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Dutch Heaven
By bipolarlawyer | August 4, 2008
The art historians call it a Dutch Heaven, for its prevalence in the land and seascapes of the old Dutch and Flemish master painters. You’ve seen it, even if you didn’t know what it was called. Those tall, puffy clouds in a deep, blue sky, flattened and slightly grey at the bottom, teased, white, and cottony at the top– the kind of cloud that can dissipate into wisps in a completely sunny sky, or roll into thunderheads letting loose torrents in a moment’s notice. The sun shines through or on top of those clouds, and the depth of the blue sky is heightened by the contrast of the sun and the grey and silver and white clouds, the beauty of the sun more poignant for the threat of rain.
Even well medicated, the threat of mercurial moods shines through. The introspection that is necessary to maintaining a healthy balance, of not letting the natural mood cycles extend beyond “merely” moody and happy, can cause me to call into question whether the sunshine is actually about to turn into parching desert sun, or whether the rainclouds are presaging a hurricane.
Sometimes, though, a mood is just a mood, and a partly cloudy, partly sunny sky is just a Dutch Heaven. Mine, too.
Topics: bipolar, bipolarlawyer |
August 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I’m always ready for a little art therapy myself.
BEst wishes
August 4th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
ooh, i really like this post. i love those particular clouds that you speak of. like fat Buddha babies.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:36 am
“Sometimes, though, a mood is just a mood, and a partly cloudy, partly sunny sky is just a Dutch Heaven. Mine, too.”
So…Sometimes a “Cigar is just a cigar”. Sigmond Freud
August 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I am so glad that I found this blog. I enjoy it SO much. It gives me insight and a different take on my partner of almost 9 years, who is bi-polar. Approaching him is sometimes like starting a cyclone, and this blog gives me a way to quietly get some feeling of how he may feel without upsetting our balance. Thank you so much for this blog…
August 5th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Being Dutch and living in the Netherlands, I see those skies a lot. They reflect my moods up to a point and then I let them go and live their own lives while I only react to the beams of sunlight that reflect off the brass cat that sits next to my son’s picture. I feel equally satisfied with summer rain coming out of gray clouds, because it is July and those clouds do look like an old master painted them. That makes up for a lot.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Great post–what a perfect description!
August 6th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I love a little education in my blog reading–thanks!
August 8th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I think when things are like that it’s always the point where my therapist is always asking me to figure out “but isn’t some of that NORMAL? Don’t you always say you want NORMAL?”
It’s a good point.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Lovely . . . . and captures the fine-wire act required of so many illnesses and disorders. I know of what I speak, wobbling here myself.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:11 am
So true, and so what I needed to read this morning.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I think sometimes I hang by a thread, but it is a golden thread, for sure.