I sort of doubt I will be posting again before next year, just because my head is not with it.
So Happy new year! and if I do post, well sucks to this post
I really don't want to say too much, or too little.
I have been sick for the past few days, like christmas eve till now, or something... a sort of cold/flu not sure what the difference is anymore kind of thing. I'm mostly achy, sometimes have a mild fever and the occasional cough. Been taking heavy regiments of the quil.
That being said, between the ill, and the quil. I have had many strange moments that almost seem like i am high. incredible body sensations, and moments where my mind was just so single fire...
I am used to being able to multitask, and that has not been going well, but I am not working so its fine. I just sort of have a constant nagging feeling like i am behind on everything.. which I probably am but I am sick so fuck it.
Anyway some examples... the other day I just sat for like an hour in my bathrobe in a slight feverish stoop and it just felt like melted heaven or something... It feels like the tingles I get from watching asmr videos.
It doesn't always feel like that. I have been having a really hard time sleeping because i get so achy that I wake up like every 20 minutes and can't get comfortable... but sometimes it just feels weirdly nice. I don't know anything other than medication and intoxication that makes you that aware of your body... illness is weird. So when I can relax and still feel all the little sensations its nice.
thats the body part
the mental/emotional part is weirder. I have my normal fantasies, my normal day dreams, my normal thought patterns... only because they are so single focused I get really lost on them. I was at a movie today (my attempt to be normal and pretend like I wasn't sick) and i started thinking about something for like 10 minutes, and then when the previews started I snapped out of it, but I felt a deep feeling of loss because I had been attached to that reality, but also a feeling of relief because I am pretty sure it wasn't a positive reality.
At the book store I saw a book about being a new dad and it almost made me cry, because I had this glimpse of that reality and then it wasn't real.
which brings me to the last piece...
I always enjoy dreams, and this in and out confused state I have been in has been particularly interesting at times... I spend 40-50 minutes in bed not quite asleep (due to the aches) but not quite awake, lost in these pseudo dream states... but a few days ago I woke up after a longer spell of sleep, and I was very conscious of the perspectives in the dream, it was weird though, it was like
lots of different spirits talking, and there was a collective decision to wake up, (which my body responded to), but before the spirits had acted upon their decision... so they continued the conversation for a second... and basically it was one spirit asking the other ones well which body should I wake up as? and the spirits were kind of saying whichever you want? my body opened its eyes and said this one! before the spirit chose.
It was a very surreal dream, and made me think of something I had thought of after another dream a few weeks or months ago, but about the fact that maybe our consciousness actually isn't dependent upon these bodies... and maybe it chooses to come back when you are waking.
Anyway... I woke up struck with that idea... that my body chose before the consciousness had... it had more options.
I would like to sort this out more... maybe I will have some more interesting dreams tonight.
in reality land.
I got to see a bunch of friends last week and it made me feel accomplished and good and loved.
I will probably see some more in the next week, but I don't feel like i am in such a rush.
At the movie theater and the restauarant and the bookstore today, I was suprised by how small my voice felt, like a character, a child asking for help...
My body feels week and my mind feels like racing when it isn't entirely vacant.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
yuckers
11:42, trying to get to sleep. Listening to the same video I have been playing on repeat for weeks now. Pretty telling when you go through it.
My mom said I was repressing my anger, she suggested two remedies. First she suggested I chop down a tree... we later joked that that might be putting more violent and angry energy into the world, but my response at the time was I already lack the motivation to do anything. Grant quoted something about how the energy we use to repress often keeps us from having the energy to move forward. Secondly she suggested crying. I told her I wish I could, but haven't in months.
I'm trying to go with this method.
Jess asked me to do something today that was at the exact right moment, and made me feel really nice. She asked me to get her groceries, sick baby at home. I was already out of the house and already in a fairly ok mood due to a large amount of coffee, food and somewhat intense conversation about religion, politics and psychology.
It was really nice, because it involved almost no emotional energy (minus a tiny amount of anxiety about getting the wrong thing). I am beating myself up tonight for abandoning people. For not feeling strong enough, for not being compassionate enough, for not being able to care take more people... for not having any desire to reach out to people who I think probably need someone to reach out. I am thinking about them, because I am pitying myself, I am thinking about how my situation is really not so bad and yet feels so debilitating while other people are dealing with much more, and I can't even pick up a phone, or apologize... and yet more than likely I am holding those same inabilities against others.
None of these emotions are very helpful, they don't make me want to get up and do things. They make me want to shut down and shut out the world.
Today I find myself reliving my life, new thoughts and feelings all expressed in old poems. Religious poems, emotional poems.
My mom said I was repressing my anger, she suggested two remedies. First she suggested I chop down a tree... we later joked that that might be putting more violent and angry energy into the world, but my response at the time was I already lack the motivation to do anything. Grant quoted something about how the energy we use to repress often keeps us from having the energy to move forward. Secondly she suggested crying. I told her I wish I could, but haven't in months.
I'm trying to go with this method.
Jess asked me to do something today that was at the exact right moment, and made me feel really nice. She asked me to get her groceries, sick baby at home. I was already out of the house and already in a fairly ok mood due to a large amount of coffee, food and somewhat intense conversation about religion, politics and psychology.
It was really nice, because it involved almost no emotional energy (minus a tiny amount of anxiety about getting the wrong thing). I am beating myself up tonight for abandoning people. For not feeling strong enough, for not being compassionate enough, for not being able to care take more people... for not having any desire to reach out to people who I think probably need someone to reach out. I am thinking about them, because I am pitying myself, I am thinking about how my situation is really not so bad and yet feels so debilitating while other people are dealing with much more, and I can't even pick up a phone, or apologize... and yet more than likely I am holding those same inabilities against others.
None of these emotions are very helpful, they don't make me want to get up and do things. They make me want to shut down and shut out the world.
Today I find myself reliving my life, new thoughts and feelings all expressed in old poems. Religious poems, emotional poems.
simple truths and a little late night zen
Its 2 AM, or will be.
I fell asleep around 9:30 and woke up around 12:00. I find this pattern is repeated nightly. Perhaps this is Mike falling into the very human pattern of the two sleeps night, but I find it irritating. I find many things irritating lately, and try my best to laugh at that.
Starbucks has the best mint tea of all the chain stores. I take my tea with an unreasonable amount of sweet.
I can't sleep so instead of playing computer games or watching youtube videos I thought I would read a little. I bought like 7 books recently, two on urban shamanism, 2 on zen buddhism, 1 on hinduism and 2 that are non directly spiritual.
The first book I started reading was about seeing things before drawing them. A meditation on seeing. Seeing something as a living loving, beautiful thing, and then creating. I like this idea because it resonates well with a technique I was using a lot during the summer and fall, where I would look at something, a scene, and then sort of enhance the scene by using a different part of my brain. Now the part of my brain I was using may not have been the lovey-side, but after using this technique everything seemed so much more beautiful and lovely, so I think it counts. I find it harder to do this right now. I think it is my seasonal depression, stress, grief etc that is keeping me from seeing, still I try now and then and it works.
The second book I started reading is about urban shamanism, and pieces of it are nice, but I also find it a bit vague when the author is generalizing, and too new age-y or co-opting of other traditions when she is being specific. I am trying to figure out the role of ritual in my life.
I find it very hard to take on traditional rituals. There are certain mantras, prayers and songs I like, but I don't tend to use them in traditional ways. I like idols and icons as art but not as meditation focuses. I don't have the space to meditate that I would need (it would be easier at work where there are open rooms, but of course I have work stress). I have a strong aversion to group rituals *one of the aspects of SoT that gets to me. Anyway, I like the book in that it reminds me of larger concepts, and I would like to see myself as a healer in a larger way... but I have a lot to learn, and a lot to shed.
The third book I just picked up tonight after reading some Carl Sandburg poems (my step grandmother gave me two of his books, at first I was reluctant but I actually really enjoy them).
This book is about Zen, and I haven't even gotten to the specific teachings but reading the introduction made me ooze with thoughts of the attachments of the day... so I decided to write. (creating another attachment I guess).
I woke up this morning with a poem on my brain about cycles, about pulses, about mathrock. I attempted to write it out, and I don't think I succeeded at getting what I actually wanted on paper... but I almost never edit, so who knows.
The poem was about my belief that meaningful things, meaningful relationships, meaningful connections cycle in and out of your life... but they do cycle.
I have been waiting for a dream.
I have been waiting for a call.
I have received neither and wonder why. Does it mean the connection has worn thin? Does it mean the distance is too great. Does it mean doors are shut. Does it mean I should put my heart in other hands. Yes, probably all of that. But in my head, my ego says no. Some things aren't permanent. Some waste away, but some come back, they check in from time to time, because they mattered.
In this universe I see patterns, I see waves, I see different directions, but all of these things cycle back. What looks like left eventually cycles around to being right, what goes up, comes down, what goes forward, comes back etc. I see us all fluctuating at different vibrations, different frequencies, but these things occasionally meet up. My 3/4s meets your 7/8s meets my 5/7s meets your 3/5s sometimes.... sometimes.
I'm reading buddhism, and of course this is my attachment. My ego's desire for something lasting, in a world of impermanence, but what is impermanent about us? Do I not shed this skin, to wrap myself in the cloak of another one? Do I not shed these atoms to be fused into the combination that makes up you? Did we not dine on the same molecules that will inevitably become us, for a time, be released and then perhaps at some time, rejoin us again? Am I missing something?
I find familiarity, and comfort in certain rooms, with certain people.
It takes my will to keep it from happening, it requires my ego to brace against it... you're telling me this isn't a homecoming? You're telling me this isn't a meeting point in our cycles?
I believe in impermanence, my body will shed, my creations crumble, my thoughts vanish from second to the next, but there is something beyond the me that calls, that longs, that pulls and pushes. I've called it chemicals, I've called it fate, I've called it bonds and bondage chosen or embraced, I've pushed it from the nest, I've held it back, but my choice in response, my ego's response is to an attachment beyond me.
I want to look at people, at trees, at this computer, at my loving cat, at the book, at the sun, and see the energy that makes it... the vibrations, the impermanent setting, embrace both the present and eternal aspects of it. But the balance between these is difficult without believing in cycles, repeated patterns, dynamic creative complex comings together.
In the last bit of the poem I wanted to write, that I may be traveling the x axis, while another travels the third (z) Axis, which seems like a pushing away, a distance... or at least a separation in paths... and that we would have to rely on the 4th dimension to bring us back together.
I remember struggling with these same concepts last year when I was reading all that Sufi stuff.
Its funny how my mind wanders to certain topics at certain times of year... again cycles.
To get beyond the theoretical and spiritual.
I am deeply lonely. I feel neglected by someone and its causing me a lot of frustration. I think about other people regularly with a very warm heart, but I don't know how to span the gaps in the cycle... I think everything is probably in its right place, and so I am moving forward, but its a fight to stay positive. I am very exhausted with the effort of trying to stay positive, motivated. I guess this is a good lesson for when I am out of the country... like -hey you made it through home without any friends, you can make it through travel (which is exciting, and new) without some too.
Most of the day today I spent trying to prepare myself for one social event with my family. It took a lot of will, it went well, I felt good coming home and then I passed out exhausted.
I was initially supposed to go to two events today. The second one ended up overlapping too much with the first but I had already decided I couldn't go because of the enormous amount of effort it would have taken me. It sounds like the event was incredible and would have made my day, but the heavy thought of going almost kept me in bed all day.
These winter depressions aren't all that different each year... I ought to have learned something.
Lack of motivation, irregular sleep patterns, irritability, extreme introversion, desire for deep topics, strange fantasies, cynicism, distaste for faking shallow surface level bullshit... lowered motivation, longing for escape and release. Incredibly strong emotions that present themselves in a very drone numbing fashion.
The first time it really took me down, I worried I was schizophrenic.
When I use my happy light, and get enough sleep, and have my day planned out, or have a good conversation, or eat healthy... it all vanishes for a few hours and I am almost my normal self. I laugh and enjoy the little things... and this is how I know now (what I didn't know that first time), that this too shall pass. That this is part of the cycle.
It does make me wonder if my parents always remarking that I was moody around the holidays was my anxiety around social/familial gatherings, or my seasonal depression... I suppose Easter freaks me out too.
I fell asleep around 9:30 and woke up around 12:00. I find this pattern is repeated nightly. Perhaps this is Mike falling into the very human pattern of the two sleeps night, but I find it irritating. I find many things irritating lately, and try my best to laugh at that.
Starbucks has the best mint tea of all the chain stores. I take my tea with an unreasonable amount of sweet.
I can't sleep so instead of playing computer games or watching youtube videos I thought I would read a little. I bought like 7 books recently, two on urban shamanism, 2 on zen buddhism, 1 on hinduism and 2 that are non directly spiritual.
The first book I started reading was about seeing things before drawing them. A meditation on seeing. Seeing something as a living loving, beautiful thing, and then creating. I like this idea because it resonates well with a technique I was using a lot during the summer and fall, where I would look at something, a scene, and then sort of enhance the scene by using a different part of my brain. Now the part of my brain I was using may not have been the lovey-side, but after using this technique everything seemed so much more beautiful and lovely, so I think it counts. I find it harder to do this right now. I think it is my seasonal depression, stress, grief etc that is keeping me from seeing, still I try now and then and it works.
The second book I started reading is about urban shamanism, and pieces of it are nice, but I also find it a bit vague when the author is generalizing, and too new age-y or co-opting of other traditions when she is being specific. I am trying to figure out the role of ritual in my life.
I find it very hard to take on traditional rituals. There are certain mantras, prayers and songs I like, but I don't tend to use them in traditional ways. I like idols and icons as art but not as meditation focuses. I don't have the space to meditate that I would need (it would be easier at work where there are open rooms, but of course I have work stress). I have a strong aversion to group rituals *one of the aspects of SoT that gets to me. Anyway, I like the book in that it reminds me of larger concepts, and I would like to see myself as a healer in a larger way... but I have a lot to learn, and a lot to shed.
The third book I just picked up tonight after reading some Carl Sandburg poems (my step grandmother gave me two of his books, at first I was reluctant but I actually really enjoy them).
This book is about Zen, and I haven't even gotten to the specific teachings but reading the introduction made me ooze with thoughts of the attachments of the day... so I decided to write. (creating another attachment I guess).
I woke up this morning with a poem on my brain about cycles, about pulses, about mathrock. I attempted to write it out, and I don't think I succeeded at getting what I actually wanted on paper... but I almost never edit, so who knows.
The poem was about my belief that meaningful things, meaningful relationships, meaningful connections cycle in and out of your life... but they do cycle.
I have been waiting for a dream.
I have been waiting for a call.
I have received neither and wonder why. Does it mean the connection has worn thin? Does it mean the distance is too great. Does it mean doors are shut. Does it mean I should put my heart in other hands. Yes, probably all of that. But in my head, my ego says no. Some things aren't permanent. Some waste away, but some come back, they check in from time to time, because they mattered.
In this universe I see patterns, I see waves, I see different directions, but all of these things cycle back. What looks like left eventually cycles around to being right, what goes up, comes down, what goes forward, comes back etc. I see us all fluctuating at different vibrations, different frequencies, but these things occasionally meet up. My 3/4s meets your 7/8s meets my 5/7s meets your 3/5s sometimes.... sometimes.
I'm reading buddhism, and of course this is my attachment. My ego's desire for something lasting, in a world of impermanence, but what is impermanent about us? Do I not shed this skin, to wrap myself in the cloak of another one? Do I not shed these atoms to be fused into the combination that makes up you? Did we not dine on the same molecules that will inevitably become us, for a time, be released and then perhaps at some time, rejoin us again? Am I missing something?
I find familiarity, and comfort in certain rooms, with certain people.
It takes my will to keep it from happening, it requires my ego to brace against it... you're telling me this isn't a homecoming? You're telling me this isn't a meeting point in our cycles?
I believe in impermanence, my body will shed, my creations crumble, my thoughts vanish from second to the next, but there is something beyond the me that calls, that longs, that pulls and pushes. I've called it chemicals, I've called it fate, I've called it bonds and bondage chosen or embraced, I've pushed it from the nest, I've held it back, but my choice in response, my ego's response is to an attachment beyond me.
I want to look at people, at trees, at this computer, at my loving cat, at the book, at the sun, and see the energy that makes it... the vibrations, the impermanent setting, embrace both the present and eternal aspects of it. But the balance between these is difficult without believing in cycles, repeated patterns, dynamic creative complex comings together.
In the last bit of the poem I wanted to write, that I may be traveling the x axis, while another travels the third (z) Axis, which seems like a pushing away, a distance... or at least a separation in paths... and that we would have to rely on the 4th dimension to bring us back together.
I remember struggling with these same concepts last year when I was reading all that Sufi stuff.
Its funny how my mind wanders to certain topics at certain times of year... again cycles.
To get beyond the theoretical and spiritual.
I am deeply lonely. I feel neglected by someone and its causing me a lot of frustration. I think about other people regularly with a very warm heart, but I don't know how to span the gaps in the cycle... I think everything is probably in its right place, and so I am moving forward, but its a fight to stay positive. I am very exhausted with the effort of trying to stay positive, motivated. I guess this is a good lesson for when I am out of the country... like -hey you made it through home without any friends, you can make it through travel (which is exciting, and new) without some too.
Most of the day today I spent trying to prepare myself for one social event with my family. It took a lot of will, it went well, I felt good coming home and then I passed out exhausted.
I was initially supposed to go to two events today. The second one ended up overlapping too much with the first but I had already decided I couldn't go because of the enormous amount of effort it would have taken me. It sounds like the event was incredible and would have made my day, but the heavy thought of going almost kept me in bed all day.
These winter depressions aren't all that different each year... I ought to have learned something.
Lack of motivation, irregular sleep patterns, irritability, extreme introversion, desire for deep topics, strange fantasies, cynicism, distaste for faking shallow surface level bullshit... lowered motivation, longing for escape and release. Incredibly strong emotions that present themselves in a very drone numbing fashion.
The first time it really took me down, I worried I was schizophrenic.
When I use my happy light, and get enough sleep, and have my day planned out, or have a good conversation, or eat healthy... it all vanishes for a few hours and I am almost my normal self. I laugh and enjoy the little things... and this is how I know now (what I didn't know that first time), that this too shall pass. That this is part of the cycle.
It does make me wonder if my parents always remarking that I was moody around the holidays was my anxiety around social/familial gatherings, or my seasonal depression... I suppose Easter freaks me out too.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
I woke up a few days ago with an ache in my heart. A dread.
My depressions lately, mixed with this ache, created an overwhelming crabbiness that wouldn't lift.
I couldn't quite place the source of the ache... I just knew that it had to do with the lack of friends around, and the idea of people coming home.
over the course of the day, a little bit of clarity came as I wrote this poem.
Every few hours I would sneak back into the office to write another line.
The spacing will be slightly screwed up... but this was my plea.
My Heart
My depressions lately, mixed with this ache, created an overwhelming crabbiness that wouldn't lift.
I couldn't quite place the source of the ache... I just knew that it had to do with the lack of friends around, and the idea of people coming home.
over the course of the day, a little bit of clarity came as I wrote this poem.
Every few hours I would sneak back into the office to write another line.
The spacing will be slightly screwed up... but this was my plea.
My Heart
Oh my little heart,
You’re clever, you find ways to meander through rocks, through hard places,
Oh but you’re tough
You’ve won a thousand strong man contests, with no prizes
The wise men say the experience is the prize, my heart you have become so wise
Oh my heart,
filled with vacant rooms you’ve kept the place warm and tidy.
Some other, in their haste left the door open, the pipes have frozen,
And you, you’ve stoically kept the furnace fuming.
Oh my little heart,
Pushed a thousand times to heal in a moment, you make doctor’s believe in miracles.
For each healing ten times that –the stretch to accommodate, you’re an olympic gymnast
-training since you were an innocent.
Oh my heart,
you’ve kept some, some of that pureness, despite madness, despite venom, despite betrayal,
my little heart,
you are a warrior, a magician, a sage, how have you bared it
the branch breaking winds, the moments lost at sea, the questioning always questioning confusion.
Oh my little heart,
how have you clarified the madness, how calmly chose, calmly hidden away
when poison rippled, when torrents of passion, when breathless and abandoned
Oh my heart,
I’ve asked you so much, every time to reach, reach just beyond infinity,
But will you, just one time more
try