More than one life to lead

News flash! We DON'T get more than one life to lead. But getting the obvious out of the way...

I've been inspired to write after watching the movie "127 Hours" with James Franco, which has supplemented experiences in my life quite closely. This may be a little heavier than my usual blog posts----and yes, I realize that IS saying something---but the time has come to talk about something really real, and not just ranting and manufactured meanings.

On January 11, 2011 my dad died of Leukemia no one knew he had. And even though the circumstances of the death meant he did not experience long-term suffering, the sheer loss has affected me in ways one would only understand having lived through it. The simplest lessons, the ones we hear over and over, learning by rote, learning vicariously through the dramatized versions we love to watch in film, are the most difficult to understand without experience, the most shockingly true once you have the experience, and the easiest to forget in the shallow pool we like to call regular life.

Let's not forget:

1. We only get one life.

We get one shot to live the best way we possibly can. But it's not really just ONE shot. Let's not forget either that life is a massive conglomeration of little, tiny, insignificant shots. A span of 80- 100 years (you hope) full of opportunities to love, and opportunities to make the right decision, or to learn from a mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time.

2. Life is short.

We have no idea how long we're supposed to be here. (Hence, we hope we get a span of 80-100 years) It's the end of the world for someone every single day. You could die choking on your cheerios in the morning.

3. LOVE who you "love," don't just go through the motions.

Hopefully, we all get to learn at some point what love is and what it really means. Don't mess with people. Don't complain about your spouse too much. When they're gone, you'll be wishing for his dirty laundry on the floor, or her yelling at you to pick it up.

I suppose having someone close to you die is a little bit like starting over in life, like having a second life to lead. Things that used to be so important no longer are, and some things that were important have become even more so.

All any one of us has, ACTUALLY HAS, is our will, our choices, and our love. That's it. We worry ourselves with so many things that don't matter, and we're so dense that people have to suffer and die to wake us up. And even THEN it doesn't stick.

(In defense of us humans, though, we live in a great paradox of living in the now and planning for the future. We don't know when we're going to die, but we have to plan on living for a pretty good amount of time because we probably will in most cases. So we forget the basics, the important integral parts of our being, while planning our lives.)

None of this writing really matter, I suppose. But I hope that those of us who are at a period like this, when life has been stripped of the human planning trappings exposing the heart of what we're DOING here, can remember what's important even after the initial shock subsides.

the metaphorical nail in my foot I got avoiding a metaphorical pile of dog poop

Would I have ever thought 5 years ago that I would look back on my quarter-century life and see a fistful of regrets?

No. The answer is no, I was sure I was too careful for mistakes. Or, at least too careful to make any real ones.

With that kind of cocktail of naivety and pride, it's a wonder I've even survived at all. I mean, shouldn't I have been abducted or died in some car accident by now? I like to compare my existence--the sheer miracle of it---to the miracle of retaining both of your eyes for the duration of your life. Those delicate, gelatinous balls of translucent tissue and water are affected by DUST particles for crying out loud. I mean, seriously!

And now that the veil has been lifted, what now? What the hell now? I find myself plagued by the memory of a speech on sin and its effects on us I had the wonderful privilege of hearing as a 9th grader. Imagine you are a piece of wood. Every sin is a nail you drive into yourself, the piece of perfect wood. Jesus (savior, woo!) removes the nails in confession, BUT we're left with the holes forever. In other words, the consequences from your mess-ups stay with you forever. and let me tell you, a broken relationship (friend, boyfriend, spouse, relative) is a scathing little bugger of a nail.

Pretty sad for us out there. Especially if you're like me and keep nailing things to yourself. Or running into stray ones just lying around. Nails that is. Or step on ones jutting out of the ground. They don't tell you that's how the nails really get you. We're not (in general) so masochistic as to do things we think will be injurious to our persons. NO! We think we're doing ok until @#$!@$%@#$^ in comes the rusty nail on the pavement we hit trying avoiding a pile of dog poop.

That's real life. Substituting a nail to avoid a pile of dog poop. Choosing or falling upon A "sad" to avoid an "even sadder." We don't usually get a choice of "Happy or Happy" or "Happy or sad." That would be too easy. And THEN sometimes what we THINK would be "even sadder" is really just the "SAD!"

I'm sure anyone reading this is probably thoroughly confused by all of this rant, but the point is very simple: Life, and trying to live it well, is just really hard.

Sometimes, sometimes a LOT of times, you're probably being an idiot. We just hope and pray our idiocy doesn't hurt us or people around us too badly.

My coffee is eating a hole in my stomach lining.

You know what I can't stand? When you feel like there's a giant iron weight strapped to your neck weighing down every breath you take and the movies you watch still have happy endings. That's not life. We're standing around with our heads in the sand and making up stories about how with wish life would be so we don't have to think about how the world actually works. And then we feed these stories to our children so it's all they know resulting in an ever increasing generational depression and/or apathy. Because what's the point when life always ends in pain, an everyone you know has to lie to cover it up because we can't deal with it!?

Banks are Evil

My house is cold,
I'm eating chocolate to warm my bones,
in this wretched zone of alone.
my dishes are growing, my bed linens thinning,
banks' pockets thicken with every penny I stick in
their miserly backsides cause their swivel chairs to squeak
and then, I'm sinking again,
in cold old home,
eating chocolate to warm my bones
in this wretched zone of alone.

How yelling at my ex across a street helped me become a better musician

First of all, for the record, I hate saying "my ex." I don't know why it comes so naturally, but somehow it has been programed into me by way of romantic comedies and kids television shows in which 14 year olds have "break ups" and "get back togethers." (In the words of the drunk trying to steal our cab last night: B**** please!)

But I digress. The real reason for opening this blog is that I had a maturity break-through as a musician the other day: I finally learned how to belt like a broadway star, and now having done so, I see a sort of beautiful symmetry to the timing. I'm growing up, so my voice changes like what's going to happen to Justin Beiber any time now. Except this girl-woman version. It's like a metamorphosis for which I sort of feel a sense of gratitude to the man who helped me get here. Broken heart, string-along, douche bag Trial by FIRE aside, I was able to use my experience in love to propel me into a place where I could physically express a passion I've never been able to express. Why yes, my life IS a movie.

Belting, as it was explained to me, like any singing is an extension of speech. But there's an intensity behind it that is different from other forms of singing. I learned how to belt by harnessing the voice I had when I yelled F*** You across a street. It was crazy then, and it's crazy now. But as passionate as I am, I'm not a yeller. Belting is like beautiful yelling. Yelling with abandon. It needs to be vulnerable and full throttle, or else it doesn't work. You can't be afraid and belt, kind of like you can't be afraid while you're expressing to someone months of hurt you've been repressing.

So I have a different voice now. A new power, in a sense, that kind of came out of nowhere and everywhere.

morbid, but whatever

Watching the film "The Boy With the Striped Pajamas" had the same effect most world war II movies have on me: How is it possible for enough people to believe in or go along with or remain blissfully ignorant of the evil the Nazi regime was proposing?

One reason, of course, was that the Nazis were lying to each other even before they were lying to the public. But then isn't that the nature of evil? Lies within lies within lies. Lies to hide the the lies about what you're hiding. They developed an intense dogma of Rationalization of what is necessary or what is "good," what it means to be human, which was fueled and kept together by the two elemental weapons of evil: fear and lies.

The Nazis give us one of the most excellent examples of the strangling web of evil than can only end in the way Hitler almost poetically obliged us all: suicide.

But just because most of us aren't Nazis, it doesn't mean we're any less capable of sliding down that same icy slope of despair and fear. That privation, that emptiness of goodness we call evil is like a quarter you drop between the seats in your car that you quickly resign to retrieve some other time. If you treat your lies like small change, pretty soon, you'll end up with a purse full of ...."treasures" that make more than your shoulder hurt.

"untitled" ooooooooh!

I feel the need quelquefois to express my daily depression.

FEAST ye happy few on the morsels of meaninglessness I have provided for your delight:

The United Postal Service is giving me grief,
I decided to turn over a new leaf,
but there was mold on the other side,
or whatever those fuzzy things are. I can't decide.

Radio stations weren't in the mood
to play any songs besides about some boy who's rude,
I'm ready for the Christmas songs, I won't lie
except The Little Drummer Boy makes me cry. a lot.
Dear God, another Christmas keeping company on a cot,
and explaining to relatives why it's a roommate I've got,
instead of a fiance or boyfriend or lascivious lover,
Christmas is coming and I'm taking cover.

distracted by introspection

Just when I began to pride myself on my ability to look inward, to see my own motivations, knowing my crazy so it can be controlled, I trip over my shoelaces and land face down in my mess.

I've gotten shallow and selfish in my introspection, which may be worse than no introspection at all. I miss important things. I obsess over trivial things. Constantly looking at and analyzing my own fear has, instead of diminishing its power, made it stronger. Fear is an overwhelming enemy when you see it lurking around every corner of your mind, every bit of your incentive.

Instead of learning the root of what I want/need, developing sensibility I've become more easily seduced by my emotions and physical senses.

How did this happen??? How and why is that we are made so that our own bodies and minds betray us?

My memory is untrustworthy. My emotions exaggerate reality. "Who I am" is almost irrelevant because the tools we have to know ourselves can come unbalanced so easily. I can be a certain way, but there is such a limit to how much of who I am I can actually know; and even then, "who I am" is a fluid state, constantly fluctuating to some degree.

How do I know who I am, who I want to be, who it's possible for me to be, and who I don't want to be?

We make choices sometimes we don't think will affect as as intensely as they do, and they change us either in actually changing who we are or who we think we might be. It depends on the choice we make in dealing with the choice we've already made: I guess it's the choice of dealing with the choice that makes us who we are.

Dear Boys

That's right, I said Boys, because I haven't met any men recently.

But this is beside the point, because this letter is meant specifically for the males inhabiting the Greater New Orleans Area.

Are you aware that it is common knowledge among girls of substance in this city that we are in the very LAST place you come to find a life-long companion?

Do you have any perspective on the fact that this means that it is common knowledge that girls of substance think you are ridiculous, childish, lazy, irresponsible, player, man-children?

Do you realize that if you can't land a girl of substance, you will end up being 60, alone, with nothing but copies of playboy, empty promises of strip club bouncers, and your own regrets to keep you company, keep you getting up in the morning? Sadly, you'll have deserved it.

I don't think any of you have really thought this through. In fact, I'm quite positive you haven't. So this is my gift to you, ye head-in-sand man-whores: Avert your eyes from the Greek hoochie who can't seem to understand basic street crossing for one second and pay attention.

Even the girls you're sleeping with (or want to be sleeping with) think you're lame because you have zero good intentions, and zero perspective on what it means to live well, to love, to be loved; and the worst part of it is that you have no idea, nor do you seem to care. Apathetic Idiots.

What. Is. Wrong. With. You?

There are many among us who would like so see a mass de-johnsification because that's the only way you might start using your MINDS. While I don't support a maiming, perhaps a temporary paralysis might help you to understand that you continually throw away good things because they cost too much. Why wait for the goddess when you can get the dairy maid whenever you please? here's the answer...wait for it...because SHE'S a GODDESS, you morons.

I'm sorry for all of you in advance who will end up siring illegitimate children in spurious relationships that end in infidelity and emotional trauma.

But then..

I don't feel sorry for you.

bastards.

Doubting Tobias

A brief return to a paper I wrote exploring the validity and definition of DOUBT.

Whether Doubt is more Rational than Faith?

Objection 1: It would seem that to reason is to doubt, and is the rational opposite of faith. Descartes says that the essence of man is his reason. He arrives at this conclusion through a process of doubting everything, whittling his reality down to his own doubting thoughts, which he accepts as real because he is, in fact, thinking them. In the cogito, (“I think therefore I am”) he shows that to doubt is the base truth and ability of the human person, which is human reason.

Objection 2: Doubting may be defined as critical thinking which allows the thinker to deconstruct ideas, analyze the parts and their origins, and formulate opinions accordingly. This is also known as the reasoning process.

Objection 3: Doubt is necessary for examined faith. Man continually formulates and reformulates opinions though the process of doubting, i.e. reason, which includes the breaking down (doubting) and rebuilding (faith). Reason as a part of our free will allows us to be aware of and understand on varying levels why we believe and act a certain way. Therefore, it is more rational to doubt because faith is inherently dependent on a person’s ability to doubt that which he has faith in so that he can understand why he possesses the faith to being with.

On the contrary, “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth” (Fides et Ratio chapter. 53. Quote from the First Vatican Council)

I answer that, The clash between doubt and faith can be compared to the “convictions” in Paul Ricoeur’s “hermeneutical detour” : Doubt and faith are two convictions which are navigated and governed through reason. Doubt should not be used synonymously with “reason” because it, as is faith, is merely a mode of reasoning, rather than reason itself; Doubting is not an end in itself. Rather, it must return to faith in some form as its product of reasoning. We formulate opinions through the process of having faith in some things and doubting others. Neither of these two, faith or doubt, is somehow contrary to human nature, nor is one less a part of the human rational being; and if both are part of our nature, than it follows that we should govern them with our reason. It is not possible to live in the state of doubt. Even while doubting, a person must be living positively in some way. For Descartes, his positive state was that he believed his mind (and its history) existed. While doubting is an acclaimed product of the modern, educated mind, and rightly so in the method of self-critique, it is incomplete without the necessary rebuilding of what it has broken down. In addition, it should be mentioned that doubt when it is not subject to the reasonable critique, it too may be as incomplete and unexamined as the faith it breaks down. Doubt which is not subject to the reasoning process, a constant movement back and forth between itself and faith, is simply another occasion of unexamined faith—or perhaps, just apathy. As I have stated above, it is impossible for a person to maintain a stasis of doubt.

Reply to Objection 1: Humans possess innate proclivities toward both doubt and faith, and we use our reason to choose when to doubt and when to have faith.

Reply to Objection 2: The first problem with defining doubt as reason is that it automatically takes faith out of the picture as something that is reasonable unless faith is modified by doubt (there is no faith without doubt.) Likewise, if faith were to be defined as reason, it would alienate doubt as something that is reasonable as well.

Reply to Objection 3: Faith is the product of examined doubt, towards which it is impossible for doubt not to aim. One cannot live in a state of doubt without also living in a state of faith on some level. For example: One who may doubt the existence of God will be likely to simultaneous harbor ardent belief in his own existence.

Diagram of the faith/doubt version of the Hermeneutic Arc:

faith |

| doubt

|

better |

faith |

|

V

REASON

Age old, eating away at my SOUL

While perusing my email today and attempting to clean out the 1500 or so emails that I've somehow found reason not to delete, I came across emails from my ex that once again cause my palms to sweat, my eyes to water, my throat to parch. Old flame? You might say that. More like splinter in my rear end. Splinter in my rear caused my the demolition of the cruise ship I was sunbathing on. The cruise ship I call "romance"... has "death trap" written on the underside of those life preservers.

Thoughts:

Why the HELL do I still think you're beautiful? Aren't you supposed to look ugly when you're an ugly person? YES you ARE."

The sick, ridiculous, frustrating and ultimately soul-killing part about this particular situation is that I still don't think he's an ugly person even though every logical part of my brain points to the fact that I should hate him.

No. I don't.

Not even now......

Nope...still don't.

#@$%@#$^@%^#$%&#$%&

Thoughts:

Why did you send me that goofy picture of you with you're hair perfectly mussed like you just got up from a nap, with your perfectly smoldering yet kind, little boy eyes looking out of the photo and then decide not to speak to me two weeks later?!

To summon The Merovingian, suddenly the reason, the why is not important, it's just the feeling.

It's really I who am the enemy here. It is I who kept the emails just waiting in my inbox like change you stash for a rainy day, purposely overlooked just long enough to be forgotten, but close enough at hand that you can bump into those shiny coins when you least expect it, and bask in the triumph of cashing it in for a desperately-needed caffeine fix. That's what you are, oh picture in my email. You're just today's meager fix as I continue trying to detox my body from the rush of hormones and decades-forward life plans I had to quit cold turkey. I'm just like any other addict, except my drug has a face. My stash-hole in the wall is my mind. Always easy access.

old colorado montage

Videos from my trip in February. I love you, Colorado.

the girl I mean to be

The girl I mean to be is an elusive specimen. Who knows where she goes when she's no longer attached to my body's brain stem. When I'm checked out, I think to myself, "she would have done it this way, but I don't have the energy."

That's it: I don't have the energy to be the girl I mean to be. I'm tired, dammit!

If I had the audacity to walk into work and be a completely different person, I might have more attitude, or break out into rap songs, or just plain ignore people when I don't feel like greeting them. I'm changing the tables of customer service--perhaps totally derailing the sensibility and decorum of what it means to serve the customer. Then again, maybe the public needs to be taught a lesson in customer service as well. We are not your serVANTS, but we serve. And there is respect involved on both parts. When the server treats the served with the kind of respect they receive, all HELL breaks loose. Well gee, people, can we learn anything from this?

Centuries long abuse from customers would suggest at the very least that we are still making 11th century decisions in a 21st century technologically oppressive, spoiled brat breeding world.

Am I a little sleep deprived? Yes
Am I a little cranky? more than a little


But the point of me saying any of this is not really to rant about how angry people make me, but to recognize that it's probably the many, many of us are deeply angry and sad about things that aren't clear even to us. We are prevented from being the people we mean to be--if we've even taken the time to cultivate an image of our ideal selves, which is unlikely in most cases--because we run into road blocks that we've not yet figured out how to get around. Knowing this, perhaps I can forgive the 3rd person today telling me that my job is ridiculous and my competence questionable. His or her emotional conflict and disquietude may well make my own look like a day at the park.

A Post-Modern Depression

I think my quarter life crisis is perhaps both a cause and effect of an insistent post-modern depression. My sister and I discussed our respective stomach knots and heart drops that plague our every day existence. Is it because we've achieved a certainty of survival, our needs of food and shelter have largely been met, that our default state of being is sadness? Is it that we have nothing but time to contemplate ourselves and the higher needs of community and love and trust are not being met?

Are people that are angry when they come into a place of business because...THEY are having the same existential crisis, the same poverty of the spirit?

The story of Alex