force myself which sucks. I have put on more weight than what I weighed before I got sick (as a precaution) and I am on the road to recovery. BUT I keep thinking of those who are still going through this.

…

I feel finding out today this lovely friend has what they thought I had, not only means I must do more to help others, because I KNOW how they feel, and what they suffer, but because we need to find out why this disease and others like it, are happening so often now when they used to be super-rare. It isn’t because people aren’t eating organic, most of the people I know with these things did eat well. Many of the doctors dismissed the link to Epstein Barr Virus and it was my PCP who finally decided to test me. My results showed I had EXTREMELY high titers of EBV in my blood. I worked out after contracting the Noro Virus last March I must also have either had a reactivation of EBV from childhood (90 percent of us get it as children or young adults) or I had never had it and got it for the first time.

…

Either way I realized EBV TRIGGERS Gastroparesis and Gastric arrhythmia. Somehow the autoimmune aspect of all Herpes Family viruses (like Shingles too) trigger various illnesses. The most common you think of with EBV are ME, Chronic Fatigue, MS, Fibromyalgia, Stomach Cancer. But more and more doctors are seeing stomach issues like Gastric Arrythmia and Gastroparesis. The medical industry says Gastroparesis is incurable. I don’t believe it is. I have read that if you can get your EBV down you can get over Gastroparesis. Many times if this is the cause then beating the virus beats the symptoms.

…

The only current treatment for EBV is high dose Vitamin C. I could never handle the acidity of Vitamin C. I found that Dr. Mercola made a Lypoic version that doesn’t hurt your stomach and I began to take 4000mg daily. Ideally if you can then IV Vit C works even faster and better. Once the EBV is reduced in your body the symptoms of the Gastroparesis may abate. The information online is awful and inaccurate, it basically says you will have it for life, but I have known people who overcame it, through diet modification, managing stress (which can exacerbate any serious illness) , adequate rest and treating the CAUSE which doctors never talk about because they want to treat the symptoms.

…

During this time many things changed in my life, at first I thought those changes were bad but I have come to see sometimes you have to force yourself to change, and what you think is a bad change, actually is a blessing in disguise. This illness forced me literally to reexamine my life, I realized I needed to make changes, which included moving and living elsewhere, as well as redirecting my energies into things I’d neglected such as teaching dance again and not giving up on my writing. I had let the awful experience dampen my hope and the truth is, when you survive something that awful it gives you a chance to find your joy again which I have in so many ways. I’m still on the road to recovery, I still have pretty bad days, but I am mindful of how far I have come and that along with support from loved ones makes all the difference.

…

If anyone you know is having severe stomach issues and they need help please give them my details because I want to help people. So often people are isolated and uncared about when they are sick. I have known many who have chronic illnesses and they are neglected by their families and invisible in our society. I felt totally alone when I was at my sickest it was the worst feeling in the world, which happens to most who experience long-term illness. The hardest part being since serotonin and other brain chemicals are actually made in the stomach, when you have severe stomach problems you get extremely down and anxious. On top of that Gastric arrhythmia produces a physical anxiety that had me crawling out of my skin, something I never had before.

…

I am truly blessed for having a chance to recover, but I believe in paying forward and I also believe if any of you know someone suffering, some of this information can help that person. The doctor I saw was in San Antonio, Texas and he was really, really good and I’d even say flying there to see him would be worthwhile, he is the clinical director of the National Gastroenterology Research Center in America.

…

If it wasn’t for him, those who love me and doing research I KNOW I would have either killed myself or spent the rest of my life suffering. I want to help anyone else get as well as they possibly can. I truly believe viruses are the cause of most things (cancer, etc) and we can fight them. You are NOT alone. Pass this on please to anyone you know who may be suffering. Thank you for reading if you did. We need to bring awareness to rare diseases like this that are growing in number and striking healthy young people in their prime. Never give up.

Candice Louisa Daquin Reviews Sarah Doughty’s Just Breathe — Go Dog Go Café

One of the hardest things to do when reviewing a book is to read other reviews. I typically don’t because it can be intimidating or distracting. However, I was curious to know what others had thought of this series of books and interestingly more has been written about Sarah’s Earthen Witch Novels series than most […]

via Candice Louisa Daquin Reviews Sarah Doughty’s Just Breathe — Go Dog Go Café

Blur (collaborative poem w/Tre Loadholt)

Echoes of pierced hearts
Taunting evil deeds
Motherless child from a
Damaged womb

Breathless before God
And his followers
Atonement expires
Heat drenches a soaked soul

A sparrow breaks his wing
Black ash falls from the sky
Voodooed and seanced
A blur, a speck no one sees
Or knows

If you moved from colored bruise beneath silken pour of sleeplessness

Supple backed, dewy salt, two thrust on tiptoe, catching breath

Shards blending, fizzured pulse, ever and ever, tongued capture

Flush against humid glass, hold–pressing fierce crimson, disturbing numinous hour of sewing

Children with boiled seaside sweets, deep in their catkin singing mouths, dream of a dark cast–shrouding

Morning’s nectered promise, fed gobfuls of glib adult reassurance

insubstantial as fluttered dancers heart

Yet as I quit–the hingeless drug

Your smudged anger envelops, the stray chill of my shoulder

As a bandage will hold us, burned into place.

Until moths pick their way from water-painted cocoon

Feeling their way in inked shiver, milked squid, gesturing tresses

Your long goose neck–bent to catch, last wetting of ground

For rain begins her throbbed drumming, swelling in granite intensity

And I, shake my lethargy off

Pack pain in her paisley ring box

Tasting cyanide and fruit

In the orange peel of day

Chasing last whisper

Of her quiet running horror.

 

Collaborative poem by Tre Loadholt & Candice Daquin

Inspiration: Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49001/ariel

Artwork: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/328410997808168523/

Tre Loadholt: https://acorneredgurl.com and https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl

Candice Daquin: https://thefeatheredsleepcom.wordpress.com/

Reblog: Interviewing the talented Tony Single

Reblogged from; https://crumblecult.com/2017/05/21/comfy-confabs-tony-single/

Hullo, Dear Reader. Guess what? I got talked into being the second interviewee for my brand new, ongoing feature, Comfy Confabs. The interviewer being the interviewed?! How on Cthulhu’s sweet, barren earth did that happen? Well, I’ll tell you how… It’s all the fault of one Candice Daquin, and if you don’t know who she is then you really need to edjumacate yourself at The Feathered Sleep. Okay, go. Go now! Go and have your eyes opened and your mind exploded. I’m serious! I’ll be here when you get back.

Right, got all that? Good. So, anyways, I approached Candice to be the focus of this second interview, but instead of a yes I got an offer to be interviewed by her instead. “You’ll be more interesting!” she said. “But I’m a career hack!” I protested. She was having none of it, so I folded rather more easily than a deck chair at a conflict resolution symposium…

All joking aside, I am rather pleased with the outcome. Not only have I shared dialogue with a writer of Candice’s calibre, but the resulting Q&A even makes it seem like I’m not a total and utter narcissistic halfwit—pretentious maybe, and a bit of a tool, but still…

CANDICE: Were you always an artist? Did you used to do something before that? If so, when did you decide to devote yourself more toward your art and networking your work for others to see?

TONY: I’ve been drawing since I could hold a crayon, so I feel like I’ve never not been an artist. I was even creating comic strips all the way through my school years, so by the time I was accepted into art college the idea of trying to be a professional cartoonist felt like the next logical step to me. However, my life since then has consisted of being equal parts job seeker, house husband, and struggling artist.

CANDICE: What do you recall as your original inspiration when you began to draw more for others to appreciate? What message if any did you want to convey the most?

TONY: I don’t really recall much to be honest. I do remember Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strip featuring quite prominently in my childhood. I adored its many characters (and still do), and very much aspired to do something in the same vein. As for messages, I don’t think I had any in mind at that age—only an idea that I wished to live out a creative life.

CANDICE: Do you consciously impart messages in your work or do you think they are interpreted by the viewer?

TONY: I believe it’s a bit of both. The older I get, the more I find what I want to say, and so I’ll layer this into whatever I create. However, no one likes to be preached at, so I’ll try to find an indirect way to impart that meaning, a way that gives the reader credit for having their own mind and take on things. Of course, whatever I put out there does often get interpreted in ways that I cannot possibly anticipate, but this is no bad thing. All it means is that people aren’t being passive, that they’re actively engaging with my work, and that makes me happy.

CANDICE: Does your hearing-loss factor in the choices you make artistically?

TONY: Such an interesting question. No one has ever asked me this before! If my hearing-loss is any factor at all then it would have to be in the way I try to write dialogue. I am constantly striving to make my characters sound as naturalistic as possible (not easy to do within the silence of the page). I want their stresses, intonations, and turns of phrase to mimic what I will often hear in everyday conversations.

CANDICE: When did you begin to combine your ability as a writer/poet with your art? Do you feel more confident in one genre than another?

TONY: As a cartoonist, I’ve always combined my writing with my art. I do find it difficult to draw a standalone image as it often feels like there’s no story present. I tend to be more comfortable working with a sequence of images; it’s a less static approach that’s conducive to driving narrative or some overall message. If there’s one thing I like more than writing or drawing alone, it’s putting those two things together to tell a story.

CANDICE: If you had endless options, what would you choose to do with your art? Would you like to be a comic-artist, a graphic-novelist? Or something else?

TONY: When I was young, my goal was to write and draw a famous comic strip, just like my hero Charles Schulz. That changed. What I’m doing now with Crumble Cult actually plays to my strengths as a cartoonist, and far more so than the newspaper format ever would have. It’s emotionally fulfilling in a way that a gag strip could never be for me. Still, as a creative, I can’t say that I’ve ‘arrived’. My next big challenge is to write and draw my first graphic novel, and I want to do this in Ukraine. I have no idea how I can make this happen, but I sure aim to.

CANDICE: If you weren’t you and you didn’t know you, and you saw your art what would you think of the person behind it?

TONY: God. Again with the interesting questions! I find this difficult to answer as I’m often wondering what people make of me anyway (could someone tell me?). I’m constantly striving to get personal with my comics, to bare my all, and yet I use them to hide myself at the same time. It’s weird, I know. I guess I just like to confound people’s expectations.

CANDICE: Whom are your biggest influences both historically and in more recent times and why?

TONY: There’s the aforementioned Mr. Schulz. His Peanuts strip has always appealed to my whimsical and melancholic natures, as have the works of Tove Jansson. I grew up reading her Moomintroll books, and they were fanciful but in an extraordinarily mundane, grounded way. Then there was the Osamu Tezuka comics that possessed a certain kineticism which I very much admired. And they had a rather pleasing pulp fiction sensibility too; for me, Adolf and Astroboy will always be his definitive works. Oh, and Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku was another influence. That story was romantic, down-to-earth, very very funny, and humane. I’m also seeing an abundance of that last quality in Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Bros. That’s a more recent influence I suppose, but no way in hell will I ever reach those giddy heights of masterful storytelling. Not with my own paltry efforts. Still, I love what I do, so I can try.

CANDICE: You mentioned wanting to do a graphic novel (so glad you said that, this interviewer always felt this was your destiny, jus sayin’!) but also ‘in Ukraine’ meaning you want to write / draw it in Ukraine or in Ukrainian? Can you elaborate on this and explain to the readers where this momentum began and why? (I think I know!)

TONY: I think you do too! I once asked my writing partner Tetiana Aleksina about her home country, and she challenged me to simply go there and pay her a visit. Her feeling was that it would be better for me to experience Ukraine firsthand rather than simply hear about it from afar. That’s when I had the idea to turn this potential trip into a story that I could tell in the graphic novel format, and so I’ve been obsessed with the idea ever since. Plus, it would just be a cool thing to hang out with someone that I love and admire very much! I plan to make it happen. Again, I don’t know how, but I will.

CANDICE: What influence has your writing collaborator Tetiana Aleksina had on your work and how do you feel she has influenced your direction?

TONY: I was floundering creatively before Tati came along, and that’s the truth. I don’t know where I’d be today if it weren’t for her timely intervention. The width and breadth of her imagination is the one thing that shone through when I first encountered her blog, and so I very quickly became a fan. And as I got to know Tati through our collaborations thereafter, I came to realise she was someone I very much wanted to work with on a permanent basis. With much trepidation, I asked her if I could, and luckily for me she said yes! And in all the time since, I’ve come to see just how meticulous Tati is with her endeavours. Everything counts for her; nothing gets wasted. Things are worth doing properly or not at all. Not many bloggers seem to have this perfectionist drive, and so I’ve really come to value her professional approach and attention to detail. I’m forced to lift my game—to strive for my absolute best—and this clearly is no bad thing. As a result, we now have many projects in the pipeline, and aim to make them all come to fruition.

CANDICE: If you could fast-forward ten years where would you like to be in terms of creative output and accomplishment?

TONY: I would like my wife and I to be living abroad, and for me to be working alongside Tati in person. That’s the dream. We want to bring out more books, to complete our first novel, and maybe even tackle a graphic novel together too. The sky’s the limit. We just have to be foolish enough to reach for it!

CANDICE: What subjects most influence your perspective as an artist and why?

TONY: Religion and mental health are two huge subjects in my life, so they tend to crop up in my work a lot. After suffocating in a Baptist church environment for nearly twenty years, I realised that I needed to get out and truly be myself for once. I’d also given up on the idea of a loving god by this point, and was feeling tremendous guilt about that—I felt like a heretic and a failure as a human being. There were also lingering questions from my youth regarding my sexuality and self-identity that were still not going away, that could not be adequately addressed the longer I stayed in such an emotionally and intellectually toxic subculture. I felt stained and stunted. I needed to escape. Add ongoing anxiety and depression to the mix, and you can see why I write and draw the things I do. I have to.

CANDICE: What role do you think you play as an artist in terms of being a ‘truth’ bearer to subjects most close to your heart and what subjects would you include? (Example; This interviewer holds mental-health and gender close to her heart and incorporates them into her work often.)

TONY: The more I follow my current path, the more I find what I want to explore in terms of themes. Of course, there’s the aforementioned religious and mental health issues, but I’m now branching out into other areas such as sexual identity and gender politics, and finding that there’s quite a bit of crossover. Actually, it’s shocking to note just how much church and society have framed my thinking in general, and in ways that are less than helpful, that quite frankly fly in the face of reality. Back in my church days I tried to cleave to some pretty dangerous ideas dressed up as piousness and a sacrificial love for mankind, but really… I was only robbing myself of the ability to empathise with others while at the same time deliberately taking leave of my senses. One particular issue seemed to crop up again and again amongst my peers: homosexuality. God and his ‘chosen ones’ were disturbingly obsessed with that, and sought to box it up as something which was ‘aberrant’ and ‘evil’. This kind of bigotry always troubled me as I’d always believed that homosexuals were as normal as anyone, but I never had the guts to challenge it head on. At the time, I was more invested in gaining total acceptance from my fellow Christians than in pursuing a form of ethical honesty. So, yes, I now incorporate such concerns and themes into my works as often as possible. It’s kind of my duty, and I have a lot to atone for.

CANDICE: Thank you for your time answering these questions. As long as I have had the fortune to know you as an artist, I have found you to be a continual inspiration, but I also know you personally to be very modest and unaware of the impact you have upon others. Do you think this came about from your life thus far? Have you felt working in this creative community and especially with your creative partner Tati, that you have begun to shed your modesty and become fully the creative person you wanted to be? Do you see this as a process of transformation? I say this because in the last year I see a shift in the courage of your work delving deeper into issues and subjects that matter to you with more willingness to ‘go there’ than say, before.

TONY: Oh, Candice, you’ve always been very kind to me. I wish I truly was modest. The reality is that I possess a massive ego, and it offends me. Seriously, I must have an overinflated sense of self to be trying to tear that down on a constant basis! If I was truly humble, I wouldn’t even be thinking about myself in the first place. As for the impact I have on others, I’m always worried that it will be a bad one, so I find I overcompensate and try not to have an impact at all. I know—messed up or what? I always suspect that I’m not being totally honest with myself, which is why I write and draw. I just want to get closer to the truth of me—whatever that may be—so the creative process is very much an act of attempted transformation. It’s taken me a long time to ‘go there’, to work up the courage (or foolishness?) to tackle issues and subjects that I personally still find very painful. I also hope I don’t end up fashioning a narrative for my life that isn’t honest, or a narrative that paints me as some blameless, long-suffering saint. A narrative that fools even me. How do you stay true to something like that? I’ve no idea.

Please visit Tony at;https://crumblecult.com/2017/05/21/comfy-confabs-tony-single/  and please leave comments on his site♡