Surveilable Psycho Bubbles

I am starting to place more value on my concerns. I interpret this as a rising sense of being worth it. Moreover, being as honest and observational as possible about my reactions to unwelcome events breeds more authentic, self-generated information rather than the self-limiting attitudes that come from suppressing my feelings and behaving the way I think I'm "supposed to." This deeper embrace of what I am feeling doesn't include expressing the emotion in an unchecked way, but allows for a more nuanced form of neutral acknowledgment spiked with pungent understanding and sweet fondness. The good news is that when there is too much self-generated information to know what to do with, self-generated systems occur to organize it, and this feels something like personal agency. When these motors hum it feels like independence and freedom.

I can also now see internal pain as a way to test and expand my capacity to accept who I am as a man making a go at a challenging, responsible, and productive life. And what is the best container to hold me in that context of trying at life? Certainly not a self-judging mind attempting to coerce its own abstractions by stuffing loose threads within its walls. I see the possibility of a bigger container to occupy. One in which I have space to walk and run and sing and dance. To do everything. And to let what is loose and not understood spill over. In this space I become able to love more of just about all of me. And what I don't love, the container holds that too. Gone are the days of intending to, or hoping someday, that I can "learn to love myself and so love others." How many times have we been told to do this? Here are the days of gaining respect and love for somebody who consistently tries in spite of self-judgement. A man who takes actions in a place where defiance and acceptance converges. Because even atonal compositions harmonize in their own novel way.

The consequence of gaining self respect is that my emotions are starting to feel easier to regulate. At best, I can be swept up by natural life's tendency toward self-correction. By law, chaos begets order. And I can allow this reorganizing stasis to occur internally, and even be enchanted by what's taking place. But even at my worst, I know from past experience that the harsh self-talk isn't nearly as true or interesting as a person who has shown that he can fall, get up, and try again. The man who knows that, at least so far, storms always blow through. The echoes of harsh self-talk resemble the entire person I once was in a shadowy form. Merely an insubstantial entity not really in touch with what is needed to settle in and fill up with the stuff of life. The entity is no longer me now, but a small voice within. I have a deep appreciation for that turn of events in my life. I want to hug the small voice and let it stay in the guest room till it gets back on its feet. I once stayed in that very guest room too.

I also feel empowered as a person who possesses the ability to transform emotions into energy and insight for myself and other people. I can sense a deeper core of universal needs in people and I want to get warmer. My conversations with others about their struggles becomes like a big game of "Hotter, Hotter...Colder, Colder." What gets me closer to the prize and how can I hone the intuition that takes me there? I want to find what's hidden for the benefit of me and for you. Seeing my pains with purpose makes me less likely to resist my own feelings, and being on this mission with other people's struggles helps me be less under the spell of my anxious chatter's inevitable destination of confusion. The data of my mental comments is an unconscious sea of irrational evaluations, reactions, and thoughts, seen through fogged up goggles. I become the lost captain trying navigate what he deep down senses is an unnavigable situation.

The more empowering option here, that of purpose, helps me see a way off the water and back home. It helps me see that peace can be had even when circumstances don't feel resolved. The layer of purpose and acceptance to any of life's events lies underneath, always. And the knowledge that I can always rest my weary self there--solidly so, inspires an invaluable confidence in enduring hardship. This knowledge helps neutralize the overwhelm. It opens up all sorts of possibilities for my spiritual life. It tells me that I can continue my path in understanding how to operate from my heart more than my head. It connects me in a deeply satisfying way. Assuring me that I can meet everyone, anywhere, even when nobody but me is here.

I have a lot of fortunate concerns right now. I love that I have visions and interests in goals and crankiness and sweetness simultaneously. The cup feels very full of juice with added bitters and sugars and muddled up everything. This is in line with what I want out my adult life. A concoction of everything.

Break Up Song

Here is the sheet music to the tune I can’t hum. A composition of your
personality missed, sounding with mine. The traits that make our fates. I
sound this out not in sorrow, nor in hopeful revival, but as the recognition I want
to not fail at making again. Our harmony, which once existed.

I imagine your light fingers on my shoulder, at the ready.
Digits strumming reminders that I am the song.
I am its source. Guts attached from the neck, sinew strung across the belly.

Vibrations flooding my chest, carefully arranged with capacity for hearts.
All finished by glazed-over male hips and coarse-haired bowlegs that splay
into feet—with longish toes. Though not as long as yours.

The details in design are no longer this song. If we were to address the untended
to parts, they would appear to be just that: untended to. We own separate
kidneys and livers for sorting this out. Bendable skeletons house each of our vitals.
Each needing separate resting spots and separate vitamin bottles.

And yet, it's the tune of each other that can't play apart. Nor quite together.
A disparate sound. Driving the mind. And it needs attention.
Constant and careful. 

Our song could swell, or: admiration may not rehearse that day.
But it's just like they say—without pressure, there are no diamonds.

Late April

There was a plan to talk
Around It, over It, through It
And to savor a sympathetic ear.

Because whatever It was, boiled hot.
And you could hear its steam whistle,
even from a comfortable distance.

There was every reason to think
that there was a problem.
And so they walked to the creek to talk.

They did end up talking,
about water,
and he later gave some thought to it.

“Water that is clear and deep,
And can stay wtih you,
Is rare to find.

Water that dares not alter your path,
But can stay with you,
Strikes me as courageous.”

This water soothed the boiling, and quieted the whistle.
And this water sprouted a terrified, trembling seedling
That seemed in no condition to survive.

A seedling too fragile. Too exposed. Too unsure of its roots.
It sprung across the mouth of a man who insisted
That something he could say might make its longing go away.

But the water insisted back, just then.
And the seedling was met by her clear and deep glance,
which seemed to say, our plan to talk about that is not for today.

Only the bold can teach the bold, and only with ears.
And what he saw was her whole heart giving to listening.
And what she saw was his courage to tremble.

And what the water found was something rare:
Two people sitting in union with its master plan.

The medium's still the message. Duh Kony guy.

If you think about it, the short-form documentary has never enjoyed so much power and required less skill and credentials to achieve a wide audience. In that way, the format almost resembles a cruel dictator whose downfall is met by increased knowledge and power. A cruel dictator that would make a good subject for a short-form documentary. A documentary that seems really important and everyone feels morally empowered watching, but results in its "dehydrated" maker passed out naked in front of Sea World blaming all of the new-found Likes for his demise. Perhaps the form itself is what is becoming tiny, needy, emotionally manipulative, and unable to handle power. Perhaps we are led to wonder what the intentions behind a conversation of terrible suffering on the other side of the world, a probable cocaine and alcohol binge in San Diego, and a "click to share" with lots of back-patting comments of concern actually have in common.

Yes, I will answer my own question: attention, power, personal success disguised with human morality. Oh, and Facebook. At the end of the day, is the overriding morality of the Internet 2.0 about putting money in all the specific places ts most needed and not considering how it got there? Isn't that cynical way of thinking consistent with all the rich-people shit that liberal secular humanists hate. Trust me. In this day of doing right no matter what the reasons, and of asking for handouts to coincide your personal success with your ever-important charitable cause, if you can't handle fucking kickstarter money, you wouldn't be able to handle billions of dollars or weapons or power either. We all basically behave the same way in the grips of these things.

A title that suits

I have a new job title. Apprentice to Life. I have only learned one thing so far, and that is that being an expert sucks. Being blind to limitations hurts. Being unable to have the humility to understand the terms and boundaries of what it is you are getting into will quickly translate into a weakness. There are others that know better. I am getting into life, and I will listen and practice and not try to move up or on or sideways or out. I am an apprentice to life.

It's such a relief to finally have a career settled.

Fact-Facing

»The essential quality of poetry is that it makes a new effort of attention, and "discovers" a new world within the known world. Man, and the animals, and the flowers, all live within a strange and forever surging chaos. ... But man cannot live in chaos. ... Man must wrap himself in a vision, make a house of apparent form and stability, fixity. In his terror of chaos he begins by putting up an umbrella between himself and the everlasting whirl. Then he paints the under-side of his umbrella like a firmament. Then he parades around, lives and dies under his umbrella. Bequeathed to his descendants, the umbrella becomes a dome, a vault, and men at last begin to feel that something is wrong.

Man fixes some wonderful erection of his own between himself and the wild chaos, and gradually goes bleached and stifled under his parasol. Then comes a poet, enemy of convention, and makes a slit in the umbrella; and lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision, a window to the sun. But after a while, getting used to the vision, and not liking the genuine draught from chaos, commonplace man daubs a simulacrum of the window that opens on to chaos, and patches the umbrella with the painted patch of the simulacrum. That is, he has got used to the vision; it is part of his house-decoration. So that the umbrella at last looks like a glowing open firmament, of many aspects. But alas! it is all simulacrum, in innumerable patches.«

--DH LAWRENCE

Jaws of Life

Sure, the minds don't do anything but fear. Still, you can see one impossible glint cutting through their fogged up eyes. You sense a presumptuous faith and so commit to their broke down lives. And they say, "All's about I am right now is here." And you tell them, "Perfect, it's all just heart from here." You tell them, "Don't be scared. I know a smile feels more than far." And you say that the laws of people behaving are bigger than they are.

You tell them it no longer concerns the particulars you may think of you, but that the laws apply to them too. And that it's safe and free, to only be here. And you let them know how much bigger everything ever was than that little mind they fear. Even while out there, battling life's laws with an appetite for anything near. Beyond me, beyond you, and beyond us lies this Great Fact, which ever will be.

And first you tell them the bad news--that they no longer get to be who stands before me. And then you say the good--that the entirety they never saw, the light sky beyond the dark tunnel they are struggling through, it loves you, see. I can show you the way out. And then the sky. And shocker it was to me, it will be to you: see, it loves you. And I truly mean that, broke-down friend.

I'll be the first to concede that this kind of love's tougher than any man could bear alone. But you will behave in small monthly payments--a new lease renting to own. And then, in carefully minded increments, you will own It. And then there's the matter of the sky...Well, some days it will just feel so goddamned close.

So look now, here's my outreached hand. You have ideas about cheer, slipshod fears, and enough regret to fuel a rocket eons away...In my most plain voice, hope is where we begin. Drink ice water. You can't smell nor taste it. Drink up. Touch your calloused hands together, and lift that swelled up tongue. Pray. It won't work, but do it anyway. Wiggle your ears. There's a frequency so near that there's no way you will hear. But put that mind on firm notice: "There shall be nothing today."

There's no such thing as a prowess that can Unmangle the mangled. Nor can just one illuminate a tunnel. We have clumsiness. We have flashlights. We have each other and salutation--and don't forget about that sky. A sharp-toothed glint, drawing shallow breaths beneath story-cracked skin, shines its way through--somewhat resembling a grin.