Tag Archives: personal history
Hamantaschen
It’s part and parcel of being a guy. My character defects are interwoven inside my gender traits.
Wanting to eat compulsively, eat overabundantly, eat emotionally is wrapped up in my gender. Eating doesn’t directly cause character defects nor directly cause harm to others. But it’s intertwined inside of them. It’s also interwoven inside my character strengths. Everything good about me has become linked to food, just like everything bad. My taciturn nature. My moodiness. My brooding. My incommunicativeness.
These things are also wrapped up in my manhood. I feel I am simply behaving like a man. However I am behaving like an ass. Manhood can cut both ways. Good and bad.
Even this trying to cut to the heart of the matter, not bottling, is tricky. It can so often backfire if I am not keeping my eyes on the prize. Salvation. Self-knowledge. If I only go half way, it can be a catalyst to a slip. If I rest on my laurels, if I am at all self satisfied or self obsessed, I am cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
Scott and I used to use that expression. Good ol’ Scott. I wonder where my defects of character bled into our friendship. I can think of one instance where I was probably in a particularly brooding state of mind, and he called it out. But there are others where my particular personality quirks gave us that wonderful rapport that was the key to a close friendship. That’s what I’m talking about. My obsession with food is a symptom of who I am, the good and the bad. If I wasn’t a glutton, Scott wouldn’t have had the opportunity to cook me somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 egg in a baskets on some Saturday mornings. It was a springboard for certain fun times. It didn’t directly cause me to act like a jerk, like alcohol apparently does. But it got fused with whatever maladjustments I have been prone to over my life. Of course in my first family food was intimately interwoven into our traditions and daily lives. So whatever bad personal qualities I absorbed within that environment, have been addressed in a certain way by my relationship with food.
Food is unfortunately an odd but common replacement for human connection. Perhaps some character defects spring from this replacement. Anti socialness. Distraction. Detachment. Uncommunicativeness. Fuzzy thinking. When you put food above people, you obviously are less social. When you’re always thinking about food, you can’t focus on other things and your mind gets lazy. When your diet is so unhealthy, it affects your brain and brain functioning. I am finding myself getting very sleepy lately as a result of not overeating. I think it’s both physical and emotional. Physical because of not having the constant oral stimulation as well as the substance flooding through my bloodstream. Emotional because I used to be trying to be high on food all the time, and now that’s been removed from my daily routine.
French
I don’t know if it’s really from 1995, but I found some notes I scribbled on the margins of “French Toast for Breakfast.” It’s copy-written 1995. They are as follows:
Can I retrain the messages I am receiving and had received? Hasn’t it been a short enough time since I was little Adam? I just didn’t know how important and vital it was to trust me. I am the source, and the soul inside me is my conscience and spiritual guide. No matter how wonderful or powerful things or people are around me, I must always include and even prioritize my own feelings and guts and dreams. I must permit and nurture me, grant me access. Activities happen to be more or less conducive for this openness. Some activities you are ashamed of are in fact conducive to openness whereas some you are proud of and open about block the inner self and prevent growth and living.
As a little child, you don’t know which habits will turn out to be healthy and nurturing and which will turn on you. You aren’t sure how much independence you will be required to have later on and thereby how best to care for yourself. I do need to harken back to a young age to find sources of behaviors.
It’s always interesting to see what I was thinking about in years past.
enviable
What’s the point of writing? I immediately see the point. What’s the point of not writing? I rarely see the point. We are at the Y. At her behest. I like to come here, but not for me.
I need to get to work. Work inside and out. Writing is inside work. It can lead to good outside work. I need to use the tools, the OA tools. They are a better plan than what I seem to have come up with from my own personal history.
I heard that gluttony and perhaps sloth are too judgmental to be productive ways of inventorying myself. Not forgiving. I don’t know. Dick suggested the 7 deadly sins as a starting point, didn’t he?
I would say it’s safe to say that gluttony and sloth are close bedfellows. Avarice? Hmmm. What is your potential? Where is the bar? An outside program helps to provide a non moving bar. Or any bar. An outside philosophy. Don’t rely on your own shaky will power.
I think anything that keeps me on track and isn’t hurtful is helpful. If it’s the sins, the Y, the meetings, the fellowship, work, friendship.
and then
Yesterday and today my mind has been opened. I am rereading Love Is A Choice and responding equally strongly as however many years ago when I first read it. I imagine I have a different array and even a different level of things to reflect the information against now. I have kicks that I get on with different books and authors, or different people, and like I said in the last blog, I wish I knew where my central beliefs and passions lay so as not to sway with the breeze so much. I love a book (or a person) that states its ideas unwaveringly – I always have. When will I get to that point myself?
I do feel like this particular book has many of the ingredients to help me dissect and then reattach myself to the world and to a life less based on ups and downs and confusing, fleeting passions. It speaks of a life which accounts for all the many layers and interests inside us all.
originally published on 9/23/06
35, and counting
Being my birthday, it seems timely enough for a blogaroonie. I will quote from yesterday’s “feelings journal” entry.
Right now I’m a little tight, tightly wound. I spent the last few hours at home, alone, watching Clerks and taking a nap, eating tortilla chips and orange juice. I was entertained but still immersed in solitude. I was feeling okay, as far as I was aware. But I was also kind of walled in. I guess I chose to be in that isolated place. It feels familiar and safe. But it also tightens me. Now I’m aware of the tightness. Now that I’m sitting in the library at the Phil, writing, and in the vicinity of others, other warm bodies, warm personalities.
Then later I wrote this:
I finished the concert – it was a proud experience some of the time. I wore my earplugs to preserve my hearing, which was a comfort. At some point I guess a fragrance wafted to my nose which reminded me of my dear friend Rosalie S. The reminiscence was probably enhanced by the fact we were playing a Brahms symphony, one of her favorites. So for a few seconds I had that good feeling, good association. I actually tried to retain it, but it dispersed. I spent the later part of the concert partially beating myself up about my left hand tension. Perhaps ironic. Perhaps self-defeating.
So, the fact is I have been writing a fair amount, but privately. I don’t allot myself enough time to do that and blog. It requires a different mindset. It’s similar to playing the cello with or without an audience. I also feel different depending where I am when I write. Maybe I should try to relish all these differences instead of having my good ol’ buddy inside my head criticize my circumstances every step of the way.
originally published on 10/29/06
Cheerily
I sit in orchestra and watch people. Or observe is a better word, due to my feeling of non-belonging. I see all sorts of bizarre movements and expressions that are solely a result of an individual’s idiosyncrasies. They are unrelated to the essence of the music being played. They are their egos. That is actually fine if they prefer to do things that way. My dilemma is that I cannot seem to get away with even the slightest departure from total discipline in body and mind without everything unraveling at the seams. All these other people appear to be humming along perfectly contentedly. And I have in fact asked people or alluded to the possibility that they are suffering from any of my same physical or mental symptomology, and almost always it is not the case. This is one reason why I have spent much time trying to look for answers to my cellistic issues outside the musical realm – I keep hitting a brick wall when I address it directly.
One other aspect to this is the question of whether others are striving for the same kinds of things I aspire to. If generally they are not, then it may be perfectly logical that they have none of the same problems I do. I assume people are on my page. I strongly wish that they are. It’s painful for me to even write that there’s a possibility that they aren’t. I despise being different, separate, and in the end isolated. I cannot believe the way people take all these human differences and/or commonalities in stride. I freeze up when I become aware of these things. And I freeze up if I try not to be aware. Maybe the only thing I can attempt to do is take my inability to take things in stride, in stride. That’s only once removed from other people, right? Not too bad.
originally published on 9/3/08
Mellifluous
Why is it that in the middle of a shower I get the urge to go work out, thus negating the shower? And why do I want to sleep in when I must get up but arise early when I have no obligations? How deep do my contrarian tendencies go? I used to think it was optional, just something I could put on to help differentiate myself from the crowd. But then, why did I want to differentiate myself? Why was that important to me? It must have had some deeper underpinnings.
It happens to me all the time, really. And it’s annoying when I would actually like to accomplish something. I have to play cat and mouse with my urges. I must outwit them in order to achieve a goal. If I want to answer a non urgent-business email, somewhere inside I need to be planning to do something totally unrelated to writing. Then there’s hope of me doing what is opposite. Same is true for working out, unless I’ve somehow embedded it into my routine at the moment. But even my routines have to be interpreted as contrary to something else to stick to them.
My stomach tells me it’s already full when it’s time for Thanksgiving dinner, but eat aplenty when I really shouldn’t. My arms start aching when it’s time for a concert, but feel great when I don’t have any upcoming performances. See how deep and visceral it is? It’s not something easily accepted either, because it’s inherently opposite to the natural course of events. My mind is trying to follow and shape my life path, but my insides are making all sorts of detours.
It’s like I live inside a magnet or a rubber band. I’m being pushed and pulled along by an unseen North Pole or puppeteer pulling an opposite-handed string. Sometimes I think it’s my soul’s way of keeping me in a homeostatic state, keeping me centered in a way. Perhaps that’s the good side of it. So maybe I should learn to give in to the North or South Poles and let them do what they’re apt to do anyway, without intrusion from my conscious self. I do not really know what percentage of consciousness versus unconsciousness is really my favorite. It’s a fluctuating thing which is not exactly under my control, but I can tell when it’s out of whack, I guess.
This blog affects that balance. Writing affects it. As does psychotherapy. They both seemingly merge the conscious and unconscious in a smooth way. You can keep track of the intricacies of the merging process there. But again, it requires either outsmarting or randomly falling into the correct circumstance to get to this place of symmetry.
originally published on 12/5/10
Buster
Tonight Cody almost gingerly flipped through the pages of my Wicked paperback for a good 10 minutes. He had no interest in stopping, either, when I hinted at him lying down to sleep. It was pretty extraordinary, considering how recently he has been destroying Dr. Seuss baby board books and the like, either by chewing or attempting a reversal of the binding. I was wondering if his respectful page turning has something to do with observing the way I handle the book when I am reading it both aloud to him and silently. People do remark on his observational bent, although they don’t always interpret it as such. It can come across to some as a somber, slightly aloof affect. But if you spend enough time with him, you see that he displays that gaze when there’s something worthy of study.
He seemed to appreciate having a TV dinner-esque meal fed to him tonight. When he would tire of one item, I luckily (from some bit of experience) had other options ready at the offing. He ate samplings of Khwan’s fried rice with salmon and egg; her couscous with tomato, ground pork, onions, cilantro, and other savories; some apple blueberry sauce; and Liberte strawberry yogurt. This was all washed down with intermittent sips of water, which he kindly doesn’t spit out boxer-style anymore, and of course his favorite propranolol dose. His eating preferences are an interesting moving target, changing as he grows. Of course he is also a moving target since we’ve stopped bothering with his high chair now with his recent deep hatred of confinement of any sort.
originally published on 7/30/11
Why, oh why
The cello is a way for me to exhibit me, both to my own eyes and to others. I’m equally unpredictable musically as in real life. I am now surmising that most everything is equivalent. I was not trained to think that. But that doesn’t make it irrelevant.
When I play the cello I am thinking about and feeling the same series of ideas and sensations as in regular life. Why shouldn’t I be? Any energy I am exerting to heal myself is just as easily directed to music-making. And anything misdirected in real life also falls short on the cello. I have always suspected that but I have never received solid confirmation from outside myself, so I couldn’t take it seriously due to my difficulty individuating myself from others. Are some things the problem and the solution simultaneously? I can’t individuate, but I must.
The important aspect of this is how I apply this learning theory to my music. I need to be sensitive to how my feelings reflect in my performance. It’s all in there if I listen for it. If I am feeling unfulfilled, for instance, I will create music in a stifled way. But it’s not even that simple. Because like life, the music is in flux. The emotional journey and processes are more reflective than a momentary mood swing. It is trickier and subtler than what I might consider my surface state of mind.
originally published on 12/19/06