i can't remember if this is posted here somewhere already, and frankly i'm too tired and/or lazy to look it up. so here goes nothing.
november 21, 1990. i was supposed to go out with my girlfriend at the time, but was asked to work until close at my store. i readily agreed. i like my job well enough, i liked my boss, the extra cash wouldn't hurt and she would understand. i called, she did, and that was that. until 11pm. her parents called me then, to tell me. she had decided to surprise me, to come and see me at work, something she had never done, a place she had never been. she lived on the north side of denver, i on the south, and we usually met somewhere in the middle. one patch of ice on an overpass, one inattentive moment or tiniest lack of ability to overcome that ice patch, and her car went through a rail and fell. she more than likely was killed instantly. and so was i.
this writing will not finished today, not by a long shot. there's so much more under all of this than even i understand that it will be pouring out in pieces and bits for weeks, months, years. but it is time to let it out. it's time to figure it out. because it is partially responsible for the mess that is my mental landscape.
i don't mean to absolve myself or to blame my entire depressive history on one car accident almost 20 years ago. heaven knows that i was enough of a mess prior to that. looking back, i had been wrestling with depression for years. carolyn showed me joy. she was not a cure, not a miracle that kept my illness from plaguing me. but she offset it to some degree, or gave me highs to match my lows. she forced me to see the big beautiful picture, let me have some faith in that beauty that is everything. she took me to beautiful places where she had spent her life and showed me how they made her feel, and together we felt our own smallness and significance in the face of mountains and lakes and rivers and forests that were so immense yet made of the tiniest plants and creatures. she gave my heart something into which it could pour itself.
when she died, that part of me died with her, or so i imagined. i dammed up the font of my soul, turned off my feelings and began to live my life in black and white. without her in it, the world simply had no color, and i foolishly accepted that it would always be so. without joy, there is no color. without that other piece to my puzzle, i did not fit the grand design. i shut off my heart and went about life as though there was never to be anything like that ever again. my place in this world had been taken from me, and now was my time to be but an extra in the movie, some cog in the machine that made the story go along for others.
now i have been trying in my own screwed up way to capture all of that for 18 long years and i didn't even realize it. my heart has been off, but it has not wanted to be, and it has been trying to make its way out of the prison i built for it all along. through whatever means necessary - be it drugs, religion, self-flagellative relationships, rebellion, music - my soul has been trying to free itself and regain that magic i once lost. for years i reeled with it, allowing myself to flail uncontrollably in the world and make a mess of things. for years now i have been trying to control it, trying to point that impulse in some direction that i can perceive as 'responsible' or 'productive'.
i am not, down deep inside of my soul, someone who feels nothing. i am not a man who is rigid, who needs control, who want things to be orderly and regimented. i have tried to be, and i have been fighting myself. i am kali. i am wild, i am freedom that is not run amok but travels creation with abandon and self-assurance. somewhere within me lies that bohemian youth that does not care for the way that thing seem but rather sees things for what they are. somewhere within me lies that free soul that she unleashed that could find joy in the bark of a tree or the tickle of a crawling ladybug on his skin.
i have told myself for years, secretly, that i died on that night, but the truth is that i tried to kill myself. not literally, but figuratively. i have been punishing myself for the decision to stay at work by killing everything she gave me. her name was carolyn, and i loved her fiercely, for she taught me to live fiercely. and she is the dead i carry with me. and man - that would really piss her off.
31.12.08
30.12.08
a moment
i may have done it again. i may have tapped into that thing i used to be able to find once upon a time. when i lived in colorado, i could do it. that's where i figured it out. i guess she taught it to me in a way, if i am honest. it's difficult to describe, but i'll give it a shot.
there was a point where i could take solace in my insignificance. that sounds very depressing, but i do not at all mean it that way. there are those who speak of enlightenment as an expansion into the everything, growing until you feel like you connect to it all, all of creation humming together as the great om inside of you. i believe this to be my version of that. it is more subtle than i would have expected, less of a powerful realization and a choir of angels than a tickling at the base of the soul, but one that fills that soul up from the bottom in a way that you may not realize is happening until you have emptied out again.
i played in snow. for anyone who lives with snow, this is a meaningless experience, i suppose, but i was born where it snows and spent much time in a place where it does not. boxing day was magnificent. great, huge flakes fell slowly and softly, the ground was already covered with enough snow to keep my feet from meeting the grass beneath no matter how hard i stepped. the air was crisp, cold and clean. the world as white, and there were snow angels to be made and king of the mountain to be played. i watched the cheeks of my children turn to apples, watched their breath turn to fog, watched them wiggle with delighted discomfort as the snow found the weak spots in their clothing.
i took 5 minutes for myself while they were winding down, and i left them with my aunt. i needed a few moments to be alone with my childhood in a way, to be the kid i was once and had forgotten, or let go, or had taken, or whatever. i needed a moment to enjoy this, to be happy. i went around to the front and stood in the front yard in which i had played often as a young boy, let the wind whip me and let the snow fall on my face, and it happened. every flake hitting my face said 'you are here. you are here. you are here.', and i understood what those flakes were telling me. i felt the world all around me, the whole of creation all around me, felt so small and noticed, truly noticed where i was in it all. i felt my own smallness, my own part of the wholeness, saw myself as part of it.
i felt those flakes tell me their brothers and sisters were landing all around and covering so many other parts of the same world, that their cousins the raindrops were coming down somewhere warmer, that their further relatives, the rays of the sun and the moon, were touching those places not being coated with precipitation, and that those i loved everywhere were being touched by them at the same moment, and that i was no different than the rocks and the trees and the grasses and, yes, the very snowflakes themselves, as i was being covered with no less and no more than they. i was small, i was a part. i was tiny and felt the hugeness of it all. it was magnificent.
i have no idea how long it lasted, and as quickly as it came upon me it was gone. i did not mourn its passing, strangely, like i have mourned the passing of so many of my moments of opening up. i was simply glad for its having visited me, happy i could have been part of everything for that brief span, thankful for the time playing in the snow with the kids preparing me for it. later in the day we would go sledding, and it would not be the same. it was to be just joy, just fun, just worldly good time, but even then i did not belittle it for its lack of grandiosity, but was simply happy to be there for that time, wind whipping me as i raced down the hills and snow fighting me as i dragged my exhausted crew back up them. life would intrude again as it always does, but for a time i had it again. i understood the beauty.
there was a point where i could take solace in my insignificance. that sounds very depressing, but i do not at all mean it that way. there are those who speak of enlightenment as an expansion into the everything, growing until you feel like you connect to it all, all of creation humming together as the great om inside of you. i believe this to be my version of that. it is more subtle than i would have expected, less of a powerful realization and a choir of angels than a tickling at the base of the soul, but one that fills that soul up from the bottom in a way that you may not realize is happening until you have emptied out again.
i played in snow. for anyone who lives with snow, this is a meaningless experience, i suppose, but i was born where it snows and spent much time in a place where it does not. boxing day was magnificent. great, huge flakes fell slowly and softly, the ground was already covered with enough snow to keep my feet from meeting the grass beneath no matter how hard i stepped. the air was crisp, cold and clean. the world as white, and there were snow angels to be made and king of the mountain to be played. i watched the cheeks of my children turn to apples, watched their breath turn to fog, watched them wiggle with delighted discomfort as the snow found the weak spots in their clothing.
i took 5 minutes for myself while they were winding down, and i left them with my aunt. i needed a few moments to be alone with my childhood in a way, to be the kid i was once and had forgotten, or let go, or had taken, or whatever. i needed a moment to enjoy this, to be happy. i went around to the front and stood in the front yard in which i had played often as a young boy, let the wind whip me and let the snow fall on my face, and it happened. every flake hitting my face said 'you are here. you are here. you are here.', and i understood what those flakes were telling me. i felt the world all around me, the whole of creation all around me, felt so small and noticed, truly noticed where i was in it all. i felt my own smallness, my own part of the wholeness, saw myself as part of it.
i felt those flakes tell me their brothers and sisters were landing all around and covering so many other parts of the same world, that their cousins the raindrops were coming down somewhere warmer, that their further relatives, the rays of the sun and the moon, were touching those places not being coated with precipitation, and that those i loved everywhere were being touched by them at the same moment, and that i was no different than the rocks and the trees and the grasses and, yes, the very snowflakes themselves, as i was being covered with no less and no more than they. i was small, i was a part. i was tiny and felt the hugeness of it all. it was magnificent.
i have no idea how long it lasted, and as quickly as it came upon me it was gone. i did not mourn its passing, strangely, like i have mourned the passing of so many of my moments of opening up. i was simply glad for its having visited me, happy i could have been part of everything for that brief span, thankful for the time playing in the snow with the kids preparing me for it. later in the day we would go sledding, and it would not be the same. it was to be just joy, just fun, just worldly good time, but even then i did not belittle it for its lack of grandiosity, but was simply happy to be there for that time, wind whipping me as i raced down the hills and snow fighting me as i dragged my exhausted crew back up them. life would intrude again as it always does, but for a time i had it again. i understood the beauty.
24.12.08
question
drawn to the ground and an end to flight? i suppose. i have flown, tossed by breezes that were not mine, unfamiliar sky, bold and beautiful and blue, rippled clouds and volcano-poured sunrises, windy clearness buffeting and gray mists hanging low and pregnant with possibility. i have thrilled in unpredictable loops, stopped my heart with close passes to the ground at speeds that seemed irrecoverable, danced the tops of trees and flown still and serene against a neverending baby blue. the province of dreamers was my home.
my string plucked from my tail, solid, predictable, unmoving and safe, the ground has beckoned and i have slammed into it headlong and pointed, my nose buried in turf and leaves and things unfamiliar, things i have seen only from above and which have me feeling lost and wondering what this is wrapped around my tip. trees which were my footbeds are now my companions, soil and roots now where my feet rest and wander. my legs are unsteady, my eyes unaccustomed to obstacle are clouded with forests and fields and mountains and buildings. my vantage, once grand and unspoiled has contracted into a small frame to fit with the rest of the grounded.
am i of the grounded? can i be one of these who surround me, feet happily twined in grasses and hands that play in those leaves, toes that feel their way around roots and do not stub and stumble upon them? i fear my hair becoming tangled in those naked branches, breaking my now tender feet upon rocks i have not felt before, tearing my skin against trunks around which i am unused to making my way, having always merely lightly touched their tops and pivoted over.
i feel too heavy. i feel my relentless weight bound to the earth. lightness is my being, my way, my dance. i am not a dancer here. i am not a dreamer here. this is not the province of dreamers, this does not yet feel like my home. i am still of the sky, and i will continue to look longingly to it, wondering how i became so heavy.
my string plucked from my tail, solid, predictable, unmoving and safe, the ground has beckoned and i have slammed into it headlong and pointed, my nose buried in turf and leaves and things unfamiliar, things i have seen only from above and which have me feeling lost and wondering what this is wrapped around my tip. trees which were my footbeds are now my companions, soil and roots now where my feet rest and wander. my legs are unsteady, my eyes unaccustomed to obstacle are clouded with forests and fields and mountains and buildings. my vantage, once grand and unspoiled has contracted into a small frame to fit with the rest of the grounded.
am i of the grounded? can i be one of these who surround me, feet happily twined in grasses and hands that play in those leaves, toes that feel their way around roots and do not stub and stumble upon them? i fear my hair becoming tangled in those naked branches, breaking my now tender feet upon rocks i have not felt before, tearing my skin against trunks around which i am unused to making my way, having always merely lightly touched their tops and pivoted over.
i feel too heavy. i feel my relentless weight bound to the earth. lightness is my being, my way, my dance. i am not a dancer here. i am not a dreamer here. this is not the province of dreamers, this does not yet feel like my home. i am still of the sky, and i will continue to look longingly to it, wondering how i became so heavy.
23.12.08
sleep
sleep is an elusive and inconsistent mistress. there are nights where she comes immediately upon head hitting pillow, wraps me in her pale blue arms and holds me tightly, not leaving my side and comforting me until the wee one's cry or squeaking leaps in the crib rouse me. there are nights where she holds me for a while, then grows weary of me and leaves me to the cold sheets as she makes her way out , never even looking back over her pale blue shoulder to see if she's awakened me. there are nights when she seemingly comes home late, having been out god knows where while i have tossed and turned waiting, and she slips in unconcerned about whether i was worried, lies my head to her breast and coddles me until the morning.
then there are nights like last night. sleep, she is not only inconsistent in her comfort but in her behavior. she is, for the most part anymore, at the least a quiet and comforting mistress when she comes, and once she comes, when she stays she is typically the sweet lover we all need. but nights like this last, oh no she cannot be counted upon. nights like this last, she comes pale and smoky, raven tresses wild with anger and judgment, fire burning in her cats' eyes, fire born of something i cannot understand fully but that looks like hurt. i know her, i know who she is but not why she comes like she does, know not why she chooses these nights to berate silently, to hover fearfully and threatening above me, hand to my cheek but staring through me as she mouths the words i cannot hear.
she carries with her a ghostly pallor now, bluer than death but not so blue as to seem a caricature. her hair is darker than it ever was in life, the curls not so softly coiled as they were but every bit as untamed. her neck, her limbs, all longer than they were, she has gained an even more feline aspect than she once had. and her touch, that touch that once was the world and warmed me from within simply to consider, has come malevolent and causes a shiver, part of me longing for it but shrinking from it all the same.
i can feel her anger, it is palpable and real, and her eyes weep their fire onto my forehead as though they should carry the words i cannot hear, and can see in her heart the back-and-forthing between a sadness i cannot understand and the anger that blazes as she tamps down that sadness, the anger smoldering through her fingers to leave her mark on my cheeks.
on these nights, i sleep but i do not rest. i simply awaken as i fell into sleep, tired and wanting for the dreams to remain at bay, but with the added weight of that judgment upon me and wondering if she will ever forgive me.
then there are nights like last night. sleep, she is not only inconsistent in her comfort but in her behavior. she is, for the most part anymore, at the least a quiet and comforting mistress when she comes, and once she comes, when she stays she is typically the sweet lover we all need. but nights like this last, oh no she cannot be counted upon. nights like this last, she comes pale and smoky, raven tresses wild with anger and judgment, fire burning in her cats' eyes, fire born of something i cannot understand fully but that looks like hurt. i know her, i know who she is but not why she comes like she does, know not why she chooses these nights to berate silently, to hover fearfully and threatening above me, hand to my cheek but staring through me as she mouths the words i cannot hear.
she carries with her a ghostly pallor now, bluer than death but not so blue as to seem a caricature. her hair is darker than it ever was in life, the curls not so softly coiled as they were but every bit as untamed. her neck, her limbs, all longer than they were, she has gained an even more feline aspect than she once had. and her touch, that touch that once was the world and warmed me from within simply to consider, has come malevolent and causes a shiver, part of me longing for it but shrinking from it all the same.
i can feel her anger, it is palpable and real, and her eyes weep their fire onto my forehead as though they should carry the words i cannot hear, and can see in her heart the back-and-forthing between a sadness i cannot understand and the anger that blazes as she tamps down that sadness, the anger smoldering through her fingers to leave her mark on my cheeks.
on these nights, i sleep but i do not rest. i simply awaken as i fell into sleep, tired and wanting for the dreams to remain at bay, but with the added weight of that judgment upon me and wondering if she will ever forgive me.
22.12.08
poke, poke
time for a quick update on just how weird probing one's inner landscape can be. i have been complaining about not being able to access my emotions. crap, just look at that sentence. ' not being able to access my emotions' sounds like i'm troubleshooting the dhcp service on the new router. jeez. anyway, i've realized something (and brandie's about to have a moment that goes along with when her mother told her water was good for your health): whoa, nelly, i have loads of emotions, and would have trouble accessing them but for one vital thing - i have them turned off for a reason.
since i've been mulling about the hallways of my soul the last week or so, i've been walking a line i've found that lies between my keeping it all held together and completely breaking down. not completely breaking down in the sense that i'll need to go back in the pen or anything, but it's a feeling that if i open that door it'll be an hour or so before i stop crying or want to see anyone. no idea what for or why, no idea what i might find out, if anything. it just feels big and hairy and not like something i want to disturb.
imagine exploring as a child, down by the creek in your neighborhood you've spent conglomerate days wandering past, and finding a cave. same cave you've seen a hundred times in your travels, but you've never gone in. it's been the storefront for your western town, the entrance to the shield control center on endor, the palace drawbridge, but never someplace you'd enter. but today, you've been dared. today you have no choice. you have to go in. it's your job, the ultimate last mystery of your creek and the triple-dog dare all rolled together. if you don't do this, you'll never live it down. so in you go.
it's dark, your heart is racing, but you're finding it's not so bad. it's just a cave, after all. a twist, a turn, your breath catches with each and starts again when the corner is turned and nothing has jumped out yet to eat you. your eyes become more and more accustomed to the dimness, the sound of dripping water becomes less threatening and more just a part of the background sounds of your experience. you turn that next corner, and there, snoring in the back of this cave is a great big brown bear.
and your fucking best friend danny just dared you to poke it with the pointed stick you brought.
since i've been mulling about the hallways of my soul the last week or so, i've been walking a line i've found that lies between my keeping it all held together and completely breaking down. not completely breaking down in the sense that i'll need to go back in the pen or anything, but it's a feeling that if i open that door it'll be an hour or so before i stop crying or want to see anyone. no idea what for or why, no idea what i might find out, if anything. it just feels big and hairy and not like something i want to disturb.
imagine exploring as a child, down by the creek in your neighborhood you've spent conglomerate days wandering past, and finding a cave. same cave you've seen a hundred times in your travels, but you've never gone in. it's been the storefront for your western town, the entrance to the shield control center on endor, the palace drawbridge, but never someplace you'd enter. but today, you've been dared. today you have no choice. you have to go in. it's your job, the ultimate last mystery of your creek and the triple-dog dare all rolled together. if you don't do this, you'll never live it down. so in you go.
it's dark, your heart is racing, but you're finding it's not so bad. it's just a cave, after all. a twist, a turn, your breath catches with each and starts again when the corner is turned and nothing has jumped out yet to eat you. your eyes become more and more accustomed to the dimness, the sound of dripping water becomes less threatening and more just a part of the background sounds of your experience. you turn that next corner, and there, snoring in the back of this cave is a great big brown bear.
and your fucking best friend danny just dared you to poke it with the pointed stick you brought.
19.12.08
a bit of a purging
i am surrounded by wonderful and understanding people who love me deeply. i have some of the most fantastic people in all of history as my friends. my support network is both deep and wide. i know this. i can see it clearly. i even believe in it. i really, truly do. and yet, i am on one level terribly, horribly alone. ultimately, i am the only one in my head. though there are hundreds who can understand what i am going through, no one else can truly know.
this is my struggle, my battle, and no one else has ever fought this one. many have fought one like it, but no one has fought this one. many know similar feelings to mine, but no one has ever felt mine. many have seen the things i see and known the circumstances i know, but no one has ever seen them through my eyes.
i find myself angry and bitter at times, particularly with those who would presuppose that they can understand where i am. it's unfair to judge those people, i know, but i am anyway. i am not a diagnosis. i suffer from depression. there is a diagnosis, certainly. but this one is mine. the diagnosis does not tell you anything about me. the diagnosis tells you about a set of symptoms, but tells you nothing of the storm inside, tells you nothing of the despair, the turmoil, the doubt, the sadness. the diagnosis comes with a nicely prescribed set of descriptors to define the resulting exhibitions of the disorder, but it does not explain the things which have formed those symptoms.
please. love me, feel compassion for me, ask to help me, ask to hug me. but don't tell me you understand. you don't.
i just spell-checked this and there were no misspellings found. it's a christmas miracle.
this is my struggle, my battle, and no one else has ever fought this one. many have fought one like it, but no one has fought this one. many know similar feelings to mine, but no one has ever felt mine. many have seen the things i see and known the circumstances i know, but no one has ever seen them through my eyes.
i find myself angry and bitter at times, particularly with those who would presuppose that they can understand where i am. it's unfair to judge those people, i know, but i am anyway. i am not a diagnosis. i suffer from depression. there is a diagnosis, certainly. but this one is mine. the diagnosis does not tell you anything about me. the diagnosis tells you about a set of symptoms, but tells you nothing of the storm inside, tells you nothing of the despair, the turmoil, the doubt, the sadness. the diagnosis comes with a nicely prescribed set of descriptors to define the resulting exhibitions of the disorder, but it does not explain the things which have formed those symptoms.
please. love me, feel compassion for me, ask to help me, ask to hug me. but don't tell me you understand. you don't.
i just spell-checked this and there were no misspellings found. it's a christmas miracle.
18.12.08
doubt
i think maybe the worst part of the flattening out of my emotional landscape is the doubt. as always, dear reader, i will bring it all back around, so just grab the metaphorical 'oh shit' handle and hold on for the ride. all hands inside the car at all times.
i have known little but anger, self-doubt and sadness for most of life. certainly those have been punctuated by moments of bright light, holes punched in the darkness, but those holes are like the stars viewed from the city - not so great in number, not so white in color, not so vibrant in their light as maybe they would be when viewed from another vantage point. the drugs help the sky from being so black, i suppose, but they cannot move me into the country where the stars are greater and brighter and myriad. i am still obscured by the city lights in which i live, and so while the darkness may not be as dark, the stars shine no brighter either. the drugs can't do that for me.
my sky has been so very dark, too. i had one of my great friends encourage me the other day my reminding me that many men, most men perhaps, have trouble with 'feeling'. it's all part of the mars/venus issue for men and women, yes? and i wish that had been as encouraging as it should have been, but i couldn't take the solace from it that anyone might have hoped, because i don't live in the mars/venus split world. my closest relationships have always been with girls and/or women. i have always found them easier to relate to (with a couple of highly notable exceptions, i suppose), and i believe that to be because we speak a similar language. it may not be that i speak the feminine language fluently or natively, but i certainly natively speak italian while women speak spanish - the words aren't identical, the pronunciations of the common ones may be off slightly, but the languages come from a common root and are so similar we can communicate. certainly i am not a native speaker of the male language. let's call it german, shall we? thus endeth that cumbersome metaphor. all i am trying to get at is that i am, by my nature, an emotional being. i am not some hyper-rational thinker who analytically selects his responses to the external stimulus. i react with my heart and my soul, the fundamental stuff of a human being is the part of me that rises up in anger or in sadness. i feel, and i feel deeply and fully. but i haven't figured out the positive side to that yet.
and now the circle closes. if i am that emotional being, if i have this bottomless well of feeling but cannot draw up a bucket of love for my family, what have i but doubt? this is the hardest part of it all. without that feeling, to me it feels less than real. if it does not feel real, i am left to wonder why i am here, what i am doing in this place with these people. i am prone to concern about my place in this world i have chosen, doubting that i am the best man to raise my children or care for my wife, doubting whether i was meant to take that left turn at albequerque that would have given them someone who could love them as they should be loved and not teach them the lessons i learned in smothering oneself. i doubt, and that doubt is what i have to work from right now. and that is the worst part.
i have known little but anger, self-doubt and sadness for most of life. certainly those have been punctuated by moments of bright light, holes punched in the darkness, but those holes are like the stars viewed from the city - not so great in number, not so white in color, not so vibrant in their light as maybe they would be when viewed from another vantage point. the drugs help the sky from being so black, i suppose, but they cannot move me into the country where the stars are greater and brighter and myriad. i am still obscured by the city lights in which i live, and so while the darkness may not be as dark, the stars shine no brighter either. the drugs can't do that for me.
my sky has been so very dark, too. i had one of my great friends encourage me the other day my reminding me that many men, most men perhaps, have trouble with 'feeling'. it's all part of the mars/venus issue for men and women, yes? and i wish that had been as encouraging as it should have been, but i couldn't take the solace from it that anyone might have hoped, because i don't live in the mars/venus split world. my closest relationships have always been with girls and/or women. i have always found them easier to relate to (with a couple of highly notable exceptions, i suppose), and i believe that to be because we speak a similar language. it may not be that i speak the feminine language fluently or natively, but i certainly natively speak italian while women speak spanish - the words aren't identical, the pronunciations of the common ones may be off slightly, but the languages come from a common root and are so similar we can communicate. certainly i am not a native speaker of the male language. let's call it german, shall we? thus endeth that cumbersome metaphor. all i am trying to get at is that i am, by my nature, an emotional being. i am not some hyper-rational thinker who analytically selects his responses to the external stimulus. i react with my heart and my soul, the fundamental stuff of a human being is the part of me that rises up in anger or in sadness. i feel, and i feel deeply and fully. but i haven't figured out the positive side to that yet.
and now the circle closes. if i am that emotional being, if i have this bottomless well of feeling but cannot draw up a bucket of love for my family, what have i but doubt? this is the hardest part of it all. without that feeling, to me it feels less than real. if it does not feel real, i am left to wonder why i am here, what i am doing in this place with these people. i am prone to concern about my place in this world i have chosen, doubting that i am the best man to raise my children or care for my wife, doubting whether i was meant to take that left turn at albequerque that would have given them someone who could love them as they should be loved and not teach them the lessons i learned in smothering oneself. i doubt, and that doubt is what i have to work from right now. and that is the worst part.
17.12.08
gloriously off-topic
i know it's only for a short time, but i am so very thankful that winter finally arrived. it seems a peculiar admission, but this is truly my time of year. i have always claimed to be a fan of fall, but though fall may be beautiful its inconsistency of weather is distressing to me. give me beautiful, clean winter, with its dim shining sun and cold bracing breezes, its occasional stillness that allows the crisp cold air just to sit and enliven the body with blood drawn to the skin. give me the rosy cheeks, the warm coats, breath that can be seen and the magnificent design of precipitation that does not fall strongly on heads but rather floats slowly and lands lightly to its rest.
it's the cleanness i think that appeals to me. i adore the smells of fall, the decay and the wetness, the opposite of pregnant spring, leaves and other vegetation fallen to the ground and building again the soil for spring to work its magical rebirth. but, in time, those scents become tiresome, or perhaps simply overwhelming, and i long for winter's clean slate. the air gets cold enough that the smells cannot survive any longer, and one is left with nothing but pure, sweet air, to charge and sting the lungs and bury the soil to hibernate before spring comes and fills the world again with life.
perhaps i was mistaken, then. it is not spring which is pregnant. spring brings the birth. winter is the pregnancy. winter is the wait while all things rest and form. winter is the space between death and rebirth, that time when nature girds itself and builds the weight for the labor that is coming with spring. winter is anticipation and rest all at once. beautiful, chilled, white and full of that which is yet to come. this is where i can find all the beauty and understand it, in the world waiting and preparing, drawing itself together for that great hurrah to come with great green life as winter lets loose its hand and spills out the spring in rivers of exuberant color. but for now, all that energy and vibrancy lies in wait, gathering itself for the work to come.
i adore fall, but i love the winter. this is my time. this is my season.
it's the cleanness i think that appeals to me. i adore the smells of fall, the decay and the wetness, the opposite of pregnant spring, leaves and other vegetation fallen to the ground and building again the soil for spring to work its magical rebirth. but, in time, those scents become tiresome, or perhaps simply overwhelming, and i long for winter's clean slate. the air gets cold enough that the smells cannot survive any longer, and one is left with nothing but pure, sweet air, to charge and sting the lungs and bury the soil to hibernate before spring comes and fills the world again with life.
perhaps i was mistaken, then. it is not spring which is pregnant. spring brings the birth. winter is the pregnancy. winter is the wait while all things rest and form. winter is the space between death and rebirth, that time when nature girds itself and builds the weight for the labor that is coming with spring. winter is anticipation and rest all at once. beautiful, chilled, white and full of that which is yet to come. this is where i can find all the beauty and understand it, in the world waiting and preparing, drawing itself together for that great hurrah to come with great green life as winter lets loose its hand and spills out the spring in rivers of exuberant color. but for now, all that energy and vibrancy lies in wait, gathering itself for the work to come.
i adore fall, but i love the winter. this is my time. this is my season.
13.12.08
out, out damm spot.
a lot of people don't believe in signs and destiny. how's this:
when i took over mail operations at children's medical center there were a lot of names i used to see daily. you get used to seeing certain ones, over and over. there are frequently ones that just stop coming because the people no longer work there.
the methodist church is strangely and uniquely tight-knit in ways i don't understand. a few weeks back my friend and former pastor called to ask brandie if she would run as part of a relay team for one steve damm, a local methodist who was stricken with a rare brain cancer and in whose honor several individuals and at least two teams would be running. she agreed instantly. i was training to run the half marathon at the same time.
a week or so later i got sick with a respiratory infection and was unable to train for about 3 weeks, and slow getting my feet back under me when i was back on the road.
i went online to register for the white rock half. it was full. sold out. no further registrations. brandie discovered that when she had volunteered to oversee the advent workshop at our church, she had failed to take into account that it fell on the same day as she had agreed to run as part of the relay. i agreed to take her place.
i read an article in the dallas observer on the man in whose honor i would be running on sunday. i recognized the name as one of those i knew from the daily mail at the hospital that had stopped coming. that name is steve damm. i used to run the operation that delivered mail bearing his name. tomorrow i will be running in his name. god bless, steve, and out, out damm spot. i will be proud to wear that shirt in the morning, and every day it survives into the future.
when i took over mail operations at children's medical center there were a lot of names i used to see daily. you get used to seeing certain ones, over and over. there are frequently ones that just stop coming because the people no longer work there.
the methodist church is strangely and uniquely tight-knit in ways i don't understand. a few weeks back my friend and former pastor called to ask brandie if she would run as part of a relay team for one steve damm, a local methodist who was stricken with a rare brain cancer and in whose honor several individuals and at least two teams would be running. she agreed instantly. i was training to run the half marathon at the same time.
a week or so later i got sick with a respiratory infection and was unable to train for about 3 weeks, and slow getting my feet back under me when i was back on the road.
i went online to register for the white rock half. it was full. sold out. no further registrations. brandie discovered that when she had volunteered to oversee the advent workshop at our church, she had failed to take into account that it fell on the same day as she had agreed to run as part of the relay. i agreed to take her place.
i read an article in the dallas observer on the man in whose honor i would be running on sunday. i recognized the name as one of those i knew from the daily mail at the hospital that had stopped coming. that name is steve damm. i used to run the operation that delivered mail bearing his name. tomorrow i will be running in his name. god bless, steve, and out, out damm spot. i will be proud to wear that shirt in the morning, and every day it survives into the future.
11.12.08
oy, thank you!
at long last, a decent night's sleep. in bed at a reasonable hour, asleep in no time, and i don't even remember stirring until isaiah woke me up at 5:4o or so (the little bugger's been waking up early since he caught this most recent cold). good stuff.
there's no plan for today, no major question to resolve, nothing of which to purge myself, but i did want to clear something up that apparently caused a small amount of confusion. there are some who would try to convince me that i am, of course!, capable of happiness, that i do feel it because they have seen it in me. and of course they are right. i did not mean that i am completely and utterly incapable of emotion, nor that i have never found any enjoyment in anything. that is very much not the case. i find enjoyment in many places, not the least of which is time spent with my kids and my wife.
bear with me while i spin us off on a tangent here - like the 3rd season of 'connections', it might be tough to see where i am going but i promise to get us there. in my therapy session the other day we were discussing joy, and it turns out that we massively misuse the word here in western english. we have this notion of joy as something transitory and excellent, some sort of happiness that is more intense than happy and typically, it seems, related to some immediate feeling of extreme happiness in the moment. that is very much not the case, or at least not semantically. joy, as a biblical greek notion (and as an ideal according to echkart tolle and hundreds of other theologians and faith leaders), is about happiness and faithfulness and confidence in the midst of strife. biblically, joy is the feeling that despite the current circumstance there is a god who loves you and has created this situation, but will see you through it and the other side will be better for it, and even if it is not there is an eternity that is more beautiful for being in his presence than any misery this world could dole out. perhaps a bit grandiose for our daily purposes, so let's look at it from a more practical standpoint: joy is grace under pressure that gives us the ability to be happy in spite of our circumstance, the ability to see the beauty around us and in us and to accept what is happening because it is a small part of the grand beauty that is everything.
that is what i am lacking. joy. i can do happiness. happiness is the transitory feeling. happiness comes in playing lego, in playing drums, in running, in hugging, in seeing a baby born. happiness is a result of circumstance. anyone can do happy. it's pavlovian.
joy is harder. joy requires the ability to see beauty where there is none, and to accept the ugliness as part of the beauty. this i cannot do. and love is part of joy, and so i think i have trouble getting it, at least as most people would understand it. is love the feeling that this person beside you is wholly and completely yours, part of you and part of that all-encompassing beauty? whether it be a wife or a child, is love being able to see that you are part of a grand beautiful everything and this person is part of it with you? perhaps this is where i fail. if one cannot see the grand beauty, one cannot see the others around him as part of it, and without that the connection is not made.
i'm not saying one must believe in god to love, nor even in a grand scheme that is anything more than just the wheels of nature turning. but even acceptance of nature as the end of it begets in many an appreciation for their place in it, and that is enough, it seems, to create the connection to another that is required for love to blossom.
so perhaps this is where i need to begin. i need to find the grand beauty. with acceptance of that, perhaps my place as part of that beauty will become clearer, and even if i cannot see clearly what that place is the very fact that i have a place in it will be enough. and with my place in the beauty apparent, the place of those around me will become clear also, and to see them as part of the beauty with me is what i need. from there, joy. from there, love.
there's no plan for today, no major question to resolve, nothing of which to purge myself, but i did want to clear something up that apparently caused a small amount of confusion. there are some who would try to convince me that i am, of course!, capable of happiness, that i do feel it because they have seen it in me. and of course they are right. i did not mean that i am completely and utterly incapable of emotion, nor that i have never found any enjoyment in anything. that is very much not the case. i find enjoyment in many places, not the least of which is time spent with my kids and my wife.
bear with me while i spin us off on a tangent here - like the 3rd season of 'connections', it might be tough to see where i am going but i promise to get us there. in my therapy session the other day we were discussing joy, and it turns out that we massively misuse the word here in western english. we have this notion of joy as something transitory and excellent, some sort of happiness that is more intense than happy and typically, it seems, related to some immediate feeling of extreme happiness in the moment. that is very much not the case, or at least not semantically. joy, as a biblical greek notion (and as an ideal according to echkart tolle and hundreds of other theologians and faith leaders), is about happiness and faithfulness and confidence in the midst of strife. biblically, joy is the feeling that despite the current circumstance there is a god who loves you and has created this situation, but will see you through it and the other side will be better for it, and even if it is not there is an eternity that is more beautiful for being in his presence than any misery this world could dole out. perhaps a bit grandiose for our daily purposes, so let's look at it from a more practical standpoint: joy is grace under pressure that gives us the ability to be happy in spite of our circumstance, the ability to see the beauty around us and in us and to accept what is happening because it is a small part of the grand beauty that is everything.
that is what i am lacking. joy. i can do happiness. happiness is the transitory feeling. happiness comes in playing lego, in playing drums, in running, in hugging, in seeing a baby born. happiness is a result of circumstance. anyone can do happy. it's pavlovian.
joy is harder. joy requires the ability to see beauty where there is none, and to accept the ugliness as part of the beauty. this i cannot do. and love is part of joy, and so i think i have trouble getting it, at least as most people would understand it. is love the feeling that this person beside you is wholly and completely yours, part of you and part of that all-encompassing beauty? whether it be a wife or a child, is love being able to see that you are part of a grand beautiful everything and this person is part of it with you? perhaps this is where i fail. if one cannot see the grand beauty, one cannot see the others around him as part of it, and without that the connection is not made.
i'm not saying one must believe in god to love, nor even in a grand scheme that is anything more than just the wheels of nature turning. but even acceptance of nature as the end of it begets in many an appreciation for their place in it, and that is enough, it seems, to create the connection to another that is required for love to blossom.
so perhaps this is where i need to begin. i need to find the grand beauty. with acceptance of that, perhaps my place as part of that beauty will become clearer, and even if i cannot see clearly what that place is the very fact that i have a place in it will be enough. and with my place in the beauty apparent, the place of those around me will become clear also, and to see them as part of the beauty with me is what i need. from there, joy. from there, love.
10.12.08
ouch.
i'm up early, which is only difficult in that i also slept poorly, and even that only after being awake longer than i should have been. yesterday was my first major insight and admission into something that i had feared was the case but was even more afraid to face.
it started in my therapy appointment yesterday, popped up in an email conversation with a friend, and then brandie asked me point-blank about it last night and it sent me on a long and difficult soul-searching mental road that has culminated in a very real and very painful realization. in the end, it was brandie's question that put me to the task of making myself look at it dead-square. we were up before bed, talking about my appointment today and what realizations may have come from it, and during the course of that conversation i mentioned that one of my major symptoms is that if you put me to it and made me write down a logical list of my blessings versus my curses, my list of blessings would be improbably long and my list of curses somewhere between minimal and nonexistent. i can see on paper that i am lucky and that my whole world is something for which i should be grateful. i have more than i deserve. but i don't feel lucky, i don't feel grateful. i can see that i am, my mind knows that i should be, but i simply do not feel it. and then she asked it.
'so, when you say that you love me, or when you tell the kids you love them, is an intellectual thing?'
the question went on from there to clarify that there was no judgment in it, to clarify that she would not be hurt by the response, to clarify that by it she was just trying to see if when i say 'i love you' i mean a warm and fuzzy in my heart feeling or something else. but what it meant to me is the difference between 'i love you' and 'i feel responsible to you and recognize that you bring advantages to my life'. ball-peen hammer to the forehead time. because i knew she had caught me. i had been found out for sure. my greatest secret was revealed, and i had been the one who accidentally pulled back the curtain. i was awake trying my damnedest to drag something up to defend myself to myself, to find a shred of something i could honestly say made me human and not a failed husband and father, but i never did find it. and then i faced my own demon: i do not seem to have much in the way of emotions that don't qualify as negative.
i had worried on this for a long time, deep-down knowing that i would eventually come to this conclusion. and i don't mean to suggest that i am truly some sort of sociopath who feels nothing at all. i think that i feel a lot, but that those feelings are all the ones that people fear with good reason. each of us has a well of feelings to which we go, where we can dip in the bucket and drag up a fill of love, gratitude, compassion, sadness, fear, loneliness, or whatever we should feel at the time. mine is a dark well, and i don't like to go to it. the emotions with which i have experience in my own soul are not my favorite ones, to say the least, and it seems that over time i have found a way to stop going to the well altogether. sounds like a fine defense mechanism until one recognizes that rather sizable hole in the theory - it not only keeps me from responding emotionally in bad ways, but in good ones, too.
for as long as i can be sure of my memories i have felt guilty about this one thing that i have carried with me. it has been forever since i have felt like i love anyone. i know that i should, i know that i do, but i don't feel it. i can say that i love brandie, i can say that i love my children, but i have never really had a moment where when i said it i was bathed in some soft and pale yellow light, where when those words cam from my mouth my heart was full to overflowing with beauty and wonder. i have never felt like a father should feel. i have never felt like a husband should feel. i put a cap on my well some time in the past because the only things in there were things of which to be afraid, and so my loves are all intellectual ones. i am a father. i am a husband. i am a friend. and i know this about myself, and so i behave accordingly. i show love, i show friendship. i act like someone in those relationships should. but i don't feel those things. they don't feel genuine, they don't feel like mine, they don't feel like me.
and so comes back the curtain as far as i can pull it. i don't yet know why this is, but for whatever reason, be it that i don't feel i deserve it or that i'm waiting to be found out as something i am not or whatever, i feel like an impostor, like i am living someone else's life, a life that was designed for someone who is not me but into which i fell almost by accident, and now i play the role i chose. husband. father. friend. roles, all of them. and none feels like it's genuine, or at least not i believe it is supposed to feel.
do i love my family? of course i do. who could not love them? but i don't love them like you do. i don't love them with my heart, i love them with my head. my heart is just not involved. is it something i can learn? i hope so. but even as intimate as i am with my sadness and misery i have a devil of a time with crying; i don't cry much, and when i do it is short-lived, and this is from someone who suffers with a major depressive disorder. if i'm so detached from my dominant emotion that i can't even cry, what capacity do i have for the emotions with which i am completely unfamiliar? and doesn't my family deserve more than i am giving them? don't my children deserve a father who genuinely loves them with all his heart? doesn't my wife deserve more than what i give her, a seemingly empty bag of words and occasional actions that look like love but are a hollow actor's portrayal of what he rationalizes as the correct behavior?
i feel like a failure in this regard. i feel like i am in a place i don't belong, living a life for which i was not designed. i am not comfortable with my role. i don't do happy, i don't do love. a father needs to be capable of both of those, and right now i am not. and so...ouch.
please forgive the mess that is today's entry. it's not to my usual standards of imagery or smoothness of language. but i hadn't the willingness to revise, rewrite or otherwise. i just barfed it up because it makes me feel a little sick.
it started in my therapy appointment yesterday, popped up in an email conversation with a friend, and then brandie asked me point-blank about it last night and it sent me on a long and difficult soul-searching mental road that has culminated in a very real and very painful realization. in the end, it was brandie's question that put me to the task of making myself look at it dead-square. we were up before bed, talking about my appointment today and what realizations may have come from it, and during the course of that conversation i mentioned that one of my major symptoms is that if you put me to it and made me write down a logical list of my blessings versus my curses, my list of blessings would be improbably long and my list of curses somewhere between minimal and nonexistent. i can see on paper that i am lucky and that my whole world is something for which i should be grateful. i have more than i deserve. but i don't feel lucky, i don't feel grateful. i can see that i am, my mind knows that i should be, but i simply do not feel it. and then she asked it.
'so, when you say that you love me, or when you tell the kids you love them, is an intellectual thing?'
the question went on from there to clarify that there was no judgment in it, to clarify that she would not be hurt by the response, to clarify that by it she was just trying to see if when i say 'i love you' i mean a warm and fuzzy in my heart feeling or something else. but what it meant to me is the difference between 'i love you' and 'i feel responsible to you and recognize that you bring advantages to my life'. ball-peen hammer to the forehead time. because i knew she had caught me. i had been found out for sure. my greatest secret was revealed, and i had been the one who accidentally pulled back the curtain. i was awake trying my damnedest to drag something up to defend myself to myself, to find a shred of something i could honestly say made me human and not a failed husband and father, but i never did find it. and then i faced my own demon: i do not seem to have much in the way of emotions that don't qualify as negative.
i had worried on this for a long time, deep-down knowing that i would eventually come to this conclusion. and i don't mean to suggest that i am truly some sort of sociopath who feels nothing at all. i think that i feel a lot, but that those feelings are all the ones that people fear with good reason. each of us has a well of feelings to which we go, where we can dip in the bucket and drag up a fill of love, gratitude, compassion, sadness, fear, loneliness, or whatever we should feel at the time. mine is a dark well, and i don't like to go to it. the emotions with which i have experience in my own soul are not my favorite ones, to say the least, and it seems that over time i have found a way to stop going to the well altogether. sounds like a fine defense mechanism until one recognizes that rather sizable hole in the theory - it not only keeps me from responding emotionally in bad ways, but in good ones, too.
for as long as i can be sure of my memories i have felt guilty about this one thing that i have carried with me. it has been forever since i have felt like i love anyone. i know that i should, i know that i do, but i don't feel it. i can say that i love brandie, i can say that i love my children, but i have never really had a moment where when i said it i was bathed in some soft and pale yellow light, where when those words cam from my mouth my heart was full to overflowing with beauty and wonder. i have never felt like a father should feel. i have never felt like a husband should feel. i put a cap on my well some time in the past because the only things in there were things of which to be afraid, and so my loves are all intellectual ones. i am a father. i am a husband. i am a friend. and i know this about myself, and so i behave accordingly. i show love, i show friendship. i act like someone in those relationships should. but i don't feel those things. they don't feel genuine, they don't feel like mine, they don't feel like me.
and so comes back the curtain as far as i can pull it. i don't yet know why this is, but for whatever reason, be it that i don't feel i deserve it or that i'm waiting to be found out as something i am not or whatever, i feel like an impostor, like i am living someone else's life, a life that was designed for someone who is not me but into which i fell almost by accident, and now i play the role i chose. husband. father. friend. roles, all of them. and none feels like it's genuine, or at least not i believe it is supposed to feel.
do i love my family? of course i do. who could not love them? but i don't love them like you do. i don't love them with my heart, i love them with my head. my heart is just not involved. is it something i can learn? i hope so. but even as intimate as i am with my sadness and misery i have a devil of a time with crying; i don't cry much, and when i do it is short-lived, and this is from someone who suffers with a major depressive disorder. if i'm so detached from my dominant emotion that i can't even cry, what capacity do i have for the emotions with which i am completely unfamiliar? and doesn't my family deserve more than i am giving them? don't my children deserve a father who genuinely loves them with all his heart? doesn't my wife deserve more than what i give her, a seemingly empty bag of words and occasional actions that look like love but are a hollow actor's portrayal of what he rationalizes as the correct behavior?
i feel like a failure in this regard. i feel like i am in a place i don't belong, living a life for which i was not designed. i am not comfortable with my role. i don't do happy, i don't do love. a father needs to be capable of both of those, and right now i am not. and so...ouch.
please forgive the mess that is today's entry. it's not to my usual standards of imagery or smoothness of language. but i hadn't the willingness to revise, rewrite or otherwise. i just barfed it up because it makes me feel a little sick.
8.12.08
murph.
reading over that, i realize now that it's a mess. i need to go back to writing in the mornings, if for no other reason than at least then i would have the excuse of being up while it's still dark outside. ultimately, i also see a trend that does not impress me: clinicality. there's not much, if any, emotion in that last post, and that's a shame. friendship is a subject that is so dear to me that it deserves some real emotionality. perhaps it's just the way i treated the subject, perhaps i really was fairly detached from it, perhaps i'm just tired and out of the gas it would take to screw together a heartfelt blog entry, but i will put forth an honest effort to crack open my soul a little more and see what's in it, rather than simply opening up my brain and letting metaphysical nonsense spill out all over the keyboard. damn stuff makes the 'k' key stick something fierce.
a whole new woooooooorld....
oh dear. sorry for that. but it's been stuck in my head for some unknowable reason, and i thought i'd share that little earworm with all my readers - both of you. in reality, i do know why it's stuck in my head, and it's a long and winding road that takes to here from where i began. so i shall spare you the trip and simply go back to the start, which is the germane point anyway. a whole new world...or is it?
i opened the door to this a crack with my last post. i'm not at all sold on the idea that we have but one dance in this existence. i know, i know - i'm a methodist christian, and that faith (indeed, pretty much any christian denomination) leaves essentially no room for interpretation on this subject. regardless of whether one prefers to take everything paul wrote as truth or with a grain of salt of biblical proportions (see how i did that? i tied it back into itself! ha.), or if one even wants simply to pare it down to accept only the words of jesus himself, there's nowhere to go with that line of thought. once, and that is it. unless you're unitarian universalist, but they only sort of count as christian by virtue of growing out of a christian denomination in the first place. anyway...
i'm finding that i don't much care what the history of my faith says, which seems on one level to negate it as my faith, i suppose. that's been coming for much of my life, though, so please do forgive me if i'm not exactly wearing a hairshirt and sackcloth over it. i'm not rescinding my membership in that club, but likewise i am not seemingly on board with all the bylaws. in any case, i have developed a nasty habit (to hear some tell it) of cherry-picking what sounds right to me and what does not. i am comforted by the notion that i am not simply choosing the easy rules, but just passing on the ones that make little sense in light of what we know of history at this point and that are at complete odds with faith systems that were around for millennia before abram became abraham. i do not claim to be right, but only claim that i do not know, and any who might write me hate mail for this paragraph will be wasting the parenthetical gap between the health of your wrists and carpal tunnel syndrome, for i have no intention whatsoever of engaging you in debate.
so, back to it. recent events have opened me up to some...impressions that i may have had for a long time but was never in the right place to ponder. something about being in a psych ward leaves one with a number of philosophical conundra. perhaps it's all the extra time one has while hiding and praying that the more dramatic expressions of mental disease aren't communicable. regardless, a lot of introspection has been going on, only some of which has been shared here, and it has brought about the concept of the 'familiar' to me.
i have dipped my toe into this already, but the 'familiar' has become kind of my name for those people with whom i am immediately comfortable. 'soulmate', the word i originally used, seemed both too strong and limiting at the same time, for while it connotes a depth that may go beyond that about which i am speaking, it likewise has a colloquial meaning that would presuppose a singular pairing, and the familiars number more than one. and so i have been trying to make some sense of this fact that there are people who to me simply seem immediately non-threatening and my impressions of whom are instantly exempt from my own mind's fears. how does this happen? why are these people, with whom in many cases i have no reason whatever to be comfortable, so quickly trusted? is there a single common trait that they all share, something that i can recognize in them and by it know that they are not like anyone else?
and it struck me while i was in my bed one night in the ward, and it struck me again a day or two after i was out, and i ignored the thing until i was talking to one of them and it struck me again: perhaps the word 'recognize' is what it's all about. i don't mean to imply that there is necessarily any such thing as my coming to know that once upon a time this one was my wife, or that one was my best friend, and that one day with enough work and regression therapy we might realize that we have known each other as joey, susan, theodorus and grok. but if we do cycle back through here, what are the chances that we retain no impressions of our past experience? i do not speak of memory, per se, but of retained experience on some level that cannot be accessed by our consciousness while informing our new experiences.
i was reading a brief article on the recent death of the most studied man in the history of memory science. he had had an operation at a young age to remove a segment of his brain, and with that segment went his ability to consciously remember anything long-term. he could remember things for approximately 20 seconds, until it was time for that information to move into long-term memory and then it was gone. at one point he was subjected to a series of repetitive manual tasks, and each time it seemed to him to be a new task. but he slowly grew more adept at the task with repetition - his muscle memory was still working even though he had no idea that it was. he remembered nothing, but his body built that memory for his conscious mind. that is a solid analogy for what i am trying to get across. that though we are never consciously aware that we have shared our lives with someone before, that there is some metaphysical analog to muscle memory that is seated in the soul and allows us to 'recognize' those in whom we have placed our trust in the distant past.
i also do not mean to imply that we are stuck recycling the same friends over and over again. this is a big ol' world, and once one adds time into the equation perhaps things don't line up terribly well. we also must allow for the fact that we develop new friends. i have, i know this to be true. but these friends may be the ones that have taken me time to trust, and in that time has been built a friendship that may well transcend this life and wander off into another when we bump into each other again.
i am coming to think that possibly we all have this ability, that it is just part of the human experience, but that i am sensitive to it because it is so hard for me to trust anyone that those with whom i quickly feel safe stand out in the starkest of relief.
i opened the door to this a crack with my last post. i'm not at all sold on the idea that we have but one dance in this existence. i know, i know - i'm a methodist christian, and that faith (indeed, pretty much any christian denomination) leaves essentially no room for interpretation on this subject. regardless of whether one prefers to take everything paul wrote as truth or with a grain of salt of biblical proportions (see how i did that? i tied it back into itself! ha.), or if one even wants simply to pare it down to accept only the words of jesus himself, there's nowhere to go with that line of thought. once, and that is it. unless you're unitarian universalist, but they only sort of count as christian by virtue of growing out of a christian denomination in the first place. anyway...
i'm finding that i don't much care what the history of my faith says, which seems on one level to negate it as my faith, i suppose. that's been coming for much of my life, though, so please do forgive me if i'm not exactly wearing a hairshirt and sackcloth over it. i'm not rescinding my membership in that club, but likewise i am not seemingly on board with all the bylaws. in any case, i have developed a nasty habit (to hear some tell it) of cherry-picking what sounds right to me and what does not. i am comforted by the notion that i am not simply choosing the easy rules, but just passing on the ones that make little sense in light of what we know of history at this point and that are at complete odds with faith systems that were around for millennia before abram became abraham. i do not claim to be right, but only claim that i do not know, and any who might write me hate mail for this paragraph will be wasting the parenthetical gap between the health of your wrists and carpal tunnel syndrome, for i have no intention whatsoever of engaging you in debate.
so, back to it. recent events have opened me up to some...impressions that i may have had for a long time but was never in the right place to ponder. something about being in a psych ward leaves one with a number of philosophical conundra. perhaps it's all the extra time one has while hiding and praying that the more dramatic expressions of mental disease aren't communicable. regardless, a lot of introspection has been going on, only some of which has been shared here, and it has brought about the concept of the 'familiar' to me.
i have dipped my toe into this already, but the 'familiar' has become kind of my name for those people with whom i am immediately comfortable. 'soulmate', the word i originally used, seemed both too strong and limiting at the same time, for while it connotes a depth that may go beyond that about which i am speaking, it likewise has a colloquial meaning that would presuppose a singular pairing, and the familiars number more than one. and so i have been trying to make some sense of this fact that there are people who to me simply seem immediately non-threatening and my impressions of whom are instantly exempt from my own mind's fears. how does this happen? why are these people, with whom in many cases i have no reason whatever to be comfortable, so quickly trusted? is there a single common trait that they all share, something that i can recognize in them and by it know that they are not like anyone else?
and it struck me while i was in my bed one night in the ward, and it struck me again a day or two after i was out, and i ignored the thing until i was talking to one of them and it struck me again: perhaps the word 'recognize' is what it's all about. i don't mean to imply that there is necessarily any such thing as my coming to know that once upon a time this one was my wife, or that one was my best friend, and that one day with enough work and regression therapy we might realize that we have known each other as joey, susan, theodorus and grok. but if we do cycle back through here, what are the chances that we retain no impressions of our past experience? i do not speak of memory, per se, but of retained experience on some level that cannot be accessed by our consciousness while informing our new experiences.
i was reading a brief article on the recent death of the most studied man in the history of memory science. he had had an operation at a young age to remove a segment of his brain, and with that segment went his ability to consciously remember anything long-term. he could remember things for approximately 20 seconds, until it was time for that information to move into long-term memory and then it was gone. at one point he was subjected to a series of repetitive manual tasks, and each time it seemed to him to be a new task. but he slowly grew more adept at the task with repetition - his muscle memory was still working even though he had no idea that it was. he remembered nothing, but his body built that memory for his conscious mind. that is a solid analogy for what i am trying to get across. that though we are never consciously aware that we have shared our lives with someone before, that there is some metaphysical analog to muscle memory that is seated in the soul and allows us to 'recognize' those in whom we have placed our trust in the distant past.
i also do not mean to imply that we are stuck recycling the same friends over and over again. this is a big ol' world, and once one adds time into the equation perhaps things don't line up terribly well. we also must allow for the fact that we develop new friends. i have, i know this to be true. but these friends may be the ones that have taken me time to trust, and in that time has been built a friendship that may well transcend this life and wander off into another when we bump into each other again.
i am coming to think that possibly we all have this ability, that it is just part of the human experience, but that i am sensitive to it because it is so hard for me to trust anyone that those with whom i quickly feel safe stand out in the starkest of relief.
4.12.08
who am i?
so, while falling asleep last night brandie told me that i really do seem to feel better, like i'm happier. nice to hear. then she said something that completely spun me off of my axis, not for its sadness or cruelty or any such thing but simply because it's me we're talking about here and i can't let something be simple. she said it's like the real me is being let out, being allowed to emerge, something along those lines. you'll have to forgive me for not remembering her exact turn of phrase - i've slept since then.
all i could think of was how disturbing a thought that is, that the real me has somehow been subsumed by this disease of the brain and mind. but has it been? was the real me that which has been buried under mountains of sadness? or is it more accurate to say that is the real me, and we are now in the process of creating a new me, chris v2.0? after all, it's my brain that is miswired, my patterns of thought which are twisted into self-defeating and self-loathing spirals of doubt and fear. it's my emotions that have driven me into slow, dark doldrums of sadness and sparked off into fits of irritable anger. it's my own analytical ability and emotional sensitivities that have allowed me to fight with others by finding the thing which will hurt most to hear in the course of an argument and using it against them. i am, to some degree anyway, the very thing which i have set out to defeat.
i don't mean to suggest that depression and anxiety completely define who i am, but to a point they are part of who i am. the real me is indeed sad, is indeed a miserable sack of excuses and mental boobytraps designed to preserve my own self image of someone undeserving of what he has or might have. we are, in part, not only the 'good person down inside there'. we are, to some degree, defined by our behavior, or no one would ever be accountable for his actions because someone will always believe 'there's a good person in there, he's just hurting'. there very well be a good person in here, and i'll be working very hard in the years to come to make that person who i am, but for now i'm not certain at all that who i really am is being uncovered so much as reborn.
i do believe in a soul. i believe unquestionably that there is some fundamental particle of our consciousness that is a piece of the eternal everything, and so in that regard i believe that each and every person is capable of good because at our core each is grown from the same seed. but i also cannot see how that seed is all that defines us in each life (in case there is more than one - a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that i have had experience and recent revelations that suggest that there is more to our existence than this one spin through the solid world).
let's look at it using the seed as an analogy. a seed grow into a tree, yes? now, each tree is grown from the same thing, built of the same stuff. we see an elm, we see it is grown from an elm seed. we see it is built of xylem and phloem, woody fiber and bark, leaves and chlorophyll, cellulose, cell walls and membrane layered on one another, nuclei, mitochondria and all the other building blocks common between them. now then, when we see the elm, we also take into account its location and its form, its general health and its effect on its surroundings. if our elm stands on a riverbank, healthy and strong, evenly formed and branches spread out to the sun, leaves wide and green, gathering sunlight and providing a home for a squirrel and countless insects, giving shade to lesser plants and acting as it should to filter carbon dioxide into oxygen for the mammals in the neighborhood, we see its magnificent beauty, accept the miracle that is the tree and praise its wonderful design and say to ourselves 'that is a good tree'. but if our elm grows too close to our house, growing unevenly and with its roots upsetting our foundation, causing thousands of dollars in damage and costing hours of cost or effort to remove the offending part, or even the entire tree, in order to preserve that which it is destroying, we no longer see the beauty and wonder of the tree and say to ourselves 'damn tree buggered up my house and cost me a fortune'. the elm is still an elm. it is still made of the same stuff. but the effect it has on its surroundings has changed what it is. its role is not 'beautiful tree', but 'destroyer of sanctuary'. not 'good tree' but 'bad tree'.
is it not likely that we as humans are like this? whether speaking literally or metaphysically, we are all built of the same stuff. we are, each of us, a conglomeration of not only that fundamental bit of the divine that we call the soul, but also of our neuroses and behaviors and beliefs and loves and hates and fears and joys. those things are as much a part of who we are as the spark of life itself, and if those things are negative then our true self is, for that time, a negative self. my chemistry has made me sad. my thoughts have made me sad and fearful. these things are part and parcel of who i am, and i accept that. my true self for most of my life has been unhappy and afraid. but i can move the tree, uproot my elm gently and with care and move it to the riverbank where it can flourish and do what a tree is capable of doing. i can turn 'bad tree' into 'good tree' by changing the things that define 'bad tree'. there is nothing other than that sad person to uncover or resurrect, but the building blocks are the same as those of a happy person. it is simply their assembly which is off, and design flaws can be worked around and compensated for. so while i may not believe that my true self is coming to the fore, i do believe that i am redefining who i am, and while daunting that is also one hell of an exciting prospect.
all i could think of was how disturbing a thought that is, that the real me has somehow been subsumed by this disease of the brain and mind. but has it been? was the real me that which has been buried under mountains of sadness? or is it more accurate to say that is the real me, and we are now in the process of creating a new me, chris v2.0? after all, it's my brain that is miswired, my patterns of thought which are twisted into self-defeating and self-loathing spirals of doubt and fear. it's my emotions that have driven me into slow, dark doldrums of sadness and sparked off into fits of irritable anger. it's my own analytical ability and emotional sensitivities that have allowed me to fight with others by finding the thing which will hurt most to hear in the course of an argument and using it against them. i am, to some degree anyway, the very thing which i have set out to defeat.
i don't mean to suggest that depression and anxiety completely define who i am, but to a point they are part of who i am. the real me is indeed sad, is indeed a miserable sack of excuses and mental boobytraps designed to preserve my own self image of someone undeserving of what he has or might have. we are, in part, not only the 'good person down inside there'. we are, to some degree, defined by our behavior, or no one would ever be accountable for his actions because someone will always believe 'there's a good person in there, he's just hurting'. there very well be a good person in here, and i'll be working very hard in the years to come to make that person who i am, but for now i'm not certain at all that who i really am is being uncovered so much as reborn.
i do believe in a soul. i believe unquestionably that there is some fundamental particle of our consciousness that is a piece of the eternal everything, and so in that regard i believe that each and every person is capable of good because at our core each is grown from the same seed. but i also cannot see how that seed is all that defines us in each life (in case there is more than one - a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that i have had experience and recent revelations that suggest that there is more to our existence than this one spin through the solid world).
let's look at it using the seed as an analogy. a seed grow into a tree, yes? now, each tree is grown from the same thing, built of the same stuff. we see an elm, we see it is grown from an elm seed. we see it is built of xylem and phloem, woody fiber and bark, leaves and chlorophyll, cellulose, cell walls and membrane layered on one another, nuclei, mitochondria and all the other building blocks common between them. now then, when we see the elm, we also take into account its location and its form, its general health and its effect on its surroundings. if our elm stands on a riverbank, healthy and strong, evenly formed and branches spread out to the sun, leaves wide and green, gathering sunlight and providing a home for a squirrel and countless insects, giving shade to lesser plants and acting as it should to filter carbon dioxide into oxygen for the mammals in the neighborhood, we see its magnificent beauty, accept the miracle that is the tree and praise its wonderful design and say to ourselves 'that is a good tree'. but if our elm grows too close to our house, growing unevenly and with its roots upsetting our foundation, causing thousands of dollars in damage and costing hours of cost or effort to remove the offending part, or even the entire tree, in order to preserve that which it is destroying, we no longer see the beauty and wonder of the tree and say to ourselves 'damn tree buggered up my house and cost me a fortune'. the elm is still an elm. it is still made of the same stuff. but the effect it has on its surroundings has changed what it is. its role is not 'beautiful tree', but 'destroyer of sanctuary'. not 'good tree' but 'bad tree'.
is it not likely that we as humans are like this? whether speaking literally or metaphysically, we are all built of the same stuff. we are, each of us, a conglomeration of not only that fundamental bit of the divine that we call the soul, but also of our neuroses and behaviors and beliefs and loves and hates and fears and joys. those things are as much a part of who we are as the spark of life itself, and if those things are negative then our true self is, for that time, a negative self. my chemistry has made me sad. my thoughts have made me sad and fearful. these things are part and parcel of who i am, and i accept that. my true self for most of my life has been unhappy and afraid. but i can move the tree, uproot my elm gently and with care and move it to the riverbank where it can flourish and do what a tree is capable of doing. i can turn 'bad tree' into 'good tree' by changing the things that define 'bad tree'. there is nothing other than that sad person to uncover or resurrect, but the building blocks are the same as those of a happy person. it is simply their assembly which is off, and design flaws can be worked around and compensated for. so while i may not believe that my true self is coming to the fore, i do believe that i am redefining who i am, and while daunting that is also one hell of an exciting prospect.
2.12.08
mysticism?
somewhere along the way this blog was bound to shift a gear or two and get away, at least on occasion, from my musings on my own mental state. that's probably a good thing, as anyone reading this thing is likely bored to death of the topic, and i myself weary of it from time to time. that said, this was not an easy thing for me to do - i've sat and written and rewritten and mulled over whether to begin a second blog instead in order to keep this one purely about the depression experience. in the end, i have decided that had i really, deep down, wanted this to be about the depression experience i would have called it 'the depression experience'. instead, i went with 'nothing to see here', so obviously i wanted this to be an open forum for all things me. yes, that's self-deprecating. and funny. admit it.
in any case, the thing that has been pulling at me the last day or so is the mystical experience and how it all works. or, more to the point, what it is that might make it not work. why is it that some people can do it and some can't? there are those who would argue that anyone can, and i suppose they're probably right, but there is psychological and psychiatric genetic research being done that suggest there is an inherited component to one's religiosity, a notion i find both repugnant and compelling. i've admittedly not read too much on the subject thus far, but i would not be surprised if i were to discover that it is ultimately not the religiosity that is at issue, but the ability to feel the presence of god (please feel free to use whatever term you like here - i will use god because it's the term i find falls immediately to hand and because it's very, very short. and i am lazy). what i am getting at is the idea that one's religiosity is not necessarily defined by one's genes, but by one's ability to have a mystical experience that allows one to be religious.
obviously there are other factors in play. i'll be the first to admit (and accuse) that not every religious person has any ability at all to feel any mystical experience. in fact, there may even at some point be an inverse relationship (witness pedophile priests, thieving pastors and whole hate-mongering congregations). but at the base, beginner level, doesn't it make sense that without a predisposition to feeling the presence of god one is less likely to be involved in any religion and therefore be 'less religious'? and stop and look around at your own circle. if you look at everyone you know does it seem like the more analytical and less emotive someone is, the less likely that person is to be a member of a religion? and is the converse true?
i touched on my reasoning for this train of thought in an earlier post. i don't know that i am necessarily on the 'genetically predisposed to be religious' list. i don't meditate well. i don't pray well. the corporate worship experience does not open me to an experience with the almighty and i am not expecting any divine visitations anytime soon. but when i play there's something that happens, and so i wonder if we all really do have some way to tap into that flow, and if it's just a little more difficult for some than others.
to be certain, we haven't made it any easier. the ages of reason and analysis have subsumed the age of experience and art and mysticism for so long now that our modern society has little to no way for someone to gain a mystical insight without great effort. even those who may be more prone to those experiences have few outlets into which they can plug, and the available outlets are frequently unattractive for reasons of bigotry, exclusivity, threat of violence, fear of judgment, hypocrisy or just age-old boring traditionalism. in older cultures, mysticism was part and parcel of life. it was what was real. our own advancements in science and rational thought have killed our ability to believe in anything beyond that which we can touch, and without that ability we are even less able to open ourselves to any religious experience because we are less willing, and there are things that simply must be believed to be seen, not the other way around.
it strikes me that we as a human race were born into experience with the innate ability to have that mystical experience. most these days think that early cultures' belief systems are simply signs of their inability to rationalize and their lack of scientific knowledge, ghost stories to explain away the universe around them, and perhaps there's something to that. but every step we take down the rabbit hole of quantum physics and string theories suggests that perhaps our own scientifically-based ideas make less sense than we think, that the picture is much, much larger than we can see, and so i wonder if maybe we have, with all our learning, unlearned something that might be more fundamentally necessary and more fundamentally true than all the science we can muster. after all, if we find through the current trends in physics that there are myriad universes and dimensions and that every choice we make creates a fork in the road that generates a new pair of existences, doesn't that lend credence to the hindu and buddhist notions that reality is but a dream and the true reality lies beneath it, underpinning it while at the same time undermining it? and every time we turn around we find that there's another variable we missed in the equation, and we have to manufacture dark matter, background energies and rays and constants and other artificial balancers just to make the math work. why is something as creatively-named yet as unobservable as 'dark matter' more valid than a god experience or explanation?
i think perhaps that we have, in our zealotry for science and reason, fallen easy prey to plato's allegory of the cave - every bit as easy prey as any primitive belief system. and i don't mean to suggest that any particular religion is necessarily more accurate or has walked around the rock to discover the fire and shadows. but i personally find a lot of beauty in the acceptance of the fact that we are in the cave and that perhaps there is a different explanation than what we see. that acceptance can be born of the ability to feel something larger than just one's neurons firing and the effects of group-think. when i design something there is a feeling more of 'uncovering' something that already exists and that wants to be revealed. when i play music there is a feeling of going to someplace where that music already is and bringing it back for others to hear. these feelings may be illusions, certainly. but they may also be factual, or they may be beautiful analogies for some universal mechanism we will never understand.
this existence is not a simple place, and there is far more in play than quarks and leptons. even science admits that. and so i wonder if, in discounting the mystical experience, we are discounting something as important as science. hell, i sometimes wonder if we are discounting something more important! but my greater concern is that we are training and breeding out of ourselves the ability to experience that deeper world. i worry that we are actively destroying our own ability to relate to the universe around us on its own natural terms. instead of dealing in the language the universe natively speaks, have we created esperanto in an effort to do it better? are we speaking a language that is dead before it ever was alive? i don't know. but i do know that human history is filled with wonderful allegory and myth, and each step we take in our modern society seems to remove us further from our own roots. we are a world full of people who cannot understand our own religion because its intellectualism is beyond our capacity, and we are losing the ability to believe in the simpler explanations, dammit.
in any case, the thing that has been pulling at me the last day or so is the mystical experience and how it all works. or, more to the point, what it is that might make it not work. why is it that some people can do it and some can't? there are those who would argue that anyone can, and i suppose they're probably right, but there is psychological and psychiatric genetic research being done that suggest there is an inherited component to one's religiosity, a notion i find both repugnant and compelling. i've admittedly not read too much on the subject thus far, but i would not be surprised if i were to discover that it is ultimately not the religiosity that is at issue, but the ability to feel the presence of god (please feel free to use whatever term you like here - i will use god because it's the term i find falls immediately to hand and because it's very, very short. and i am lazy). what i am getting at is the idea that one's religiosity is not necessarily defined by one's genes, but by one's ability to have a mystical experience that allows one to be religious.
obviously there are other factors in play. i'll be the first to admit (and accuse) that not every religious person has any ability at all to feel any mystical experience. in fact, there may even at some point be an inverse relationship (witness pedophile priests, thieving pastors and whole hate-mongering congregations). but at the base, beginner level, doesn't it make sense that without a predisposition to feeling the presence of god one is less likely to be involved in any religion and therefore be 'less religious'? and stop and look around at your own circle. if you look at everyone you know does it seem like the more analytical and less emotive someone is, the less likely that person is to be a member of a religion? and is the converse true?
i touched on my reasoning for this train of thought in an earlier post. i don't know that i am necessarily on the 'genetically predisposed to be religious' list. i don't meditate well. i don't pray well. the corporate worship experience does not open me to an experience with the almighty and i am not expecting any divine visitations anytime soon. but when i play there's something that happens, and so i wonder if we all really do have some way to tap into that flow, and if it's just a little more difficult for some than others.
to be certain, we haven't made it any easier. the ages of reason and analysis have subsumed the age of experience and art and mysticism for so long now that our modern society has little to no way for someone to gain a mystical insight without great effort. even those who may be more prone to those experiences have few outlets into which they can plug, and the available outlets are frequently unattractive for reasons of bigotry, exclusivity, threat of violence, fear of judgment, hypocrisy or just age-old boring traditionalism. in older cultures, mysticism was part and parcel of life. it was what was real. our own advancements in science and rational thought have killed our ability to believe in anything beyond that which we can touch, and without that ability we are even less able to open ourselves to any religious experience because we are less willing, and there are things that simply must be believed to be seen, not the other way around.
it strikes me that we as a human race were born into experience with the innate ability to have that mystical experience. most these days think that early cultures' belief systems are simply signs of their inability to rationalize and their lack of scientific knowledge, ghost stories to explain away the universe around them, and perhaps there's something to that. but every step we take down the rabbit hole of quantum physics and string theories suggests that perhaps our own scientifically-based ideas make less sense than we think, that the picture is much, much larger than we can see, and so i wonder if maybe we have, with all our learning, unlearned something that might be more fundamentally necessary and more fundamentally true than all the science we can muster. after all, if we find through the current trends in physics that there are myriad universes and dimensions and that every choice we make creates a fork in the road that generates a new pair of existences, doesn't that lend credence to the hindu and buddhist notions that reality is but a dream and the true reality lies beneath it, underpinning it while at the same time undermining it? and every time we turn around we find that there's another variable we missed in the equation, and we have to manufacture dark matter, background energies and rays and constants and other artificial balancers just to make the math work. why is something as creatively-named yet as unobservable as 'dark matter' more valid than a god experience or explanation?
i think perhaps that we have, in our zealotry for science and reason, fallen easy prey to plato's allegory of the cave - every bit as easy prey as any primitive belief system. and i don't mean to suggest that any particular religion is necessarily more accurate or has walked around the rock to discover the fire and shadows. but i personally find a lot of beauty in the acceptance of the fact that we are in the cave and that perhaps there is a different explanation than what we see. that acceptance can be born of the ability to feel something larger than just one's neurons firing and the effects of group-think. when i design something there is a feeling more of 'uncovering' something that already exists and that wants to be revealed. when i play music there is a feeling of going to someplace where that music already is and bringing it back for others to hear. these feelings may be illusions, certainly. but they may also be factual, or they may be beautiful analogies for some universal mechanism we will never understand.
this existence is not a simple place, and there is far more in play than quarks and leptons. even science admits that. and so i wonder if, in discounting the mystical experience, we are discounting something as important as science. hell, i sometimes wonder if we are discounting something more important! but my greater concern is that we are training and breeding out of ourselves the ability to experience that deeper world. i worry that we are actively destroying our own ability to relate to the universe around us on its own natural terms. instead of dealing in the language the universe natively speaks, have we created esperanto in an effort to do it better? are we speaking a language that is dead before it ever was alive? i don't know. but i do know that human history is filled with wonderful allegory and myth, and each step we take in our modern society seems to remove us further from our own roots. we are a world full of people who cannot understand our own religion because its intellectualism is beyond our capacity, and we are losing the ability to believe in the simpler explanations, dammit.
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