Dharma

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Softening the Edges of My Rage

Have you ever wished for someone’s demise?  Have you ever hated with such intensity that if the object of your derision were to meet with an untimely accident you would have to hope there would be for you an alibi, because such an accident would draw suspicion upon you?  I have been there twice.  It is not a comforting place to be.

The first was the sociopathic girlfriend of my ex.  She wanted to destroy me and in her attempts, I would imagine my revenge to help me cope.  There were moments where I would fantasize her death, giving myself the satisfaction of picturing a silvery knife so sharp, its blade razor thin slipping along the surface of her neck, aligning with skin and veins, blood seeping and pooling around her nape.  At other moments I divined her foot, uselessly pressing a brake line that had been cut, her car careening helplessly over a guardrail and smashing into a tree.

Eventually I learned to circle the wagons against this woman and she turned her attentions elsewhere, but not before making my life a living hell.  After a time the revenge fantasies ceased and life continued not quite as before; I carried a little cloud about me for a while.  I needed redemption.  I’m not sure it ever came, but I did move to a new place where I could remove her from my head. She took up too much space there for a time.

In recent months I move in and out of hatred again.  This one certainly takes more space than is deserved or warranted.  For every moment it is in my head, I leave no space for love or creativity.  It doesn’t come often, but when it does, it fills me with the intensity of a raging conflagration, burning and spitting and roiling.  No wonder hell is described as fire; hating someone is a sort of hell and it blisters and scalds.  I know enough pop psychology to know that such intense hatred only harms the one who is feeling it.  On an intellectual level I understand its ramifications, and so I bend my body into yogi poses, pound my feet in Nike sneakers, force my mind away from conversations that can have no solution, breathe down into the soles of my feet.  It works–most of the time.  But then it doesn’t and with it I must contend again.

Into this hatred happened a very young, very naive and stupid girl.  She was like some desperate and obsequious puppy, hoping to be liked, having no idea what the hell she had stumbled into.  I wanted to kick her.  I had no desire to befriend this naive creature trying so hard to be nice.  I wanted to fold her in half, destroy her hopefulness, rub her face in the anguish and rage she could not know or understand.  She tripped along, coy and carefree, like a puppy with her tongue lolling, tail wagging between her legs, hoping I would be friendly. Because she came from the one I so despised, I hated who she was and what she represented before she ever said a word.  I wanted her to back away, to get out, to leave what she had found.  She was not welcome.  She had no business.  I wanted her to go and to take her syrup with her.  After I aimed several poison darts in her direction, she started to get the idea.  For a moment I felt sorry for her and tried to warn her against where she was headed, but she wanted none of that, and nipped at me.  For this nip, I bit.  Hard.

I have been advised to write, to rend this vitriol from my veins.  Write she says.  Write.  It doesn’t matter what you say, just write.  If you can place this things that are in your head in a place outside of you then you will come to a place where they no longer matter.  Write.  Remove them from you.  Link them to someplace else.  And so I do.  I have for today for this moment softened the edges of the rage.

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Swimming

Let me state from the outset that I have been examined by a physician and I am not clinically depressed.  I have also seen a psychiatrist and she has also said that I am not depressed.  I was. During my pregnancy, I suffered severe perinatal depression.  I came to understand that perinatal depression is often intrinsically linked to one’s relationships and support systems.  Pregnancy creates its own little hormonal time-bomb; bad relationships or lack of support can set the bomb off.  In my case, I had both.  My partner was fundamentally incapable of dealing with the mental demands of my pregnancy, and I was 3000 miles away from my friends and family.  I got well, however.  I went to a psychiatrist.  She helped me to understand the physical changes and demands of my pregnancy on my brain, and provided the support I was not getting at home.  Although I do not see her regularly anymore, I maintain contact with her and have continued taking depression screens.  I am not depressed.

I open with that caveat because I have changed in a way with which I am not quite at ease., but the lack of ease is not manifesting itself as angst.  Rather, I observe that I am how I am.  I’ve become ridiculously unflappable, even when it seems flap might be in order.  I observe people experiencing their emotions, particularly in relationships, and often I wonder what all the excitement is about.  It isn’t that I don’t feel.  Quite the contrary.  I love my daughters so much it can bring me to tears.  Yet I see how people get quite excited about things that seem so silly and I simply cannot feel it.  I feel like I’m observing beings from another planet.

I have become remarkably disengaged.  I used to feel a pressing urge to write and publish.  Lately, I have the desire to write, but it isn’t quite so urgent anymore.  Words aren’t tapping my brain.  They are there.  They swim in and swim out.  But mostly now it’s like I’m a fish swimming along observing, with no desire to share it with anyone.  Life is there.  I see it.  Now I see something else.  It’s odd, this feeling.  My head used to be so energetic.  No more.  So much of what I observe seems so unendingly ridiculous.  Humanity seems destined for demise, at a faster and faster pace, and I’m just swimming along watching.  This is part of why I haven’t found much to write about lately; nothing seems much to demand so much energy.  So much of what goes on seems such a waste of time, and I’m busy taking care of my baby, my daughter, and myself.  I’m not talking about the things that are important.  I’m not talking about working hard on things that are worthwhile.  But a lot of energy is wasted on a lot that isn’t important at all, and I cannot fathom what all the fuss is about.  The whole world seems caught up in a lot of nonsense.  A LOT of nonsense.  Reality television, piss poor bands, sports, “Tea Parties” by uneducated fools who wouldn’t know democracy if it hit them in the face, which star slept with whom, and on and on.  I know.  I’m being judgmental.  But so much of what is important is lost in the barrage of incessant noise, background constancy that distracts and distracts and distracts, numbing and pulling attention away from most of what is important.

The other day I pulled up in front of my house to wait for my daughter to bring something out to me from the house.  As I sat there waiting for her, a person drove up behind me.  They could have gone around, there was room, but did not.  After about 20 seconds, the woman gunned her engine and drove up next to me, screaming and flipping me off, before driving on.  I just looked at her.  What in the world was that about?  Why all the fuss over having to go around?  People can be seriously deranged.

Some say if you aren’t mad, you aren’t paying attention.  To some degree I agree.  But I just can’t get fired up anymore.  Over and over and over, hypocrisy, ignorance, and idiocy seem destined for superiority.  So I observe.  I feel like someone watching humanity as it drives itself over a cliff.

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Happy New Year Musings

I got a headline in my email inbox that said It Will Never be 2008 Again.  Well, it will never be this moment again, or this one, or this one.  We have all these silly human traditions to mark the passage of time, yet time passes every moment. Each one is a new beginning and an ending.  That moment is the future, now it is now, now it is over.

And on and on.  Every year I mull over this curious holiday celebrating what is essentially the same moment as previous, but we label it as new, give a party, scream and shout, and have another method of categorizing our time.  It does its job, to some extent anyway.

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mary jane white and red

Mary jane red and white, smoke a grape through a pipe. Mary jane white and red, eat a chocolate chip instead.

These days have been filled with beautiful moments. I keep forcing myself to live in the moment because I do not want to lose them. I will miss these moments when they are gone; I do not want to spend them thinking about a time that has not yet arrived.

I am in a room next door to a room where Man is playing music. Good music. Tight. I like it. It’s nice to be able to sit in here and play around on the computer and write while simultaneously hearing music. He’s doing a little piano solo now on keyboards. He’s got it set to an organ sound, plus he’s playing some left handed key bass as well. This appears to be a good and appreciative crowd. Their applause seems genuine and interested. I peeked in and saw some heads bobbing. That’s always a good sign. I just can’t get it when I see people listening to music and they seem not to feel it at all, especially a swinging jazz quartet with an amazing piano player.  Actually, all the players sound really good.  I’ll go in and listen from there in a few, but being in here is nice too.  Mellow.

Right now is one of those moments when I wish I drank coffee and could. I feel like lying down and taking a nap. I feel like I’ve had a sugar crash, but I haven’t eaten much sugar. I’m sleepy. Well this is a crappy post. It’s my pitiful attempt at showing up, but I’m too tired so I think I’ll go take a nap on the indoor outdoor carpet and dream of the sun.

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Dynamite Without a Fuse

I have changed my mind.  There will be no doozy. Sometimes we have huge lessons, but they have already been learned, so running into them again really isn’t such a big deal.  It’s like playing with dynamite that has been defused.  I am gradually realizing that in the past I have built up expectations based on a perceived reality, then discovered my perceptions weren’t accurate.  It seems again to come back to the need to live in the moment.  Even my post worrying about what might happen because of what had happened previously was all projection.  It’s not living in the moment.  Reminder, reminder.  That’s not such a doozy of a lesson.  It’s the same one I keep learning over and over again.  This time it really doesn’t hurt at all.  So duh.

Here’s what happens when I have insomnia for over a month then start to get some sleep:  Yesterday I called a monocle a clavicle.  No shit.  At least the last three letters were the same.

I saw the movie Ishtar for the first time.  That is really a funny movie.  The blind camel takes the cake.

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Brain Robber

Insomnia is cruel.  Like an invisible burgler it crawls through the window of your brain robbing you of sleep.  The parts for sleep may all be there, but insomnia has stolen them.  You can try the tools, valerian root, guided imagery, good hard exercise during the day, earplugs, white-noise machines, eye covers, making certain not to drink any liquid before 8, but they operate like an average casino against Danny Ocean.  They just don’t work.

I manifest stress as insomnia.  I have for years.  Sometimes it feels as if I have spent as much time staring at the walls and ceiling in the dark as I have during the day.  I have learned to manage stress and all the techniques for its alleviation.  Above all, I have learned not to sweat the small stuff because it’s the small stuff that makes the big stuff even bigger.  Because I have had insomnia off and on for years, I have of course read all about it, in books and on the internet.  I have swapped stories with my other insomniac friends.  I learned there are two primary types of insomnia:  one in which the insomniac cannot fall asleep and the other where the insomniac has little difficulty drifting off, but awakens in the middle of the night and cannot go back to sleep, then finally falls into a deep sleep right before it is time to get up.  This makes getting up and getting moving extremely difficult.  I have the second type.

I recognize different facets of insomnia.  If my brain is running in circles, I hear the same song over and over and over like a broken record, and I know I have to find some way to break the cycle to get back to sleep.  An insomniac friend told me of a technique whereby you roll your eyes back and forth while closed, mimicking REM sleep. This works in some instances, but only for the brain running kind of insomnia.  Other times my brain isn’t running in circles, it is just awake, moving from thought to thought.  In this instance, I try to focus very heavily on where I am:  the pillow, the blankets, being comfortable, being warm.  The only problem with this method is that if I have to go to the bathroom, it becomes immediately obvious.

I normally have a vivid, photographic and strong audial memory, but it disappears when I have not been able to sleep.  I turn into a zombie after a few days of this misery.  Staring into space, missing words, forgetting things.  It’s terrible.  Because I knew this about myself, I knew that if I was able to sleep while taking the bar exam, I would pass.  If I did not sleep, I would not pass.  It was as simple as that.  I had the experience of hundreds of tests prior to go on, as well as horse show competitions.  I knew my performance depended on my ability to sleep.  Because of this, I went to a hypnotist three times before taking the bar exam.  It worked.  I slept.  I passed.

Insomnia has not been nearly as big a problem for me for some time as it used to be.  I think my body just became so used to outside stressors it gave up even bothering to respond to them.  I’m sure my cortisol levels were through the roof.  But at some point, stuff really didn’t bug me anymore.  Some person pulls in front of me in their car.  Ah well, it’s not me, it’s them.  The dog tracked in poop?  Okay, guess I’ll clean that up.  I don’t know.  I suppose it just did not seem worth it to ruin a moment getting all worked up about something meaningless, something that would increase my stress level, and ultimately impede my ability to sleep.  I have even learned to relax about insomnia, and that step alone seems to have been the biggest contributor to ridding myself of it.  I wake up in the middle of the night.  Okay, fine.  Guess I’ll lie here.  I’ll be fine tomorrow.  And so it’s been.

Only now I have insomnia again and it is different.  First of all, I can’t go to sleep.  Falling asleep has never been so consistently difficult for me.  Then once I do fall asleep, it’s fitful.  I awake easily and also awaken at my old insomnia wakening time of 3 or 4 a.m.  And it is like I have multiple facets of insomnia manifesting at the same time.  The brain is running in circles and active.  Plus I have been getting anxious about having insomnia, and I haven’t been anxious about insomnia in years.  Last night for instance, I finally reached that relaxed point between sleep and wakefulness when my brain interceded with the thought, What if I don’t fall asleep? With that, I was instantly awake.  Damn brain.  Shut up already!  What is that?  Why did it do that to me?  And so it went for what felt like hours.  Time always feels longer when you are trying to go to sleep.  I finally did fall asleep, but I woke up several times.  This morning when the alarm went off it was torture to struggle out of bed.

So here I am.  I know what is going on.  I have a pile of bills and I can’t pay them.  I have dozens of outstanding job applications, even for mundane positions, and no one is calling.  My house is for sale and I need for it to sell so I can leave here.  I try not to get too excited about leaving, but it is hard not to want to escape when it feels like nothing works.  It doesn’t matter if the approach is to lay low for a while or go gung ho for a while or somewhere in between, nothing works.  Maybe I have been cursed.  But I don’t go around feeling that way.  I figure life hands you stuff, you deal with it.  It doesn’t help to go all martyr and negative and lament a lousy life.  I can want to leave more than anything and see if it’s better somewhere else, but I’m not going to ruin this moment hating it.  Only it seems my body hasn’t gotten the message.  It’s freaking out on me even as the mind says no.

I asked my counselor about this.  Why is it, I say, that my body is rebelling?  My mind is cool with this.  I’m getting these trials to become a stronger person.  I’m growing. I’m fine.  She says it is an enormous amount of stress not to be able to pay your bills because it goes to fundamental security.  Okay, fine.  I get that.  But if I’m not stressing about it when I’m awake, I don’t need to when I’m asleep either.  What is the point of getting to the point where you don’t sweat the small stuff when you are awake if your body freaks out when you’re supposed to be asleep?  I suppose it is something to do with the stress not necessarily being small stuff, but I just don’t want to sweat that either.  It’s not fun.

So I’ll keep on keeping on.  I’m sure this is a rambling incoherent post because I am kind of like a drugged person, I’m so tired.  I stop periodically and stare at the lamp.  I pause because I’ve forgotten a word.  I actually had to spell check thief.  That’s sad.  For me it’s sad. And then I come to the end and have nothing further to say.

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Truly Random Thoughts of a Stream of Consciousness Insomniac

My brain is normally overflowing with words.  I can hardly exist sometimes with all the words leaking out my ears and nostrils.  But for the last few days, my brain has been remarkably quiet.  I’ve thought of a few things, but nothing like usual.

Okay, non sequitur here.  But I’m sitting and typing this and my little dog, Piper, is lying down next to me with his funny little back legs stuck out straight behind him and he’s licking his front paws.  Oh!  Now the greyhound started snorting (she does that periodically, kind of gags and snorts like she has something caught in her throat) so Piper just jumped up to warn her with a couple of throaty little barks that he’s here so that snorting better not come any closer.  Oh she’s warned all right.  She’s lying across the middle of the floor taking up that half of the room.  I’m sure she plans to trip anyone who wants to come after me.  Dogs.  They are so present.

So anyway.  Last night I was pondering the fact that my brain has not been very active recently and I had a few interesting thoughts I wanted to write down, but I was too tired.  The brain wanted to sleep.  Sitting here, I almost wonder if it’s the insomnia that’s shut down my brain.  I have not been sleeping well.  It’s been over a week.  I know why.  I have no job.  I’m not making much on the contract work I’m getting.  I’m not sure how I’m going to pay the mortgage next month.  I got a shutoff notice from the city for water.   So I lie there in the middle of the night when I wake up and force myself into the moment, try not to worry about the future, try not to plan how to bring in cash.  I keep focusing on the pillow or the comforter or my dogs snoring or Milla’s arm across my head.  Bonk.  That brought me back to the present all right!

It’s funny how difficult living in the moment can be.  But I find that my days are much more stress free than they used to be, even if I’m not the best living in the moment person.  Compared to how I used to be, I really shouldn’t be so hard on myself.  Now I have to figure out how to stay in the moment at 3 in the morning when my brain wants to consider all the possibilities having no money brings.

So sitting here contemplating this now I am certain that the empty brain is just trying to sleep.  It does not function well without rest.  It loses its verve.  I yawn a lot.  I know this place.  Stress has always manifested as insomnia for me.  Insomnia makes it hard to be awake, in every sense of the word.  It is kind of nice for stream of consciousness, useless blogging though.

I’m selling my house.  I am moving somewhere warmer.  Or at least sunnier.  Milla’s dad wants us to move to Boulder where he lives.  He says it is sunny there 300 days a year.  I have a friend here who is from Denver.  She says it is sunnier there too, even though it’s cold.  I’m curious whether the sun alone will cure me.  I long for heat as well.  In the heat I can wear wispy dresses and flip flops.  In the heat I can pull on a t-shirt and cutoffs and I’m ready for the day.  In the cold I have to go searching for layers that won’t be terribly uncomfortable but will keep me warm.  And the choices!  It’s overwhelming.  So today, I can wear a maroon turtleneck, or hmmm….a black turtleneck?  How about grey?  And let’s see, should I wear the Levi’s for when I’m bloated or am I sufficiently watered that I’m not retaining anything and can wear the skinny ones?  Gee.  I’m not sure.  I could wear khakis, but that would require ironing and I really don’t feel like ironing.  So Levi’s it is.  There are those who tell me it’s because I’m so skinny that I’m cold all the time.  I don’t have enough padding.  So I should just gain a bunch of weight then I won’t be cold?  Not sure that would work.  I’m not the sort who gains weight easily.  And too much sugar makes me insane.  So I could try eating a lot more than I do, add sugar, and I’ll be chubby and meaner than hell, but I’ll be warm.  You know?  I think I’ll move instead.

Well off I go to try and earn some money so perhaps I can sleep.  That would be nice.  At the moment, I would really like a nap.

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Derek

So today handed me my first how well can you deal with this new mentality of living in the moment when the moment is shit event.  I knew all along that the real test whether I got it with the living here and now and watching the thoughts but not acting on them would be when something really shitty happened.  So now something shitty has happened and my brain would really like to revert back to its old tricks of getting depressed and worried that life will be fucked up forever.  So I pick up my dog and nuzzle the fur in the back of his neck with my lips and feel its warmth and realize I’m here and right now, this moment I’m okay.  So maybe it will work if I don’t worry how long I have to keep doing it, knowing I’m just staving off the thoughts for now.  I don’t know, it isn’t tested.  But I don’t know what is going to happen the other way either, it just feels worse.

My brother, my baby brother who isn’t a baby anymore, but young enough I remember holding him and carrying him as an infant, I remember my mom’s entire pregnancy, started getting in trouble with drugs when he was a teenager.  He would get in trouble then my dad would pay to fix it and he’d be fine for a while then go back to my parent’s house then get in trouble again then dad would pay to fix it and he’d be fine for a while then he’d get in trouble again and on and on and on ad nauseum.  He’s been to treatment about five times.  He never really gets into it.  It started to be obvious that the key to Derek getting into trouble was going back to my parent’s house.  He’d get in a fight with my dad who likes keeping Derek the bad guy because that’s the only role he’s comfortable with.  Then Derek would use that as an excuse to go find his local idiot druggie friends and go do something stupid and he would get in trouble.

He was so smart as a little boy.  He built a robot from scratch when he was like four years old.  It walked and had blinking eyes.  He made a little motor and hooked it up to the legos and made it move.  But he had Tourette’s and the teachers were annoyed by him and he hated school.  I think he was genuinely ADHD too, but this was before that was the popular label for any kid who didn’t fit.  Luckily the Tourette’s faded by high school.

Anyway, Derek was the kid all the other kids worshiped.  They followed him around like he was the Pied Piper or something.  He is the sensitive sort, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it.  He loves animals like they are babies.  And loves babies.  But he acted tough around all his friends.  They thought he was God.  And he had one special friend, one who looked up to him, a friend he adored.  They were best buddies.  They worked on the farm of this man who was a teacher in Derek’s school, Mr. K.  Mr. K was a kind man and good for Derek because he made him act responsibly.  By the time Derek was 17, he was a foreman in the summer working on Mr. K’s farm.  But Derek had started smoking pot and would get into trouble.  Mr. K would try to guide Derek and get him to make better decisions, but Mr. K was too late on the scene.  Since Derek came along ten years after the rest of us he was handed anything and everything he ever wanted. This meant that when Derek wrecked a car, he got another one.  When he wrecked that one, he got yet another one (I wasn’t even allowed to use my parent’s cars, let alone get my own).  Anyway, so this is how it was.  Derek dropped out of school and passed the GED.  He worked on Mr. K’s farm.  And him and his best buddy Brad were the kings of the dipshits who followed them around like they were gods.

Then one morning Derek spent the night at his girlfriend’s house.  The clock radio woke him up and he was lying there listening.  The DJ told the story of a boy who had been four-wheeling outside town on one of the logging roads.  The logging company had put up a cable across the road up the hill to keep four-wheelers out of there, but neglected to put ribbons on the cables.  A local boy had been riding up the hill and was killed the day before by one of these cables.  Then they said his name and it was Brad, Derek’s best friend in the world.  This news destroyed Derek.  He was never the same after that.  It was like a sadness settled in and became a part of who he was.

Derek told me a story.  He went to the funeral home.  They were not having an open casket.  Brad’s head had been nearly removed by the cable.  The funeral director let Derek go in to be with his body after the funeral.  He told Derek he could open the end with Brad’s feet if he wanted to.  Derek did, but he opened the wrong end of the casket.  He said Brad’s eyes were open and he was crudely stitched together.  He said the image is a part of his brain.  I can’t even imagine.

So after this, Derek kept going to work, but he was darker.  He wasn’t the happy kid anymore.  He got arrested for a DUI and had meth in his truck.  Plead guilty, got his probabtion.  Then about 10 months later, Mr. K was going through the drive thru at McDonald’s and had a heart attack, his car hit a tree, and he died.  They didn’t know if the heart attack or tree killed him.  Derek seemed to quit caring after that.  He quit going to work and started always using drugs.  Of course, my parents would not admit he was using.  He would sleep for days then turn mean then leave.  On and on and on and on.  Then he’d get caught.  Then he’d get ordered treatment.  Then he’d be fine.  Then back on.  In between he married a woman he met online and had a couple of kids.  This came with its usual drama.  Somewhere in there Derek went to jail for the first time.  Then again.

The last couple of years Derek has really seemed to want to stay off drugs.  He took himself to Central City Concern, a treatment program here in Portland, and was doing well, got a job, then went back to my parent’s (there is a whole dynamic there too where my dad asks Derek to “come work for him” that helps keep this going on), then he used drugs again.

Finally, after the last episode, his PO told him he couldn’t go to Marion County.  That was the only place Derek had ever gotten into trouble, and that’s where my parent’s house is.  I allowed Derek to move into my basement until he found his own place, something he planned to do this weekend.  He got a job.  He did not go anywhere near my parent’s house.  The DA wanted to throw him in prison for six months.  The judge gave him probation with a zero tolerance order.  This meant he could not touch any intoxicant.  He could not go where intoxicants were served.  He had to stay in treatment.  He had to keep a job.  Derek was doing all of these things.  He was doing remarkably well.  He would help me with my house and play Clue with my daughter.  His girlfriend annoyed me, but not in any major dysfunctional way, she just isn’t very bright and gets on my nerves sometimes.  He worked graveyard and would come home in the middle of the night and sleep until he had to go to work again.

Then this morning, I woke up and was in the kitchen making tea and noticed the light blinking on my house phone indicating a message.  I did not have my glasses on or contacts in so I could not see the caller id to find out who had left the message, so I just dialed in.  It was a recorded message trying to get me to choose whether or not to accept a collect call.  I felt the flutter in my stomach.  I got my glasses and looked at my phone.  It said Inmate Phone.  I went to the front window and looked out.  Both Derek’s cars were parked there.  I walked down to the basement.  Derek was not in bed.  I called my Dad.  What is going on?  Oh, I just got up.  Not much.  No. What is going on with Derek?  Nothing I know of.  Well there is a call on my phone that says Inmate Phone.  Shit.  No.  My dad told me to call Sarah, so I did.

Man, she’s dumb.  That is the thing about her that annoys me more than anything is how damn dumb she is.  I’m trying to practice compassion, to accept each person as they are.  To love everyone, even if I don’t want to.  She is my biggest practice case.  I just can’t stand it because I don’t think she’s really that stupid, I think she is just used to people doing everything for her when she acts like she can’t do anything, and I don’t think she’s as dumb as she pretends to be.  So when she acts like she’s stupid, it drives me crazy.  And it’s not fair to her.  She can’t help it if she’s been treated like a baby her whole life so she doesn’t do much herself.  And I wouldn’t dislike a dog because it was dumb.  Hell, my dog Edna is dumber than a fence post, but I love her to death.  So anyway, this morning Sarah was as blase’ as ever, Oh Derek got arrested.  Why?  Drinking.  Why was he drinking?  Well we went to Gabe’s after he got off work and he had a beer.  Well the police wouldn’t just come up and arrest Derek for drinking a beer.  They would need some reason to know he had drank a beer.  It wouldn’t just come out of nowhere.  Oh well I was driving us home and I got a ticket and they smelled the beer and arrested him.  Fuck.

So I called my parents back and told them and the rest I guess will be whatever it is.  I don’t even know.  I’m trying not to be angry with Sarah for driving like she’s blind because she does and it’s annoying.  Hell, she totaled her car the day before while driving alone in the middle of the night.  More than likely she was sending Derek a text message.  I’ve seen her text while driving on too many occasions.  I won’t let her hold her phone when she’s driving with me in the car.  But the truth is it doesn’t damn matter how Sarah was driving because if Derek hadn’t been drinking, he wouldn’t have gotten arrested.  I told my dad this.  He wanted to be irritated at Sarah for how she drives and irritated at Gabe for drinking.  I told him none of their actions would have mattered if Derek hadn’t been drinking.  My parents would love for all this to be someone else’s fault, like laying blame will alleviate any of the pain.  It won’t.

I’m trying not to wonder how Derek could be so hopeless to get himself in this mess.  I keep reminding myself that he knew his limits, but he really has this “It won’t happen to me” mentality.  I know that in the journey that is Derek’s life there are many, many choices he could have made differently that would likely have resulted in something else.  I have known for a very long time that I cannot control this and that he is ultimately responsible for what happens to him.  And at the same time it breaks my heart.  I’m so sad that this is his path.  I wish he would choose something different.  It hurts to watch someone you love make choices that hurt them.

Two days ago Derek was sleeping.  I went down and gave him a big hug.  He asked me if everything was okay.  I said everything was fine, I just love him.  I’m so glad I did that.

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Would You Like Fries With Your News?

I do not read or watch the news.  I know there are those out there who would consider this irresponsible, and perhaps for them this is true.  But I know most of it is designed to keep my heart rate elevated and probably also to make me shop, two things I have no desire to experience on a regular basis, so for over a decade I have engaged in a “news fast.”

Ironically enough, this has not kept me from being aware of what is going on in the world around me, although I did not know who Laci Peterson was, the pregnant lady who was murdered, until her husband was on trial (and in fact I had to google Lacy and pregnant to get her name for this, such is my lack of knowledge on the subject).  I like to peruse the Living section in the paper and get the little entertainment blurbs.  I also like the Metro section and when I’m at Starbucks or see it somewhere, I’ll read a lot of it.  This is the section on Portland and surrounding areas, so often the information is useful.  I will occasionally glance at the opinions section, and I like to check out the obituaries to see if anyone young died.  Weird, I know.  All of this is only when I’m at Starbucks or another coffee place that has papers and I’m sitting alone and forgot to bring a book or desire something a little more fluffy than whatever I happen to be reading at the moment.

I never watch television news.  Ever.  I absolutely hate it.  When I last watched news, the stories were less like music videos than they are now.  When I catch a glimpse of the news at someone else’s house or in a store where its blaring, it blows my mind how far it seems from anything desiring to impart information.  It’s constant noise and visual effects and seriously, it looks like music videos.  I hate it.

I am on a few political listserves, MoveOn and People United for Change.  I get emails from them and I read through them.  I unsubscribed from most of them because when I was getting too much, I never read any of it.  At least by limiting the number I can absorb some of the information, but I limit what I take in because there is just so much to get angry about, and I do not want to spend my life pissed off.  I know someone once said that if you aren’t mad, you aren’t paying attention, but I can’t spend every minute of every day being angry.  I can make choices that hopefully contribute to change, but being angry all the time isn’t going to help anything and will likely make me sick, so my choice is to limit the sheer volume of information, especially about the current administration.  Yes, they are power hungry.  Yes, they are liars.  Yes, they’ve created multiple disasters that will take years to sort out.  Okay.  I get it, but I’m not spending my time on this planet pissed off every minute of every day.

There is a point to this.  I have a yahoo email account.  I use it for things like ebay or Craigslist ads, stuff I don’t want in my personal email.  When you login to yahoo, the front page is one liner news.  I have been following the Heath Ledger stuff.  I liked him as an actor.  A lot.  I thought he was brilliant in Brokeback Mountain, but he was a standout even in his early stuff like 10 Things I Hate About You.  And I loved A Knight’s Tale.  Plus lately it seems like I keep hearing about people dying from prescription drugs.  A friend of mine died last spring from the drugs she was taking for eczema.  In December, two friends of mine each had a friend who died in their sleep from taking prescription drugs, and I read it was a possibility Brad Renfro died from prescription drug interactions, possibly with illegal drugs or alcohol.  (See my post from 1-22-2008.  It’s a bit tongue in cheek, but I noticed all these people dying from prescription drugs.) So I have been following the Heath Ledger story out of interest from that angle as well.  I’ll be curious what the autopsy report shows.

Anyway, as I logged in to my yahoo account each day, I saw the stories on Heath and I actually clicked on them and read them.  Mostly the yahoo stories seemed to add a new paragraph to the top of the same story while the bottom paragraphs stayed the same.  Then the other morning, I went to Starbucks and decided to hang out for a while.  I went to the used paper bin and started pulling out the sections I like to read.  The front page had a story on Heath, so I grabbed it.  Back at my table, I started reading the story and maybe there are those out there who will not be surprised by this, but the story was one hundred percent, word-for-word identical to the stories on yahoo.

Okay.  I’m not naive.  I know that media is consolidated.  But really, do we get one story every time we read the news?  Does some person out there get to write it, then that is the story that is copied here, there, and everywhere?  For the next several days, whenever I went into a Starbucks, I pulled out the paper and there was the same Heath info straight off yahoo news.  It was the same whether the paper was the Oregonian or the NY Times.  How boring is that?

I KNOW how publicist’s work. I KNOW that if someone wants something to be the official story, get all the news orgs to pick it up and that will be what’s reported.  I KNOW the vagaries of the media conglomorate system.  But does that still mean we have to have one story written by one writer that’s put out into the system of what we get to read?  That is so boring!  And these stories don’t have a byline. They are just bland.

I find this disappointing.  Are we all so used to this now that I shouldn’t be surprised?  No wonder people often don’t believe what is in the news.  You get one story over and over, it’s easy to believe we’re being fed what someone wants us to believe.  Reporters are supposed to report what they observe, the truth as they see it.  And there are those who believe there is one truth, one thing that factually occurred.  But we all know that we each see things differently according to our own conditioning.  If we get five accounts of the same event, we can put those together and perhaps get a more flavorful account of something we were not there to experience.  When we get one sanitized, flavorless, boring version of what supposedly is, it’s hard not to wonder if there is more to the story.  I think we’re all less likely to trust what we’re given when it’s force fed, canned blandness.  Or perhaps we’re less likely to question.  Don’t question it and don’t believe it.  It’s like the television news with its music video visual bombardment, all hype and no substance.  There’s nothing there.  We’re not being told anything.  Here we have the internet and this theoretical access to the entire world, but we’re all being fed the same thing.  We have this opportunity for imagination and creativity to flourish, and instead the entire world gets the same thing. Assembly-line news.  News like Starbucks.  And Target.  And Walmart.  And Sears.  And on and on and on.  Even politicians have turned into mass market products to appeal to everyone and no one.  Yuck.  What a sad state of affairs we’ve gotten ourselves into.

We need a change.  I have been sitting here mulling over the sheer enormity of the bland mass marketing of every single thing.  I guess people will have to want it to change in order for it to happen.  The number of various levels on which change would have to happen to actually succeed is staggering.  As such, it’s easy to see why anyone would look at that magnitude, feel powerless, and so do nothing.  But that doesn’t work.  Each person has to change what they can if they want things to be different.  If each one of us does that, anything is possible.

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Fly Me to Anywhere

Put me on a plane and fly me to anywhere.  The Augustana songwriter who penned the words to this song lived winters as I do.  I read some of the forums after the lyrics on a few sites.  Lots of people commented that it was about loving someone who is suicidal, and while this interpretation is valid I heard the song differently.  You don’t have to be buried in actual pills and blood from your slashed wrists to have the feeling that you will die if you stay where you are, and that the death does not have to be literal.  How many people walking around are the living dead, medicating themselves with things, pills, obesity, illness, and on and on and on and on.  This song gets under my skin.  I just want to get on a plane and fly anywhere.  Not away from anywhere.  Not to anywhere.  Just to be in the sky and marvel that humanity has made it possible to lift our physical body miles in the air.

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Post #45

Have you ever had a brilliant thought in the car or in the middle of the night when you’re too tired to get up and do anything about it then the second you’re in a place you can write it down it’s gone?  I suppose that is what separates the successful creators from the unsuccessful ones, either the ability to remember those brilliant ideas or the wherewithall to drag your ass out of bed to write the thoughts down.  There is that little thing though, about something seeming brilliant in the edges of sleep, and it turns out to be pretty crappy in the light of day.

Apparently this brilliant piece of drivel was my post number 45.  I don’t know why I didn’t post it or name it.  I was probably distracted by living in some other moment than the one I was in, longing for Ron or Frederick or some other figment of my imagination and not paying attention to the moment I was in.  So today I’m fiddling around with my wordpress account, creating a new theme, doing something different, and I notice there is a little button above where I compose that says DRAFTS.  And after DRAFTS it said Post #45.  So I clicked on it and found this tidbit of thought.  I remember typing it, but beyond that I don’t recall much.  However considering I have wasted many days in the last several weeks not living in the present and focusing heavily on the male figments of my imagination, I can reasonably assume that one of them is the reason the post was interrupted and forgotten.  How sad it is.  How sad indeed.

When I consider the hours, days, weeks, months, years I have wasted living outside the moment I am in….ah well.  I suppose lamenting this would be futile as well.  There is no way to retrieve those moments.  I can only hope I remember to live in the present going forward.

Today is particularly difficult.  I must remember this is only about my third day of understanding, and I would not say it’s full understanding or that my brain is in a groove with it yet.  I would suggest to myself that this will take some time, but I don’t want to limit things.  At least awareness is present, so that should help.  But today I have been wanting to live my old patterns.  I have been fighting the urge to leave the messenger on in the hopes that one of the figments will communicate with me.  He has, but it has been little.  I heard something on the radio that reminded me of the figment and felt something funny in my stomach.  Reminder again, he’s a figment, he’s a figment.  Get here.  Look at the sky.  Isn’t it cool? Look at the clouds swirling in the late afternoon light.  The sun wants to peek through.  It is cold, but it is bright.  Okay, I’m here.

Post #45.  Sounds like a mile marker.  Perhaps I can find some interesting metaphor for the milepost to help me remember that the other stuff is all just figment.  It is where I have been in this qwest to live in the moment and to avoid living somewhere else.  It can help me give up the figments who are really only synapses firing in my brain.  Here I am.  Here is this bright computer screen.  Here are these keys that I type on so effortlessly.  Here is the heater on my cold feet and my bladder that feels as if it would like to be emptied.  Click on the mute button so if the figment sends you an IM you do not scramble in an attempt to respond immediately, thereby engaging the figment or hoping the figment will communicate further with you.  Relax.  Breathe.  You are here right now.  And that is all that matters.

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Dharma Struggles

I have been thinking a lot lately about being present in the current moment, living right here right now, because living anywhere else gets me into trouble.  I have been struggling with this concept for some time now.  I think I originally started with the Tao Te Ching a couple of years ago, and at that time it seemed right, but I didn’t start to live it.  Then I lived the worst year of my life and the concept was placed before me in a book by Pema Chodren called When Things Fall Apart.  There were moments last year where existing hurt so badly, where if I had not had my daughter I would have chosen to die (although some of the moments would not have happened without having my daughter because they came from problems with my ex and his girlfriend so who knows how things would have been).  In any case, I did not want to be here I hurt that much.  During those moments, sometimes the only way I could get through would be to read the book about being in the moment and be in that moment reading that book.  Or I would lie in bed and hold my daughter and focus on that moment alone to get to the next.

Then Peter came along and I became obsessed with his lying and cheating and totally tossed all the living in the moment out the window.  Focusing on him took the focus off me.  But that got old and I finally chose to walk away.  Since him, I have had a series of “relationships” where in each case, the man would be there but not be there or disappear or act in any number of ways that were not present.  Finally, I have been communicating with a man for over a month via email, chat, and phone, who makes no effort to see me in person despite ample opportunity and despite many claims that he would like to meet.  And with him I just realized I was projecting this entire what could be scenario onto him and absolutely not living in the present.  He’s this, he’s that, he’s everything I think I want, yada yada, but these are all external things.  They are not him because he is not real.  He is not here.  I have never seen his face in real life!  Jesus, it’s ridiculous!

And it dawned on me, what the hell does the universe have to do to get me to understand this point?  After the last couple of years, I have lamented to anyone who would listen, if the universe just told me what to do, I would do it.  But the universe did just that:  it gave me the Tao Te Ching over two years ago.  I did not live it.  It gave me the worst emotional pain I have ever experienced and I did not live it.  It finally gave me a series of relationships whereby each subsequent man was less present than the first.  It finally took one who is really not here for me to think, “What in the world am I supposed to be learning from this?”  I was asking this question before, but I was NOT getting it.  Now I think I’ve got it and I wonder, why the hell was it so hard to fucking figure out?

So now I am here and I am trying to live in each moment.  As part of this, I am trying to accept who I am in this moment, not to judge, not to criticize, not to worry, just to be.  And it is the most peaceful I have ever felt.  I have been worrying incessantly about where my next dime is supposed to come from.  I have been terrified of owing taxes and where my next mortgage payment is coming from.  But all of those things are not hurting me right now.  In this moment, the mortgage is paid.  In this moment, no one is taking anything from me because I owe taxes or my family-law attorney.  I am going with the dharma, existing here and now.  Why waste this moment worrying about what is not happening, right now?

Yet here is where I get confused.  I need to find some way to earn money.  I do not want to wait until the moment when my house is being repossessed to realize that that moment sucks!  There has to be responsibly planning for the future without sacrificing the now.  Only I have no idea how to go about it.  Another big part of all of this process is choosing the life I lead in a manner best suited to who I am.  I chose law school to escape where I had been rather than to choose a life I wanted.  This was a terrible reason.  I hated being a lawyer.  It was the biggest mistake I have ever made.  I wanted to write so I chose law school thinking I could make money writing and because I feared that I couldn’t make money writing any other way and feared that my writing wasn’t good enough and made this major life choice without having had any idea what my life would be like.  It was all about escape and fear and concerns about what other people thought about me and making money and nothing about living my life on my terms or accepting who I was or what I could do without worrying about other people.

So now I am trying to make active choices about who I want to be, what kind of life I want to live, doing things that nourish my soul, and at the same time, I have to pay the mortgage.  One part of me says keep doing these things you need to be who you are.  Write the articles and books.  Try to teach the classes.  Do the astrological consultations.  And if you do these things, money will flow to you, because you are doing what you need to do.  But I admit it.  I’m afraid.  I’m afraid if I don’t take more active steps like even applying at Starbucks or putting this house on the market before I get behind on the mortgage, I will lose this house and end up in a worse position than I am in now.  It is all coming from fear.  I do not trust the universe to take care of me.  I suppose that is the crux of it, isn’t it?  Maybe I should pay attention and try to get whatever lesson is in this before life gets really rough, like it did with the living in the moment stuff.  But I just don’t know how.  So I am asking the universe, please, give me some guidance and I will pay attention.  I will do what I have to do to pay attention so you do not have to bonk me on the head.  I will do my best to trust and have faith that I will be cared for and that everything will be okay.  I don’t suppose I have any other choice.