proteanme

Mostly, things are ok and I’m very lucky that way. I realized the other day how ‘ok’ can be such a luxury. So I try to be grateful for it cause I’m not entitled to it. Lately I’ve been thinking about all the people I know. So many are so kind and generous.  So many are so nice and sweet.  And everyone puts up my with horrible typing. Everyday shit happens that distracts me from the truth of all that. But then I’ll have a nice phone call like I did tonight or another friend who never emails me sends me a message and I remember that I’m a lucky guy.

All these disparate things I’ve been mulling over this year are coming together, which is amazing, but overwhelming. I’m at this interesting place of not wanting to romanticize or pathologize what makes me tick, so to speak, and I hope I can stay in this place for a while. There is huge potential for learning. There is the real possibility of adaptation. And now I’m thinking of the tragedy of the Sandman. I know none of this sounds very concrete, but it’s complex and would require so many blog entries and footnotes that I would become sick of myself.

I’m still thinking about David Foster Wallace.  I’ve listened to some audio and watched this interview with Charlie Rose. I wish I would have seen him read. I actually wish I could talk to him, silly as that sounds.

I hope Obama kicks McCain’s ass tonight. I’m soooo sick of this. Seriously, the idea that John McCain and Sarah Palin could be running our country. What a fucking nightmare. What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and a moron? Lipstick, right.  Except hot morons where lipstick and Palin’s not really that hot, at least not to me. And the moron math gets all screwy when you think that Sarah Palin actually said this in an interview with CNBC’s Kudlow & Co. As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?

I know I’ve been quiet here lately.  Frankly, I’m overwhelmed.  First off, the financial crisis and the proposed bail out staggers my mind. Literally.  Thank you Amos for doing such a nice job of commenting on it. And second, I can’t believe the election is right around the corner. Tanque has been has been keeping the blog flame lit the last couple weeks with lots of election related posts, which has rocked.  Including his endorsement of the Obama/Biden ticket. I think there was mention of my name in some comment about being inspired or hopeful about Obama. And I wanna clear things up and say I don’t feel either of those. The fact is I don’t look to a presidential candidate for hope or inspiration.  But I am inspired by the those folks who feel inspired by Obama. I think it’s a good ticket. They’ve got my vote. I think there’s a chance with Obama/Biden we can get things done that need doing. I want the conversation to change on a national level and Dems can do that. But c’mon these are politicians, man. And you don’t stay clean in such a fucking dirty business. Saints don’t run for president.

I feel like lots is going on in my life, but when you look at the shape of my days, you wouldn’t know it. I still find great joy in a sharp chef’s nice and fully inflated bike tires, the company of friends and the long stretches of quiet and time alone in between. I’m still purging and spent last weekend helping RU clean out our old basement. Whew! I did like that it was all very butch in a very classical butch kinda way, like driving a big pick up truck full of crap, most of which I’d hauled and lifted into the bed myself. RU has a fucked up back. The purge was a not the first choice for how I wanted to spend my weekend, but it bubbled up to the top after a failed attempt at camping in Indian Heaven on Mt Adams. It was just too dang foggy up there. And out here fog will kill your ass. I’m serious.

Mostly I’ve been trying to pay attention to the everyday details in my life and how I spend my time. The intention is to better align the external with the internal. It’s tricky, cause it doesn’t always add up. But it’s a good practice and hopefully it will become habit. To that end I’ve been having some kind of intense exchanges with my girl in western Mass and there are no conclusions to draw there except abstract ones, like a deeper understanding of the equation of capacity. If that sounds poetic, well it kinda is. Not that it doesn’t have very real implications. These things aren’t mutually exclusive.

I wanna a put plug in here to try and get as many of you all as I can to try green cleaning. Better for you, the environment and if you make your own solutions better for your wallet.

It’s so interesting how thoughts and feelings that arise around something can harden you or soften you or both. I like the idea of both because I’d like to get away from all the binary thinking of this either/or culture. Say for instance I’ve have some unwanted experience, like rejection, I can get pissed and hurt and close myself off or I can feel sad and closer to the pain of other folks who I know are feeling rejected too. Especially folks who feel rejected by me. And for a second I can also see maybe it was never about rejection; maybe it was about someone seeking out connection or trying to soothe their loneliness and longing and fear; maybe it was about self-preservation; maybe it was was about timing.

Maybe it’s ok if I’m even a little softer than I thought I was.

Last year I was the same age as my dad was when my parents got divorced. I thought that was significant. But nothing special happened. I’m a year older now and the other night at a party I met a girl who has the same name as my dad’s last wife. We talked for a while.  She laughed at my stories. It was a fine evening.

Mostly, things just happen, ya know.  Meaning comes from the inside.

God damn, I’m feeling heart broken these last couple days.  My therapist pointed out that I’ve been saying for a while that I wanna feel heart break — if heartbreak is what’s gonna come out of certain situations.  I just didn’t dwell a lot on how that might actually feel.  Working with my fears around flying has taught me a lot about not getting too caught up in anticipatory junk.  It’s funny, funny not being the right word at all, how your can feel so certain in your heart about some things, like loving Indiana, and how that love can’t move the mountains that make it impossible to do more than love it from a distance.  ANd me I’m not ready for loving those immovable mountains.

I’m confused and not feeling very sure about this process I am in. It is unlikely that ‘this process’ is really some finite thing with an ending marked by an event, like moving or embarking on a new career or getting married, etc. I’m worried that I’m fooling myself by talking about places and people being better fits when maybe really I’m just looking for some kind of answer, when an answer really doesn’t exist. I dunno that I am making any sense except to myself and maybe this is all a bunch of self indulgent clap trap and I should just find work that is aimed at alleviating other people’s suffering.

This year is turning out to be a year where I really take a look at what gives shape and meaning to my days, and in turn to my life. I wouldn’t exactly call it an existential crisis, but that’s mostly because I’m not in a panic. If anything I’m more in a state of underwhelmed surprise, like “really, this is it?” The question I’m asking myself right now is: am I really down with the shape of my days, given that I have the luxury to shape them. I work and when I’m not working sometimes I do things that have some meaning to me and sometimes I just do things to take the edge off my loneliness and anxiety. I spend a fair amount of time by myself, which in part is intentional, to carve out the time and space to reflect, and to write and make music. But there’s also a hard swallow to all that alone time and that is, with very few exceptions, I don’t have meaningful connections out here. While I am part of a network of people here and that’s nice, the truth is I am not part of a community; I’m not in a deeper relationship; and I am far away from most of the people with whom I feel there is genuine understanding and the chance for giving and getting some sustenance.

It’s taken months of turning off the T.V. , not going to movies, not reading much, not eating a lot of crap and not just hanging out with whoever to see all this. But at this point I’ve got a pretty clear picture of what I’m doing with myself, literally and figuratively. And getting that picture flushed out has been accompanied by a fair amount of sadness, curiosity, and gratitude, some of which has been excellent fodder for this blog.

The other day I realized I might be coming to a place where I can start to let myself consider what now or what next.  I got a feeling that the what is mostly gonna be about me being solid enough in myself to take some bigger chances than I’ve taken before.  But we’ll see.  I know I gotta stay true to letting things unfold right now, even though I wanna rush ahead.  I need to seep letting things get stripped away so I can really see.

And it’s been a little bit of a surprise to discover how moved I am by art.

Sometimes I feel like my whole life right now is the calm before the storm. It’s weird too because I was telling my girl in western mass that as I get to feeling more solid in myself, the ground beneath me gets to feeling more hollow. I flail around a lot, try to interrupt old patterns, reach out to connect to someone and feel like I’m a little too lost in the metaphorical part of life.

More than one person has told me I seem angry, but they are also people with whom I’ve been so accomodating in the past that I’m not sure what to do with their feedback. I notice that I am much less patient with some folks when their approach is not working for me. And I think that happens more when there’s no wiggle room in the approach for anything but their own point of view. We’re not collaborating; we’re not negotiating; we’re even not trying to reach an understanding.  Half the time I feel like all that’s happening is at best they are patiently waiting their turn to ‘hold forth’ in hopes of trying to win me over or bend me to their will. Either way it feels like there’s not much room for me or my experience.

It gets tricky because I’m trying to figure out how to be responsible for myself on a deep level and how to be open and solid all at the same time. And sometimes I just fuck up – treat someone or myself poorly, spin out on fear or fantasy, indulge in self righteousness or self pity.

Lots of subjects have been on my mind recently and I’m going to list them out here in hopes that something might ring a bell for further exploration.

First, I’ve been thinking about the phrase “they did the best they could”, often said in a conversation where one is talking about how to deal with effects of the short comings of another person or persons, like one’s parents. I’ve come to find that phrase doesn’t work for me. Fro example, when it comes to my parents, they did what they did. And it’s true I can’t change that, but did they do the best they could do? I dunno. And thinking of their actions in those terms does not help me deal with what got broken in me. And thinking of my own actions in those terms, that somehow I’ve been doing the best I can, doesn’t help me deal with how I’ve fucked up in my own life. I think maybe it’s the whole idea of “best” that doesn’t work for me. For one thing, on the flip side of “best” there’s a “worst”, which is not helpful either. And best implies judgment and I’m trying to cultivate curiosity.

Race. I woke up the other morning thinking about how if Obama got elected he would have to think so carefully about the racial make up of his cabinet. Think about it in a way his predecessors have not, simply because he’s African American. Yes, the last several Presidents have probably made sure to have some diversity on their cabinet, at least one woman and one African American. But believe me, if Obama is elected and appoints as many African Americans to his cabinet as any previous President has appointed whites to theirs in the last 20 years or so, there will be cries of alarm about a black cartel taking over this country.

Prolonged adolescence. I think I could get into trouble here with too many generalizations. Plus I’ve not really reflected on this topic in any detail, but I’ll stumble on in anyway. I’ve been noticing a lot of things that make me think we have this state of prolonged adolescence here in the U.S. and it does not serve us well as far learning to take on responsibility for oneself. I’m not trying to be a kill joy about a maintaining a sense of play or wonder cause it’s not a lack of seriousness I’m talking about.