feast & famine

Inspired bright, with adventure and movement
Horizons span far and broad
Unfettered by haze and fog  
And noise and clutter 
And everything falls into place. 

Try I might align myself as prudent
To as many harrowing odds
Against better ways and chance
And poise and balance 
With nothing to stand before me

But alas, should the sails fall flat, as they do
Or perhaps, away, all your crew have up and left you
Straws drawn at dawn
Embarked by dusk alone 
To a terrible thirst at sea

And yet the cellars are dry and so am I oh why
To weather the storm inside
Abiding time in stride
To try the tide to take its course – no guide
And drift all along the way

Without that pilot light that from all sight eludes me
How curious to feel it gone but never burning
So what did I do to deserve the flame
And what did I do to lose it? 
Didn’t I care to waste not, want not
And never abuse it?  

But lying a while here in stow concludes it
And proves hitherto it’s a soothing illusion 
That ever I’s moving
For when I wash up on the shore 
Why the fuck was I on a boat?

magistrate, a computer virus

I spent several days running different kinds of antivirus and restorative techniques. But it was super fucked beyond my competency to repair. Rather the correct and safest thing to do with an infected “black box” is wipe it clean. So I junked it for Ubuntu. Not just to be practical; the power port is still broken and the specs are obsolete, this is not a practical machine.

His login was “Magistrate”, which was particular about him. It belonged to the lexicon of words we used as children in play. Canonical cool words. I did everything in my power to preserve this Windows instance so his username remained in existence. Ultimately I wiped the thing.

Now when I see that machine, it’s empty. Bland, dull. A thing that is there. Like a body bereft its soul. So I have this tension surrounding “Magistrate” that persists within me. Into my memories, my thoughts.

I caught a computer virus.

broken heart

I’ve never known a broken heart until my brother died this past weekend.

I am sorry. For every misstep I’ve ever made no matter how large or small, for every wrong I’ve ever done. Not taking a minute out of my shitty, self absorbed miserable life to count my abundant blessings, preferring instead to cry about having a smaller dick.

And he was such a self absorbed fucker, same as me. I can’t erase the shameful, tragic, and even resentful memories from his darkest times. Nor I can’t sing of sunshine and roses when that was never the case. I can’t distill his existence into any trope or allegory. He was all of it, the good and the bad.

And now it’s done and that’s it.

Except that’s all it ever is, for all of us.

I miss you.

labels vs action

To invoke the label “I’m an alcoholic” has always seemed to derail the conversation. TMI but as an analogy, I remember I had an enflamed gut, the doctor diagnosed me with gastroenteritis. “What is gastroenteritis?” I ask. “Inflammation of the gut.” Worthless circular logic.

Because a label doesn’t necessarily beget action.

So then to say “Well I don’t know that I resonate with labeling such as “Alcoholic”, what about to generalize to ‘Problem Drinker? That’s more behavioral / action-ey’ Because certainly I knew I had problematic drinking tendencies and I needed to behave better / more responsibility to reduce those problems. Except I don’t actually know how to “behave better” because I never fucking do and I would have figured this out by now if it were possible because that’s the solution I’ve always tried for.

So I try to take a step outside of the occasion of drinking: “I have problematic as well as known alcoholic tendencies that necessitate lifestyle changes which may include managing the amount that I drink.”

This is better but it is critically lacking to why specifically does my condition necessitate change other than to mitigate only Bad consequences? Because Risk Aversion is actually not a genuine motivator for me, and leads to question:

“For what greater Good am I in pursuit beyond merely mitigating the Bad?”

The answer is none.

I am pursuing no greater Good because I waste all of my physical time and health away with debilitating behaviors that enable me on a daily basis to never answer that question.

And truly in my heart, if not always my actions, pursuit of the greater good is the highest ideal of myself. The root of the issue is that I am not on that path.

So to be that person, and not to be the person I am that I don’t particularly like, there is one very specific task I can perform immediately to that end – to begin the journey, I must know Where I Am Going by answering the question “For what greater Good do I pursue beyond merely mitigating the Bad?”

In order to first answer that question, I must become sober, because otherwise I never will.

I don’t mean to cheapen the context of this lovely quote, but it has oddly stayed with me through the years: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

addiction

It’s difficult to say. I want to spell out some great glamourous come-to-jesus that somehow finely captures and delivers the true emotionality of it. I want to be heroic, brave, strong, and brilliant, with some triumphant conviction to know and declare I will get through this.

But I am not yet any of those things, I am an addict.

I have a permanent chemistry that is deeply and markedly different from someone without my affliction. Permanently. I broke it. Or maybe I was already broken. It doesn’t matter because that’s just how it is now.

With or without any substances I am this person, I have been this person, I will be this person.

There is no going back, there is no other way forward, no other way it could have been; only a permanent uphill battle that’s now even more challenging than the insurmountable task it already is for someone “normal” – something I have never been, and never will be.

Everything I’ve read is so disheartening, about timelines and struggles. I’m actually worried that support groups will sooner break my heart than heal it. I will find this out first-hand but this is all so new to me. I think I’m past the worst of it in the short term, the booze and Adderall took a greater toll on my health than since.

But solving the bigger issue now is all the rest of everything.

Which is the same it’s always been, and always will be.

For now, I’m no better off than this fictional entity I’ve been playing the part, or who I wanted to be.

But that person is trapped, and I must leave him behind.

 

“Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his
environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left.
Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.” – Commissioner Pravin Lal, “A Social History of Planet”

Winston the Crow

It becomes a whole thing, Winston, always looking out for him in my smoking spot just outside of work. It’s something I look forward to.He’s rapidly growing up, but for his size he still has messy tufts of a downy belly.

One morning it’s really quiet on my way in to work.

Unfortunately someone left a bag of dog poop right there in my smoking spot.

I get close and I see it’s not what I thought after all, rather it’s the wet, wilted, downy, lifeless tufts of Winston’s belly who had passed some time, somehow in the night. I had to leave, and his body is soon cleaned up after. 

I wish there was more to say, but that’s the end to the story of Winston the Crow.

new post

It’s a strange thing, I haven’t tried writing for a bit of a spell. It’s extraordinarily difficult, this thing.

I have to wonder how it is that people do it on command, and regularly at that. I mean I understand the pull of it, which is why I dabble here and there. It’s sexy, really, this whole thing. First ideas and creativity, made tangible and packaged for delivery. And the presentation, to turn all that solitude and introspection into something that resembles a conversation, incredible.

I haven’t forgotten about this thing, this old blog. It occupies a peculiarly significant space in my identity. I think about it often, the secret part of me that wishes I was something I’ve never become; the writer, creative and insightful.

Sure I lack for drive and discipline; but far beyond than that I feel there’s nothing to say. I’ve been toying with this topic for a while. Yeah I’d love to do this thing, writing. But for every blog/journal I see of someone chronicling their life events, I’m more interested in identifying with their character than I am by their raw content. And, me being subject to the same rules, I find this paralyzing.

I ought to hit Post before I reevaluate my decision and get lost in particulars and possibilities 🙂

Mindfulness and metaphors

I sit behind a couple laptops running windows vista. Across the room on display is our product offering, featuring both current and discontinued devices. A TV commercial silently plays on repeat all day, even though nothing on it is relevant today.

The floor is huge, and bright green, and people bustle by the front doors on their way to other venues in the mall. It’s a huge space, and quiet, though it echoes of greater things past. This used to be a major operation. The back space is twice as big as the floor, including two offices and a half kitchen.

This place has offered me refuge after hours, like when I locked my phone and keys in my car and needed a phone. Or while I was in school I’d come and study late, somewhere quiet and clean. Stuff like that. With all the time spent here, and privacy, it’s homey.

Just me and my castle. Safe, comfortable, alone.

Plenty of time to fuck around and binge on netflix. Sometimes I’ll pace about, or sit and stare into space. Sometimes my eyes are drawn to the looping TV commercial like a moth. That’s how I watch football.

And then a sale here and there, which is fun. The challenge is preserving a certain intensity. The physical act of making the sales is, oddly the easiest part of the job, and also the only reason why they pay me to be here. Though they have announced the pending merger with another company.

So really, one specific metaphor is what I started with, and where I will end: Patterns recur in your life because of the energy you put off into the universe.

I’m alone in this town which is stagnant, and also alone at work, and my company is stagnant. And I’m just comfortable enough to get by, but I am not thriving, and my work is just profitable to survive but faces total collapse.

So I am leaving for Seattle in two days.

feast & famine

The principle of the “Feast & Famine” is based on an experience I had paying a hand reader for a reading of my prints.

feast & famine

The wind at your back, the lights are all green. Calm and serene, yet sharp and enthused. Life is rife with adventure and movement, and horizons span far and broad, unfettered by haze and fog and noise and clutter.

And everything falls into place.

But alas should the sails fall flat, which they do. The cellars are dry, and so am I, oh why? What did I do to deserve the glow, what have I done to lose it? Didn’t I care to nurture the flame, to waste not, want not, and never abuse it?

My beacon extinguished, can no one see me at all.

But I can still see them.

***

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his
environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left.
Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.

— Commissioner Pravin Lal,

leaders and obstacles

Whether or not you like someone is either a choice or a habit; in either case, the onus is on you for this relationship, and not on them. To lay blame upon another for your affection is to concede that you have no agency in determining what people are included in your life.

Certainly there are bad people. That’s cool. But to cast judgment is to relate with them, and relating with them is to selectively internalize them.

So when someone’s a jackass to you, who’s the bigger jackass? If you put them into the plane of being your peer, then you’re also a jackass.

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else—you are the one who gets burned.” – Buddha

Feel compassion for those who are lost, not anger. In their time, they will find their way or they won’t; you can take people only as they are, not as you want them to be. You can only reliably invest in yourself in the present. Waste no time casting and evaluating projections upon others.

There are no adversaries, only leaders and obstacles.