Category Archives: everyday observations

Building up your human skills

It’s like the Karate Kid. You do menial labor, so it seems, over a long period of time, and in the end you have something useful to show for it. You are developing your human skills. But it’s frustrating because it’s so hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I was getting guidance, and that helped give me hope about the light. Hope that I wasn’t just spinning my wheels. But maybe in the end you have to walk into the light all by yourself. You have to approach the light by yourself. Maybe the approach is the “walking into.” It’s not just a last second thing.

To write or not to write / take it or leave it diet

I will try to write without breaking the trance that aids me, so it seems. The meditative state, perhaps. I will take it or leave it. That’s my diet of the day. If I can feel that I can take it or leave it, perhaps in a sort of blasé way, then I am left in a position of being able to make my own decisions. Because it’s not that I don’t understand how to eat. It’s that I feel compelled to eat inappropriately.

There are inner and outer triggers that qualify as compulsions. Maybe I feel that I will disappoint someone if I don’t eat in the manner they expect me to. Or I sense a ghost lurking inside me advising me to eat this or eat that, maybe because I did it before and it didn’t kill me, so what’s the harm?

A difficult night / elusive change

If only the reasons I am sure life is worth cherishing could help me help myself. I seem to be okay with not completely flushing my life down the toilet. I can retain a modicum of life force in the face of all that weighs me down.

Unfortunately, my ability to make positive change stubbornly evades my attempts. I guess I knew this about myself, but I also seem to stubbornly believe I should keep trying. Haha. Stubbornness against stubbornness. Butting heads. Sound familiar? It echoes life and relationship. What fun are relationships if not for these head butting matches? A lot, actually. But my fate does not seem to be limited to peace and tranquility. No matter how much I think it could or should. I have angst, damnit. My supposed zen calm may very well be angst in disguise.

Generational bonds / connections

Whereas it seems like everything is happening in a small vacuum to me personally, it makes a lot more sense that there is a contingency of people going through the same journey. It is liberating in a way to feel unique. But it is unrealistic, and it may end up leading to nowhere.

We humans set up situations to encourage a feeling of bonding. Like national holidays. It is then that you’re supposed to feel connected. We don’t understand that we are always connected, in deeper ways than that. We don’t talk about that though, in mixed company. Maybe in secret rooms, secret hiding places.

I imagine many things are generational. I am unintentionally experiencing life in much the same way as others in my generation. They like to label generations. But that’s an external label, which doesn’t tell you much about your personal experience of it. I think I am aware of this generational bias, and I try to steer Cody in healthier, better directions, having learned what works and what leads nowhere. I would like him not to have to repeat the same mistakes I made (and still make). Maybe he can’t simply by virtue of his being in a totally new generation. It’s funny – I feel such a bond with him, but in the end he will be living (and has already lived) in such a different culture and world. Even the difference between Naples and Potomac is pretty vast. Plus Potomac in the 70s and 80s and Naples in the 10s are starkly different I’m sure.

Titling blogs / benefits of expressing yourself / benefits of not expressing yourself

It matters. It matters what you say. It matters how you think. It matters that you exist. It matters if you speak or don’t. Some things are better left unsaid. Mom advised not to speak too readily under certain circumstances.

Was it for this reason? To keep something in your heart? Close to your heart. Close to your sleeve. Is it that important what you do or don’t share? Am I known for my shares? And non shares.

It’s interesting to distinguish between things that might be perceived as practice for life and things that are real life. One distinction might be the question of cost. Is real life by definition free? Real for yourself, at least. Your real experiences are to some degree untouchable and untaxable. Unknowable to an outside party. I can write and write and write, but won’t there always remain a proportion unmentioned? Not on purpose. Just by deleterious destiny. There’s an inner life and an outer life. People talk about a rich inner life. That could mean a wide range of emotions and pieces of understanding that inevitably remain unspoken, unexposed.

If I were to title this blog in some sort of legitimate way, not in any way obscure, would that take away something from the expression? Is it along the lines of what I’m talking about, ways to express myself or repress myself? Repressing is a term that certainly has a bad rap. Maybe it’s not so bad if it only applies to not expressing yourself on the outside. I used to believe that if I wasn’t writing or in some way bearing my soul, I was essentially dead. What if that isn’t the truth? What if I don’t turn to ash the moment this blog entry has run its course?

Maybe one reason I don’t title appropriately is that I don’t want to reread the blog right after I finish. I am using it as a way to intuitively express my ideas and feelings. It’s not an essay for an English course. So if I don’t reread it, I won’t have a sense of its entirety, an overview. In fact, I write specifically so that I don’t have to have the ideas in my head. Rereading will reinsert those ideas back where I don’t want them. Since almost no one reads this, it has become more of a private journal anyway. It doesn’t have to be made to attract readers in that sense. I suppose in another sense I would be glad to be a source of some solace or wisdom to anyone that might be in need of it. Maybe I can scan the entries quickly to get a sense of what my main points were.

Maybe even for myself, if and when I want my own solace or need some wisdom, I will be able to search topics more easily if the titles clearly state what I wrote about.

Meaty

What am I supposed to love more than food? Writing? Maybe. Music? Perhaps. Food is life. But food is also pain. And it’s purported to be a death warrant. My theory is that I can overpower one love with another love. Haha. Now that I write that I see that is silly. Isn’t it a famous truth that love doesn’t work that way? Maybe it’s a typical male interpretation of it. Blocky. Stacking one thing on top of another.

You have to invite more love into your life. Love is invitational. Open. Love doesn’t understand turning off or trumping. That’s for the brain. The intellect. Since there seems to be no question that I love food, I must approach it from the standpoint of love relationships. Just listen to what my parents have said about love. That it cannot be analyzed in and out of existence. That it cannot be chosen like an item on a restaurant menu. It finds you, if you’re willing. If you avail yourself. Love. Oh, what a roaming relationship I’ve had with you. What a wild ride. You have been my companion since birth, haven’t you? Will I ever understand the wiles of your ways? You’ve made this life quite interesting. You’ve been a master of misdirection. I’ve used your name in vain many a time, haven’t I? But you’ve led me astray. You’ve given me life, and you will dig my grave. You’ve given me hope, and you lead me to despair and hopelessness. You refuse to guide and teach me – you are buttonlipped. I will miss you and yearn for you when I’m in the throes of death. You are synonymous with meaning. But you are just a word. Nothing more. At least in this context. You are indigestion. You are a hangover. A love hangover, a food hangover. Anything that you have asked me to binge on. You oppose moderation. You oppose a lack of passion.

What’s funny is that I think I will figure this out in a writing spat. i will figure this out and then I will go on my merry way with sufficient wisdom to change my evil ways. To love right. I don’t just write for catharsis, like has been proposed by a few. That is a side effect, really. I write to gain wisdom. Insight. Epiphany. That seems silly, though. Such an innocuous thing, putting words down. How can that make a difference to who I am, to my sheer essence? But what else has made such a difference? Am I supposed to go hiking every day to find wisdom? Am I supposed to go sailing or kayaking? Am I supposed to visit Europe or the Middle East? Am I supposed to volunteer at a soup kitchen? Or for a political organization? Am I supposed to work for a charity? Am I supposed to quit the Naples Philharmonic and try for a solo career? Will those things teach me more about life and love than writing? Am I supposed to write the great American novel? Am I supposed to write a self help book? Am I supposed to go to meditation retreats? Am I supposed to become a teacher in a school? What age group?

It’s funny that I forget how love has burned me. Whether it’s a few hours ago or a few decades ago. I have to forget, though. I have to love love. That’s my nature. That’s my calling. I am called to love. I write to balance some of the excesses of love. That’s one of the things I can do about this overactive love gland. I can’t have it amputated. I think I would die then. I can counterbalance its effects.

letter

That scene in Sleepers. It can haunt me. At times. That is one good reason why I journal. That is one reason I sleep with the XM radio on. Next to my head, yes. Things haunt me. I am affected by things, despite what I let on. That is why I am a good musician. I am affected. I am just not great at understanding and articulating and acting on those things. So I inact. Not enact.

I need friends and lovers to hold my hand. To help stabilize me. To help me walk. Life is too overwhelming otherwise. I can’t fathom the reality of it. Like in Sleepers. I can’t fathom the cruelty. The pleasure in being cruel.

I can’t believe I act tough. I can’t believe I act like I know it all. Do I have to do that in order to get along? In certain circumstances, yes. But I need to weed those out of my life, it seems. I need to find places in the world where I can be true to myself. I think I have done that to some degree.

Being in Thailand this month is once again opening a window for me. Turning on lights inside myself. I can see what hides. What scurries into corners, under carpets.

shrivel

Maybe music allows for such a shriveled, spontaneous, fractured personality. Maybe music benefits from it. Maybe music requires it. The arts. Larger than life. Your problems, your passions, your dreams, your dips.

It’s nuts. I somehow latched on to one of the few things that flourishes in my insanity. It’s built in to our society. We allow for it.

Maybe I had a perfect childhood. Maybe I pick up everything, good and bod, so it could seem I had it bad. Maybe I am hazy because that’s the way I am.

That’s been my working theory for a long time now. That’s the beauty of theorizing. It is not fact, but it can be your version of fact until a better one trumps it.

bard

I’m a badass. Not for the reasons you think. Depending who you are. It’s the little tiny things. It’s breathing. It’s writing. It’s the little victories. It’s succeeding where I have previously failed. Expressing myself here is an example of an instance where I previously couldn’t find the wherewithal to express myself. I learned, and I forged into unknown territory. I dared. For me, that is worthy of the moniker badass. Exercising control in a situation that tempts me to let loose, to forge directly into a favorite territory of mine, is badass.

In my case, badass doesn’t really look badass to an outside observer. Me acknowledging that I’m badass is badass, too. Standing my ground against someone who thinks they’re a badass is being badass.