this journey is quite an exhausting one. i am finding more and more that i would far rather hike for days through rocky mountain national forest, lugging my own gear and food and sleeping wherever i find myself at night, than explore my own inner landscape. i fee like i'd be far less worn out.
each day, or at least each week, brings the discovery of yet another block i have placed onto the wall i have built around my inner self. i have written rules for my own behavior that keep me in check and don't allow the five-year-old inside me to run freely. i'm not speaking of my inner child as the term is commonly used, at least i don't believe i am. but down inside me is a little kid that never grew up because i didn't allow him to exist, so his growth was stunted and he's just now beginning to emerge. and he's an annoying little cuss.
i have found that i seem to have more in common with my elder son than i would ever have thought possible. caleb is relentlessly emotional, so completely ruled by his feelings at times that he literally cannot control what he does or how he responds, and as frustrating as that can be for me as his parent, i have always had a but of a grudging respect and even admiration for it. he can be so overwhelmed by his adoration for you that couldn't stop himself from hugging so impossibly hard that he uses ever fiber of muscle that he has. if he has his heart set on something that does not work out, it is the end of the world to him, not for selfish reasons necessarily but because he has invested himself so fully in that dream that it has become his reality, and something so simple as a friend not being able to play a particular afternoon is devastating to him on a level that would to most seem more appropriate for a death in the family. once upon a time i was like that. i can remember it. and it was not welcome.
and i started to build. i gathered block upon block and stacked them one on another, creating a wall that manufactured with each row a newer and deeper sense of stoicism, a dam to hold back that flood was so strong that it would take me over and not allow me to control my own reactions. those waters of whatever feelings i was having would wash over me and there nothing i could do to swim in them and force my direction. i would simply ride that tide, letting it take me where it would. it was easier, more natural, more accurate and more right, but it was unacceptable and would not work. so came the wall, and the wall has grown so very high.
but it has outlived its usefulness. i no longer live in the world that required that control, and the waters on the back side of that structure have risen to the point that the wall can no longer contain them and they spill over the top of it in subtle waves and splashes. for now. but there have come to be times when those splashes and waves become larger and pour over the edges in torrents, and it is impossible to hold back flowing water with nothing more than your hands. i find myself running back and forth, trying to gather the waters back up as they fall and toss them, press them, mash them or simply to hold them at the top, praying the spillage won't be too great.
but it is becoming greater than i can muster the energy to keep up with. i can longer run quickly enough, my hands are no longer large enough and i have run out of blocks to add to the wall, and the waters are seeping through my fingers or eluding my hands altogether and they have begun to pour over onto the ground around me and make their wet and difficult way into the world from which i had managed to isolate them.
it is a weird and terrifying experience to know that at any moment i could break into tears or unexpected laughter. i don't believe myself unstable, but it feels that way to me because i'm simply not accustomed to it. random moments of beauty can overwhelm me, moments of sadness can become unbearably poignant, moments of disappointment manage to breed themselves into anger and resentment the likes of which it would take days, months or years to cultivate for someone with a proper lifetime's worth of experience. i can find myself taken over by music to the degree that i am moved quite literally to tears while driving, a particularly soulful song grabbing hold of me and taking me with it, and for now, anyway, no matter how foreign the feeling i am willing to let myself go for the ride. it's a wonderful and magnificent and frightening and exhilarating thing to be one of those people whom i have always secretly respected.
i remember a scene frequently from the movie 'philadelphia'. i thought that film was overwrought and overrated, and i still feel that way, but that overwrought sense made this one scene work. i believe it's at a party, and tom hanks's character is singing with an opera and is so overcome that he is left a shuddering and balling mess by the time it has ended. it is over-the-top, almost silly in its overdone-ness. but that scene has stuck with me because i never thought myself capable and i would have loved to understand what that was like. i hated that scene when i saw it, thinking it foolish and ridiculous, but i have never forgotten the look on hanks's face, the camera sweep up and over him as the piece rules him. secretly, i wanted to be able to do that.
well, i can do that. i am actually built that way and have made myself not believe it, forced myself to control it, tame it and keep it under wraps. no more. i am my own son, and i have tidal waves of emotion that i have never let myself experience in which i am now going to be happy to swim. i will let myself daydream. i will stand and stare at a piece of art that moves me until i can no longer bear it. i will let myself be sad about something not going the way i had hoped or be overjoyed by something that did. i am standing still and watching those waters spill, and i intend to dance in them as they fall like a kid playing in the rain.
4.3.09
2.3.09
this is a test
mostly just to see if this thing still works! it's been forever since i wrote anything, and a lot of that is because i haven't had much in the way of inspiration of late. also, with time the desire to churn everything out through the keyboard fades. all the miserable thoughts i might have start to lose the need to be expressed the longer i am in therapy. it doesn't feel yet like i am past the point where depression is a risk anymore, and i certainly haven't made any breakthrough that has magically made me fart sunshine. but therapy is such a good thing - it's giving me a place where i can spit out all of my c0ncerns and worries and sadnesses with someone else, and that almost negates the original point of this blog.
and so i am considering what to do with it from here. i have enjoyed writing. a lot. thus, i think from this point forward i'll likely have sporadic mental health and emotional musings, but that this will either become a home for my general philosophical ramblings or nothing more than a relic that documents essentially the final quarter of 2008. only time will tell.
and so i am considering what to do with it from here. i have enjoyed writing. a lot. thus, i think from this point forward i'll likely have sporadic mental health and emotional musings, but that this will either become a home for my general philosophical ramblings or nothing more than a relic that documents essentially the final quarter of 2008. only time will tell.
17.2.09
the secret
is no secret at all, i'm sure. the secret is simply to be open. i am reading a book right now co-written by the dalai lama, and his contention is that his openness is what allows him to be happy. could it really be so simple? of course it could. but simple is rarely easy.
one is rarely more open to attack than when open to another person. if your arms are spread wide for a hug, you are never more vulnerable to a blow to the stomach or a kick to the groin. but without that openness, you are also never open to the hug you seek. and it is as simple as being strong enough to be willing to weather the blows in order to allow for the hug. we reap what we sow in all regards, but i feel it is most especially true in this one.
the fear? becoming overwhelmed. i am exhausted with myself right now. i have but dipped my toe into the waters of own emotions, and i already fear the overwhelming nature of what lies under the still surface. there is an undertow to the human soul that can become so strong to drag one down, and i am afraid of that, but i have already been there. i no longer am cripplingly afraid of my own dark side. but the light - i am also afraid of the light.
if i open myself, are those blows too strong? i have been battered about by winds of feeling already, opening myself little bits across the years, and what lies inside me is strong, so strong i fear my ability to control it. i can feel inside me something that wants out; it is not malevolent or bad, but just strong. i fear it's wanting out, because i feel like it may be a dog off the leash at a park, an openness that leaves me unable to protect myself or hold myself together.
which is nothing to fear at all. what have i to protect? in many ways i am only a shell anyway, the result of shutting myself off from the world for so long. and so why should i not let myself make that opening? all it will take is one small crack, and everything inside me can come pouring out, a torrent of beauty spilling out onto the floor and climbing the walls and radiating outward from me into my surroundings and over everything i can see. i can build a beautiful outlook that will make all the difference in the world for me, and maybe just all the difference in the world. i am finding over nights and through the relentless barrage of images and stories that my mind generates that i want to pour myself out, but i am afraid of losing myself in that process.
but isn't that what it's all about? isn't it about losing one's self to allow one's self to become what it is meant to be? if i can give up that control, the things i see will no longer be threats, but loving opportunity. that which i have will become no longer responsibility but gratefulness, that which i do not have will no longer be resentment but only that which i do not have, and at the most hope, but no longer regret.
i feel this morning like i have spent too long curled in a ball, tossed about while floating disagreeably on the waves of this ocean, allowing myself to be thrown about by waves and baked in sun. i feel like it is time to open that ball, allow myself to drown and become part of this ocean, moving into the newness that is what life is meant to be: all one, all together, open and free and connected. no longer fearing those brushes at my own edges, but feeling those brushes and embracing them.
i am afraid of this. i do not know how to do it. but i want to figure it out. can i do it slowly, opening a small crack and letting myself trickle out? or is the secret that i must dash the wall and let the torrent flow forth? must the opening be complete first in order to function? only time will tell. but it is time to tell. baby steps are what i have. they may not be enough as yet, but they are what i can take. i must take them.
one is rarely more open to attack than when open to another person. if your arms are spread wide for a hug, you are never more vulnerable to a blow to the stomach or a kick to the groin. but without that openness, you are also never open to the hug you seek. and it is as simple as being strong enough to be willing to weather the blows in order to allow for the hug. we reap what we sow in all regards, but i feel it is most especially true in this one.
the fear? becoming overwhelmed. i am exhausted with myself right now. i have but dipped my toe into the waters of own emotions, and i already fear the overwhelming nature of what lies under the still surface. there is an undertow to the human soul that can become so strong to drag one down, and i am afraid of that, but i have already been there. i no longer am cripplingly afraid of my own dark side. but the light - i am also afraid of the light.
if i open myself, are those blows too strong? i have been battered about by winds of feeling already, opening myself little bits across the years, and what lies inside me is strong, so strong i fear my ability to control it. i can feel inside me something that wants out; it is not malevolent or bad, but just strong. i fear it's wanting out, because i feel like it may be a dog off the leash at a park, an openness that leaves me unable to protect myself or hold myself together.
which is nothing to fear at all. what have i to protect? in many ways i am only a shell anyway, the result of shutting myself off from the world for so long. and so why should i not let myself make that opening? all it will take is one small crack, and everything inside me can come pouring out, a torrent of beauty spilling out onto the floor and climbing the walls and radiating outward from me into my surroundings and over everything i can see. i can build a beautiful outlook that will make all the difference in the world for me, and maybe just all the difference in the world. i am finding over nights and through the relentless barrage of images and stories that my mind generates that i want to pour myself out, but i am afraid of losing myself in that process.
but isn't that what it's all about? isn't it about losing one's self to allow one's self to become what it is meant to be? if i can give up that control, the things i see will no longer be threats, but loving opportunity. that which i have will become no longer responsibility but gratefulness, that which i do not have will no longer be resentment but only that which i do not have, and at the most hope, but no longer regret.
i feel this morning like i have spent too long curled in a ball, tossed about while floating disagreeably on the waves of this ocean, allowing myself to be thrown about by waves and baked in sun. i feel like it is time to open that ball, allow myself to drown and become part of this ocean, moving into the newness that is what life is meant to be: all one, all together, open and free and connected. no longer fearing those brushes at my own edges, but feeling those brushes and embracing them.
i am afraid of this. i do not know how to do it. but i want to figure it out. can i do it slowly, opening a small crack and letting myself trickle out? or is the secret that i must dash the wall and let the torrent flow forth? must the opening be complete first in order to function? only time will tell. but it is time to tell. baby steps are what i have. they may not be enough as yet, but they are what i can take. i must take them.
11.2.09
lines
i wonder what it is that we find so attractive about the straight and narrow, the black and white. is it comfortable for some reason to deny that there is not more than varying shades of gray and infinitely curved and twisted shapes? why on earth must we fight the very nature that spawned us?
one need only look out the window to see the flaw in our design. man plans; god laughs. we tame and whip natural form, attempting to straighten and simplify things, codifying the complex and lyrical shapes of nature into ever-simpler volumes of boxes and spheres and triangles, every surface smooth, every edge razor sharp and perfectly defined. and for how long does it work? not very, when the grand scheme is seen.
a tree has no lines, a river no planes. there is no smoothness to a field, no mathematically simple perfection to a flower's petals. the world that was given to us cannot be tamed, but must be live with in accord. we section off pieces of the land with attempts at straight line fences to guard our boxes; mother nature blows them down and tears off our roofs. certainly, she tears down her own trees as well, but this is all part of how it works for her. she builds, she destroys. we build, she destroys. and yet we fight her and try to tell her that mean paternal rationality and logical progression are her masters. she has yet to lose.
i believe we are killing ourselves, evolving ourselves into irrelevance with our need for straight. nature abhors an absolute, and yet we attempt them. we build religions of absolutes, laws without subtlety, societies of relentless 'progress' and consumption. we manufacture new imaginary boundaries to define 'us' and 'them', more lines that exist nowhere but on sheets of paper just so we are able to say 'this is mine' keep out'. there is no wisdom in tilting at windmills - though romantic, it will eventually lead to ruin.
why can we not allow nature to take her courses? why must we always seek to understand? what is it within us that causes us to be unable simply to allow something to be what it is without the need to reshape it or somehow attempt to improve upon its form so that it becomes more useful to us? there is beauty in the bohemian, the poetic and swirling and curving and notched and twisted and decaying and fuzzy and gray.
i find comfort in the black and white, but it is a comfort that has never sat well with me. i blanch at the yoke of rationality that i put on myself. i see the pattern in my numbers, recognize the theoretical beauty of a straight line and a right angle. but they feel wrong somehow. when i let myself stop thinking, my inner landscape swirls and twirls, it odes not follow linear progressions of logical step and logical step.
there is wisdom in the stream of consciousness. there is beauty in allowing what is to be. the twists and turns that life throws at us are nothing more than the natural order; they are not obstacles, but simply the next turns or twists. the mind of god is very likely not a giant computer, crunching numbers and logically spitting out causes and effects, but a chaotic and self-organized system of unexplainable mystery, wheels within wheels in spiral arrays that have an order far beyond a pattern we will ever grasp. it is like wind: we know what it is and what its effects are, we know the mechanisms that create wind, but we will never really understand the how and the why. every discovery leads to another mystery. the one answer is never found, and if it ever were it would likely be a very unsatisfying 42.
and therein lies the beautiful joke douglas adams gave us. thousands of years spent crunching the numbers and the great computer responds with the final answer to life, the universe, and everything in it being 42. we will toil relentlessly to find the answer, but when we get it we won't like it. we're not supposed to. we're not built for that. we're part of nature, not its overlords. this is our charge, not our command, and we are not wiser than the mind which set it up.
one need only look out the window to see the flaw in our design. man plans; god laughs. we tame and whip natural form, attempting to straighten and simplify things, codifying the complex and lyrical shapes of nature into ever-simpler volumes of boxes and spheres and triangles, every surface smooth, every edge razor sharp and perfectly defined. and for how long does it work? not very, when the grand scheme is seen.
a tree has no lines, a river no planes. there is no smoothness to a field, no mathematically simple perfection to a flower's petals. the world that was given to us cannot be tamed, but must be live with in accord. we section off pieces of the land with attempts at straight line fences to guard our boxes; mother nature blows them down and tears off our roofs. certainly, she tears down her own trees as well, but this is all part of how it works for her. she builds, she destroys. we build, she destroys. and yet we fight her and try to tell her that mean paternal rationality and logical progression are her masters. she has yet to lose.
i believe we are killing ourselves, evolving ourselves into irrelevance with our need for straight. nature abhors an absolute, and yet we attempt them. we build religions of absolutes, laws without subtlety, societies of relentless 'progress' and consumption. we manufacture new imaginary boundaries to define 'us' and 'them', more lines that exist nowhere but on sheets of paper just so we are able to say 'this is mine' keep out'. there is no wisdom in tilting at windmills - though romantic, it will eventually lead to ruin.
why can we not allow nature to take her courses? why must we always seek to understand? what is it within us that causes us to be unable simply to allow something to be what it is without the need to reshape it or somehow attempt to improve upon its form so that it becomes more useful to us? there is beauty in the bohemian, the poetic and swirling and curving and notched and twisted and decaying and fuzzy and gray.
i find comfort in the black and white, but it is a comfort that has never sat well with me. i blanch at the yoke of rationality that i put on myself. i see the pattern in my numbers, recognize the theoretical beauty of a straight line and a right angle. but they feel wrong somehow. when i let myself stop thinking, my inner landscape swirls and twirls, it odes not follow linear progressions of logical step and logical step.
there is wisdom in the stream of consciousness. there is beauty in allowing what is to be. the twists and turns that life throws at us are nothing more than the natural order; they are not obstacles, but simply the next turns or twists. the mind of god is very likely not a giant computer, crunching numbers and logically spitting out causes and effects, but a chaotic and self-organized system of unexplainable mystery, wheels within wheels in spiral arrays that have an order far beyond a pattern we will ever grasp. it is like wind: we know what it is and what its effects are, we know the mechanisms that create wind, but we will never really understand the how and the why. every discovery leads to another mystery. the one answer is never found, and if it ever were it would likely be a very unsatisfying 42.
and therein lies the beautiful joke douglas adams gave us. thousands of years spent crunching the numbers and the great computer responds with the final answer to life, the universe, and everything in it being 42. we will toil relentlessly to find the answer, but when we get it we won't like it. we're not supposed to. we're not built for that. we're part of nature, not its overlords. this is our charge, not our command, and we are not wiser than the mind which set it up.
a new set of rules
essentially, i am going to force myself to let things be. when i write, i am going to try to leave what i write without revising ten ways to sunday. i realize not everything up here is perfect, that there are still mistakes and flaws and problems in every post on here. but i have come to a place where i need to start teaching myself to accept those flaws, to learn that everything will never be perfect no matter how hard i try. there will always be a mistake, a flaw, a problem. there will alwys be an awkward turn of phrase, a word left out, a clumsy metaphor. but it is time to let those things be for a while.
my writing may always have come across as off-the-cuff, as though i woke up and spit it out without ever giving it a second thought. that is far from the case. nearly everything here has been rethought, rewritten and revised. i am going to stop that for now. this may result in a precipitous drop in the quality of what is written, but i am forcing myself to be ok with that.
my writing may always have come across as off-the-cuff, as though i woke up and spit it out without ever giving it a second thought. that is far from the case. nearly everything here has been rethought, rewritten and revised. i am going to stop that for now. this may result in a precipitous drop in the quality of what is written, but i am forcing myself to be ok with that.
10.2.09
selfishness
very briefly for today: where does care for self end and selfishness begin? i am hearing left and right about honoring myself and what i need and what i want, and making sure that i am not making my desires subservient to those of others. i must be willing to say no when others want me to do something that is in conflict with my own wants. bear in mind that i understand this whole dynamic changes when those 'want's are changed to 'need's. wants will very frequently be subsumed by needs.
but essentially, i have so very rarely put myself first that i have no idea how to strike the balance when things get gray, when that line is blurred. i have been trying very hard to determine what some of my needs and wants are, and now that i find some of them in conflict with those of others the pendulum is swinging back toward where i always have been. if i have this want, but everyone else has an opposing want, does not the greater number rule? do i really deserve to have what i want, or am i simply being selfish?
simply put, i don't know. i will continually second-guess my own choices, and i will worry and wonder how my life might have turned out if i had put myself all along, but most of that doesn't matter now. it is in the past. i have now what choices i have made, and i can only build on those with the choices i have yet to make. but how does one do that if one cannot even trust that one is acting with the right interests? where do my choices cease to be my choices? where does my responsibility to myself end and my responsibility to others begin? how do i know when i am being selfish instead of honoring myself?
bugger.
but essentially, i have so very rarely put myself first that i have no idea how to strike the balance when things get gray, when that line is blurred. i have been trying very hard to determine what some of my needs and wants are, and now that i find some of them in conflict with those of others the pendulum is swinging back toward where i always have been. if i have this want, but everyone else has an opposing want, does not the greater number rule? do i really deserve to have what i want, or am i simply being selfish?
simply put, i don't know. i will continually second-guess my own choices, and i will worry and wonder how my life might have turned out if i had put myself all along, but most of that doesn't matter now. it is in the past. i have now what choices i have made, and i can only build on those with the choices i have yet to make. but how does one do that if one cannot even trust that one is acting with the right interests? where do my choices cease to be my choices? where does my responsibility to myself end and my responsibility to others begin? how do i know when i am being selfish instead of honoring myself?
bugger.
2.2.09
equanimity
composure. sangfroid. even-headedness. i am filled with it this morning, and i am not at all impressed.
equanimity is the goal of the buddhist practice. it strikes me as the thing that john the baptist must have cultivated in himself while awaiting his death, what the apostle paul must have settled into while languishing in prison after prison, what mandela must have required to endure and then to forgive. it is what i see in the dalai lama every time he is interviewed, and i have always desired to be in that state.
acceptance. resignation without giving up. a decided lack of passion about one's own circumstance. i don't mean to imply that i am stuck in any sort of prison or anything of the sort. if anything, quite the opposite today. in yesterday morning, upon waking, i found myself making a connection to the world i have not felt in quite some time, if ever. it was not that i looked around and felt that all was love, that i clicked into place and everything around me suddenly made sense, or that every choice i have ever made came rushing back to me in a pregnant moment and i gained great clarity as to how i came to be where i am. nothing so grandiose, i'm afraid, but i did wake on sunday morning with a feeling that i was part of the picture, the really big one.
for a long, long time now i have felt outside of it all, like i had somehow been lifted out of the stream of consciousness the rest of the world swims in and had been left to sit on the shore and watch the fun with muddy feet. it was a feeling of separateness, of aloneness almost - a feeling that i wasn't quite fitting the way i am supposed to, like a puzzle piece that someone has jammed into the wrong space, bent tabs squeezed into a place in which they don't belong, kinked up and image flaking off. it had become not so serious as that perhaps, but rather than feeling jammed in it had come to the point where i had pulled myself out of the space altogether and rested on the picture wondering where my place even was. i don't know that i have truly wedged myself back in yet, but i at least recognized yesterday that i have tabs and divots, that there is indeed a spot for me to fit in this grand design. i felt like i did have someplace i belonged and was part of the picture. i felt other people like they were peers, not threats.
i ran yesterday, too, for the first time in 2 months or so. i had taken a trot last weekend - just a lazy something to test the legs and see how the felt - but yesterday i ran for real. just a quick 5k, but that was just the thing: it was reasonably quick, under 25 minutes. not bad, and the legs feel pretty good this morning. but i ran. got back to being me for a bit. nice.
and this has all left me with a feeling of equanimity. i have peace, i have some small sense of contentment. i am neither overjoyed nor irritated this morning. i find myself of simple and sound mind with neither thrill nor venom. i just am. i have achieved, to some degree, what i have sought. and it is uncomfortable.
i am not calm. i am not smooth. i have always been in turmoil. i have, for as long as i can remember, been a busy sea, and to have my waves suddenly gone is leaving me a little confused, i think. i am passionate, enthralled, annoyed, roiling and boiling and bubbling and tossed about, rain-spattered and water over the gunwales or racing swiftly under blue skies and over sun-baked simple waves, with the light hot on my back and my attention on the sea in front, waiting for the wave that would bounce me from my joys and thrash me back into stormy waters. to sit still in the doldrums, waves gone and sea of glass beneath me, breezes cool and temperate and soft enough not to disturb my lack of motion, is unfamiliar and not a little disconcerting.
i have come to where i want to be, or at least have found my way into the same country, sharing surroundings with it, and i am finding that this country is so new and so different that it is hard to decide that it is a nice place to stay. i know that i must remain here in the glass-smooth seas of this country, if only to survive the journey, for i know to have lived as long as i have in the surging waters of my own oceans has been sheer luck. my outlook has been severe, my waves sharp and dangerous, and to have made it through them has been as astounding a bit of fortune as this world has seen. and so it is not without great introspection that i say that i feel like a foreigner here in this smooth water. for all of the connection i felt yesterday, for all the part-of-it-allness, the very feeling of composure it begat has created a dis-ease within me through my lack of familiarity with it.
sad, i suppose, that i should get to the point that so many wish to achieve - the connection and acceptance rolled together into a balance that gives peace and calm outlook that can take so long to cultivate - only to be confused that it has stolen my passion. i feel things in great, wide swings, depths and peaks of equal height and depth if not frequency, and this spot in between which we all seek has me wondering what the big deal is. i am fighting for acceptance of my own acceptance, equanimity in the face of my own equanimity. with my passions quelled, this middle ground feels to me to be middling. this could take more work than i thought.
equanimity is the goal of the buddhist practice. it strikes me as the thing that john the baptist must have cultivated in himself while awaiting his death, what the apostle paul must have settled into while languishing in prison after prison, what mandela must have required to endure and then to forgive. it is what i see in the dalai lama every time he is interviewed, and i have always desired to be in that state.
acceptance. resignation without giving up. a decided lack of passion about one's own circumstance. i don't mean to imply that i am stuck in any sort of prison or anything of the sort. if anything, quite the opposite today. in yesterday morning, upon waking, i found myself making a connection to the world i have not felt in quite some time, if ever. it was not that i looked around and felt that all was love, that i clicked into place and everything around me suddenly made sense, or that every choice i have ever made came rushing back to me in a pregnant moment and i gained great clarity as to how i came to be where i am. nothing so grandiose, i'm afraid, but i did wake on sunday morning with a feeling that i was part of the picture, the really big one.
for a long, long time now i have felt outside of it all, like i had somehow been lifted out of the stream of consciousness the rest of the world swims in and had been left to sit on the shore and watch the fun with muddy feet. it was a feeling of separateness, of aloneness almost - a feeling that i wasn't quite fitting the way i am supposed to, like a puzzle piece that someone has jammed into the wrong space, bent tabs squeezed into a place in which they don't belong, kinked up and image flaking off. it had become not so serious as that perhaps, but rather than feeling jammed in it had come to the point where i had pulled myself out of the space altogether and rested on the picture wondering where my place even was. i don't know that i have truly wedged myself back in yet, but i at least recognized yesterday that i have tabs and divots, that there is indeed a spot for me to fit in this grand design. i felt like i did have someplace i belonged and was part of the picture. i felt other people like they were peers, not threats.
i ran yesterday, too, for the first time in 2 months or so. i had taken a trot last weekend - just a lazy something to test the legs and see how the felt - but yesterday i ran for real. just a quick 5k, but that was just the thing: it was reasonably quick, under 25 minutes. not bad, and the legs feel pretty good this morning. but i ran. got back to being me for a bit. nice.
and this has all left me with a feeling of equanimity. i have peace, i have some small sense of contentment. i am neither overjoyed nor irritated this morning. i find myself of simple and sound mind with neither thrill nor venom. i just am. i have achieved, to some degree, what i have sought. and it is uncomfortable.
i am not calm. i am not smooth. i have always been in turmoil. i have, for as long as i can remember, been a busy sea, and to have my waves suddenly gone is leaving me a little confused, i think. i am passionate, enthralled, annoyed, roiling and boiling and bubbling and tossed about, rain-spattered and water over the gunwales or racing swiftly under blue skies and over sun-baked simple waves, with the light hot on my back and my attention on the sea in front, waiting for the wave that would bounce me from my joys and thrash me back into stormy waters. to sit still in the doldrums, waves gone and sea of glass beneath me, breezes cool and temperate and soft enough not to disturb my lack of motion, is unfamiliar and not a little disconcerting.
i have come to where i want to be, or at least have found my way into the same country, sharing surroundings with it, and i am finding that this country is so new and so different that it is hard to decide that it is a nice place to stay. i know that i must remain here in the glass-smooth seas of this country, if only to survive the journey, for i know to have lived as long as i have in the surging waters of my own oceans has been sheer luck. my outlook has been severe, my waves sharp and dangerous, and to have made it through them has been as astounding a bit of fortune as this world has seen. and so it is not without great introspection that i say that i feel like a foreigner here in this smooth water. for all of the connection i felt yesterday, for all the part-of-it-allness, the very feeling of composure it begat has created a dis-ease within me through my lack of familiarity with it.
sad, i suppose, that i should get to the point that so many wish to achieve - the connection and acceptance rolled together into a balance that gives peace and calm outlook that can take so long to cultivate - only to be confused that it has stolen my passion. i feel things in great, wide swings, depths and peaks of equal height and depth if not frequency, and this spot in between which we all seek has me wondering what the big deal is. i am fighting for acceptance of my own acceptance, equanimity in the face of my own equanimity. with my passions quelled, this middle ground feels to me to be middling. this could take more work than i thought.
29.1.09
perfectionism
so, the dreams have slowed down but haven't really stopped. i started seeing a new therapiste (she's female, so it's therapiste, not therapist, you know), and she suggested that it's very likely that i am finally ready to start dealing with some of the stuff i've been burying, and as a result my unconscious mind is starting to root it up and spit it out because it's finally ok to do so. sounds alright to me, and i'm sure it's better than the alternative (which i gather means swallowing it all continually throughout the remainder of my life until it eventually either explodes and takes me with it or rots me from the inside out) - but it's still exhausting.
frankly, i'm bored with my own brain's inability to be obtuse. we're always reading and hearing about dream interpretation, and how certain things have symbolic meanings that it frequently takes specialists or at least books to muddle our way through, and then even freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. but really, my dreams are so glaringly obvious when they even bother to be symbolic at all that it is, honestly, embarrassing. but i suppose that all just reinforces what the therapiste says - must be time to deal with it if i can't even be bothered to codify it.
in any case, in churning through this with the therapiste, it became patently obvious that my underlying, root-cause issue for many of my difficulties (challenges? problems?) is perfectionism. now, those who know me are all sitting and reading this with giant question marks overt heir heads, because i come across as far less than a perfectionist, but there's so much truth to this it was a little painful to hear.
i want things to have discrete results, provable truths, to be right or wrong, black or white, and in the end i prefer it if everything is perfectly lined up and executed to the utmost. when you realize just how impossible perfectionism is, you can see just how paralyzing it can be. roll a massively lacking self image and more than a few pounds of self-loathing on top of that realization, and you have yourself a recipe for never having the confidence to stat anything at all, and for becoming disenchanted with the things one does start before they're ever finished because they're not going right. crap. sounds so terribly familiar i wanted to curl up and quit right there.
and social anxiety? don't even get me started. in sales, there is a thing known as the 'hit rate', essentially the percentage of successful sales made for a volume of calls made. if you're over 10% in most industries, you're superstar. and in real life all our interactions have a hit rate, but we think of them as friends, acquaintances, enemies, or just those who can barely tolerate us. try loading perfectionism into your social requirements and you will desire nothing less than a completely unachievable hit rate of 100%. you want every interaction to go perfectly and to come out the other side with a new best friend. that is never going to happen, so you obsess over what might go wrong. you obsess over what did go wrong. you obsess over what didn't go wrong so you can try to repeat it next time you run up against this person.
what i think makes the most sad about it all is what it may have cost me. i realize this may make little sense, but i do what i do now because of my perceived inability to do what i want to do. i have never wanted to be anything less than creative for a living, to have a consistent outlet for everything inside me that wants to be expressed and to share the beauty or ugliness of that with the rest of the world, be it through visual arts or music. but while i may have some natural ability, i haven't the patience to develop it because it should be perfect already. i have a subconscious impression that everything i attempt should be coming out right and that learning shouldn't be necessary because it means taking imperfect steps. and so i leave myself with a partial ability to do anything creative that is even worthless in and of itself because i won't use it due to its imperfection. now i live in a world of numbers that are provable and discrete. there are right and wrong answers. i exercise some creativity in what i do because there is definitely an art to massaging margins and managing bids, and the handling of salespeople versus product management is an art form all to itself. but in the end, it's not me, and i'm just now beginning to mourn the loss of what i might have been able to do if i didn't just see art and music as having unprovable success rates. in my mind, artistic success translates as sales of work or as being completely satisfied with end products, and i may never have sold a thing and with my current expectations i will never be free to enjoy the satisfaction of looking at my own work and being satisfied with it. that has destroyed my ability to do anything with my desires and left me in a world of numbers.
even now i want nothing more than to spend the rest of the day going over this post to correct everything that is wrong in it. poor word choice here, typo there, that section should be scrapped altogether. that i ever post anything is a bit of a miracle. i do have to go and get in the shower to prepare for work, so instead of revising and editing for rest of the day i will just bury myself in numbers and in the back of my mind wonder about who might be reading this and what they're thinking of it and apologizing to them in my head for all the mistakes in it and for the fact that it really could be so much better written.
frankly, i'm bored with my own brain's inability to be obtuse. we're always reading and hearing about dream interpretation, and how certain things have symbolic meanings that it frequently takes specialists or at least books to muddle our way through, and then even freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. but really, my dreams are so glaringly obvious when they even bother to be symbolic at all that it is, honestly, embarrassing. but i suppose that all just reinforces what the therapiste says - must be time to deal with it if i can't even be bothered to codify it.
in any case, in churning through this with the therapiste, it became patently obvious that my underlying, root-cause issue for many of my difficulties (challenges? problems?) is perfectionism. now, those who know me are all sitting and reading this with giant question marks overt heir heads, because i come across as far less than a perfectionist, but there's so much truth to this it was a little painful to hear.
i want things to have discrete results, provable truths, to be right or wrong, black or white, and in the end i prefer it if everything is perfectly lined up and executed to the utmost. when you realize just how impossible perfectionism is, you can see just how paralyzing it can be. roll a massively lacking self image and more than a few pounds of self-loathing on top of that realization, and you have yourself a recipe for never having the confidence to stat anything at all, and for becoming disenchanted with the things one does start before they're ever finished because they're not going right. crap. sounds so terribly familiar i wanted to curl up and quit right there.
and social anxiety? don't even get me started. in sales, there is a thing known as the 'hit rate', essentially the percentage of successful sales made for a volume of calls made. if you're over 10% in most industries, you're superstar. and in real life all our interactions have a hit rate, but we think of them as friends, acquaintances, enemies, or just those who can barely tolerate us. try loading perfectionism into your social requirements and you will desire nothing less than a completely unachievable hit rate of 100%. you want every interaction to go perfectly and to come out the other side with a new best friend. that is never going to happen, so you obsess over what might go wrong. you obsess over what did go wrong. you obsess over what didn't go wrong so you can try to repeat it next time you run up against this person.
what i think makes the most sad about it all is what it may have cost me. i realize this may make little sense, but i do what i do now because of my perceived inability to do what i want to do. i have never wanted to be anything less than creative for a living, to have a consistent outlet for everything inside me that wants to be expressed and to share the beauty or ugliness of that with the rest of the world, be it through visual arts or music. but while i may have some natural ability, i haven't the patience to develop it because it should be perfect already. i have a subconscious impression that everything i attempt should be coming out right and that learning shouldn't be necessary because it means taking imperfect steps. and so i leave myself with a partial ability to do anything creative that is even worthless in and of itself because i won't use it due to its imperfection. now i live in a world of numbers that are provable and discrete. there are right and wrong answers. i exercise some creativity in what i do because there is definitely an art to massaging margins and managing bids, and the handling of salespeople versus product management is an art form all to itself. but in the end, it's not me, and i'm just now beginning to mourn the loss of what i might have been able to do if i didn't just see art and music as having unprovable success rates. in my mind, artistic success translates as sales of work or as being completely satisfied with end products, and i may never have sold a thing and with my current expectations i will never be free to enjoy the satisfaction of looking at my own work and being satisfied with it. that has destroyed my ability to do anything with my desires and left me in a world of numbers.
even now i want nothing more than to spend the rest of the day going over this post to correct everything that is wrong in it. poor word choice here, typo there, that section should be scrapped altogether. that i ever post anything is a bit of a miracle. i do have to go and get in the shower to prepare for work, so instead of revising and editing for rest of the day i will just bury myself in numbers and in the back of my mind wonder about who might be reading this and what they're thinking of it and apologizing to them in my head for all the mistakes in it and for the fact that it really could be so much better written.
27.1.09
kitty!
first off, it seems that maybe the dreaming thing is settling down a little. i had a particularly poignant one the other night, no interpretation of symbolism necessary, and i wonder if maybe it was little more than that working its way to the surface. the problem is that my energy level isn't much better, so i don't know what that says. and then, of course, in a final installment of wishy-washiness for the day, my energy level may simply suck due to the fact that we have had three sick kids around here since that dream happened and my system's been fighting off kid germs in the meantime. kid germs are very strong. they're like the hulk of germs: indiscriminate and powerful, and they have a nasty habit of harming those they love.
so, the kitty thing. in a lot of conversations lately it seems that people don't quite understand how one can become depressed and not know it, and there's a lot of validity in not getting it. sometimes, i look back over the last year and wonder how i missed the signs. but the fact of the matter is that depression hides and protects itself, and it makes you feel good about it in ways a healthy mind wouldn't really consider.
and so, cat. it's like a cat. a beautiful, smooth, warm and fuzzy kitty. certainly it has claws, but you don't see them; they're hidden away safely inside the paws, allowing it to pad safely and softly into your lap, such that in spite of the fact that you know those pointy razors are sheathed in there, waiting to knife into your thighs, you don't really consider them a threat, and certainly not relative to the comfort of having this delightful little beastie cuddling against you. it comes to you, all body rubs and begging for your attention, turning itself over to expose its belly to you in the hopes that you'll become absorbed in how cute it is and pay attention to nothing else.
because, like a cat, depression is jealous. jealousy is how it works. it gains your trust to the exclusion of everything else. like a cat that crawls into your lap while you read, only to insert itself between you and your book, and then, not content merely to have your lap now, but requiring to be the sole focus in your existence for that time, the cat will place its paws against the book and push it down against your knees so that reading it becomes impossible and you must pay attention to it. if you continue to try to read, the cat will find its way around to stand on your legs, stretch itself up and stare into your face so that its own eyes fill your vision and you have no choice in the matter. jealous beastie has won again.
there are times when it is less obvious, too. like a cat who wakes in the night to find itself lonely, it will sneak into bed and lie next to you and you'll never even notice it has come until morning when it's too late. perhaps it has inserted itself between your knees as you lie on your back, keeping you from turning yourself over as needed. perhaps it has wrapped itself around your head, purring and creating enough heat and noise to keep your sleep from being peaceful. but you don't really realize it's there until you're fully awake and the night's sleep has already been compromised. and even if you did, it's so soft and warm, and makes you feel so loved, that you'd let it stay anyway.
and therein lies the final piece. the ugly piece. like a cat, who's affections are entirely on the its own terms, depression loves you. you are its host, the thing that feeds it, the thing that protects it. you are its reason to exist, and so it makes you feel loved, too. it can fill your world, staring into your eyes to the exclusion of all else, telling you it loves you and begging you please to rub its back. and, despite the fact that you know this, in spite of the fact that you understand it's a cat and that the love is never truly unconditional with it, you still feel privileged and special. this is your cat (HA!), and it loves you. it wants you, and only you. and so you love it back. you pet it, you nuzzle it, you stroke it and feed it and give it what it wants, because it has made you feel special.
then it tires of the love and swipes you with those fucking claws. again.
so, the kitty thing. in a lot of conversations lately it seems that people don't quite understand how one can become depressed and not know it, and there's a lot of validity in not getting it. sometimes, i look back over the last year and wonder how i missed the signs. but the fact of the matter is that depression hides and protects itself, and it makes you feel good about it in ways a healthy mind wouldn't really consider.
and so, cat. it's like a cat. a beautiful, smooth, warm and fuzzy kitty. certainly it has claws, but you don't see them; they're hidden away safely inside the paws, allowing it to pad safely and softly into your lap, such that in spite of the fact that you know those pointy razors are sheathed in there, waiting to knife into your thighs, you don't really consider them a threat, and certainly not relative to the comfort of having this delightful little beastie cuddling against you. it comes to you, all body rubs and begging for your attention, turning itself over to expose its belly to you in the hopes that you'll become absorbed in how cute it is and pay attention to nothing else.
because, like a cat, depression is jealous. jealousy is how it works. it gains your trust to the exclusion of everything else. like a cat that crawls into your lap while you read, only to insert itself between you and your book, and then, not content merely to have your lap now, but requiring to be the sole focus in your existence for that time, the cat will place its paws against the book and push it down against your knees so that reading it becomes impossible and you must pay attention to it. if you continue to try to read, the cat will find its way around to stand on your legs, stretch itself up and stare into your face so that its own eyes fill your vision and you have no choice in the matter. jealous beastie has won again.
there are times when it is less obvious, too. like a cat who wakes in the night to find itself lonely, it will sneak into bed and lie next to you and you'll never even notice it has come until morning when it's too late. perhaps it has inserted itself between your knees as you lie on your back, keeping you from turning yourself over as needed. perhaps it has wrapped itself around your head, purring and creating enough heat and noise to keep your sleep from being peaceful. but you don't really realize it's there until you're fully awake and the night's sleep has already been compromised. and even if you did, it's so soft and warm, and makes you feel so loved, that you'd let it stay anyway.
and therein lies the final piece. the ugly piece. like a cat, who's affections are entirely on the its own terms, depression loves you. you are its host, the thing that feeds it, the thing that protects it. you are its reason to exist, and so it makes you feel loved, too. it can fill your world, staring into your eyes to the exclusion of all else, telling you it loves you and begging you please to rub its back. and, despite the fact that you know this, in spite of the fact that you understand it's a cat and that the love is never truly unconditional with it, you still feel privileged and special. this is your cat (HA!), and it loves you. it wants you, and only you. and so you love it back. you pet it, you nuzzle it, you stroke it and feed it and give it what it wants, because it has made you feel special.
then it tires of the love and swipes you with those fucking claws. again.
23.1.09
running
still tired, and B had a great point. i'm not running. this might have as much to do with the fact that i'm not sleeping well as my dreams do, and there's no question that i gain a lot of energy when i'm exercising. add to that the fact that a good run is one of the few times where my brain really shuts down, and not running might be contributing to my dream festival.
i may have written on this before, i don't remember. when i run, as i said above, my mind can turn off. there's a notion amongst novices that meditation is about one's mind being clear of thought, but that's not really the case. meditation is about one recognizing the thoughts one's mind generates as nothing more than thoughts and dismissing them before they have a chance to distract from the task at hand. at least that's how i've come to understand it, anyway. for me, that's the magic of a good run. i get one step beyond that.
after about 2 miles, my mind stops generating anything beyond what is needed to keep running and stay alive. there is not much more in my consciousness than left-right-left-right, breathe in, breathe out, turn right, car, turn left, another car, on your left, excuse me, whoa bicycle!, stoplight. and, occasionally, i hate this hill right now. but all the worry, postulation, all the things that keep my brain churning and burning disappear. i no longer wonder about whether it might work better on this account to use this pricing model, whether i could better aggregate data using this arrangement, what might be the best way to present and analyze this table, wonder what's for dinner, are the kids doing alright with me now that i'm more mellow, will B and i ever get back to normal again...
just breath and pounding. restful. peaceful. quiet in the midst of sound, calm in the midst of the fury of the active world. i am working hard, but my mind is still. my body is tiring, but my mind is resting. my mind's time to sleep, the conscious and cognitive self removed from the equation and curled up under the covers of exhaustion and given respite from their neverending workings, the cycling and recycling and lifting up and turning over of issues and problems and confusion stopped for a short while and my brain retreating to its animal sense of presence where its only responsibilities are to keep me functioning and keep me safe. and it is always thankful for it, ever grateful for the chance to stop.
i have been missing this. my mind has been working constantly for 2 months now, the only running having been the relay i ran at the beginning of december. i have given my mind no rest, never given it the chance to be off. like a worker with no vacation or holiday for a lengthy stretch, i fear its work is beginning to suffer, and perhaps it's spilling over into the time when i should be resting my body. my mind is craving some attention, some rest, and it is telling me so by poking me like a neglected 5-year-old pokes at his mother's shoulder, saying 'mom. mom. mom. mom. mom.' until she finally looks up and asks him to stop and he can tell her what he's been dying to pass along. well, i might just have looked up, and my mind may have passed along what it has needed to tell me. time to start running again.
i may have written on this before, i don't remember. when i run, as i said above, my mind can turn off. there's a notion amongst novices that meditation is about one's mind being clear of thought, but that's not really the case. meditation is about one recognizing the thoughts one's mind generates as nothing more than thoughts and dismissing them before they have a chance to distract from the task at hand. at least that's how i've come to understand it, anyway. for me, that's the magic of a good run. i get one step beyond that.
after about 2 miles, my mind stops generating anything beyond what is needed to keep running and stay alive. there is not much more in my consciousness than left-right-left-right, breathe in, breathe out, turn right, car, turn left, another car, on your left, excuse me, whoa bicycle!, stoplight. and, occasionally, i hate this hill right now. but all the worry, postulation, all the things that keep my brain churning and burning disappear. i no longer wonder about whether it might work better on this account to use this pricing model, whether i could better aggregate data using this arrangement, what might be the best way to present and analyze this table, wonder what's for dinner, are the kids doing alright with me now that i'm more mellow, will B and i ever get back to normal again...
just breath and pounding. restful. peaceful. quiet in the midst of sound, calm in the midst of the fury of the active world. i am working hard, but my mind is still. my body is tiring, but my mind is resting. my mind's time to sleep, the conscious and cognitive self removed from the equation and curled up under the covers of exhaustion and given respite from their neverending workings, the cycling and recycling and lifting up and turning over of issues and problems and confusion stopped for a short while and my brain retreating to its animal sense of presence where its only responsibilities are to keep me functioning and keep me safe. and it is always thankful for it, ever grateful for the chance to stop.
i have been missing this. my mind has been working constantly for 2 months now, the only running having been the relay i ran at the beginning of december. i have given my mind no rest, never given it the chance to be off. like a worker with no vacation or holiday for a lengthy stretch, i fear its work is beginning to suffer, and perhaps it's spilling over into the time when i should be resting my body. my mind is craving some attention, some rest, and it is telling me so by poking me like a neglected 5-year-old pokes at his mother's shoulder, saying 'mom. mom. mom. mom. mom.' until she finally looks up and asks him to stop and he can tell her what he's been dying to pass along. well, i might just have looked up, and my mind may have passed along what it has needed to tell me. time to start running again.
21.1.09
tired
i am really hoping this isn't any sort of bad sign. i didn't really think about it until this morning, but i have been unnaturally tired for the past couple of weeks. night before last i went to bed at 9:45pm and pretty much went straight to sleep. granted, i had just spent half an hours in a bath with chamomile and lavender, so a little sleepiness isn't totally unjustified, but when one goes to sleep before 10pm, one should be able to rocket straight out with the alarm at 5:30am. this did not happen. last night, in bed and asleep before 11pm, and had a little trouble dragging it out today until 5:45am or so. it's just not like me, but i suppose i have a right to be a little worn down these days. i just hope it's not diagnostic.
truly, i think there's a whole mess of reasons i'm tapped out. work's been crazy busy, and with big projects that are very important from a strategic standpoint. many of my days have been filled with pondering the great imponderables, and that's both mentally and emotionally draining. and last, and very likely the furthest from least, my dream life seems to have gone off the charts.
my whole life i've never had much of a dream life at night; it seems like i've always done most of my dreaming while wide awake. it's always been one of B's biggest frustrations with me (the daydreaming, not the lack of nighttime storytelling). i simply have just never really been one to remember my dreams, certain creepy blue-skinned ones notwithstanding. but of late it seems i'm waking every couple of hours with some new thing jammed into my recumbent melon that has so jarred me by its presence that it brings me to full consciousness. it's not like there's a raft of nightmares waiting for me on eyes closing - in fact, these dreams are for the most part nonsense or at the least non-threatening. but man, oh man, they just don't seem to let up. and i think i'm just not used to it.
i have a theory. i understand that every living soul dreams at night. it's a part of our mind's mental reboot, a required part of the resting process, without which we would never feel rested and - by some hypotheses - would actually go insane. so i know full well that i have dreamed my entire life. i just have never had them wake me, and i've never remembered them. i believe this to be because of the walls i have built inside my own self, walls that divide off my fears and hopes and dreams from my thinking and feeling mind. i have effectively walled off my unconscious from my conscious, and as a result my conscious self is never allowed access to the things that might stir my emotions, the things that leak out of the mind at night. until now, it is only the most powerful things that have made it through.
that dreaming self is the animal part of us, the most basic bit of our nature where all of our native instincts rule and play freely with our hearts and thoughts. this is the world of little more than fight-or-flight and pure creativity, where any story may be told and our logic has no dominion whatever. it is a place of pure fantasy and where we can show ourselves literally anything. for someone who fears his own emotions and whose sense of self-worth is so tiny as to be self-flagellative, it can be the most terrifying place of all.
i now am spending a lot of energy and effort to break those walls down. i am intentionally punching holes in them, tentative ones right now to be sure, but holes nonetheless. the barrier between my conscious, careful self and whatever lies beneath is coming down one miserable but safe brick at a time, and that other world, dammed up and held at bay for so long, is now spilling over and through and around that wall like so much water that has been set free. and now my poor mind is awash in imagery and fantasy and fear and hope and beauty and ugliness the likes of which it has not had to see for a long, long time and it is, frankly, overwhelmed.
i should start a dream journal, because i already don't remember most of these dreams (except a rather peculiar recurring one where i am imprisoned in a desert, with nothing but a structure like that of a playground and a series of black rubber paths through the sand which hides a collection of particularly nasty, rusted but highly-effective mechanical dog-beasts that are the guardians and methodically chew alive those who wander into the sand - ok, that one is a little creepy, i have to admit) and i think they may be telling. but they are very intense in a way i haven't really experienced outside of the blue lady dreams, and some are truly beautiful. it is not all threat and fear. but it is all foreign and alarming for that.
however this is working, whatever the purpose or cause, they are short-circuiting my sleep to a point where some mornings i feel as if i have had little or none. i remember B saying something about this once when she was making a breakthrough. in time, i expect it will fade into a part of my normal nighttime landscape. but for now, it's exhausting.
of course, i could also be wrong. maybe there are no walls coming down at all and my brain's just on some IT-quality trash dump. there's a lot of garbage files in there, buddy.
truly, i think there's a whole mess of reasons i'm tapped out. work's been crazy busy, and with big projects that are very important from a strategic standpoint. many of my days have been filled with pondering the great imponderables, and that's both mentally and emotionally draining. and last, and very likely the furthest from least, my dream life seems to have gone off the charts.
my whole life i've never had much of a dream life at night; it seems like i've always done most of my dreaming while wide awake. it's always been one of B's biggest frustrations with me (the daydreaming, not the lack of nighttime storytelling). i simply have just never really been one to remember my dreams, certain creepy blue-skinned ones notwithstanding. but of late it seems i'm waking every couple of hours with some new thing jammed into my recumbent melon that has so jarred me by its presence that it brings me to full consciousness. it's not like there's a raft of nightmares waiting for me on eyes closing - in fact, these dreams are for the most part nonsense or at the least non-threatening. but man, oh man, they just don't seem to let up. and i think i'm just not used to it.
i have a theory. i understand that every living soul dreams at night. it's a part of our mind's mental reboot, a required part of the resting process, without which we would never feel rested and - by some hypotheses - would actually go insane. so i know full well that i have dreamed my entire life. i just have never had them wake me, and i've never remembered them. i believe this to be because of the walls i have built inside my own self, walls that divide off my fears and hopes and dreams from my thinking and feeling mind. i have effectively walled off my unconscious from my conscious, and as a result my conscious self is never allowed access to the things that might stir my emotions, the things that leak out of the mind at night. until now, it is only the most powerful things that have made it through.
that dreaming self is the animal part of us, the most basic bit of our nature where all of our native instincts rule and play freely with our hearts and thoughts. this is the world of little more than fight-or-flight and pure creativity, where any story may be told and our logic has no dominion whatever. it is a place of pure fantasy and where we can show ourselves literally anything. for someone who fears his own emotions and whose sense of self-worth is so tiny as to be self-flagellative, it can be the most terrifying place of all.
i now am spending a lot of energy and effort to break those walls down. i am intentionally punching holes in them, tentative ones right now to be sure, but holes nonetheless. the barrier between my conscious, careful self and whatever lies beneath is coming down one miserable but safe brick at a time, and that other world, dammed up and held at bay for so long, is now spilling over and through and around that wall like so much water that has been set free. and now my poor mind is awash in imagery and fantasy and fear and hope and beauty and ugliness the likes of which it has not had to see for a long, long time and it is, frankly, overwhelmed.
i should start a dream journal, because i already don't remember most of these dreams (except a rather peculiar recurring one where i am imprisoned in a desert, with nothing but a structure like that of a playground and a series of black rubber paths through the sand which hides a collection of particularly nasty, rusted but highly-effective mechanical dog-beasts that are the guardians and methodically chew alive those who wander into the sand - ok, that one is a little creepy, i have to admit) and i think they may be telling. but they are very intense in a way i haven't really experienced outside of the blue lady dreams, and some are truly beautiful. it is not all threat and fear. but it is all foreign and alarming for that.
however this is working, whatever the purpose or cause, they are short-circuiting my sleep to a point where some mornings i feel as if i have had little or none. i remember B saying something about this once when she was making a breakthrough. in time, i expect it will fade into a part of my normal nighttime landscape. but for now, it's exhausting.
of course, i could also be wrong. maybe there are no walls coming down at all and my brain's just on some IT-quality trash dump. there's a lot of garbage files in there, buddy.
15.1.09
birfday
today i am 36, and i honestly don't have much to say about it except that i think i might skip this post and go back to bed, not because i am depressed about turning 36, but because my dream world - which so very rarely bothers to be active - went a little ape-shit last night (no worries - there were no women with blue skin haunting me, just...well, dreams!) and it's my birthday, so if i'm a little tired and feel like sleeping in, screw you, world. ah munna do it.
the one thing i wanted to get out this morning is a bit of a weird one. 36 is the first age at which i can truly relate to where my own father was at the same age. at 36, my father had packed us up and moved us to plano from our hometown in southern ontario. in fact, it was the year he turned 36 in which this happened (i think - my math is always poor, especially so at 6am, but born in '47 and the move in '83 would make him 36 that november, si?). there's nothing in particular attached to that, no resentments or overtly sentimental sudden feelings of deep connection for which i had always yearned, just the recognition that i am entering a phase of my life which is completely new to me. i am now old enough to remember what it was like for my father at my age. when he turned 36, i was 10 and going on 11, and there was major life change with that move, so i now have clear memories that go along with my father at this age. i know what our life was like at this age, and it's kind of a weird feeling, because i now can try with extra information to look back on my own perceptions of our life then through his eyes, or at least through the eyes of a man the same age.
in any case, happy birthday to me. here is to life on the far side of 35, new perspective, perhaps new beginnings and atonement for past mistakes and wrongs. and, by the way, it is beautifully, wonderfully, magnificently cold this morning, my birthday present from the world itself. 36, it says. time to feel alive again.
the one thing i wanted to get out this morning is a bit of a weird one. 36 is the first age at which i can truly relate to where my own father was at the same age. at 36, my father had packed us up and moved us to plano from our hometown in southern ontario. in fact, it was the year he turned 36 in which this happened (i think - my math is always poor, especially so at 6am, but born in '47 and the move in '83 would make him 36 that november, si?). there's nothing in particular attached to that, no resentments or overtly sentimental sudden feelings of deep connection for which i had always yearned, just the recognition that i am entering a phase of my life which is completely new to me. i am now old enough to remember what it was like for my father at my age. when he turned 36, i was 10 and going on 11, and there was major life change with that move, so i now have clear memories that go along with my father at this age. i know what our life was like at this age, and it's kind of a weird feeling, because i now can try with extra information to look back on my own perceptions of our life then through his eyes, or at least through the eyes of a man the same age.
in any case, happy birthday to me. here is to life on the far side of 35, new perspective, perhaps new beginnings and atonement for past mistakes and wrongs. and, by the way, it is beautifully, wonderfully, magnificently cold this morning, my birthday present from the world itself. 36, it says. time to feel alive again.
14.1.09
moon
how i adore the moon. bright, solid platter of silver, speckled and mottled but never flawed, he hangs over night like some silent and daydreaming god. he watches and takes all into himself, becoming not involved but never seeming either to be uncaring or malevolent, simply dispassionate and removed, almost as though there is a concerted effort there to remain separate lest he be consumed by his own involvement.
the moon has no light of his own. he borrows only from the sun, but takes that same light, filters and distills it into silvery painted waves that wash over a clear night like quiet and careful swells lapping against the docks at a childhood lake. comfortable and comforting both, his light mists down to carry some clarity into the murkiness of deepest dark, so even in the wee small hours there is brightness should one merely remember to look up. that borrowed light, never stolen but given freely from the sun, can never truly be said to be the same once he has held it. it is forever changed, made new and coldly benevolent, sad and caring in a long-dead sort of way that tells the night that he loves them in a way that only he could and that very few will know and even fewer will understand.
the moon is constant. the planets, the earth, the sun, all show their different faces at different times, but the moon has made the choice to move with us as we revolve, always showing us the single face with which we are familiar, pockmarked eyes and nose and mouth staring down our way, ever overlooking and forever waiting for us to look, that we might bathe lightly in his borrowed light and see only that same face we saw as children, as young men and women, as empty-nesters, as crippled elderlies. his face always looks down, smile bemused and wan, kindly and sad-eyed for the lonely night yet hopefully watching like a father who cannot relate to his children but wants nothing more than to be there for them.
the moon soldiers on in his sky, at times resting behind cloud or mist or fog but always up and waiting to borrow light for us. he stands watch over us, the night dwellers, dispassionate and removed. he cannot be one of us, never was meant to be, but his partnership with the sun has made him special and allows him to love in his separateness. like a child with a tank of fish, he can never live amongst his charges, but mother sun brings him the food we need so that he might feed us when she cannot.
their dance is eternal, the moon and the sun, never quite meeting but always loving one another, the sun warming the moon with her light, the moon passing it on for her into the dark while she sleeps. they, on occasion, will share the same sky and there is the joyous moon in her time, dancing with her for those short hours so that we may all see them rejoice with one another, the eternal lovers in our canopy finally and for once allowed to be together, and though they are to be separated again so soon they are there together, happily tracing their arcs together in the blue waters of daylight. the moon has no desire for the day, and so he hides in night, but is made bright enough by the sun even in daylight to be seen. she makes him shine, she makes him show himself to the day, and he loves her for it.
he will always return to night, but is always better for having shown himself to the day, and there is a smile there that never fully fades for he knows full well he will see the sun once more, and for now he has his charges, his night to watch over. he has the light of the sun on him, and he shares it with us. he has no light of his own, but it is of little consequence; the moon is there for his children, and his lighted hands will forever cover us and hold us steady.
the moon has no light of his own. he borrows only from the sun, but takes that same light, filters and distills it into silvery painted waves that wash over a clear night like quiet and careful swells lapping against the docks at a childhood lake. comfortable and comforting both, his light mists down to carry some clarity into the murkiness of deepest dark, so even in the wee small hours there is brightness should one merely remember to look up. that borrowed light, never stolen but given freely from the sun, can never truly be said to be the same once he has held it. it is forever changed, made new and coldly benevolent, sad and caring in a long-dead sort of way that tells the night that he loves them in a way that only he could and that very few will know and even fewer will understand.
the moon is constant. the planets, the earth, the sun, all show their different faces at different times, but the moon has made the choice to move with us as we revolve, always showing us the single face with which we are familiar, pockmarked eyes and nose and mouth staring down our way, ever overlooking and forever waiting for us to look, that we might bathe lightly in his borrowed light and see only that same face we saw as children, as young men and women, as empty-nesters, as crippled elderlies. his face always looks down, smile bemused and wan, kindly and sad-eyed for the lonely night yet hopefully watching like a father who cannot relate to his children but wants nothing more than to be there for them.
the moon soldiers on in his sky, at times resting behind cloud or mist or fog but always up and waiting to borrow light for us. he stands watch over us, the night dwellers, dispassionate and removed. he cannot be one of us, never was meant to be, but his partnership with the sun has made him special and allows him to love in his separateness. like a child with a tank of fish, he can never live amongst his charges, but mother sun brings him the food we need so that he might feed us when she cannot.
their dance is eternal, the moon and the sun, never quite meeting but always loving one another, the sun warming the moon with her light, the moon passing it on for her into the dark while she sleeps. they, on occasion, will share the same sky and there is the joyous moon in her time, dancing with her for those short hours so that we may all see them rejoice with one another, the eternal lovers in our canopy finally and for once allowed to be together, and though they are to be separated again so soon they are there together, happily tracing their arcs together in the blue waters of daylight. the moon has no desire for the day, and so he hides in night, but is made bright enough by the sun even in daylight to be seen. she makes him shine, she makes him show himself to the day, and he loves her for it.
he will always return to night, but is always better for having shown himself to the day, and there is a smile there that never fully fades for he knows full well he will see the sun once more, and for now he has his charges, his night to watch over. he has the light of the sun on him, and he shares it with us. he has no light of his own, but it is of little consequence; the moon is there for his children, and his lighted hands will forever cover us and hold us steady.
13.1.09
space
last evening i watched a really riveting (for nerds) documentary on the impact the helvetica typeface has had on design and life in general. i know, this does not sound like anything a normal person would spend time on, and perhaps it isn't, but i have friends who would find it equally riveting, so pound sand.
in any case, there was something in it that struck me.massimo vignelli said simply that typography is not about the letters, it's about the space between them. now, we can debate the relative merits of that statement ad nauseum, because typography can very much be about the letters, and type itself can be expressive (just not for a modernist like vignelli). but it's the assertion that the space between the letters is what makes the meaning stuck with me all night.
i define myself by what i am not. i am defined by the space i leave between myself and others, the relationships i have defined by their relative scarcity. i count as friends those that others might count as acquaintances, count as acquaintances those that others might not count at all. it is through my lack of ability to open myself to others that i define my closeness to anyone, and that is a shame. would it not be a more pleasant and true way to see things simply to define them as what they are as opposed to what they are not? a friend, an acquaintance, a love, an opponent.
defining things by the space between seems empty and hollow, no admiration of the thing itself but simply a recognition of what that thing is not. in doing so, are we not saying nothing more than that we wish it were more than what it is? in a lack of appreciation of the thing itself, we devalue that thing.
almost friday. another rung up the ladder. not bad, could be worse. better than nothing. milquetoast sentiments of appreciation that things are not as bad as they could be, but far from endorsements of what things are. the stars are not made more beautiful for their paucity in the city sky, but for their great number in the country sky. the night sky is made beautiful not by the clouds themselves, but for the light of the moon dancing on them. the forest is made beautiful by the trees of which it is made, not by virtue of being more than single tree. love is beautiful in and of itself, not because it represents a lack of misery. the moment is wonderful on its own merit, not for being not another moment that we dread or fear.
it is what things are that makes their beauty, not what they are not. it where they are that is appropriate and right, not where they are not. part of making happiness is understanding and finding the magnificence in what the world is, not being thankful for what it is not. it is the additive properties of any given moment that make its grandeur, not the subtractive, for beauty lies everywhere in what things are and cannot be found in what things are not.
in any case, there was something in it that struck me.
i define myself by what i am not. i am defined by the space i leave between myself and others, the relationships i have defined by their relative scarcity. i count as friends those that others might count as acquaintances, count as acquaintances those that others might not count at all. it is through my lack of ability to open myself to others that i define my closeness to anyone, and that is a shame. would it not be a more pleasant and true way to see things simply to define them as what they are as opposed to what they are not? a friend, an acquaintance, a love, an opponent.
defining things by the space between seems empty and hollow, no admiration of the thing itself but simply a recognition of what that thing is not. in doing so, are we not saying nothing more than that we wish it were more than what it is? in a lack of appreciation of the thing itself, we devalue that thing.
almost friday. another rung up the ladder. not bad, could be worse. better than nothing. milquetoast sentiments of appreciation that things are not as bad as they could be, but far from endorsements of what things are. the stars are not made more beautiful for their paucity in the city sky, but for their great number in the country sky. the night sky is made beautiful not by the clouds themselves, but for the light of the moon dancing on them. the forest is made beautiful by the trees of which it is made, not by virtue of being more than single tree. love is beautiful in and of itself, not because it represents a lack of misery. the moment is wonderful on its own merit, not for being not another moment that we dread or fear.
it is what things are that makes their beauty, not what they are not. it where they are that is appropriate and right, not where they are not. part of making happiness is understanding and finding the magnificence in what the world is, not being thankful for what it is not. it is the additive properties of any given moment that make its grandeur, not the subtractive, for beauty lies everywhere in what things are and cannot be found in what things are not.
12.1.09
ouroboros
i had a very cool experience on friday night. a pair of our friends came over and spent the evening with us, we ate indian food cooked right here in our very own kitchen (except for the naan - that's done out back on the grill, friend), and sat at the table for the next 5-6 hours and drank wine and talked. and talked. and talked more. and across the course of the night one of them opened up just a hair.
this person is reserved and wears as much emotion as possible on the inside. i get the impression that to have such a conversation for this person is rare, and to be let in on it either implies a special level of either trust or drunkenness or both. in any case, there is some measure of darkness that marches in lockstep with my own, but it was the admission that struck me. when talking about it all, and the ability to recognize it and snap oneself out of it with relative ease, there came this: 'sometime i like it'.
and that's just the thing. sometimes we all like it. B has always made fun of me for wanting to be a 'tortured artist'. she's always contended that i am, in reality, far to happy-go-lucky to be such a thing, and my life hasn't really ever been terrible enough to qualify as tortured. point taken. agreed, my life has been relatively kind to me, and i try my damnedest to be happy-go-lucky. but i do love to be tortured. many of us do, and some of us more than others.
what our friend said struck me for the truthfulness of it, and it was a strange repeat of a conversation i had had earlier in the week with someone else. to hear other people admit that they like to be in that place sometimes was oddly freeing. i don't know that i had ever really admitted to myself before that i like to be there to some degree. B and i talked about it a little, and she nailed it right on the head: for me, it's because it feels natural. it is, at my base, who i have been for a long, long time, and it's easy and comfortable for me to be miserable. it takes work to be happy, it takes little effort to swim around in one's own head.
and this seems to be where the problem lies. like the mythical ouroboros, i eat my own tail because i like the taste of it, never realizing that all along i am consuming myself. i refer to my depressive cycle as a downward spiral, but that is only half right - it is truly an inward spiral, one that turns in on itself more and more and more until the outside world ceases to feel familiar and my own tail is the only flavor that becomes acceptable. social anxiety makes it that much easier for me. if one fears others, there is a convenient excuse not to eat with them, and simply to withdraw into my own dinner party with and of myself.
that cycle is a tough one to break. i taste good to me. my own sadness and anger are the meat and potatoes on which i have raised myself, and that i consume myself in feasting on them is immaterial, or just goes unnoticed. this is how i got to where i got to. i enjoyed it. i loved it. i ate myself, gorged on my own darkness until i nearly ate myself whole, and if i consider myself as that mythical lizard i ate my own tail and had to get a look at the back of my own head entering my jaw before i could stop.
that is how close it was. writing that made me see it for real, and i can admit it to myself. i was likely within weeks, if not days, of finishing the meal. thank god for that fight, thank god for that one single clear moment, and thank god for that god-forsaken place i went that made me stop eating.
this person is reserved and wears as much emotion as possible on the inside. i get the impression that to have such a conversation for this person is rare, and to be let in on it either implies a special level of either trust or drunkenness or both. in any case, there is some measure of darkness that marches in lockstep with my own, but it was the admission that struck me. when talking about it all, and the ability to recognize it and snap oneself out of it with relative ease, there came this: 'sometime i like it'.
and that's just the thing. sometimes we all like it. B has always made fun of me for wanting to be a 'tortured artist'. she's always contended that i am, in reality, far to happy-go-lucky to be such a thing, and my life hasn't really ever been terrible enough to qualify as tortured. point taken. agreed, my life has been relatively kind to me, and i try my damnedest to be happy-go-lucky. but i do love to be tortured. many of us do, and some of us more than others.
what our friend said struck me for the truthfulness of it, and it was a strange repeat of a conversation i had had earlier in the week with someone else. to hear other people admit that they like to be in that place sometimes was oddly freeing. i don't know that i had ever really admitted to myself before that i like to be there to some degree. B and i talked about it a little, and she nailed it right on the head: for me, it's because it feels natural. it is, at my base, who i have been for a long, long time, and it's easy and comfortable for me to be miserable. it takes work to be happy, it takes little effort to swim around in one's own head.
and this seems to be where the problem lies. like the mythical ouroboros, i eat my own tail because i like the taste of it, never realizing that all along i am consuming myself. i refer to my depressive cycle as a downward spiral, but that is only half right - it is truly an inward spiral, one that turns in on itself more and more and more until the outside world ceases to feel familiar and my own tail is the only flavor that becomes acceptable. social anxiety makes it that much easier for me. if one fears others, there is a convenient excuse not to eat with them, and simply to withdraw into my own dinner party with and of myself.
that cycle is a tough one to break. i taste good to me. my own sadness and anger are the meat and potatoes on which i have raised myself, and that i consume myself in feasting on them is immaterial, or just goes unnoticed. this is how i got to where i got to. i enjoyed it. i loved it. i ate myself, gorged on my own darkness until i nearly ate myself whole, and if i consider myself as that mythical lizard i ate my own tail and had to get a look at the back of my own head entering my jaw before i could stop.
that is how close it was. writing that made me see it for real, and i can admit it to myself. i was likely within weeks, if not days, of finishing the meal. thank god for that fight, thank god for that one single clear moment, and thank god for that god-forsaken place i went that made me stop eating.
7.1.09
ramble. rumble. grumble.
scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to...crap, i don't know anyone obscure enough to pull one of those off. that's just fine with me, and it should be with you, too. thppt.
so, i mentioned the other day that B pointed out that i get testy when confronted with large crowd situations. fair enough. who, when confronted with one of his deepest fears, wouldn't get a little bent out of shape? especially when that deepest fear doesn't involve something truly optional, like heights or dogs or spoons (?) or something like that. crowds are part and parcel of society, and involvement with them in many situations is compulsory in order to get anything done, like truly visit a church and get to know its members. its not like going to the mall scares me - i'm not an agoraphobe. it's not merely the volume of people that gets to me. it's the necessity of interacting with them that spooks me. terrifies me, actually.
small aside: 3 months ago i'd have gone into the fellowship room at the church we visited, afraid or not. the idea of admitting that it frightened me was more scary than the fear itself. now that i've admitted it to myself, i find i'm not quite so able to sack up, which is a little disappointing. i'm hoping it's just part of the healing process.
anyhoo, B asked me what it is that frightens me about people, and when i hedged she postulated that it may be that i fear what they might want from me and that i can't control that. i don't think that's the whole thing, but a substantial chunk of that rings true. it might explain the terror i feel when i have to make a phone call for work while mall crowds don't bother me. it might explain why i can play drums or speak in front of a congregation, but the idea of standing in a receiving line makes me want to curl up in a ball. is there some paranoia about what demands every human interaction might place on me? could i truly be afraid of what everyone might want from me?
i hope not. that might be more depressing than an unexplainable fear. i know i'm not the most trusting person in the world, but i'd like to think i have slightly more faith in everyone else than to flat-out judge every intention like that, but who knows? it could be the case. if my whole life has been one giant jacked-up response to stress, then every single demand placed on me could be an additional stressor. and thusly, every single interaction could potentially produce a demand and, consequently, an additional stressor. and that would be bad, see?
eh, i don't know. something about it doesn't quite fit. i know B is right to some degree. there's no question that i fear what people might want from me. the idea of being asked for something bugs the crap out of me. but in a situation like a party full of people i don't know, what could possibly be demanded of me? there's no reason to expect that anyone would produce any stress for me beyond the interaction itself. so is it possibly the control variable? is it that the conversations themselves are beyond my knowledge, a collection of 100% unknowns? could be.
i love to present myself as a free-wheeling, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and there's a lot of truth in that presentation. i loathe having everything mapped out and scheduled to death. it seems to me to literally kill the moments if you know precisely everything about them. (i split an infinitive there, which is a pet peeve of mine, but i'm going to let it go this morning. se how that works? spontaneity!) that said, there's something to having a very general plan, just an outline of what needs to get done or a map of the topography so you can be sure you're not getting lost. and every conversation with a stranger has none of that. it is all unknown. shoot, even many business conversations are mostly unknowns. many conversations with people i know fit the bill. but a friendly conversation, you can be reasonably sure, only takes place on ground that presents no threat. strangers and business, it could go either way.
i'm out of time, which is too bad because i don't think subject is finished. while all of the above might be components of my anxiety, they just don't feel like they have the gravity required to produce the abject terror i feel when confronted with a conversation. i still just fear being wrong, a fool, stupid, unfunny, an asshole, whatever, more than i fear what someone may ask of me. but i do wonder if the unknowns are what produce those fears. if i know what's coming i can avoid looking like an ass. if i don't, i can't. one of the reasons i'm prepared in business whenever i can be. hard to look like a moron when you're prepared.
but it doesn't explain why i care. the unknowns make me unsure, being unsure makes me fear looking dumb and being disliked (a reduction, but accurate enough). ok, great. but why do i care what anyone thinks? why does it even matter? especially for someone who doesn't really care for people all that much.
so, i mentioned the other day that B pointed out that i get testy when confronted with large crowd situations. fair enough. who, when confronted with one of his deepest fears, wouldn't get a little bent out of shape? especially when that deepest fear doesn't involve something truly optional, like heights or dogs or spoons (?) or something like that. crowds are part and parcel of society, and involvement with them in many situations is compulsory in order to get anything done, like truly visit a church and get to know its members. its not like going to the mall scares me - i'm not an agoraphobe. it's not merely the volume of people that gets to me. it's the necessity of interacting with them that spooks me. terrifies me, actually.
small aside: 3 months ago i'd have gone into the fellowship room at the church we visited, afraid or not. the idea of admitting that it frightened me was more scary than the fear itself. now that i've admitted it to myself, i find i'm not quite so able to sack up, which is a little disappointing. i'm hoping it's just part of the healing process.
anyhoo, B asked me what it is that frightens me about people, and when i hedged she postulated that it may be that i fear what they might want from me and that i can't control that. i don't think that's the whole thing, but a substantial chunk of that rings true. it might explain the terror i feel when i have to make a phone call for work while mall crowds don't bother me. it might explain why i can play drums or speak in front of a congregation, but the idea of standing in a receiving line makes me want to curl up in a ball. is there some paranoia about what demands every human interaction might place on me? could i truly be afraid of what everyone might want from me?
i hope not. that might be more depressing than an unexplainable fear. i know i'm not the most trusting person in the world, but i'd like to think i have slightly more faith in everyone else than to flat-out judge every intention like that, but who knows? it could be the case. if my whole life has been one giant jacked-up response to stress, then every single demand placed on me could be an additional stressor. and thusly, every single interaction could potentially produce a demand and, consequently, an additional stressor. and that would be bad, see?
eh, i don't know. something about it doesn't quite fit. i know B is right to some degree. there's no question that i fear what people might want from me. the idea of being asked for something bugs the crap out of me. but in a situation like a party full of people i don't know, what could possibly be demanded of me? there's no reason to expect that anyone would produce any stress for me beyond the interaction itself. so is it possibly the control variable? is it that the conversations themselves are beyond my knowledge, a collection of 100% unknowns? could be.
i love to present myself as a free-wheeling, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and there's a lot of truth in that presentation. i loathe having everything mapped out and scheduled to death. it seems to me to literally kill the moments if you know precisely everything about them. (i split an infinitive there, which is a pet peeve of mine, but i'm going to let it go this morning. se how that works? spontaneity!) that said, there's something to having a very general plan, just an outline of what needs to get done or a map of the topography so you can be sure you're not getting lost. and every conversation with a stranger has none of that. it is all unknown. shoot, even many business conversations are mostly unknowns. many conversations with people i know fit the bill. but a friendly conversation, you can be reasonably sure, only takes place on ground that presents no threat. strangers and business, it could go either way.
i'm out of time, which is too bad because i don't think subject is finished. while all of the above might be components of my anxiety, they just don't feel like they have the gravity required to produce the abject terror i feel when confronted with a conversation. i still just fear being wrong, a fool, stupid, unfunny, an asshole, whatever, more than i fear what someone may ask of me. but i do wonder if the unknowns are what produce those fears. if i know what's coming i can avoid looking like an ass. if i don't, i can't. one of the reasons i'm prepared in business whenever i can be. hard to look like a moron when you're prepared.
but it doesn't explain why i care. the unknowns make me unsure, being unsure makes me fear looking dumb and being disliked (a reduction, but accurate enough). ok, great. but why do i care what anyone thinks? why does it even matter? especially for someone who doesn't really care for people all that much.
5.1.09
words
i likely will never tire of words and what they can mean, what they can do to change everything. the same words, used in a slightly different manner, some slight change in context, can make all the difference in the world.
yesterday morning we visited a unitarian universalist church. it's an idea with which we had been toying for a long, long time, and we felt that maybe, jut maybe, the time had come for a change. no conclusions have been drawn as yet, no cause for alarm among the faithful who will read this, thought those who know me personally will be aware already that i don't exactly tow the party line of my methodist faith these days anyway. regardless, i came away from this visit angry. not 'rage against the world' angry, but just somewhat...pissy. grumpy. unsettled and cranky, like some old man who saw something in the world that he didn't like. it was odd. i'm frequently that cranky old bastard, but i couldn't remember coming away from church like that, not from what was essentially a positive experience, even in a minor way. but i think i eventually figured out why.
there are a couple of components to it. one is what B pointed out, and that is that i usually come away pissy from situations where i am confronted by large groups of people i don't know, especially if i feel that i might be required by social convention to carry on a conversation with them, shake a lot of hands and generally be 'friendly' with people whom i feel no connection to other than that they want something from me - but that will wait for another day. the thing that struck me is pure, unadulterated disenchantment.
i realized yesterday morning that i was spoiled for a long time in our little newborn church. there was a service that excited me and of which i felt i could be an integral part, but in an environment and with a leadership that i felt was coming from a place of inclusion and acceptance, and that made me comfortable with this particular corporate worship. but the leadership was changed out, and things have changed along with it. and i realized yesterday that it may be very difficult for me to find corporate worship that has that same level of excitement to which i am accustomed that also carries with it the level of acceptance and universality i require. the service we attended was, frankly, boring, and that will not do. but with the changes in my home church, there is seems to be a change in the level of universality that is disquieting to me. i hope i don't portray things here too strongly, for i believe wholeheartedly that our new pastor is coming from a good place and is trying to do good in the way he understands. but it's the words. the words are changing things.
there is a language that goes with traditional christianity that reinforces its traditionalism. part of that traditionalism is the exclusivity of the religion itself. it's the idea that christians, in spite of tens of thousands of years of history prior to the existence of their beliefs, have the only tickets that are punched through st. peters pearly gates that rubs me the wrong way. it makes little sense to me, no matter how one slices it, that any god who would create a universe solely out of being lonesome would also set up a system of morality in which those created to keep him company are doomed to eternal separateness from him unless they believe in one man's sacrifice - and then wait for 20,000 years before sending that man to save them. even if we should take the wingnut version of history and accept that the earth is only 6000 years old (!), that 's still 4000 years years worth of misery accomplished before god acceded to allow christ to come to sacrifice himself for us. seems too long a gap for my taste, but i digress. WAY too big a discussion for this morning. that exclusivity is what makes me uncomfortable when there are relatively modern religions (meaning not those involving a pantheon of gods painted on cave walls, but i'm not likely to invalidate even those) that are thousands of years older even than the judaism from which christianity was born, and there are phrases that reinforce that exclusivity through their connotation and context that i am hearing, and those phrases do not make me feel welcome.
the amazing thing is that all in a single breath one can speak of god's love, the beautiful acceptance and forgiveness that is the almighty divine, the oneness that is all of humanity when united together with god, and then destroy all that with one simple turn of phrase. the second coming. the return of the king. the kingdom will come. born again. Believer (you know what i mean when i use the capital b). The Faithful. our god reigns. these are all phrases that carry with them the weight of 2000 years of misapplication of a peaceful man's words and meanings. i don't pretend to know that i am right about what christ said. but i am certain that my experience of the almighty doesn't jibe with the crusades, with the idea of god hating fags, with satisfied grins at the idea of conflict in the middle east, with those who do not accept jesus as the messiah burning eternally in an unquenchable fire. but there is no avoiding the notion that phrases like the ones above carry with them those very same motivations and meanings, and those who speak them have a tendency to see the world as colored by the same sentiments that produced that list of atrocities above.
and what blows me away about it all is how just one of those little collections of words can undo an entire battery of beautiful words of acceptance and tolerance. all it takes is one 'the kingdom is at hand' to undo all the 'we are all welcome at the father's table'. the words can create the context, the context can create the words. my great and wonderful friend who used to pastor us could say 'the kingdom is at hand' and simple mean and end to the suffering of the human experience. he is a great human being, and his heart is large enough to allow for even those who do not believe the same thing he believes. that saves those phrases. and he uses such phrases sparingly, whether consciously or unconsciously, i believe because of the weight they carry. he is wise a and loving, and i am beginning to see, i think, that he is rare even in his own denomination. a shame, i submit, but then i'm not running that show, and probably for damn good reason.
suffice it to say in the end that i grew pissy because i fear now that my window has closed, and that i'll not be able to find again that peaceful acceptance i require without a druidian blandness required by a paucity of specific religious language, and i'll not be able to find again a worship that is charged with the fire of divinity that does not come attached to what i see as an arrogant requirement of admission into a special fraternity.
this post is a disaster. i hope no one else's head hurts. if this has created any migraines in trying to keep up, i apologize!
yesterday morning we visited a unitarian universalist church. it's an idea with which we had been toying for a long, long time, and we felt that maybe, jut maybe, the time had come for a change. no conclusions have been drawn as yet, no cause for alarm among the faithful who will read this, thought those who know me personally will be aware already that i don't exactly tow the party line of my methodist faith these days anyway. regardless, i came away from this visit angry. not 'rage against the world' angry, but just somewhat...pissy. grumpy. unsettled and cranky, like some old man who saw something in the world that he didn't like. it was odd. i'm frequently that cranky old bastard, but i couldn't remember coming away from church like that, not from what was essentially a positive experience, even in a minor way. but i think i eventually figured out why.
there are a couple of components to it. one is what B pointed out, and that is that i usually come away pissy from situations where i am confronted by large groups of people i don't know, especially if i feel that i might be required by social convention to carry on a conversation with them, shake a lot of hands and generally be 'friendly' with people whom i feel no connection to other than that they want something from me - but that will wait for another day. the thing that struck me is pure, unadulterated disenchantment.
i realized yesterday morning that i was spoiled for a long time in our little newborn church. there was a service that excited me and of which i felt i could be an integral part, but in an environment and with a leadership that i felt was coming from a place of inclusion and acceptance, and that made me comfortable with this particular corporate worship. but the leadership was changed out, and things have changed along with it. and i realized yesterday that it may be very difficult for me to find corporate worship that has that same level of excitement to which i am accustomed that also carries with it the level of acceptance and universality i require. the service we attended was, frankly, boring, and that will not do. but with the changes in my home church, there is seems to be a change in the level of universality that is disquieting to me. i hope i don't portray things here too strongly, for i believe wholeheartedly that our new pastor is coming from a good place and is trying to do good in the way he understands. but it's the words. the words are changing things.
there is a language that goes with traditional christianity that reinforces its traditionalism. part of that traditionalism is the exclusivity of the religion itself. it's the idea that christians, in spite of tens of thousands of years of history prior to the existence of their beliefs, have the only tickets that are punched through st. peters pearly gates that rubs me the wrong way. it makes little sense to me, no matter how one slices it, that any god who would create a universe solely out of being lonesome would also set up a system of morality in which those created to keep him company are doomed to eternal separateness from him unless they believe in one man's sacrifice - and then wait for 20,000 years before sending that man to save them. even if we should take the wingnut version of history and accept that the earth is only 6000 years old (!), that 's still 4000 years years worth of misery accomplished before god acceded to allow christ to come to sacrifice himself for us. seems too long a gap for my taste, but i digress. WAY too big a discussion for this morning. that exclusivity is what makes me uncomfortable when there are relatively modern religions (meaning not those involving a pantheon of gods painted on cave walls, but i'm not likely to invalidate even those) that are thousands of years older even than the judaism from which christianity was born, and there are phrases that reinforce that exclusivity through their connotation and context that i am hearing, and those phrases do not make me feel welcome.
the amazing thing is that all in a single breath one can speak of god's love, the beautiful acceptance and forgiveness that is the almighty divine, the oneness that is all of humanity when united together with god, and then destroy all that with one simple turn of phrase. the second coming. the return of the king. the kingdom will come. born again. Believer (you know what i mean when i use the capital b). The Faithful. our god reigns. these are all phrases that carry with them the weight of 2000 years of misapplication of a peaceful man's words and meanings. i don't pretend to know that i am right about what christ said. but i am certain that my experience of the almighty doesn't jibe with the crusades, with the idea of god hating fags, with satisfied grins at the idea of conflict in the middle east, with those who do not accept jesus as the messiah burning eternally in an unquenchable fire. but there is no avoiding the notion that phrases like the ones above carry with them those very same motivations and meanings, and those who speak them have a tendency to see the world as colored by the same sentiments that produced that list of atrocities above.
and what blows me away about it all is how just one of those little collections of words can undo an entire battery of beautiful words of acceptance and tolerance. all it takes is one 'the kingdom is at hand' to undo all the 'we are all welcome at the father's table'. the words can create the context, the context can create the words. my great and wonderful friend who used to pastor us could say 'the kingdom is at hand' and simple mean and end to the suffering of the human experience. he is a great human being, and his heart is large enough to allow for even those who do not believe the same thing he believes. that saves those phrases. and he uses such phrases sparingly, whether consciously or unconsciously, i believe because of the weight they carry. he is wise a and loving, and i am beginning to see, i think, that he is rare even in his own denomination. a shame, i submit, but then i'm not running that show, and probably for damn good reason.
suffice it to say in the end that i grew pissy because i fear now that my window has closed, and that i'll not be able to find again that peaceful acceptance i require without a druidian blandness required by a paucity of specific religious language, and i'll not be able to find again a worship that is charged with the fire of divinity that does not come attached to what i see as an arrogant requirement of admission into a special fraternity.
this post is a disaster. i hope no one else's head hurts. if this has created any migraines in trying to keep up, i apologize!
2.1.09
an apology
really, just across the board, ouch, for everyone all around me and my life. the 'carrying the dead' post was a barfing up of a bunch of stuff i hadn't truly processed all the way as yet, and it turns out that post was very much the equivalent of walking into a room with the lights out and swinging my fists in a circle without knowing if anyone was in there. needless to say, i think maybe i'll think things through more thoroughly before they hit here, and many things like that one may never see this space. i'm thinking i'll take that post down, but haven't completely made up my mind yet, as i want to see what i manage to get out today.
the biggest thing that seems to have come from that post is the notion that, as somewhat of a love letter to a dead girlfriend and my attachment to her memory, it somehow invalidates my entire marriage. nothing could be further from the truth, though even i wouldn't have realized how wrong that was until B said something to me about the way what i had written made her feel. when she told me what that post said about our marriage, i felt like i had been punched in the stomach. that i had blindly thrown that out there with no consideration for the implications, that i could have made her feel that way made me feel sick. and that made me realize that there are far more feelings going on inside me than i might have guessed. she also said that when i have written to her, my writing is filled with phrases like 'words can't express..' and 'i can't say...', and she's right. but it doesn't mean that there's nothing there to express, and that's a revelation i hadn't expected. i talked about being turned off and emotionless, and that's just not true. i may not know how to put it into words well, but it doesn't mean it's not there at all.
my time in colorado was a good one by my standards. i was freer-feeling, rebellious and artistic. i have always had a creative and impulsive bent, but have grown up in such a way as to feel like that isn't a valid way for an adult to behave. when i graduated from high school and my parents moved to colorado, they forced me to move with them. my best friend would be attending AC in sherman, i had a scholarship lined up there and was set to go, and the rug was puled out from under me. and i was pissed. we moved to denver, and i spent a lot of time being everything the wouldn't want me to be, hence rebellious and artistic. trick is, that was really me, and it felt like it. that creativity, that expression, was part of who i was all day every day, so when i look back on that time it is easy enough to put it into creative words. carolyn died, and for whatever reason i shut that side of me down.
i went to school for art, certainly, but my work was mostly derivative and unimaginative, when it wasn't it wasn't very good. i let the voice in my head that suggested that creativity is no way to live take over, and i ended up a pretty nasty mess as a result. the biggest thing is that i don't have that part of my life viewed through a creative lens, but rather through one that thinks i was being responsible and keeping myself under control. foolish, yes, but true.
where i have gone wrong in my assessment is equating my lack of creativity and my lack of allowing myself to be who i am (partly because i'm not sure what that means, and partly because the things i do know about myself don't jive with being a husband and father according to the critical voice in my head) with a total lack of joy and emotion. i do not now believe this to be the case. i have not been fair to myself, and that has caused me to be unfair to those around me.
here is an attempt to paint a color picture of my wife and what she has brought to my life. please forgive me if it is awkward or stunted or otherwise falls short of what anyone might hope.
when we met she was difficult and shrewd at times, rigid and timid in her way, afraid of abandoning control and fearful of the world around her falling into chaos if she didn't hold everything, especially herself, tightly. she was damaged and hurt, a beautiful childlike and childish angel who could laugh or cry at the drop of a hat if she only let herself get away from her own reigns. and i have watched her change over 16 years into a magnificent and glorious example of compassion, calm and evenness, a shining symbol of what we can become if we only allow ourselves to hold onto what we can and abandon control of the rest to whatever forces create them.
she is still beautiful, maybe more so today than ever. certainly the years have been kind to her features, but there is now radiance from within that comes from a soul that knows where it lives. her eyes, always chameleons, still will turn from their gray to purple when she is in love, brightest blue when she is excited and joyful or that intense sea green when she cries, but these days that sea green is clearer and no longer covers up the pain underneath, letting it flow out with the tears and draining the pool of misery a little more each time to allow it to become shallower as she goes along. she understands her own inner landscape in a way that few ever achieve, a brilliant achievement born not only of hard work but of utter and complete talent for overcoming.
she can balance in ways that no one i know can, standing with one foot firmly in rationality and the other playfully toeing at threads in the creative world. she can analyze and figure, and in the next breath sit and paint randomly with the children. she is both the masculine and feminine in balance, the rational and the emotional, the yin and the yang together.
i called myself kali, but brandie is kali. she is the warrior goddess, pure of focus and steady of stare, able to dance and swing and move with such grace and beauty that the difficulties of life stand by awestruck and confused and in love while she cuts them down. she is strong and mindful, a whirling dervish of possibility and caring that can hold whole worlds together.
she is the single greatest friend i have ever had, unwavering and unquestioning, the one person i have been able to trust forever and maybe the only person i have ever let be a true friend to me.
i adore her, i respect her. and though i may not be able to say i loved her fiercely, that is only through my own inability to be fierce with my emotions. but i do love her, and from a deep and resonant place born of 16 years that belong only to us and a place that not many people could understand. i don't really understand that place, and so i have a hard time putting it into words. but let me try to put it this way:
she didn't know this until she read this, but in so very many ways, i wish i was her.
the biggest thing that seems to have come from that post is the notion that, as somewhat of a love letter to a dead girlfriend and my attachment to her memory, it somehow invalidates my entire marriage. nothing could be further from the truth, though even i wouldn't have realized how wrong that was until B said something to me about the way what i had written made her feel. when she told me what that post said about our marriage, i felt like i had been punched in the stomach. that i had blindly thrown that out there with no consideration for the implications, that i could have made her feel that way made me feel sick. and that made me realize that there are far more feelings going on inside me than i might have guessed. she also said that when i have written to her, my writing is filled with phrases like 'words can't express..' and 'i can't say...', and she's right. but it doesn't mean that there's nothing there to express, and that's a revelation i hadn't expected. i talked about being turned off and emotionless, and that's just not true. i may not know how to put it into words well, but it doesn't mean it's not there at all.
my time in colorado was a good one by my standards. i was freer-feeling, rebellious and artistic. i have always had a creative and impulsive bent, but have grown up in such a way as to feel like that isn't a valid way for an adult to behave. when i graduated from high school and my parents moved to colorado, they forced me to move with them. my best friend would be attending AC in sherman, i had a scholarship lined up there and was set to go, and the rug was puled out from under me. and i was pissed. we moved to denver, and i spent a lot of time being everything the wouldn't want me to be, hence rebellious and artistic. trick is, that was really me, and it felt like it. that creativity, that expression, was part of who i was all day every day, so when i look back on that time it is easy enough to put it into creative words. carolyn died, and for whatever reason i shut that side of me down.
i went to school for art, certainly, but my work was mostly derivative and unimaginative, when it wasn't it wasn't very good. i let the voice in my head that suggested that creativity is no way to live take over, and i ended up a pretty nasty mess as a result. the biggest thing is that i don't have that part of my life viewed through a creative lens, but rather through one that thinks i was being responsible and keeping myself under control. foolish, yes, but true.
where i have gone wrong in my assessment is equating my lack of creativity and my lack of allowing myself to be who i am (partly because i'm not sure what that means, and partly because the things i do know about myself don't jive with being a husband and father according to the critical voice in my head) with a total lack of joy and emotion. i do not now believe this to be the case. i have not been fair to myself, and that has caused me to be unfair to those around me.
here is an attempt to paint a color picture of my wife and what she has brought to my life. please forgive me if it is awkward or stunted or otherwise falls short of what anyone might hope.
when we met she was difficult and shrewd at times, rigid and timid in her way, afraid of abandoning control and fearful of the world around her falling into chaos if she didn't hold everything, especially herself, tightly. she was damaged and hurt, a beautiful childlike and childish angel who could laugh or cry at the drop of a hat if she only let herself get away from her own reigns. and i have watched her change over 16 years into a magnificent and glorious example of compassion, calm and evenness, a shining symbol of what we can become if we only allow ourselves to hold onto what we can and abandon control of the rest to whatever forces create them.
she is still beautiful, maybe more so today than ever. certainly the years have been kind to her features, but there is now radiance from within that comes from a soul that knows where it lives. her eyes, always chameleons, still will turn from their gray to purple when she is in love, brightest blue when she is excited and joyful or that intense sea green when she cries, but these days that sea green is clearer and no longer covers up the pain underneath, letting it flow out with the tears and draining the pool of misery a little more each time to allow it to become shallower as she goes along. she understands her own inner landscape in a way that few ever achieve, a brilliant achievement born not only of hard work but of utter and complete talent for overcoming.
she can balance in ways that no one i know can, standing with one foot firmly in rationality and the other playfully toeing at threads in the creative world. she can analyze and figure, and in the next breath sit and paint randomly with the children. she is both the masculine and feminine in balance, the rational and the emotional, the yin and the yang together.
i called myself kali, but brandie is kali. she is the warrior goddess, pure of focus and steady of stare, able to dance and swing and move with such grace and beauty that the difficulties of life stand by awestruck and confused and in love while she cuts them down. she is strong and mindful, a whirling dervish of possibility and caring that can hold whole worlds together.
she is the single greatest friend i have ever had, unwavering and unquestioning, the one person i have been able to trust forever and maybe the only person i have ever let be a true friend to me.
i adore her, i respect her. and though i may not be able to say i loved her fiercely, that is only through my own inability to be fierce with my emotions. but i do love her, and from a deep and resonant place born of 16 years that belong only to us and a place that not many people could understand. i don't really understand that place, and so i have a hard time putting it into words. but let me try to put it this way:
she didn't know this until she read this, but in so very many ways, i wish i was her.
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