Tag Archives: meditation

Death missed me last night…

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Death missed me last night.
I should laugh or cry?
Matters not.
I love everyone equally,
Desire them,
Wish to devour them,
Eat every drop of sweat,
Regardless of skin category,
Regardless of thought set pattern embodiment.

As far as I’m concerned,
If you can’t say “fuck” on network television
Then the illusion of subcultural restraint
Is no more reassuring than the government spying
That our local/national cultures condone.

Thank goodness for random acts of violence.

Thank goodness that my thoughts are in contradiction…

My thoughts say that I am omnisexual,
Yet my actions say I am celibate and live in a monogamous relationship.

I take interest in local subcultures in order to show interest in individuals
With whom I cannot express directly to them my thoughts for them
That contradict the legal obligations I made in front of a crowd of friends and family years ago.

I live in this luxury of contradictory thought patterns,
Unable to care about starving kids anywhere,
Regardless of “income inequality” that is a substitute phrase for saying people are unable to form their own local economies
(i.e., lack initiative to create money out of thin air which buys the necessities of life and more).

I lack sympathy for [pick your favourite ailment] survivors.
What did you survive?
What do you say you survived for?
Not for me, you didn’t.
One less survivor means more for the rest of us!

There is nothing I can give anyone that I haven’t already tried once and failed to get my point across,
Or succeeded in proving I am a total fuckup.

Yes, I am part of a financially-successful family living in a suburban-based rotting hull of a house,
Waiting to die.

I say I want certain things, certain people to hold, certain phrases to say, places to see,
But then I do what I say and I am still left at the end of the day with me as I am,
New experiences notched on my old, stained leather belt falling apart.

Fuck this world.
It doesn’t matter anymore.

Let me figure out how to backup this blog to my local hard drive,
Erase the online contents,
Delete the website,
And slip into oblivion from whence I came,
Just as I did with myself on a popular social media site.

We humans have such a tiny view of existence,
Measuring life in revolutions around our local star, the Sun,
Thinking that adding words like millions and billions somehow gives us added [in]significance.

No matter.
No matter what.

Death missed me last night…
Again!

I laugh because I cried for no reason,
The reason being the death of a ten-year young girl,
And I’m still here for no reason that a subculture couldn’t quickly twist into eternal purposes to sustain itself.

“No” and “not” and double-negatives,
Double-entendres and doublespeak.

Matters not.

I believed I loved two women at once,
More than once,
This time the pain is just as great,
The sorrow greater,
The distance closer yet farther away in age.

How much more, how much longer, can I survive myself?

I want to start a new charity,
It’s called “I’m a self survivor and I’m in remission, if not remiss.”

Time for another vacation from myself.

Time to start a paper “blog” and say goodbye to cultural affirmation of paranoid government spying,
Say goodbye to texting,
Say goodbye to social media updates;
Say hello to a new self that sits in public and meditates upon the meaningless mystery of dark matter,
Get power from dark energy,
Disregard the need for pop culture references to tie myself to the artificial construct of zeitgeist time.

Another uncomfortable subject for personal edification

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At this point in my life, I should be more aware of who I am, shouldn’t I?

According to my father, this should be the prime time of my full participation in the social hierarchy of my local subculture, being politically active, socially responsible and philanthropic.

It’s like what a person said — it doesn’t matter how despotic, chaotic or caring you might be or have been — your great-great-great grandchildren aren’t going to know who you were in real life, just that you were around to help conceive at least one of their great-great grandparents.

So it is that I look at my thoughts and my body’s rhythms, sensing the guilt-ridden thoughts and the internal shaking of worry that often racks my body to its core.

I realise the years of guilt I felt when I masturbated about the female figures in my life, raising a wall between us of my guilty self-pleasuring thoughts, objectifying me and them at the same time.

[On the window screen this afternoon is a stick insect, silhouetted against the backdrop of yellowing green leaves in the tree canopy of our front yard.]

For all the joy of freedom and liberty I say and think I believe, my life has been more a prison holding back my sexual desires than it has been sexually liberating.

With a universe to explore, my earthly desires ground me and make me realise I am all too human here in the 13th year of the 21st century.

In times past I have used this blog space to explore my thoughts because I have had no close companion with whom I could talk about these subjects.

Lately, I have stopped holding back my thoughts and started sharing them with my wife, letting her know that I have feelings for other women besides her and frankly, when those feelings are sexual in nature, I no longer desire to dissatisfyingly relieve them through masturbation.

I used to be able to channel those thoughts into sexual action with my wife but that path has become less available as I’ve resigned myself to the fact my wife’s body is settling into the aches-and-pains matronly, grandmotherly shape that is not as conducive to the activities we once frequently enjoyed.

Life is what it is.  If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

The word “love” is one of those symbols that carries us throughout the day — it should never threaten one person at the expense of another.

For me, love means helping another person — a set of states of energy that is distinguishable from mine.

The act of helping takes many forms.

The person being helped may be a key that opens a lock, may be the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, may be the catalyst to start a snowballing action to help even more people…

My wife loves me and wants to help me.  I love her, too, and want to help her but do I only want to help her help me?  No, I’m not completely selfish — I enjoy watching her help others and encourage her to do so.

[What does a stick insect eat?  When does it eat?]

Today is one of those days when I’m not able to fall deep enough into a meditative state to contemplate my current conditions and discover within myself a new personality trait to share.

What happens when my love for my wife and my love for others conflict?  When the conflict is unresolvable because of financial priorities, then what?

Does love have a price?  What are reasonable expectations when one spouse is financially logical and the other is not?

And from these questions, how will the storylines in the other blog(s) progress?

I put off working on my yard art sculpture today to allow these questions to simmer in my thoughts.

Love is not always about sex and I’ve spent decades trying to understand the difference.

I cannot both be a meditative celibate free from sexual desire and a libertine living on the edge of chaos and anarchy.

But I am a person who can contemplate both sets of thoughts at the same time.

This is who I am today and the days to follow: I spend time freeing myself from testosterone-driven thoughts of sexual desire for women in my life who would have no reason to reciprocate those thoughts, while focusing my thoughts on projects and art/ideas that will outlive me.

I ask nothing more or less of myself.

On a side note, I have asked myself out loud several times in front of my wife, should I take her home when she’s tired and return to the dance club to have fun now that I know I can dance with other women and don’t need the false comforting confidence of alcohol which used to lower all of my inhibitions, meaning I can actually enjoy dancing and not worry about taking action I might later regret?

I used to fear growing older but now I don’t because I see that growing older means I’m growing wiser, too, which is really and truly a lot of fun!

Living in two places — both ends of a multiplexer — at once

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While one thought pattern tries to wrap itself around putting servos in the joints of at least one arm of a single-purpose robot waving hello to passing strangers like a street [panto]mime dressed as a trash can automaton…

Hmm…another thought pattern asks me “if the universe is here only to entertain me, why do I walk away from the next adventure?”

Yesterday, as I do everyday, I adopted a role, picked out my costume for the day, and acted the part of a happy-go-lucky grownup boy.

But…

I really should avoid situations that start with “but,” but…

As happened back in 1985, when a fellow student in my CAD class at Walters State Community College, the wonderfully half-Cherokee Sarah, sleek of form and gentle of wit, bestirred the animal in me with an unending voracious sexual appetite, drove me to pull her into my arms, overcoming my subcultural/childhood training to remain a virgin until married, becoming lovers not only with her but also with her best friend, literally pushing me to the brink of madness, watching myself split into two — the loyal, brave, reverent and morally straight Boy Scout; the sex-starved college student — never able to get back my innocence physically…

Sigh…

Why again do I uphold a subculture that often makes no sense?

Yesterday, I was happy to enjoy the day for what it presented to me.

I could be an entity-in-a-box, like a TV character staying in character interacting with characters outside-the-box looking in at me but not actually making real contact.

Do I even understand for myself how lonely that makes me feel?

Do I care so little for myself that I would walk through a day as if I’m no more alive than the robot I’m building and programming?

Every moment I’m out there with people — with you, most of all — I look for a sign, a signal, an indication that there is an escape from this godly conformist hell that defines my life, which promises AND delivers me from evil, providing security from danger and [YAWN!] a repetitious ennui of getting up, seeing the world as if I’m not part of it, and going into my dreams which promise and deliver adventures full of danger, nightmares, happy moments of temporary bliss and back into the possibility of dying in my sleep while doing something fun.

And I find many signs because I am so desperate to find a similar person out there looking for the same.

But…

Yes, it’s there again, I know.

But…

When I’m desperate, any sign will do.

I’ll imagine a random stranger I meet can read my thoughts or has read this blog or purchased my books online and knows just what I’m thinking and wishing.

I can hardly imagine that my being my physical self — a decent-looking fellow with a nice personality — would in itself make people wish I could read their thoughts and know just what they’re thinking and wishing.

Yet (or but) is that all there is to life?

Are the conversations I’m having with you simply two people wishing for a “meeting of the minds,” willing to suspend our independence and disbelief to say that two people can think as one?

When I sat there bouncing in the auditorium chair, listening to you perform, watching you remember to remind yourself to smile even in the midst of a forlorn song while you strummed a guitar, I saw a future of just the two of us sitting in a cafe, sharing stories, listening as you amazed me with tales of feeling disconnected from reality that I have felt, wondering why the life of a road warrior can make you wish for a moment like this, having three weeks off to explore life with just one person — me.

It was an intriguing moment because a song or two later you sang “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight” and made me wish you knew I had been writing a story with a steampunk Amelia Earhart as a main character.

But…

But you is a universal term that in English can be singular or plural.

What about the other “you” that is an amalgam of the other, the not-me?

We are what we are.

You are a dear, sweet gal, recent recipient of the Female Vocalist of the Year, who grew up around here, even if you weren’t born here but how many people in north Alabama were born here?

Was it enough to have bumped into you in the concert hall lobby, me playing the role of the fan fortunate enough to get your autograph on a CD (I don’t know why but holding up a prop is an actor’s favourite pose, I suppose)?

Do we know each other?

Maybe.

Why did I look familiar to you?

Well, we were Facebook friends for a while but I don’t expect a performer on the road is going to take time to check out her friends’ Facebook posts, even if the joker in me made a humorous video of a dancing cicada to the tune of one of your songs, poking fun at one of your band members, Mark Schatz, who danced on a rock formation.

Last night, an adventure called my name but I was too numb from a day of feeling disconnected while looking for signs that were there all along but I was so used to not expecting them I forgot to pay attention when they showed up and planted themselves against my face.

In reality, I had one desire in my thoughts and I wasn’t expecting that side of me to approach you and play the dating game in front of my wife.

Not even a light session of fun flirting.

My voracious appetite consumed me and I didn’t want to say something stupid.

As Abi told me the first day I met her, it’s not always about what’s in my pants.

When my pants are doing the thinking, it’s best to nod and walk away, pretending an autograph was all I wanted.

Some days, being a guy is fun.  Other days, it’s tough being a beast of burden locked in a box of self-exile, my animal tendencies kept in check, my blood pressure boiling.

How many signs did I see yesterday?  How many signs did I miss?  How many signs weren’t there to begin with?

I stand up from this notebook PC, beat my chest like a silverback gorilla and roar!

What I want my childhood subcultural training can’t give me — the denial of the value of monogamy in a childless life!!!!

I walk away from this PC and tell myself the concert you gave, the songs you sang, were for me, while honouring the special needs people in our lives.  It will have to suffice for today.

Interesting phenomenon

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Do you ever go back and read what you’ve written?

I often do and notice a trend — my writing is poorest when I am in the midst of inflating my sense of self, as if I believe my writing is best when I’m writing about myself because if I am the greatest person who ever existed, everything about me must be, too.

lol

Observing the self as other is another fun exercise in being alive with plenty of time for self-reflection.

How many spiders share a single web?

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In the art of writing lives the thoughts of the writer — the philosophy, the biography, the culture (current and historical events, [un]written rules/laws), the imagination.

The genres of the written word reflect the writer in more or less ways — e.g., an engine construction manual is different than a political autobiography.

In my stories, I let my philosophy show through one or two characters but not all of them.

My talent agent and my editor frequently remind me not to tell people what I think because there’s no better downer/bummer for sales than a fiction writer breaking through the page with personal beliefs unless the writer is a bigger character than the ones written in the author’s books.

My beliefs are unimportant, anyway.  What I belief is not as important as what my behaviour shows.

However, if a person upholds and promotes a set of beliefs to which the person professes that behaviour will show, I will expect that person to do so.

For instance, what do you think about the concept of religion?  You know, how we package our emotional states and social rules into a commonly-shared narrative about the universe and our place in it.

Whatever you choose to call your religion, whether it’s one handed to you by family, discovered amongst your friends or developed on your own, is yours.  I will not condemn you for validating your lives, regardless of my inability to understand your behaviour or your explanation for such.

Recently, I watched a video by a person who recognised an honorific bestowed in his name — the Richard Dawkins Award — given at the Atheist Alliance of American convention to Steven Pinker.

i perfectly understand the reason behind the award and applause anyone who’s willing to make a hypothesis, test it and write about the results.

I am bothered by the video, though, especially the part that denigrates religious belief.

Am I wrong to think so?

Are most religions a form of hero worship, either of the indescribable essence of an infinite god or of the earthly equivalent, both attributed with our less-than-perfect traits?

That people misapply their behaviours based on their interpretations of their heroes’ intent is what history is about, no matter whether we apply the label of religious or sociopolitical to the behaviours and subsequent events/consequences.

Maybe because Richard Dawkins is an avowed atheist he feels it necessary to put down other people’s hero worship while congratulating himself in a sideways personal compliment aimed at a personal hero of his, the prize recipient, Steven Pinker.

I cannot change history — the facts of the interaction of sets of states of energy that occurred before this moment.

Is it right for me to condemn people for their beliefs, no matter how well or poorly they put them into action in the past, present or future?

I don’t know.

To hear Richard Dawkins say, in essence, that his subculture is the only one that’s right and let’s pat each other on the back for publicly patting each other puts sand in between my claws, making me flex my pointy bits and scratch the surface of what’s bothering me.

After all, rational science is not a benevolent application of our beliefs and behaviours.

A computer network doesn’t “care” how it’s used, whether as an open channel for remote robotic surgery, atheist award videos, Sunday sermons, drone strikes, government monitoring of citizens or online Ponzi schemes, yet computers and networks are the result of applying the scientific method that an atheist should award a public prize to.

I guess I am not an avowed atheist and should leave it at that.

I accept that we are all wired a little differently and what jolts one person into action may be similar to what jolts another but it’s not entirely the same.

If an avowed atheist and an avowed Christian/Hindu/Muslim/Jew/Buddhist/Taoist/humanist/spiritualist both come together to the aid of a child with severe injuries during a major natural disaster, then I am happy, because their actions rather than their beliefs achieved the same results.

The event milestone that won’t weather with time

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13,361.

That number decreases with each passing day, a series of symbols — 6th May 2050 — that holds premium place in the activities of our species.

Yet I want to ignore it, make the goals of others my goals, instead, goals that are more fun in the interim because they are goals that erase me from my thoughts.

But 13,361 days still remain.

To get there, we build reality in the thoughts and actions of our species, feeding storylines about offworld settlements that seem more real now when they’re in the future than when they’ll be our present reality later on.

The everyday reality of designing rockets, habitation modules, and autonomous cybernetic beings that will contain body parts we call human because our planet’s history has given us the belief in sets of states of energy that seem “natural,” created from procreation without extra thought on our part.

I want to devote myself to the spirit of the dance, merge my thoughts with Abi’s, become one with her on the dance floor and forget about extraplanetary development.

I want to devote myself to the spirit of the dance, merge my feet hopping with Jenn’s, become one with the infinite joy of unbridled laughter on the dance floor which feeds my thoughts about extraplanetary development.

My wife wants me to devote myself to the spirit, if not the letter, of our marriage, align my thoughts with hers, enjoy the occasional fun on the dance floor and focus solely on a financial security that sufficiently covers the cost of staying home most nights after eating out and watching television together on the sofa, taking a major holiday trip every two years.

I believe that all three scenarios in the previous three paragraphs are possible but take extra effort on my part to manage expectations, reduce my alcohol consumption, get a good night’s sleep and avoid long naps during the day.

Do I schedule my waking hours again like I used to when I was a corporate office worker?

Happiness is a generic word that I have achieved in quiet moments like taking a walk in the woods and seeing a clump of moss, and in intense moments of euphoric joy like dancing with women of all shapes and sizes or cheering for my favourite college football team.

Question to me: how intense do I want my happiness to me?  Me who often consumes friendships without kind consideration?

Sleep on it.  That’s the answer.

Until tomorrow!