.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }
I try and describe my feelings. . . thoughts. . . experience. . .
I make comparisons:
when I loved in Portland in 1999
I remember it as being my happiest
most balanced
I was stoned every day
worked at a bath house: had sex about three times a day (rarely anal; never bottomed)
went to a nude beach or hot spring almost every weekend
never wrote
only listened to music at work
mostly hung with kids
slept on blankets in a sleeping bag (no bed)
often in the back yard
woke every morning at about 5:30
most often walked to work (two miles)
– had a schedule (and a job)
is it fair to say "happiest"?
I may have just been very high
or mushy
surfing on oxytocin
I do remember constant anxiety about diseases (that bath house was filthy; gay=AIDS/death still in my mind then)
but by "happiest"
I mean
I remember being filled with passion and excitement and hope and desires
yet I also had a zen about everything
a calm perspective
or I’m just full of nostalgic bullshit
it was green and moist and limited
able to be comprehended
and relaxed into
Most of my friends were near my age
we’d hang in coffee houses. tea houses. book stores. parks. graveyards.
I. . .
I keep talking about being depressed now
hopeless
stifled
abstracted
alienated
isolated
irritated
K doesn’t experience me like that
and calls it all bullshit
as if I’m attracted to an idea of myself like that
and I wonder if that is what is inside, underneath
or just garbage in my head
I’m a mind person
could I just follow my own actions and feel I had an entirely different identity than I think I have?
I talk about having a closed heart
not being good at loving
J says "don’t believe everything that you think"
"it becomes a problem when you take all those thoughts as serious and real and make a big deal out of them"
T says I am very caring, very loving, very joyful and alive to watch
maybe a park of me is a great dark daemon that likes to tell me I’m dead all the time
keeps singing me that song
while the little kid of me keeps dancing and playing
. . . I’ve been telling myself this story for over a year
since going to be with Dying L
about how I don’t really love anyone
not really. . . not entirely. . .
just some fantasy idea of them. . . not the real them. . .
then I filled myself with guilt and shame about it
and have been drowning under that garbage since then
the whole situation made me hate The Church again (any of them, really. I’m still fine with Jesus as a story. . . but any time I hear anyone talk about any of the Christian shit I feel like screaming and smashing shit)
wow, how difficult to love someone when you hate their religion
wow, how easy to hate when it involves religions
the stories that make up the world
the stories we might be allergic to
the stories that make us wrong, bad, evil
how destructive
where’s my zen perspective now?
. . . probably lost in one of the piles around my apartment
yeah, and I continue to move the stacks around
("Re:Stacks")
5 thoughts on “34.24”
Anonymous
All the religion from Jewish myths absorbed by Christianity and Islam to the Bagavad Gita, myths- but the Gita’s this god or that was in a chariot – well more acceptable that Noah and the flood or Adam and Eve or Mathusala or Jesus, perhaps the Roman/Greek/Celtic/Norse mythologies are better, but lets get back to the beginning – sitting in a cave frightened of the world, of threats real and imagine – hey, this scenario sounds familiar – so you seek protection, a solution, inspiration might save you but you cannot accept that inspiration came from your own wisdom so you invent assisting gods – ipads, texting, sexting, baths – its all the same
dominicvine
from Facebook
Bill Bylewski:
I liked what you wrote today. I often wonder how our thoughts and perceptions of ourselves create who we are. Just read Bright Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich about how the power of positive thinking undermined America and brought about the current economic mess and tries to convince people that things will be fine if they just change their way of thinking. It also says we blame and often shun people who have fallen out of the doublethink of everything will be fine if I just adjust my attitude. Reading Norman Vincent Peale’s the power of positive thinking too just to get the other side. Too much religion for me. The description of your life 13 years ago is really fascinating especially the part about sleeping in the back yard most nights without a bed and getting up so early and walking to work. Thanks for your writing today.
17 hours ago · Unlike · 1
Eric Vazquez:
Honest and beautifully written. I find I am moving many stacks around myself. A vicarious kinship of sorts and in part. Enable the shift and catch the wave before it passes. No seatbelt. No restriction. Just flow.
16 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
Dominic Vine:
Thanks Bill (and Eric)
I often wonder about the “doublethink” (so scary, but apt to bring 1984 into this mulling)
I have friends that get through, don’t get sick, everything works. . . but I feel like so much of their strength lies in denial and delusion. . .
yet I’m very reticent to ever call jurisdiction over “truth” because we all have our own perspective and I think more philosophically than empirically — I admit to wonder over the functioning over reality rather than knowledge.
it’s messy. difficult to Test. . . what with Luck, Chance and Karma potentially playing part in any action, thought or result.
. . .
thanks for the balance and appreciation
10 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
Bill Bylewski:
Luck, Chance and Randomness all play their parts. Now I’m legally blind AND my arm tendons gave out so I could no longer work on the computer and hold down a full time job as an architect. How I play this hand and how much control I have over it is an ongoing discussion. Perhaps I lean too much towards pessimism but i’ve been better lately (and that’s with the help of drugs) so how much of this is hard wiring? I have an ex who has had a very successful life full of health and happiness but seems to deal a lot in the trade of denial and delusion. When his recent marriage hit the rocks, he just erased any sign of the marriage from his facebook page as if all the happy posts and good wishes of a few months ago just never happened. That’s one way of dealing with life’s messiness, just delete it and rewrite it and, if it helps you keep your sunny disposition, maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoy reading the journal you share with us. Your life experience couldn’t be more different than mine. I admire the expansive life you’ve created for yourself.
Anonymous
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCKElJ0bC0
Anonymous
amazing description and history…. do understand about religion ..i have found you very loving, joyful, playful, very sexual/sensual , free spirit and geniune…..
Anonymous
Sounds vaguely like “The story you have been telling yourself for all these years”
“Ah yes, my chronicle. I’ve gotton on with it!”
From Samuel Beckets “Endgame”