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.