Tag Archives: health

Domesticity, plasticity

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In the understanding that parallels deciphering my grip on reality, I could not sleep, wrapped in a blanket in the sunroom, the ambient temperature in the teens, the stars brightly twinkling, the Big Dipper teasing me through the leafless branches of a hickory tree.

Two thoughts tickled my curiosity:

  1. Why I fell in love with Abi and desire so much to please her with my increased dancing skills, and
  2. Wrapping my thoughts around Stephen Hawking’s new revelation about his old theory of black holes.

A short story waits to be written, weaving the continuing storylines of Guin, Bai and the Frenchman, as well as Cajessi, elaborating on the chapter excerpt below (written on 12th Oct 2013):

Unfortunately, Bai was allergic to a few of the chemicals and, while training a farmer who’d just returned from the fields, gotten something in her eye, probably when she rubbed her face on his sleeve during a double underarm turn.

Her next stop was a courtesy call and not a dance lesson.

Another dance instructor, Cajessi, landed on the planet two days ago and needed to acclimate a few days more before she hosted a two-day workshop.

Cajessi, too, had avoided body upgrades until she had reached her 80s.  Although she still looked elderly, her body was limber and her eyes sparkled.  She was famous for her favourite socks, a bright, neon green, and sold a signature line of them wherever she taught workshops.

Bai’s planet hopper landed next to Cajessi’s habitation module, sending up six puffs of dirt from the hopper’s footpads.

Time to read some of Hawking’s recorded thoughts…and wonder about jelly doughnuts on Mars…

If I am who I am, then I shan’t say anything about those who are who they are and aren’t like me…

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I need to let my thoughts drift this sol on this electronic slate to work out ideas beyond semantic wordplay, determining how much, if any, I should distance myself from my physical connections, my social network, in order to contemplate the concept that if the universe is here only as a manifestation of the projection of the reactions of my set of states of energy in the form of a mirror reflecting who I am, then I am returning to examination of the reflection to tear apart the image and reveal the pieceparts.

Oh, how the presence of Jenn and Abi, together and separately, has changed my thought patterns for the better!

Brenda, the woman who revealed her lesbian/self-love core to me over the course of years, making me fall in love with her even more, opened me up to the possibilities of agape love between a man and a woman, even if eros got in the way sometimes, turning me into a ram butting its head against the wall in a poetic/literary testosterone rage.

But that’s the joy of teasing one another in our daily lives, especially when we know there’s a line the teasing won’t cross, making the game much more fun as we push each other to the point of falling over the line.  And on the occasions when we fall over?  Well, someone once sang, “Let’s give ’em something to talk about!”

As the songs and poems have said over the millennia, we can get lost in the game and forget who we are.

But that’s okay, too, in the cycle of life, giving each other room to learn who we are.

I’ve learned more about myself holding the hands of Jenn, in that freedom of being myself with her that shuts out the world in a way I’ve tried to describe in our imaginary lives together on Mars 100 marsyears from now.

With Abi…well, it’s almost beyond my ability to describe what holding her hand is like.  How many times have I tried?  How can I tell you what wanting her is like?  I don’t want her body.  I want her core being.  I want her ability to go past all the negativity in life and power through to success amidst failure.

I can’t remember when I’ve loved my wife and wanted two women, two distinct best friends, at the same time, neither one my spouse.

How many years did I love Monica and my wife (before we got married) while dating another woman at the same time?  How many women/girls told me they would gladly have been the third woman/girl in my life?  How many told me, “If it weren’t for Monica…” they might have been my first?

Alas, all of this musing upon my muses is just my form of self-love taking up space on a computer server out there in the world.

The best way to give credit where credit is due to those who inspire me to see more in myself and inspire ideas for the gifts I can freely create for the universe is to make the gifts and give them away.

The clock shows 13,248 days to go.  How many sols is that?

Well, an average Earth day is 86400 seconds long.  An average sol is 88775.244 seconds long.  Thus, a day is 97.32443% of a sol.

Therefore, only 12893 and a half sols left.  Where does the time go?

Jenn and Abi, I’ve got work to do — thanks for your inspiration!  Meeting you 100 marsyears in the future is what drives me to write stories, logically compose computer code and create robotic creatures (Erin Kennedy keeps my creativity going on overdrive).

The Joy of New Discoveries

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There is a sweet spot in my thoughts where recording a blog entry feels just right.  Unfortunately, after spending time winding down this evening scrolling through friends’ Facebook posts, the sweet spot has passed by.

Time to put Facebook away and concentrate on more concrete actions to solidify the future!

Going crazy again

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In my life, I have lost my sanity a few times:

  • at age five, when I realised I was alone in the universe and had to create my own version of something to make sense of the cluelessness around me
  • at age ten, when my best friend/girlfriend died, leaving me more alone than ever
  • twice in high school, when my girlfriend broke up with me and, more significantly, after I suffered a head concussion in a car wreck
  • at age 23, when I, against all the teachings of my youth (especially the one about coveting a married woman), made love to a married woman
  • at age 27, when I cracked under the pressure of having to appear on television to promote a community project I created, sensing a number of contradictions within my personality that was perceptible on live TV and out of my control once it was broadcast to whomever was watching
  • at age 44, when my brother in-law died

I return to a familiar place on this path through life — a crossroads that branches off to unknown destinations.

I feel like I am being ripped apart, with tendrils/roots from my past pulling on me to give people I’ve known the affirmation that the lives we shared contained and shall continue to create happy times.

I’m always looking for an easy escape route from every moment I spend with other people, knowing that eventually the internal insanity that has defined me since I can remember will show itself — the disjointed, at-odds-with-itself set of thoughts that have kept me alive and in touch with people who, God help them (I’ll get back to that last phrase in a moment), are probably just as fucked up as I am but I sure as hell don’t want to know, allowing myself the illusion that other people have it together.

One girlfriend said knowing me was like peeling back layers of an onion and she was never sure what she’d find next, as protective I was in controlling people’s access to the “real” Rick.

Do I always know what I’m doing?  Rarely.  But I know where I want to be and have plans to get there.

Otherwise, the “real” me is an illusion, changing moment by moment to passively accommodate people’s perceptions of me so I can reach my goal while giving them whatever makes them happy.

What if giving them whatever makes them happy contradicts certain parts of me that are partially set in stone?

I know I am insane to think I am alone in this universe which, God help me (okay, time to address that last phrase — if I alone in the universe, then, by extension, there is no deity other than myself for myself, leaving others to find the deity belief sets in them that satisfy their needs for self affirmation?), leaves me with zero friends because if friends are merely sets of states of energy to bounce against like pinballs to get us moving again, well…

I am caught between seeing that I am a nice-enough looking guy who makes many people feel comfortable in my presence and thus able to believe I will help them affirm their beliefs, and seeing that what I want may not make many people happy.

One girlfriend, when I finally was able to share with her the dystopian visions that haunt me and chase me constantly, wondered why I was such a joyful guy on the outside but such a hard-nosed, scared-to-death conservative type on the inside.  We discussed the whole fight-vs-flight concept and, despite my best (worst?) efforts to want to control the conversation, I let the girlfriend dissect my view against my deepest desires not to hear what she saw in me.  She finally agreed that I was more fucked up than she was, taking strange theories, mixing them up in a cosmic comic worldview and applying them to my own fears and aspirations without concern that they made no sense in the real world.

It didn’t stop her from wondering what having a child with me would be like, able to compare the two kids she already had against one we could have.  A couple of days after we agreed to stop seeing each other (after all, I was banging her best friend, too (the aforesaid married woman), which made the both of us feel a little guilty (okay, maybe not too much; more like we should do the decent thing and call it off before her best friend found out)), she had sex with a guy she’d just met and ended up pregnant.  Because the guy professed his love for her without question and he was one of the heirs to a bread company fortune, she told me that even if the baby was mine, she was going to call it his; I happily agreed because it was sure going to be an affirmation of my worldview that nature-vs-nurture is a false dichotomous construct about childrearing and I didn’t have to worry about paying child support (I was a broke college student at the time).

As an opportunist looking for escape routes living in my thoughts, I recently plotted out a course of action whereby the possibilities of hitting the eject button on my current marriage might be facilitated by solidifying relationships with a dance partner; thus, I saw the person I liked laughing and dancing with the most, heard her say that her beau was looking for someone to join a fraternal organisation with and told myself, well, if it makes him happy that I join the organisation with him then I might get more time to dance with her and from there, who knows.

Damn it if the fraternal organisation’s requirements, including a main one about hosting a belief in a deity hasn’t put a burr in my side and, in the process, turned me into my father and his more conservative/religious views.

I know that portions of my personality were formed from contact with my father and I have fought tooth-and-nail internally to reject those portions because of the compromises I had to make to protect myself from his passive-aggressive treatment of my mother, sister and me, hearing from his colleagues, friends and family, however much I don’t want to, how kind and considerate but opinionated my father was and how so many people from my past want to welcome me into the fold now that I, as a legacy, have joined my father’s fraternal organisation and cemented my place in that subculture.

I am a mixed-up dude and I know it.

I’ve never been forced by a child of mine in my household to construct a consistent view of the universe in an effort to give that child the best opportunities for success with an easily-repeatable narrative about how/why life is.

I have been able, instead, to successfully slide through life, hopping from one better-paying job to another, accumulating wealth along the way without giving the shirt off my back, to arrive here in this comfortable middle-class hovel in the woods, always having an escape plan at the ready should something I had imagined happen (for the unexpected, I am probably completely unprepared).

I don’t know what my very next step will be, except to take the bathmat out of the clothes washer that the cat had pooped on and hang it up to dry (the bathmat, not the cat (or the poop)).

I still want to get to the Moon and then on to Mars and dance in low-gravity conditions with my literary characters Guin and Bai.

Whether I join reality or whether reality gets in the way, I cannot say.

If I don’t even know if sanity is an illusion, how can I know if reality is real?

Me, myself, and I…sigh…

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‘Tis sad to see that my wish — to have some dreadful disease that would end my life — has never been fulfilled.

Instead, my general practitioner tells me I am getting healthier as I get older because I have taken good care of my body.

What the hell?

You mean I won’t die of natural causes any time soon?

I wander the wilderness of this planet that we pretend is tamed with concrete sidewalks, asphalt driveways and paved parkways, never able to do more with the sets of states of energy than what they are, never able to get outside of this universe.

I shake my fist at the sky, shouting that my subculture is just not enough to make me happy — I have killed with my bare hands, I have tasted infinity, there is no love for the comfortable confines of a subculture which never truly contained me.

During the month or so of much-needed/wanted/desired self-reflection upon the threshold of self-actualisation, I assimilate my alliterative allegories and wander aimlessly.

Twixt which tweets, texts or twigs do I twist?

Having held death in my hands, there is little more to call my own.

Having stood on the edge of the abyss, there is little in the normal world that surprises me.

Yet, I want more.

I,I,I wantwantwant moremoremore.

I give the members of my childhood subculture their happy connections to our shared symbol sets, telling them I’ll perpetuate their beliefs for them and make them believe I believe them, too, if that makes them happy.

I have padded about in this comfort zone, lining the nest financially so much that I almost can’t get out of the nest or at least have raised the walls high enough to give me pause.

If only I had the impetus to generate enough income to construct a ladder or a means to helicopter myself out of this nest…

But for what purpose?

What is the core self, if there is one, the core burning desire to achieve something I am not achieving or do not see myself achieving, from this base of operations, this dilapidated modified ranch house with cathedral ceiling propped on a hillside over a crawlspace?

I am an amateur philosopher/maker/poet/writer who has been able to live below his means long enough and live in relative peace with a partner, his fellow 12-year old summer church camp attendee turned penpal turned wife of 27+ years, so that I’m closer to being stuck at home with both of us in our retirement years wondering what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives.

In other words, everything well within the normal range of people belonging to our subculture.

That, my fellow chickadees, is a revelation that hits me again and again about once a year, from when I was five, wondering how many more of the clueless adults around me I had to keep putting up with (and still wondering why!) to when I stood at the front of the church as my bride walked up the aisle to me and knowing that committing to marriage was the worst betrayal of myself that would ever happen (because I do not believe in marriage) and so on.

What I want out of life is to eliminate the self, not MYself, but the concept of the individual as more important than as just another set of states of energy generated by that burning ball of cosmic dust we call the Sun.

Then and only then will we see what the universe is, will we be able to move beyond our Earthcentric thoughts and onto the Next Great Thing that has nothing to do with the popular image of gadgets and gizmos to sell on the open market under protective cover of undercover government agents and privacy-intruding marketing departments.

Yet, how do we move a species to build spaceships for Martian settlement without peddling a lot of stuff on amazon.com and through paypal?

How do we promote the concept of conspicuous consumption in order to siphon off thousandths of a penny per sale for space exploration without overselling the concept of the individual?

Perhaps I shouldn’t care.  Perhaps allowing the religious concept of the soul in society is equivalent to allowing the economic concept of the consumer in society?

What, then, of the rise of the atheist consumer?  How do I address the issue of the atheist in the future where we need pooled resources to seed celestial bodies?

Euphemisms and symbology, that’s how!

The luxury of recounting one’s dreams

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In these past few days (weeks?) where I have asked myself if self, family, community, subculture, planet, galaxy are or are not more than symbols, I make no quick, foolish or foolishly quick decisions.

In a dream last night, my dream personality chased myself up into consciousness sprawled across the sleeping sofa, on which I turned and scribbled these notes in the moonlight:

16 Jan 14

I’m finished with touching another body on the dance floor or having to look into a person’s eyes because so much sexual tension builds up in me without a way to relieve the tension…. not fun anymore.  I’ve become used to the separation of reality from wishes, it just loses interest.  Reducing desire to pursue partners. Need to thank my instructor for wanting to dance competitively with me but it’s not going to happen unless there are serious changes in my life.

As of tomorrow, it will have been a year since I started attending dance workshops with my wife.

In dance workshops, my wife and I initially start out holding hands and dance together before dance leaders or followers are asked to rotate, meaning that I get a new dance partner for 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 seconds to attempt a new dance formation; with that dance partner, I meet a new person, a new set of life’s experiences to ask about, a new wider/narrower/taller/shorter body shape to adjust to, a new hair colour to physically look down on (although, occasionally I’ve danced with women my height or taller), a hand to grip gently or firmly, new eyes to hold my attention.

For the majority of the dance partners, the new dance formation occupy my thoughts, learning how to move my body to make my dance partner’s moves look amazing and lovely.

For a few of the dance partners, a certain fluidity of energy passes through our fingers, as if unspoken desires are literally at our fingertips.

I enjoy the flirtatious nature of dancing, no doubt about it.

But for those few dance partners, the flirtatiousness feels more electric, bordering on lust, knowing that my partner and I are setting up a situation with foreplay that doesn’t necessarily include us.

The understanding between myself and a dance partner has ranged from the almost regimented rigid cold upper body sentiment of an Irish “River Dance” jig to the glued-together warm sensuous flow of a blues dance.

If it were only Irish jig dancers I encountered during workshops, my manly arousal wouldn’t be a problem.

Instead, the one or two out of a hundred workshop participants who turn up the heat drive me insane and, as even my dream self has chased out of me, I have no satisfactory outlet to make those future encounters enjoyable.

Thus, to keep my marriage intact and my sanity in check, I’m trying to figure out how to get across to my wife that our current arrangements are unsatisfactory.

All while my niece and nephew’s grandmother is dying…

All in the luxury of a middle-class lifestyle, snug and warm in a heated home.

After a year of “blue balls,” so to speak, I can’t take it anymore!  I refuse to attend another dance workshop or group dance lesson or I SHALL GO MAD!!!

Every time I see her, I fall in love again…

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How many people remember Oliver Hazard Perry?

Master Commandant at age 27.

Are we prepared to say goodbye to the era of major sea battles?  So long to land wars?  Farewell to air sorties?

Is it possible that the paranoia of our species, the heightened fear of territorial and tribal losses, is waning?

Haven’t I already bid adieu to our species in general, spending less time analysing fractal patterns in the local solar system?

For the past three days, I have looked at nothing, my eyes closed, my neck and shoulder muscles tensed in anticipation, my body under blankets in the sunroom, waiting…

 

How much courage does it take to write outside one’s comfort zone?

What is a set of states of energy but an illusion, an imaginary boundary?

 

Giving unlimited time to my thoughts, letting them ebb and flow in and out of my seeming consciousness, wondering why an insane person like me can and does still exist, fighting day after day of self-elimination ideation…

 

Watching the decaying wave patterns my written thoughts have appeared as pebbles in the pond of society, knowing every word we make and pronounce in front of others is more significant than we notice and often less significant than we want.

 

Caught, or lost, in a maze of my own making, creating conflicting pathways, one centred on the social precepts of a supernatural being, the other centred on the naturalistic worldview, with decisions branching out and crisscrossing paths.

 

Voicing characters based on personality snippets within me — a happily married man, a celibate husband, a court jester, a woodsman, a wanderer, an eccentric wealthy hermit…

 

Face-to-face with sexual desires I cannot express because extramarital love is out of the question and intramarital love is no answer.

 

Waiting to die because killing myself is not an option.

 

Knowing I am the humble nobody I felt like as a kid, happy for anyone just to smile at me, a smile meaning more to me than gold or food, a person willing to hold my hand or give me a hug worth more than I deserve…

 

I meditate upon the meaning or the meaningless of it all, aware that everything, especially me, does not exist.

 

Oh, to be rid of these depressive moods once and for all, to slip quietly under the surface, making no more waves, this pebble taking one final trip to line the bottom of the pond, soon covered in mud and forgotten…

= = = = = = = =

To write a prose poem in opposite terms, reversing the sentiment for posterity’s sake, takes love to another level, here in this hermit’s rundown cabin in the woods, slowly rejoining the random fractal patterns of nonanthropogenic nature, centered everywhere and nowhere.  I’m getting too old to fall in love, less deserving of others’ attention when I was a young, entertaining lad, thumbing his nose at school authority.

It is time to return to my daily meditations found in books and woodland hikes, mentally preparing the older self for his exit, make room for youthful enthusiasm to take centre stage, scratch philosophical treatises in dirt before a storm and peacefully fall asleep one last time…

A simple sensation

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To know what I’ve missed, including the quiet fizzing of escaping gas bubbling and bursting out of a glass of freshly poured Pepsi…

…or the creaking and pops of our cabin wood floor under the pressure of my body lumbering through…

…the price of hearing aids is worth the sounds I didn’t know I was missing.

To Margery and Clair: your music is ever more delightful than before. Forgive my ignorant deafness in not knowing what I’ve missed during your previous live performances!