As i've said once before i have started taking my spirituality seriously, something i have put off doing for -oh...well...forever. Like most people i have been avoiding spending any time trying to actually understand what it is i believe about the world and my place in it. I have dabbled in this and that pursuit, have acquired a love of gospel music without being a christian, thoroughly appreciate islamic architecture, whatever and so forth. Basically i have been living with what somebody once termed 'the god shaped hole in my heart' for some time while fundamentally ignoring what that means and thinking that through sheer dumb luck mostly i will get through and be happy.
Well. Having acquired some honesty with myself (not an easy thing to do when you are constantly running as fast and as far from that same self as you can, which in my case is not very fast - i'm a lousy runner) I am now feeling that i had better put a shape in that hole, abd it better fit or, or, or...what?
It's the what that this little book tries to answer in it's own quirky little way. The author Dinty W.Moore very early describes his own prolongued struggle trying to jam something in that god shaped hole with little success and much frustration along with a vague sense of discontentment. So what does he do? He reads a book. It just so happens that the book is by a zen master named Thich Nhat Hahn and it sends him on an often funny but always thoughtful quest to find the intersection where Buddhism and American Culture intersect.
This is a book that is about making connections, as all books are to some extent. We all seek to connect ourselves to the world, to our friends, our families, our loved ones, our jobs, but rarely - it seems - to our selves in any real sense. We struggle ceaselessly on, boats against the current, to get through the next day intact, and often we arrive at that unintended destination with a sense of 'how exactly did i get here?' Moore, on his frazzled somewhat quixotic quest brings us into contact with a truly american character, trying to struggle with some fairly unamerican ideas and his trepidations at his own sitting practice and constant ruminations on his 'Monkey Mind' remind us that it isn't easy, but it is human.
What is beautiful about his narration is that it directly addresses aspects of buddhism that tend to pop up in all of our monkey minds at some point. Where do ornate statues of gold buddhas fit into an american life? Are they just a silly artifice? Are they important to our understanding of buddhism because they are an artifice? And whats with all of this sitting anyway? Does a completely eastern religion fit into our devoutly western lifestyles and attitudes? And really who cares?
He also addresses the basic premise of our understanding of buddhism with a hell of a good dose of american witticism: "The problem is clearly inside. My mind is a monkey and the monkey needs Ritalin." Like a bouncing buddha at the bottom of the screen, Moore pops in at dozens of buddhist sanctuaries, retreats, functions, sittings. He sits, and sits, and then sits some more, always wondering, always thinking about these intersections, all the while slowly recognizing himself in what he is learning, slowly shaping his self to fit that god shaped hole in his heart.
It isn't a great book. Moore can be annoyingly flippant at times. His wit is funny but i wouldn't exactly call it sharp - although it cuts pretty well here and there. As a whole, however, it is one of the finest and most accessible books for beginning buddhists in america because it is quintessentially american in its approach. Unlike reading directly from the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hahn - which really aren't terribly inaccesible, Moore definately relates to his audience. He's the Lisa Simpson version of buddhist, capable of quips and humor but struggling with mindfulness in a culture where mindfulness is the spiritual equivalent of worshipping the devil or singing to aliens while brewing up apocalyptic kool aid.
It is the mindfulness of a Lisa Simpson where buddhism collects its american spirit and wanders off in wonderful avenues. At least i think so. We may never have the pleasure of taking long walks among the cherry trees as Basho did (unless we live in DC) but we do have ourselves, this moment, and something very american that can live comfortably and happily within the mindfulness of buddhism.
So before you take my advice and read this book. Sit. Just Sit. Take a half hour or so and get comfortable, stare at a wall, breathe deep and then sit. Try it on. See if it fits. Filling the hole in us is part of the quest of living, get used to it. Enjoy it. When you're done sitting, get up, put on that fedora, get the bullwhip out and go start your quest. There are far worse places to start it than The Accidental Buddhist and you may have to go through them at some point, but why not start it with a fellow traveller whose already tread some of that ground?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Fields of condos, forests of subdivisions - My uncomfortable experience with southeastern wisconsin
Before i begin, a disclaimer:
I have lived in southeastern wisconsin for my entire life, much of it spent sprouting among the fields and streams of what was once called the countryside. It was a land i loved. In many ways it is responsible for who i have become and as i hope to explain, that's both a good and bad thing. I still love it but it has become something that i've been haunted by because, well, i find it a bit of a ghost of its former self. So I write this with a sense of loss and love but i maintain that the people who live there, for the most part, are a fine bunch, even if i do find them a bit misguided. If this is read by those in southeastern wisconsin, particularly my friends and family, I'm sure I'll be branded a bit of a traitor. Whatever. I love you guys and i love my country but i just don't find much of it left anymore and i'm a bit angry. I guess the word i'm looking for is nostalgic but at the same time i feel like america itself, with wisconsin as a microcosm, is losing some of its identity in the rampant and juvenile pursuit of growth for growths sake.
Okay. On with it.
I've been away for a few years, one state over in Minnesota - land of the hated Vikings. In that time my infrequent visits have witnessed some shocking changes to damned near everything from Madison to Milwaukee and Chicago to Saukville. This is a huge stretch of land but for reasons that absolutely boggle my understanding it's becoming so much smaller. It now feels like the ideal of the american dream, as popularized by TV, Radio, Martha Stewart and G.W. America has fallen out of the sky and carpet bombed the entire area. Once scenic drives have been covered with highways, McMansions are everywhere and, like rabbits, breed at an astounding rate, Stripmalls that remain mostly vacant seem to be spawn from freeway detritus as if the offramps themselves have grown appendages. A common joke has become - when you plant a Walmart its weeds - a bank, a Car Tires, Battery Plus, Sams Club, etc grow along with it.
Okay. I know its a common complaint. I'm definately on a very crowded soap box here. Let me just try and state that I don't believe for a second that this is just a problem of corrupt city planning, or a philosophy of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' I believe that, at it's core, we're looking at a crisis of identity. No i am not going to launch into an 'American Values' lecture. It's pointless. In fact it's worse than pointless. There never has been, in this country, anything in it's history that would ever lend us to believe that we've had something like a set of cohesive values. In fact, if social history shows us anything about our country it is that there have always been a fracture of values some of them slamming straight into each other.
When i was a kid growing up in small town america of southeastern wisconsin, the forests and landscape was a phenomena. It was a daily living experience, one that provided enormous comfort and delight and fueled imagination. It was a place of escape, of worship, of life, of direct and tangible experience but also of necessary fear - which only served to fuel the fun. I could walk out my door, grab my bike and in seconds be on a back trail somewhere. I could be up a tree, or just sitting calmly by a river, listening to my thoughts, breathing in the cool, feeling very quiet. It became a part of my identity, a part of who I was, and ever since then I have gravitated to places where I felt that people understood the sanctity of those things.
These days those same places where i wandered happily and got lost have been paved over. All over southeast wisconsin this has happened, to the point where i have only the memories of those things. As a people we don't seem to see far beyond our front door. We manicure our lawns, afraid of what the neighbors may think if we don't. We grow our stripmalls conveniently within reach of our magnificent, if dubiously built, homes so that we may scurry out, procure what we need and scurry back, in time for the football game. As communities we enact ordinances on house color, the height of road signs, the size of shrubs in the front yard all in an epic quest for what? Living each others lives, i think, flattening the spiritual, psychological growth of each other until it becomes a dull grayish aesthetic past that covers everything with sameness.
So basically, that's it. I think all of this growth is a loss of ourselves. The more we lose ourselves with this careless planting of weeds the less we can possibly have of ourselves in the future. It is an utter failure of our society to even consider experience. Is it an experience to drive to a Walmart or a Sam's Club? I suppose it could be. Is it an experience to live in a house that looks exactly like your neighbors, same hedges, one of four possible colors, slightly different floor plan, sleeps twelve when there are only three? Again. It could be. But i don't think so.
It is character that makes us as a society. It seems to me that my country and my state has been living in a state of fear about it's character. We've paved and smoothed and flattened its rough but beautiful edges, thrown bridges over its brooks, planted buildings over its fields, grown condos and mansions on ridges and in forests. We are systematically assasinating the character of the land and in doing so we are murdering our own wonderful identities as individuals. We are becoming mundane, indistinguishable, the living dead, surviving on the brains and souls of those more vibrant than us, and on stolen moments of experience that lift us out of our early graves into a fleeting experience of delight.
It is environment caring for you, teaching you daily, guiding you and growing you in it's character that creates you and makes you strong and willing and able to experience yourself wholly. We desperately need people to admire good architecture without fearing it, to believe that the purpose of the forest is to be the forest, to believe that a road doesn't need to be straight or fast, and that an open field is not an empty canvas for a third rate starving architect.
Things will grow of course, things will be built, bridges constructed, towns will overflow their boundaries. These things must and will happen but it is unconscionable to our identities as human beings to do so without heart. This isn't a simple lesson in aesthetics or a polemic against urban sprawl. It is a necessity that we open ourselves, become MORE human rather than less, and learn not how to change things to how we want them but how things as they are can change us into how we wish to be.
That's all for now.
I have lived in southeastern wisconsin for my entire life, much of it spent sprouting among the fields and streams of what was once called the countryside. It was a land i loved. In many ways it is responsible for who i have become and as i hope to explain, that's both a good and bad thing. I still love it but it has become something that i've been haunted by because, well, i find it a bit of a ghost of its former self. So I write this with a sense of loss and love but i maintain that the people who live there, for the most part, are a fine bunch, even if i do find them a bit misguided. If this is read by those in southeastern wisconsin, particularly my friends and family, I'm sure I'll be branded a bit of a traitor. Whatever. I love you guys and i love my country but i just don't find much of it left anymore and i'm a bit angry. I guess the word i'm looking for is nostalgic but at the same time i feel like america itself, with wisconsin as a microcosm, is losing some of its identity in the rampant and juvenile pursuit of growth for growths sake.
Okay. On with it.
I've been away for a few years, one state over in Minnesota - land of the hated Vikings. In that time my infrequent visits have witnessed some shocking changes to damned near everything from Madison to Milwaukee and Chicago to Saukville. This is a huge stretch of land but for reasons that absolutely boggle my understanding it's becoming so much smaller. It now feels like the ideal of the american dream, as popularized by TV, Radio, Martha Stewart and G.W. America has fallen out of the sky and carpet bombed the entire area. Once scenic drives have been covered with highways, McMansions are everywhere and, like rabbits, breed at an astounding rate, Stripmalls that remain mostly vacant seem to be spawn from freeway detritus as if the offramps themselves have grown appendages. A common joke has become - when you plant a Walmart its weeds - a bank, a Car Tires, Battery Plus, Sams Club, etc grow along with it.
Okay. I know its a common complaint. I'm definately on a very crowded soap box here. Let me just try and state that I don't believe for a second that this is just a problem of corrupt city planning, or a philosophy of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' I believe that, at it's core, we're looking at a crisis of identity. No i am not going to launch into an 'American Values' lecture. It's pointless. In fact it's worse than pointless. There never has been, in this country, anything in it's history that would ever lend us to believe that we've had something like a set of cohesive values. In fact, if social history shows us anything about our country it is that there have always been a fracture of values some of them slamming straight into each other.
When i was a kid growing up in small town america of southeastern wisconsin, the forests and landscape was a phenomena. It was a daily living experience, one that provided enormous comfort and delight and fueled imagination. It was a place of escape, of worship, of life, of direct and tangible experience but also of necessary fear - which only served to fuel the fun. I could walk out my door, grab my bike and in seconds be on a back trail somewhere. I could be up a tree, or just sitting calmly by a river, listening to my thoughts, breathing in the cool, feeling very quiet. It became a part of my identity, a part of who I was, and ever since then I have gravitated to places where I felt that people understood the sanctity of those things.
These days those same places where i wandered happily and got lost have been paved over. All over southeast wisconsin this has happened, to the point where i have only the memories of those things. As a people we don't seem to see far beyond our front door. We manicure our lawns, afraid of what the neighbors may think if we don't. We grow our stripmalls conveniently within reach of our magnificent, if dubiously built, homes so that we may scurry out, procure what we need and scurry back, in time for the football game. As communities we enact ordinances on house color, the height of road signs, the size of shrubs in the front yard all in an epic quest for what? Living each others lives, i think, flattening the spiritual, psychological growth of each other until it becomes a dull grayish aesthetic past that covers everything with sameness.
So basically, that's it. I think all of this growth is a loss of ourselves. The more we lose ourselves with this careless planting of weeds the less we can possibly have of ourselves in the future. It is an utter failure of our society to even consider experience. Is it an experience to drive to a Walmart or a Sam's Club? I suppose it could be. Is it an experience to live in a house that looks exactly like your neighbors, same hedges, one of four possible colors, slightly different floor plan, sleeps twelve when there are only three? Again. It could be. But i don't think so.
It is character that makes us as a society. It seems to me that my country and my state has been living in a state of fear about it's character. We've paved and smoothed and flattened its rough but beautiful edges, thrown bridges over its brooks, planted buildings over its fields, grown condos and mansions on ridges and in forests. We are systematically assasinating the character of the land and in doing so we are murdering our own wonderful identities as individuals. We are becoming mundane, indistinguishable, the living dead, surviving on the brains and souls of those more vibrant than us, and on stolen moments of experience that lift us out of our early graves into a fleeting experience of delight.
It is environment caring for you, teaching you daily, guiding you and growing you in it's character that creates you and makes you strong and willing and able to experience yourself wholly. We desperately need people to admire good architecture without fearing it, to believe that the purpose of the forest is to be the forest, to believe that a road doesn't need to be straight or fast, and that an open field is not an empty canvas for a third rate starving architect.
Things will grow of course, things will be built, bridges constructed, towns will overflow their boundaries. These things must and will happen but it is unconscionable to our identities as human beings to do so without heart. This isn't a simple lesson in aesthetics or a polemic against urban sprawl. It is a necessity that we open ourselves, become MORE human rather than less, and learn not how to change things to how we want them but how things as they are can change us into how we wish to be.
That's all for now.
Friday, January 25, 2008
My Fly Is Open or my tale of Zen Instruction.
Howdy.
The first thing i need to say is that i don't know how to sit. I'm a pretty tall guy, one might say - lanky and the whole cross legged thing has always been a bit of a problem with me resulting in detentions and other repercussions from a wee age when teachers were a bit more strict and believed that a young lad in a great deal of pain could easily be confused with a troubled and fidgety child. Things haven't changed much which is a bit of a concern for my zen meditation, luckily thats only where the problem starts.
It turns out that i am not the only one who doesn't know how to sit. No one really knows how to sit. For most of us sitting is a matter of plopping your ass down on something comfortable, snatching the remote control or a newspaper or a magazine and engaging your brain or its reasonable facsimile in colorful lights or interesting thought. This isn't sitting. Go ahead and try to sit. In all probability you're sitting while you're reading this. But thats exactly the point. Sort of.
You're not sitting. You're reading. If you were to explain what you were doing right now you would probably say 'i'm reading this dumb blog from this messed up guy.' Try just sitting. Turn off the music, the tv, close the computer (this is probably boring stuff to you anyway) and just sit.
Okay. So what. Now i'm sitting. I wonder what that girl i knew in high school is doing these days? How am i going to get out of debt? Will i ever find a job? Why can't i meet any nice people? Is there someone out there for me? Why am i such a loser?
Yep. That's sitting alright.
The purpose of Zen meditation of the school i attended the other day is just sitting. Actually sitting. You don't try to quiet your mind, you don't edit the thoughts - people tend to think that mediatation is a process of cutting out all of the thoughts. You just let them come. Whatever they are, but you don't hold onto them. You just sit. Eventually, i was told, a thought will pop up and you may chase it down and engage it - as we all do with our thoughts and troubles. But you don't have to hold onto it because, well, there isn't anything to hold onto. And i guess thats the interesting thing, to me. There is nothing to hold onto. Ever. And even if there were you will never be able to hold onto it.
Lets put it this way. Years ago i had a good job. At least it was what soe people thought of as a good job. I liked the people, i hated the drive, cursed the commute, wondered why i wasn't a highly paid writer, listened to music, surfed the internet, and occasionally worked hard enough that i was getting paid fairly well by people who should have known better. I felt pretty secure - not where i wanted to be of course - but secure and i probably would have stayed at it longer than i rationally should have because it paid the bills and gave me some pocket change to buy some things for myself. Well one day i went to work, worked the whole day, laughed and joked with my bosses and coworkers, worked my files, made my phone calls etc. Ten minutes before i was to leave work my supervisor called me in and said rather flatly that i was fired. And there you go. We think we have our security but in a blink of an eye it can be gone. Things change. Always. Forever. Nothing has any real reality to it at all.
Zen is a method of internalizing and realizing how beautifully tenuous and nonexistent our connection to this life and everything in it. You may have good things but don't hold on. Just sit. You may have bad things. Just sit. You may have fear, worry, heartache, pain, love, beauty, happiness, joy, fulfillment. Just sit.
Anyway. It was a short meeting. Then i went for coffee and wrote in my journal. It was a nice place named Brewed, terrific if strong coffee. In fact, the coffee was more than just a little strong. In n o time at all i realized i had drank myself straight into an anxiety attack. After the meditation - the anxiety. And then I realized (as the coffee was passing through as it always does) that my fly had been open all morning. Quite the loveliest introduction to zen you could possibly have, really. Enlightenment and then the inevitable crashing into my own humanity. It was as though the world was saying, 'Yep. There you are.' I thanked the world for that, laughed and zipped up my fly.
The first thing i need to say is that i don't know how to sit. I'm a pretty tall guy, one might say - lanky and the whole cross legged thing has always been a bit of a problem with me resulting in detentions and other repercussions from a wee age when teachers were a bit more strict and believed that a young lad in a great deal of pain could easily be confused with a troubled and fidgety child. Things haven't changed much which is a bit of a concern for my zen meditation, luckily thats only where the problem starts.
It turns out that i am not the only one who doesn't know how to sit. No one really knows how to sit. For most of us sitting is a matter of plopping your ass down on something comfortable, snatching the remote control or a newspaper or a magazine and engaging your brain or its reasonable facsimile in colorful lights or interesting thought. This isn't sitting. Go ahead and try to sit. In all probability you're sitting while you're reading this. But thats exactly the point. Sort of.
You're not sitting. You're reading. If you were to explain what you were doing right now you would probably say 'i'm reading this dumb blog from this messed up guy.' Try just sitting. Turn off the music, the tv, close the computer (this is probably boring stuff to you anyway) and just sit.
Okay. So what. Now i'm sitting. I wonder what that girl i knew in high school is doing these days? How am i going to get out of debt? Will i ever find a job? Why can't i meet any nice people? Is there someone out there for me? Why am i such a loser?
Yep. That's sitting alright.
The purpose of Zen meditation of the school i attended the other day is just sitting. Actually sitting. You don't try to quiet your mind, you don't edit the thoughts - people tend to think that mediatation is a process of cutting out all of the thoughts. You just let them come. Whatever they are, but you don't hold onto them. You just sit. Eventually, i was told, a thought will pop up and you may chase it down and engage it - as we all do with our thoughts and troubles. But you don't have to hold onto it because, well, there isn't anything to hold onto. And i guess thats the interesting thing, to me. There is nothing to hold onto. Ever. And even if there were you will never be able to hold onto it.
Lets put it this way. Years ago i had a good job. At least it was what soe people thought of as a good job. I liked the people, i hated the drive, cursed the commute, wondered why i wasn't a highly paid writer, listened to music, surfed the internet, and occasionally worked hard enough that i was getting paid fairly well by people who should have known better. I felt pretty secure - not where i wanted to be of course - but secure and i probably would have stayed at it longer than i rationally should have because it paid the bills and gave me some pocket change to buy some things for myself. Well one day i went to work, worked the whole day, laughed and joked with my bosses and coworkers, worked my files, made my phone calls etc. Ten minutes before i was to leave work my supervisor called me in and said rather flatly that i was fired. And there you go. We think we have our security but in a blink of an eye it can be gone. Things change. Always. Forever. Nothing has any real reality to it at all.
Zen is a method of internalizing and realizing how beautifully tenuous and nonexistent our connection to this life and everything in it. You may have good things but don't hold on. Just sit. You may have bad things. Just sit. You may have fear, worry, heartache, pain, love, beauty, happiness, joy, fulfillment. Just sit.
Anyway. It was a short meeting. Then i went for coffee and wrote in my journal. It was a nice place named Brewed, terrific if strong coffee. In fact, the coffee was more than just a little strong. In n o time at all i realized i had drank myself straight into an anxiety attack. After the meditation - the anxiety. And then I realized (as the coffee was passing through as it always does) that my fly had been open all morning. Quite the loveliest introduction to zen you could possibly have, really. Enlightenment and then the inevitable crashing into my own humanity. It was as though the world was saying, 'Yep. There you are.' I thanked the world for that, laughed and zipped up my fly.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Oh the tangled webs we weave and other unsavory things
I should start off by saying i was a tad inaccurate in my last post. The girlfriend i spoke of...well. There are (obviously) a few difficulties on that score. At this point we are not Boyfriend/Girlfriend, as tough as that is to admit to myself. But then that's what this is all about isn't it? Admitting tough things, being honest with myself and everyone else who reads this. We are - or rather i am - struggling mightily to just remain friends. I hope, i want there to be a continued relationship ending with a pastoral life of green things growing and little pink people growing and all that comes with a wonderful open life. However, i have a lot of growing up to do before that is possible - as she so eloquently put in an email to me yesterday. Which brings me around to the subject at hand:
My mostly dismally low self esteem.
For many years i thought my low self esteem was fodder for my own self deprecating jokes. I thought it was something that made my character interesting and pathetic in a way that was mostly innocuous. It harmed no one but myself, and hell - when you have low self esteem hurting yourself isn't such a big deal at all. It's like breathing and eating and sleeping. Of course you never realize that a dismally low self esteem kind of jams up every attempt at planning a fruitful life. Like pushing a cart uphill but where you are the guy pushing and the doofus on the side of the road laughing and throwing sticks in the way constantly. Eventually, if you have half a brain in your head, you will take greatly to the notion of tackling that doofus like a 250 pound strong saftey in an open field tackle. You no longer want to just put him down - you want to hurt that little bastard.
The little doofus, i am afraid, has been complicating my life (and hers) in the extreme. It's been years now, of sitting at the bottom of this hill with this cart listening to the little doofus snickering like a mind monkey in the bushes, hoping someone will come along and put an axe in this idiots head. Well. My friend has tried. But its a tricky thing. No one else can tackle that schmuck. Just me. She's been doing her best to point him out and get me off of my rock to go and get him but at times it just seems too damned hard. In the meantime life goes on without me participating.
And that sucks.
Alot.
So that and many other things are why i have decided to start this here Blog. Don't worry, gentle readers, ye shall not be regaled with tales of my failures nor a lingering, sighing chronicle of melancholia. It is time i move from this here vacation spot on the purple lake of desolation. Rather, i shall move on to greener pastures where i will munch yummy grass like a hindu cow. Not really.
So what am i up to to get moving? Good question. For starters i have started this blog. It's not much but its something. I figure i have to look inside of me for those things i have always thought about doing, for all of those dreams i've delayed, and all the other shit that makes life worth living and start doing them. One of them is publishing. Sure, this is hardly real publishing but it's something and it's mine and i made the choice to throw my voice into the ring even if no one wants to hear it sing. (Really you don't want to hear me sing. Seriously. It's not pretty. Just pull up next to my truck in the summer time and you'll know what i'm talking about.)
I've started a page on Facebook. Yeah yeah everybody has a page on facebook. So what. (Listen closely and ye shall hear the mating call of the mind monkey doofus) I have not had a page on facebook. It's pretty nice to see the connections and nothing beats throwing metaphorical sheep at people. I mean, sheep!!! All i wish for facebook is that they would let me launch llamas at my friends. Also i have decided to go in for some Zazen - actual instruction in sitting meditation. (Yeah, yeah. You and your wannabe enlightenment nonsense. You KNOW it will never work and you're stupid for even trying.)
Anyway. That starts tomorrow morning, bright and oh so very early. I'm sure i will be in at some point to let you all know how it goes. As though i am already prefiguring some result from it. Thats a bit ignorant too when you get right down to it. The point of doing things, ladies and gentlemen, is not so much for the result as for the doing of something itself. The next time your self esteem perks up with its nonsense and tries to nag you with its fears and so forth, just remember that. Stay in the present and just do it (as the unfortunate Nike ad so eloquently puts it)
Your Mind Monkey is stronger than you give it credit for. It's only through serious effort (and alot of genuine fun at yourself) that you can get a handle on it. Not that you ever will because it also just happens to be that faculty of us that prevents us from sticking our hands on the kitchen burner. Interesting that something that is in our brains to prevent us from being harmed quite frequently causes its own fair share of harm.
Adios till tomorrow
My mostly dismally low self esteem.
For many years i thought my low self esteem was fodder for my own self deprecating jokes. I thought it was something that made my character interesting and pathetic in a way that was mostly innocuous. It harmed no one but myself, and hell - when you have low self esteem hurting yourself isn't such a big deal at all. It's like breathing and eating and sleeping. Of course you never realize that a dismally low self esteem kind of jams up every attempt at planning a fruitful life. Like pushing a cart uphill but where you are the guy pushing and the doofus on the side of the road laughing and throwing sticks in the way constantly. Eventually, if you have half a brain in your head, you will take greatly to the notion of tackling that doofus like a 250 pound strong saftey in an open field tackle. You no longer want to just put him down - you want to hurt that little bastard.
The little doofus, i am afraid, has been complicating my life (and hers) in the extreme. It's been years now, of sitting at the bottom of this hill with this cart listening to the little doofus snickering like a mind monkey in the bushes, hoping someone will come along and put an axe in this idiots head. Well. My friend has tried. But its a tricky thing. No one else can tackle that schmuck. Just me. She's been doing her best to point him out and get me off of my rock to go and get him but at times it just seems too damned hard. In the meantime life goes on without me participating.
And that sucks.
Alot.
So that and many other things are why i have decided to start this here Blog. Don't worry, gentle readers, ye shall not be regaled with tales of my failures nor a lingering, sighing chronicle of melancholia. It is time i move from this here vacation spot on the purple lake of desolation. Rather, i shall move on to greener pastures where i will munch yummy grass like a hindu cow. Not really.
So what am i up to to get moving? Good question. For starters i have started this blog. It's not much but its something. I figure i have to look inside of me for those things i have always thought about doing, for all of those dreams i've delayed, and all the other shit that makes life worth living and start doing them. One of them is publishing. Sure, this is hardly real publishing but it's something and it's mine and i made the choice to throw my voice into the ring even if no one wants to hear it sing. (Really you don't want to hear me sing. Seriously. It's not pretty. Just pull up next to my truck in the summer time and you'll know what i'm talking about.)
I've started a page on Facebook. Yeah yeah everybody has a page on facebook. So what. (Listen closely and ye shall hear the mating call of the mind monkey doofus) I have not had a page on facebook. It's pretty nice to see the connections and nothing beats throwing metaphorical sheep at people. I mean, sheep!!! All i wish for facebook is that they would let me launch llamas at my friends. Also i have decided to go in for some Zazen - actual instruction in sitting meditation. (Yeah, yeah. You and your wannabe enlightenment nonsense. You KNOW it will never work and you're stupid for even trying.)
Anyway. That starts tomorrow morning, bright and oh so very early. I'm sure i will be in at some point to let you all know how it goes. As though i am already prefiguring some result from it. Thats a bit ignorant too when you get right down to it. The point of doing things, ladies and gentlemen, is not so much for the result as for the doing of something itself. The next time your self esteem perks up with its nonsense and tries to nag you with its fears and so forth, just remember that. Stay in the present and just do it (as the unfortunate Nike ad so eloquently puts it)
Your Mind Monkey is stronger than you give it credit for. It's only through serious effort (and alot of genuine fun at yourself) that you can get a handle on it. Not that you ever will because it also just happens to be that faculty of us that prevents us from sticking our hands on the kitchen burner. Interesting that something that is in our brains to prevent us from being harmed quite frequently causes its own fair share of harm.
Adios till tomorrow
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Speak from your heart and other frustrating things
So. This here being the first blog post i have ever done i figured i would tackle the first issue that comes to mind which is the phrase 'speak from your heart'. Is it just me or is this a hell of a lot more difficult than it sounds, particularly when your heart does not have lips or ears or a voicebox or any of the other necessary things that might make its speech a little easier? How does one speak from the heart? In one way or another aren't we all just speaking from the heart whenever we speak whats inside us? Is this a speech of hearts and dreams and deep inner secrets of our souls or are our hearts capable of laughing, joking, having some fun with us, being quiet, being tired, whatnot?
Obviously there is a reason that i'm mulling this over in my brain. Last night, after a fairly involved conversation with my girlfriend where i was brought up (again) on charges of being a defensive turd (guilty as charged, i might add) i was asked to 'speak from my heart.' Which sent my fuzzy little brain into a complete tailspin, eventually crashing it to earth somewhere in nebraska. If you live in nebraska and find a little brain wandering the roadways trying to stick out its nonexistent thumb, please let me know on this site.
So what is my heart saying? uhhh....Idunno. My heart is saying that it really is enjoying the music of Uncle Tupelo right now and wants to get up and dance happily, like snoopy. My heart is saying it wants to do something interesting, like climb a wall or go snoeshowing (not that i've ever used snoeshoes but hey - its my heart and it wants what it wants dontchknow.) My heart is really enjoying Chicamauga right now. Unlike that little brain out there somewhere my heart is almost always happy and optimistic about things. I know it really wouldn't mind getting lost in nebraska (indiana maybe but not nebraska) It would figure out a way to stick out a ventricle and take a ride somewhere over the plains and enjoy every last minute of it.
Other frustrating things:
I hate data entry jobs. What kind of slovenly mindless nonsense is it? How do you stay in the present when your brain is always wandering off on its own, creating blogs and the like. But hey, somebodies got to do them, right? And its us listless, unskilled writing types without the stones to force our noses into the publishing world that end up with them. Middle management types should praise the gods of commerce for the English degree! Without it they would have no power to create themselves as the minor dieties in the corporate pantheon.
I don't want to hear any more about politics ever. Too much bad to say about this topic and not enough good....
Anyway. Till next time.
Obviously there is a reason that i'm mulling this over in my brain. Last night, after a fairly involved conversation with my girlfriend where i was brought up (again) on charges of being a defensive turd (guilty as charged, i might add) i was asked to 'speak from my heart.' Which sent my fuzzy little brain into a complete tailspin, eventually crashing it to earth somewhere in nebraska. If you live in nebraska and find a little brain wandering the roadways trying to stick out its nonexistent thumb, please let me know on this site.
So what is my heart saying? uhhh....Idunno. My heart is saying that it really is enjoying the music of Uncle Tupelo right now and wants to get up and dance happily, like snoopy. My heart is saying it wants to do something interesting, like climb a wall or go snoeshowing (not that i've ever used snoeshoes but hey - its my heart and it wants what it wants dontchknow.) My heart is really enjoying Chicamauga right now. Unlike that little brain out there somewhere my heart is almost always happy and optimistic about things. I know it really wouldn't mind getting lost in nebraska (indiana maybe but not nebraska) It would figure out a way to stick out a ventricle and take a ride somewhere over the plains and enjoy every last minute of it.
Other frustrating things:
I hate data entry jobs. What kind of slovenly mindless nonsense is it? How do you stay in the present when your brain is always wandering off on its own, creating blogs and the like. But hey, somebodies got to do them, right? And its us listless, unskilled writing types without the stones to force our noses into the publishing world that end up with them. Middle management types should praise the gods of commerce for the English degree! Without it they would have no power to create themselves as the minor dieties in the corporate pantheon.
I don't want to hear any more about politics ever. Too much bad to say about this topic and not enough good....
Anyway. Till next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
