"- don't be so quick to knock it. People don't usually part with the weird shit they personally know because they know how easy it will be to punch holes in. Now I'm tellin you somethin. It's for you to poke through the soup and find the meat." John Patrick Shanley's 'the dreamer examines his pillow'

Friday, April 28, 2006

What I discovered on my bike ride

In order to get through things without being in a victim mindset or feeling "unjustly hurt" or helpless, you must look at them honestly and say, “this is what I have before me.” As frightening as it sounds, if you look at the pile of rocks ahead of you and think “ok. This is what’s next.” and keep your thoughts on just that fact that it is what is it is, not better or worse than the concrete, but different – your body will adjust as it needs to and you will get through.
But if you see and just think “oh no, a pile of rocks. That’s categorized as bad, I’m going to fall,” (or something to that effect, probable something closer to ‘oh shit,’) all your body and mind will do is tense up, and not allow you to get through without misunderstandings, blindness, and mishaps.
Fear is a paralyzer.
We can get through it by admitting what’s in front of our faces.
And yeah, we might misjudge and still get hurt. But at least we can say we knew what we were getting into and we decided to keep going. And we can decide again to keep going, seeing the pain as only part of this moment the universe decided to give us; not as a bad thing, but as part of who we are in this moment.

If we live in denial and always think “oh shit” instead of “ok,” we will think of ourselves as victims. “Oh no, this happened to me, I don’t know how, why me God?” That’s crap. We have the option every minute of opening our eyes to the awkwardness,
the truth,
the challenges,
the homework,
others’ pain,
our own discomfort at the thought of others’ pain…
and it’s a process, because we’ve all been taught to live in denial of the world around us for the sake of being comfortable.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Current obsession: music

Current music: Debussy, The Romantic Guitar. perfect.

Current mood: content - possibly due to the slug of NyQuil I just downed, hopefully due to the mystic ignorance the world allows on occasion...

Current clothing: a big Coca-Cola t-shirt that evokes strong memories.

I find it hard to write anything anymore. My emotions are so in the moment that I can't possibly express them in words or find it important to do so. My life philosophy is subtly changing every day. My moments are significant only in that they make up my life and make it worth living, not to affect anyone besides whom those I share them with. My angsts are momentary and sometimes trivial.
I want to share my life with you,
I want to pour it out onto the screen for you to dissect and to steal any tidbit that strikes a single small chord in your heart. But I can not. You have to tear your way through your own path, bleeding and swelling with the joys and bizarre and painful contradictions on your own. Possibly I'll be able to look you in the eyes someday soon, and through that we can share some... wisdom, or just laughter, another moment to document as imperfect and real in our book of learning in the present and dying to the past and reaching for the future.
Jennifer, I am saying it now. I love life. Listen to me: this dissatisfactory, wrong life is worth it, for the outside moments. Outside in the fresh air, outside yourself, out-of-body, outside of judgement, schedules, outside expectations, IN love; outside our understanding.