Sometimes a cat'll eat a bird, sometimes a bird'll eat a cat

 

I also write stuff here.

tolls on the road to damascus

 What is love? Baby, don't hurt me, though there's much more to it than that.

Popular culture needs to make love entertaining. It needs to be quick and snappy with a three part story easily followed by the masses. Usually, not always, but under almost all circumstances popular media is only popular because it is easily digestible. 

Nerd man meets manic pixie dream girl and they undergo hardships and a single change and then it's neatly wrapped up in about an hour and a half. Happily ever after? Life continues far longer than ninety minutes. 

Love languages are a method of love expression. My love language is service. I put my head down and just do stuff. That's a great thing and a kind of mature understanding. I was able to acknowledge my language and express it and in doing so I felt as if I were headed for that happily ever after. All you need is love, right?

Love is about giving, but it's also about receiving. Being receptive to your love is just as important as being giving. I am slowly becoming convinced I have a litany of mental illnesses and all I'm doing writing here is giving my own perspective on madness for some AI to read in a tenth of a second.

Love is a verb, yes, but it's a super verb. It's not just something that you do, it's something that you have to embody. I need to become love for a true experience. Does that mean I should don wings and steal cupid's bow and arrows? That's absurd. That guy isn't even returning my calls right now.

Love is a way of life. It is a walk. It is the darkness of the pupil and the light reflected off tears. Happiness, hopefully, but sometimes sadness too. I have personally experienced far too much sadness in my life to half love. I'm guilty of giving wrongly and only being partially receptive. By the grace of whatever cosmic entity that abides these things, I was receptive enough to learn.

Mental illness and abuse go together like a scalpel and stitches. The abuse cuts you up in places you don't even remember and the mental illness takes it upon itself to stitch you back up. Except this is no surgical stitching. You're not even in a hospital, you're a child crying quietly to yourself in a closet. Before you can even finish the field dressing without anesthetic you get cut some more.

"That's just the way it was back then" I was told recently. My simple response was "Would you do that to a child?"

Ultimately, that's the only barometer we need to face the truth in matters of abuse. If you wouldn't do something yourself because it's too cruel, then it's abusive. Diminishing my own abuse allowed me to diminish the abuse of others. By comparing my own suffering to the suffering of others I make their suffering less. Except, I don't have the power to change reality. My mental illness tricked me into accepting the bullshit in my own life which gave me the ability to sit on my high horse and look down upon the rest of the world's suffering.

Laughter and tears at the same time

 

Laughter.

It's medicine to both the creator and recipient of the laugh.

Chuckling. Chortling. Guffawing. Giggling. Tittering.

The words we use to describe the action are even snigger inducing. Personally, I love to laugh. I love to laugh with someone. I'm even learning to love being laughed at. If you've got an insult to give me, you'd better bring your best because I've heard them all. I've laughed at all of them, eventually. 

I was a chubby kid and fat adolescent. Then I slimmed down and blew up and slimmed down and blew up and on and on. I used to think "Nothing succeeds like excess," I've written about this before if I recall. Then that was exactly what I'd do: binge and blow up to the size of a house and then go over the top and get lost in the sauce and finally get called "Skeletor" and have one of those road to Damascus moments.

"Road to Damascus refers to a sudden turning point in one's life. It is in reference to the conversion to Christianity of the apostle Paul while literally on the road to Damascus from Jerusalem. Prior to that moment, he had been called Saul, and was a Pharisee who persecuted followers of Jesus."

Howling. Convulsions. Fits. Hysterics. Hooting.

What causes a laugh? Humor, usually. Though I've discovered much laughter hidden amidst great sadness. If you think of the silver lining of clouds off in the distance while a great dark storm cloud sits angrily above you that's the imagery I associate when I laugh and cry at the same time. It's a bitter coffee wake up call from somewhere deep in my emotional brain finding the absurd in an unexpected place.

What makes humor? If you try and find a definition online you only stumble around in circles where people show off their ability to copy and paste words from the "humor" entry in the thesaurus. It is supposed to be intuitively understood but then that doesn't explain those of us who laugh about the supposedly darker things in life. Humor is personal. Everyone finds different things to laugh about. We have to laugh or go insane, I've heard. That only explains that we seek out humor when we're at our most vulnerable. It is a safety net some of us use to catch us before we fall fully into the depths of our own madness.

Humor, to me, is how I already described. It is something absurd and unexpected. When I find humor in a dark place, for example any number of the dead baby jokes littering this blog for the last twenty years. I have a different perspective now but I would never dream of removing any of that stuff. Unexpectedly encountering the absurd is what makes me laugh, after all, and I can't think of anything more absurd than a kid who makes blog posts about dead baby jokes growing up to be a man with a tattoo on his wrist to remember a dead baby.

Yet, somewhere in the above exposition is miraculously another dead baby joke. I'm still doing it, even with perspective. The difference now is that I'm also crying. Laughter and tears at the same time.

aerating and weeping

 I've listened to this song about 40 times since yesterday. Maybe more because I'm time-blind or simply because it just resonates. I feel it. 

"Time blindness is a general term for the difficulty in perceiving and managing time. It's not a formal medical diagnosis, but it can significantly impact daily life.

Some signs of time blindness include: Being chronically late, Missing deadlines, Procrastinating often, Misjudging how long a task will take, and Feeling like time is passing quickly.

Time blindness is often associated with conditions like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It can affect a person's ability to: show up to work or appointments on time, hand in assignments or projects on deadline, pay bills on time, remember to eat, and stick to routines and schedules."

 This week has been a banner week. I been able to successfully write a few entries here and enjoy the therapy of expression online to an audience of who knows. Not only that, I got a tattoo this week that takes up the majority of my right forearm. I'm greeted by the image of a red baby's breath on the back of my hand as I type this. It's an overall more pleasant experience for me, I hope the same is true for you.

I can almost guarantee there's a reference in a previous post where I proudly cry out that I DO NOT CRY!!! Well, I do now. I have been openly weeping periodically all this week and last. I can't tell if you can tell from my recent writing but I have tapped into a well of sensitivity and understanding that I had previously walled myself off from.  

As I came of age, crying was not really permitted. Anytime a young me would be moved to tears I would be terrorized by a nearby adult threatening to give me a reason to cry. I remember when I was in grade school taking music lessons on the trumpet. Blowing my own horn is an old habit of mine, it's one I still have but it's also old. On one occasion, wanting to show off my newly honed ability to play taps or some beginner trumpet score, my mother stopped me mid-performance to provide some constructive criticism. "Please just stop, that sounds terrible." She calmly told me and I promptly ran upstairs to cry in my closet. I was about 7 or 8 and when she heard me sobbing she came upstairs and dragged me from the closet to scream "I'll give you something to cry about." As if screaming in the face of a child isn't already enough to cry about.

Pretty much every time my adult eyes have begun to water I can still hear her screeches somewhere in my mind. I can still feel my hair being pulled out or taste the soap or feel the dread as whoever doling out the punishment for unwarranted tears went in search of a larger or sturdier implement of violence.

It was a peculiar site yesterday as I rode around a client's yard aerating and weeping. Weeping and aerating, the homeowner saw me in this state and I think wisely decided to continue walking her dogs. When she arrived back from their walk I had composed myself better and managed to get into what will probably be a $2500 job. Read that and weep.

I hope that this woman thought I was just really passionate about lawn health and not finally healing from well worn mental illness. It doesn't matter to her that my heart is in pieces and my mind is dysfunctional and I can't even begin to imagine how long the job should take even though I've done thousands like it before. That's time blindness. It's related to the fact that prior to a few weeks ago the only reason I'd cried in the last 25 years was because we had a miscarriage last year.

That was the first time I let "my muse" really see me cry. Her name is Denver. Using these phrases like "my love" or "my muse" or whatever nonsense language is diminishing to the woman. Using Denver to describe her is accurate, she is a mile high stack of lovable quirks and mental illness and hope and love, but that is also her real name. I told her I might use it today because I feel this way. I told her I need to name her here in order to continue with honesty here. Using those possessives is not only diminishing to her but also to myself. I didn't fall in love with an idea, I fell in love with a woman. 

Our problems arose when I stopped just loving the woman and began to love the idea. We were planning a life together but she was the only one ready to live. Both of us have ADD but I only discovered mine at the end of our life together. This is the underlying problem responsible for all of our problems but the final straw for Denver was when I drunkenly emailed another woman for the tenth or eleventh time. I was taking on more stress than either of us were equipped to handle because I was afraid that if I couldn't provide enough for her and our future family that she'd want to leave me. I would then throw money or aquariums at the problem when she would maturely set aside her own issues to confront mine. Instead of simply listening and understanding, I chose to love her on my terms and not our terms. It's a subtle, yet exceedingly important distinction.

A series of MY bad decisions pushed her away and finally burnt her to ashes. I love this woman more than I can understand but that lack of understanding was ultimately part of the problem. I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand why I couldn't just live our life. She chose to live her life with me. We had even picked out a name for our future. Then I killed it. The insanity that I brought into our home took a skeletal, black hand and plucked our future from Denver's womb. 

I may be time blind but that's different from never knowing time. Imagine being in your mother's womb and the only experiences you know are the soothing muffled sounds, the total nourishment needs being met, and then a series of huge tsunamis of stress and negative emotions. These waves of course being the emotional distress I forced onto Denver because of my issues and insecurities. There was a storm outside the womb and that's not a bunker, it's susceptible to the onslaught of my bullshit.

Imagine heaven even if you don't believe in it, the notion is basically the same as a mother's womb. The proximity to an all loving god, every need being met, and basking in the warmth of a mother and father's love. The feelings of security and safety in the mother are some of the necessary elements for proper development. With these feelings absent from our home, I had truly killed our child. I had murdered our future with unnecessary stress. Stress I should have shouldered instead of unburdening it onto Denver. 

Time and finality provide meaning and value. They make life worthwhile. They make you treasure today because tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Giving time is the same as giving love. Attention is love and ADD is an attention deficit. The reason Denver and I fell in love was because we both saw in each other someone who needed to receive more love than anyone else could be reasonably expected to handle and someone who had more love to give than could be reasonably expected. I forgot that. I got lost and though I may now be found, it's too late.

a deeper problem than simple incontinence

 

In the last episode we discussed some scenes from the past. I believe I'm ready for now. 

I'm parenting myself these days. I'm probably not the best parent in the world but I'm trying to be the best parent I've ever had. I'm definitely not the best child in the world but I'm learning to love myself. That's what parents are supposed to do, love their children. We've evolved to basically love them unconditionally, the Greeks had a word for this: Agape. 

"Agape is a type of love that is not based on feelings, but rather on a conscious decision to love others without expecting anything in return. It's a love that is intended for everyone and is often described as the highest form of Christian love."

 "Jesus wept." John 11:35

I've been weeping lately as my child self because my parent self has been able to practice acceptance. I also pay attention to the child, when I feel emotions that don't make any sense I practice a breathing exercise before I kindly ask myself what's making me feel this way. Paying attention, without distractions, is a form of love. It's very difficult but the process is exceedingly rewarding. If I believe in any notion of "normal", I'd say that I'm on the path to normalcy. 

That John chapter of the bible is the story of Lazarus. The dead man brought back to life. In a tangible way, that story resonates. I've felt like a zombie shuffling around. Going through the motions of life in mocking mimicry of those around me that seemingly "had their shit together" so much better than myself.

I'm simply seeking out that which we are all entitled: happiness. The only way I'm able to pursue happiness is first by healing. I spent the first half of my life so far embroiled in an emergency state. I was constantly on edge and constantly under attack. I spent the second half of my life so far embroiled in an aimless and dysfunctional wandering. 

"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king." J. R. R. Tolkien

 For years I had that quote on my cubicle wall at the job where every day felt like my personal hell. While I'd like that quote to apply to me, I know that I was lost. Deep in the woods with the sun going down and a fog so thick I struggled to see my hands in front of my face. There were guttural, predatory noises on all sides and the fog, for some reason, was laced with some kind of depressant. No wonder I had such a rough time. 

Tragedy brought me out of that hell. It was a messy escape but I'd made it out, or so I thought. I only know how to love myself now because I had such a great example to follow. I spent the last three years living and loving and fighting and arguing with the best friend I've ever had. Not only was she my best friend but she was my lover and the light of my life. She still means the world to me, but the unruly child that I have now adopted decided to shit all over our walls and ceilings and some of it got in both of our mouths multiple times. Once or twice might be an accident but if the child continues to shit on your face and in weird, hard to clean places then clearly there is a deeper problem than simple incontinence. 

So now I find myself being a parent to this terrible little monster. Except I know that I'm not one of the things that go bump in the night, I'm one of those that stand in the light and face adversity. I've been fighting my entire life. I feel as if I've been in a trench style war where all I've been doing for the last thirty years has been fucking murders. I was the berserker and the samurai and the assassin and the soldier. By ones, twos, threes, or more I silenced voices. I ended anything that stood in my way until I came across a fawn in the middle of the battlefield.

In that moment I was finally born. I looked around and saw the battle and I tried to dig us a hole for safety and security. The only safety and security I'd ever known was at the on the edge of blood soaked cold steel. I scared the poor creature and it ran off as soon as it was strong enough. I'd like to think she's made it off the battlefield, that she'll live a long and happy life but I have no idea. 

I do know now the name of the enemy at the end of the war. I can also now finally see their command tent atop a mountain nearby. I need to take the child and myself through hill and under dale and scale a snowy cliff side before I can finally win my war. I have the climbing equipment, supplies, and a map. Once the war is won I think I can seek out the fawn, see that she's safe. See that she's secure and able to develop fully through the natural deer chrysalis stage and fly off to the moon as a beautiful butterfly with gossamer wings.

 

As the days wane towards winter I too am lost in the chilling gloom.

of interest not in my interest

 

I've written before that this blog contains a lot of mental health issues. In my recent self explorations I have come to realize that it is actually an ode to ADD. Most diagnoses of the disorder happen in youth but there are many with the affliction that only realize later in life. I have to assume there are countless others with ADD never diagnosed. 

The DSM-IV had three criteria but as the disorder becomes better understood the criteria have changed. Dr. Gabor Mate says that only sensitive children can get ADD. There's a dysfunction in the brain that is basically the unnatural formation of the prefrontal cortex. This is where all of our instant processing takes place and emotional regulation. The brain is supposed to develop slowly how to deal with emotions. It is supposed to give us the ability to compare and contrast past experiences and allow an emotionally regulated response. Essentially, it's the proper and timely development of the brain that makes us civilized and well balanced.

During the first nine months of our existence we have no wants and no desires. We simply exist and all of our needs are met. Then we are born. Due to evolutionary reasons that allowed us to walk upright, we need to finish early development of our higher functions outside the womb. We're not born as fully realized humans. This isn't some insight, it is obvious to anyone who has ever met a baby. 

Our first sights and sounds and smells are those of our mother. Like baby birds we hatch into this world with nothing but that initial loss and an eagerness to live. Giraffes are born into this world being expected to keep up with their mother's milk. Humans are born unable to do anything. Not only are we physically incapable (babies are notoriously weak) we are also mentally and emotionally incapable. 

The second nine months of our lives is where the prefrontal cortex and higher functioning systems fully form. This happens largely during a process called attunement. This is where the baby seeks out the context and meaning and emotions of the mother so that they can define their own. The emotional center of the developing brain resides behind the right eye and the infant persistently seeks out eye contact with the mother. The baby has no way of knowing anything about deception so when the mother experiences stress or pain or anguish the baby can sense it even when she tries to hide it. Though we may show a seemingly sincere smile to an infant, they can tell that it is insincere because the emotions that typically move those muscles are not. 

The problem arises because of the deception. The infant is unable to form their brain properly because the mother is experiencing too much stress. The sensitive babies need the attunement even more than their less sensitive counterparts because of their sensitivity. This increased need coupled with the decreased availability of emotional truth and attachment and LOVE of the mother naturally leads to such unnatural outcomes. The baby's brain adapts to their surroundings. In a new world where they need love and patience and every other bit of care but it isn't available, the baby figures it out.

My half-brother is seven years younger than myself. I remember when he was an infant my mother would "let him cry it out" in his crib while he was crying for love or attention or perhaps even food or a diaper change. My memories of my youth are terrible (which is something pretty common amongst those with ADD) but I remember feeling awful hearing the cries from the other room and being unable to do anything. I would go in and try and comfort him but I would be chastised for disturbing my mother's mothering style. I say chastised but I was usually physically and/or verbally abused in some way, another thing common to those with ADD is the diminishing of our own abuse.

Babies are in a unique position. They need the mother for everything, they need emotional attunement and physical survival. If the baby realizes that they must put their emotions aside in order to be fed, they eventually put their emotions aside and dissociate. This leads to their inability to deal with emotions later in life. I've learned that this isn't an emotional death sentence, it just means that I need to do more work. I need to be more mindful and I need to be more patient with myself than I have ever been in the past.

Remembering this, I know how and why I have ADD. I'm fairly certain my brother does as well. How can I be mad at my mother for this when I received the same treatment from her step-father? My great-grandmother also abused me when I "misbehaved" who most likely treated her daughter the same way who most likely just continued the trend. There were baby books for years that said the best way to deal with a crying infant is to treat them like my mother did my brother. A statistically higher percentage of adults with ADD are alienated from their families.

Adults with ADD complain of lives where they haven't lived up to their potential. People that meet them say they're bright, sensitive, nice, and all manner of seemingly positive traits. Except, they can't keep it together long enough to actually achieve anything. Procrastination is rampant because the reward system in our brains is wonky. Feelings of inadequacy stemming from the inability to "be normal". Which makes sense because my life has never been normal, or natural as I've come to find out. They can be quick to anger and other emotions because they don't have a working regulatory apparatus in their brain. 

Coping mechanisms often include drugs and alcohol because their is a baby sized hole in their hearts. They don't experience emotions the same way that others do because they have a differently wired brain. The reward system in the brain can be almost entirely wrong and still come up with a "functioning" adult. ADD is caused in infancy, the situations that give rise to the ADD are usually still present in the family as the child gets older. Not only is this child ill-equipped to deal with hardships at home, they are usually in a home that will have many hardships.

My entire life I've been ill-equipped to deal with being overly sensitive, which is almost certainly why I write like I do. It's also why I drank. I'm guilty of pursuing that which is of interest and only recently have I sought out that which is in my interest.

the notion eludes definition

 

As I delve deeper into identity it gets hazier around the edges. The better I define the notion the more the notion eludes definition. 

I was raised in what could be called an Italian-American home. Don't question the Jesus, listen to the elders, eat something with tomato sauce on Sundays. I would later realize none of them knew their Christ in any meaningful way, the elders were mostly full of shit, and Italians from Italy never go so tomato mad. Such is life, we either die young or live long enough for our parents to become burdensome to us. 

I recently took a DNA test and I'm exactly 0% Italian. Which means the biological relatives I've known my whole life are also not Italian. Which makes sense since our weekly or even twice or thrice weekly family dinners eventually evolved their own kind of madness.

The crime scene would always look the same. Absent minded patriarch at the end of the table prattling off testosterone filled nonsense interjected with compliments to the chef. The chef and part-time matriarchal figure perched at the opposite end of the table would always warmly receive these compliments. My mother sat across from my younger brother and myself across from my stepfather who always insisted on being between my mother and her step father. 

The chef and grandmother-in-chief, having assembled and cooked enough food for twice the number present, would always lastly settle in her chair only after being assured of everyone else's contented initial experience with their meal. Once the party was all fully settled, we were all essentially stuck for an indeterminate amount of time until the first one was finished and could use the excuse of clean up to escape for a while into safety of the kitchen.

Aside from some sulky details I've provided, this seems like a somewhat normal family meal experience. Well, with a captive audience bad comedians take advantage. Most of my own desires around this experience revolved around fast food with a quick exit. Both of these received scorn and derision until I relented and just started reading books at the table. This new tactic received outright ridicule until I ceased the practice and would only bring myself to dinner. Without the physical act of looking over the spine of a book at the rest of the party, I was finally deemed acceptable or agreeable, maybe both. 

Well, the situation was not so agreeable with me and I would frequently express my displeasure. In order to chastise a child for "talk back" or "smart mouth" or whatever useless phrase is used to describe the irascibility of youth, you must not engage. If you engage with belligerence you become belligerence. You also lose whatever high ground you had because you chose to come down and exchange insults with a child. 

Looking back now, perhaps it was a show of respect for me when my mother and grandpa would directly argue with a teenage over dinner. Their tempers would quickly turn the argument to insults and I'd return fire, salvo for salvo. Raise the black flag, burn it down, get mean. Angry and full of angst, but also well read and well spoken enough to cause disturbed looks on their faces. My grandmother would get so flustered she'd need to leave the table early. Smartly, she purchased a bell. The kind you tap to summon a bell-hop except this bell was tapped to summon sanity. 

Ridicule followed the bell around for decades, but it worked. She trained us like some of Pavlov's best dogs. However, it was obviously an imperfect system. The bell was often misplaced, I think it was hidden on purpose but I was not the culprit, this would result in chaos days until the bell finally revealed itself once more. The majority of the post-bell period was more like controlled chaos. If I ever felt the need to snap a hurtful retort to something then I'd just catch a ding. A few dings was no big deal but every once in a while I felt like I was on a game show. 

I'm looking at that very same bell right now. After she died I found it and I took it and I didn't tell anyone I had it until last week when I sent a picture to my mother. Everyone had thought it was missing never to return (most explained the disappearance on my grandpa, who now has serious dementia issues and loses things constantly). I claimed it as my own. It feels like spoil of war that I've won through all my hard work over the years dishing out better than I received. 

Why the bell and not simply seclude or exclude me? Well, firstly that seems excessive even for this group. Secondly, I have more or less always carried the philosophy that retaliatory strikes are somehow more morally permissible. Ethically ambiguous instead of simply cruel or mean. Derision aimed at my younger brother or grandmother was never permitted. It was answered swiftly with a bell worthy insult nearly every time. I love banter and can shit-talk with the best but I also understand the nuance between the two. I felt like I was deftly navigating between the two but I was a kid and pretty dense at the time. I still am but I flow better now.

The bell was a compromise, an effort to moderate the good points on both sides. I have no idea what they actually thought of my occasional belligerence but I hoped I was some kind of protector for the two of us that usually did not speak up in their own defense. Do I believe they needed it? Yes, at the time. I have no idea now, maybe I interfered too early and all I accomplished was transforming myself into a part time bully's bully. I chose my fights and went hard with conviction. 

I saw myself as a kind of mean old junkyard dog. He's not getting out of his house for random folks going about their business. He's only concerned with the guy trying to jump the fence. That guy is gonna get his throat ripped out. I thought of myself as some kind of disinterested protector. Like some samurai that everyone thinks is sleeping but he's been listening the whole time. Suddenly he snaps into action and swiftly slits a throat and stabs an eye and then there's silence again.

Has anyone ever seen me as a protector or am I still that belligerent youth? How much of my identity is defined by the way others perceive me? The impossible veil between minds has descended again to thwart my efforts. What does it matter how I think I'm being perceived if it may be so wildly different from reality? 

The problem with this is in even thinking about being perceived. If I wanted to protect my grandmother from foul words directed at her, why not simply do it and be done with it? Why do I need to persist in the belief or even write about it today? Mindfulness is something I only learned later in life and have only in the last year or so started to practice actively. It would have helped during these dinners.

this modern parable

 

Far and away the most misogynistic and manipulative narcissist I've ever met has recently taken up the habit of repeating the same story to me. This usually ends the conversation shortly thereafter on my part because I can almost feel the narrator's bias.

Full disclosure: this scumbag is one of my best friends and I'd be remiss to neglect some of his redeeming qualities. He's generally inspiring. Sometimes this is on purpose. Other times there's this accident that happens at the intersection of determination and teamwork where usually the result is something pretty good, pretty, pretty good. Quality is what he'd call it, though the notion in his mind and the real life result are not always identical. 

Another redemptive attribute is an unrivaled ability to adapt his mind to changing circumstances. He sees the best in situations ranging from shit-shows and cluster-fucks to serene and pristine paint by number. Every one of us are at different points in life and all have the corresponding differences in points of view. All of our thoughts in boxes shuffle along the cosmic assembly line of thoughts in boxes, the imagery itself just another thought in a box. With my own notion of identity becoming less defined the better I define it, I realize there's a similar journey for all those other thoughts in boxes.

The story goes thusly:

Every one is given three great loves. The first great love is a kind of puppy love You think it's the real thing while you're in the midst of it but it ends and you realize it wasn't real. The second great love is one that teaches you how to love while simultaneously teaching you how not to love because this one ends as well. The third and final great love comes at you when you're least expecting it and it is true and wholesome.

Typically that is where he ends the story and I ask him about what happens next but recently after a few more rehearsals, he's started to add a conclusion of happily ever after. Aside from following the rule of three and being kind of interesting, the story remains largely incoherent on the surface. Why would we call a first love or first great love not real and then go on to use the same language for loves two and three. If the first love above isn't real then none of the above are real, for coherent story telling at the very least.

Yes, the second great love sounds a great deal like someone you grow to hate. I don't feel that way about anyone I've ever loved. I know on some level you have to have love for something before you can hate it but I don't have hate in my heart. I've been saying "If you have hate in your heart, let it out" for almost two decades now and have been able to practice what I preach for the better part of the last one. I can't hate that which I love because I struggle with hate. Maybe my inability to hate prevents me from understanding this modern parable. 

The third love sounds like something I want to understand because I'm trying to learn not to expect. If I spend my time doing what I'm doing instead of thinking of other things while doing then I'm not doing a good job of anything. My thoughts while I work can be distracted by my work and my work while I think suffers from the lack of mindfulness. 

If I have thoughts worth considering then why not consider them? If I have work worth doing then why not do it? My need to rush and rustle along with the pace I think is around me only results in messy situations because of distractions. If I instead dictate my own pace and only allow the world around to inform my actions then I am thinking and then doing. I am observing the world, determining my part, and then acting. 

In no way am I saying I need things to slow down. In fact, the opposite is true when I am actively practicing mindfulness. I'm able to breathe, think, then act. It's impossible to control the outside world and it is unhealthy to react as well. Instead of reacting to the magnificence around me, why not thoughtfully respond? It provides more respect and love to the outside and, perhaps most importantly, to myself. I respect my thoughts and the thoughts and actions of others when I'm able to have considered thoughts during the silence between words instead of waiting for the next opportunity. 

I also don't believe we are given any loves. God, the universe, or whatever runs the cosmos isn't going to just give anyone love. It's something too precious to be given. It needs nurtured, it needs earned, it needs to grow in the silence between words. It grows in the mindfulness between souls and is only infinitely supplied when it is given the opportunity to flourish.

impossibly indecipherable

 

Self imposed identity is like building a house when you don't know how. You may know the general shape of things to come but not the full story of the innards. You're also not so great making clean cuts and what you end up with is a facsimile of a home. It looks like the hand drawn caricature of a home that we all draw when we're uncoordinated children. Proudly upon the cardboard mailbox my seal of approval gets slapped on top because I gave the whole thing a name and brought it into existence.

Identifying myself helps in this perpetual process of enlightenment but it is only a portion of the story. My identity is irrevocably intermingled with the inner thoughts of those around me and will always remain impossibly indecipherable because of the impassibility of the veil between minds.

A key aspect of identity are the roles given to us by others. These roles often have more duality than they should for accurate diagnosis so I shy away. In order to be a writer, I need to listen. I need to hear the voices in my head forming words and then my fingers need to listen to the electrical impulses sent down my nervous system to move muscles and click keys. I need to have read (because reading is a type of listening) all of the words organized here, elsewhere organized differently. I need to listen to inspiration in whatever form it takes before I can even begin.

Listening is also an important part of observing. In order to get those impulses to fire from brain to word I need to see the scene. Conjure it in my mind so that I can describe it here in words that have never been sufficient. An astute reader may have been able to intuit that my sense of smell is the worst of the bunch. I rarely, if ever, describe a scene with smell. Is my smell sense so weak because a good portion of my life has been spent with my nose buried in books?

Yesterday I did a series of experiments to determine the status of my mind-body connection. I ran for 3.55 miles to check the limits of my endurance. How far could I push my body until it decided to fight back? It didn't give me much push back. I was able to finish with less than maximum effort so either my body is obedient, I'm far fitter than I had expected, or the connection is still weak. My mind can force my body to do things it doesn't want to like run a 5k off couch or drink too much or smoke too much or do whatever too much. 

I also went out and had one drink. One drink to see if the connection is being repaired or not. When I used to drink I'd never wait for the effects of the first before the second was already ordered up. I would then never wait for the effects of the second before the third, and so on. Four or five and my body was well into the feelings by then but my mind would still be racing, seeking extra from the past that I'd never been able to mimic and knew I never would.

During this drink I was serenaded by an animatronic sorceress on percussion with a backup string section. I think sound might be a shorter avenue to the heart because it's usually through sound that I feel most moved. Sound can almost always make me feel something. The lyrical and the rhythmical combine to move the heart and mind. Songs are thought processes you feel. 

My decidedly not but assuredly so inebriated brain chose to decline the second round. Triumph? Only insofar as the siren in the corner of the cantina keeps captivating the audience with pipes like the grandest church organ. From Winehouse to Nicks and back again, I felt like I was getting a flight of heavenly treats invading my ears only periodically punctuated by background music of California burn out rock. 

Comfort music for the ears, more or less. But most certainly more. I got lost in that savory sauce every third song. Imagine if the call of Cthulhu had a female voice and it was all part of some surreal Five Nights at Freddie's show. Beautiful and terrifying yet irresistible on a level I'm unequipped to handle.

"Knowing ain't half the battle, that's a bullshit quip written by some asshole." - Aesop Rock

how's the water?

 

On yesterday's episode, I tried defining myself. Though there seems to be a lot of sharing here, it's still words on a screen. The thoughts that brought me to type these words will forever be a mystery to the outside world. A lot of times it is a mystery to me too, but usually only so long as I'm unable to form the idea into actual words. 

Trying to define myself by myself is kind of silly though. I'll never truly be able to define myself. I'm a string of thoughts in a physical body made of flesh and bone. One of these is in a physically unreachable place and the other is unable to escape its physical limitations. I live in this body which is kind of like a box in which thoughts are placed but thoughts can't actually be placed anywhere. Trying to pin down one's authentic self has been proving difficult. 

The other consideration is that of time. These words are being generated at the request of fingers clicking a keyboard today but you will read these another time. The thoughts are from before the electrical impulse is sent down to move from key to key. I'm trying to define myself now in terms of who I've been in the past. I don't want to be the ultimate repository of all this wickedness from my past and yet that's the first method I use to define myself. 

There's three or more different gears moving together that I'm attempting to stop and make sense of while they continue to spin and, in fact, need to continue to spin for my continued existence. I hope you've been able to follow along so far because I'm not so sure I have. The inadequacies of language or thought or maybe even the universe or the nature of consciousness make it hard to understand the notion of self. If it's so hard to understand, how will I ever be able to pin myself down with an actual definition?

Before I can get any further into this idea, I want to talk about the links between these things. As mentioned and as must be obvious by now, I express thoughts. The fact that writing is really a series of words expressing thoughts is why I'm drawn to the activity: it feels natural to express myself this way. Some people are feeling people and they can understand emotions and better express themselves in ways related to intuition rather than thought. Because of either a preference for thought or against feeling, I spend most of my time in my head and produce short essays of self reflection like this. If I were a feeling person, I have no idea how I'd answer these questions. Perhaps I would never have the need?

I spend more time in my head while others spend more time in their hearts. I probably have an aversion to feelings because it takes me so long time to digest them and bring them up to my head to roll around and describe in words. I suppose a feeling person might take a while to feel something about a thought but maybe that's just my own bias. 

The only way I've ever found to give myself anything resembling definition is when I had someone to live for. If you think of the idea of "space" as in outer space or even the space outside or inside your home. These places, these spaces, are only defined by their inability to be a place. Outside only has meaning when you understand inside. Light only has meaning when you understand the dark.

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, he nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”" - David Foster Wallace

 As the bee provides meaning to the flower, I found myself with an identity and meaning but only because of the relation to the love that gave me an identity with which I felt comfortable. Without a purpose I am adrift and unable to define myself other than through such coarse methods as these.

Imagine love as water. I am like a lake or eventually the ocean at the end of the water cycle. It waits there until it's ready to rise and return to the source of the system. At the source of the river is usually a mountain or somewhere water flows freely. A serene meadow filled with deer and rabbits and all manner of gentle woodland creatures. Punctuated by a billowing waterfall in the distance and embraced gently by a swiftly flowing brook, the source of all my love and life and purpose was a Bob Ross painting made alive. On the ocean side of things, wave caps breaking wildly with a hurricane on the way with nothing but darkness on the horizon. 

I lived in the ocean. Lost in my thoughts. Lost in the depths, scared of even breaching the surface. I needed to traverse the underwater obstacles and emerge at the end of the river system and go onward to enjoy the serenity of that happy little valley.

Who even is Javier Nelson?

Dating all the way back to 2006, this blog is almost twenty years old. Throughout that time I've often thought of why I write. What drives me to put these words on this computer? Who do I think is going to read this? What kind of dysfunction do I have to think this is even worth reading? 

This compulsion of mine is partly the same as any writer who self publishes: stroking one's ego. And maybe I do need to stroke it from time to time; take it out of the closet and show myself and the world I'm still coherent. While I have it out, why not see what the old girl can do. 

I remember the first time someone told me they appreciated the words I'd written. Not a teacher or professor or anyone engaged in actively coaxing out words, but someone off the street. Someone who had no dog in the fight, so to speak. Astonishingly, or not, I befriended the fellow. We drank, ate, smoked cigars, and enjoyed a few evenings of revelry and reminiscences of high school. I can't recall much friendship before the compliments. Nothing gay here, simply one dude who liked another dude's words and some bonding.

I've been asked what I write about. Well, almost everything I've ever typed is here aside from papers and such from school. If you take the time to read it all you'll quickly discover that it is a roller coaster of addiction, trauma, narcissism, racism, sexism, many other -isms, many -phobias, and I would like to hope, most importantly, hope. If you end up in the sewer, make sure you're looking at the stars, eh?

I don't even think that's a saying although it reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe. I feel like he was drunk in a gutter at some point, possibly at his death. Which is a pleasant segue into how I've been feeling lately. Like a dead alcoholic who may or may not have his corpse facing the stars. Although most likely it was overcast that night.

The reason, of course, is heartache. Or rather, I think it's more of a headache. I've picked up the habit lately of wearing bandannas. [Since I'm having difficulty finding the footnotes on this editor, I'm including parenthetical(s) and making the font smaller like this. The point of this note is to inform the reader I believe there to be fewer N's in that word than what appears here, I'm only begrudgingly accepting the spell check and lazily not looking it up. I feel it's important to lazily not look things up while I write so as to either write around the block or simply put some placeholder in like this to return to later.] I think it's because I write phrases like "I think" far more often than "I feel" and this is in a largely autobiographical medium. Aside from the obvious obfuscation surrounding identity: Who even is Javier Nelson?

Javier Nelson was born from shame. One drunken night I was surfing facebook and encountered some wall shenanigans that incited an insecurity or two and I wrote some embarrassing rant like the ones you can find in the archives and was mortified in the morning, again. It had become a habit born of loneliness and inebriation to browse facebook or instant messenger (in those days) for anyone willing to listen. Or share something of interest, but never to share something where I didn't immediately or secondarily benefit in some way.

The depths of the night combined with a dash of frustration brought back from a bar strike out or whatever dead end decision led me to be drunk and alone at 2AM. It was only much later in life that I would discover the delights of daytime drunk dialing, at this stage it was a lot darker and less refined. I still had a lot of anger issues, I see that now. This storm of darkness collided with the alcohol and fireworks went off all over friends' facebook walls. This was in the early days of facebook when it was only friends, unless mom or dad worked at a specific set of universities, facebook just wasn't a thing. The internet was much different back then, but suffice to say that it'd be far more devastating if I had those problems with the technological access of today.

I felt embarrassed by an especially outrageous public post (which was also not even a thing at the time, you just had friends that could see your wall or people that weren't your friends). I just said "Fuck it" and deleted the whole thing. I went through and deleted everything I could and nuked the account. I don't remember if I used my a university email for my grand emergence or if I actually waited for a more open facebook, but Javier Nelson rose from the ashes of this embarrassment I can't even remember now and a stubbornness to go back to the old ways or the old me. 

This may have initially been a time of sobriety or not, but Javier Nelson never had much to say about anything other than alcohol or alcohol related activities or activities after the alcohol. At any rate, a casual read through of the archives can easily confirm the themes of addiction, trauma, and poorly coping.

I guess I still don't have much to say about it because it's only now that I've turned 40 where I truly understand what the -ism part of alcohol means. Which is why my head hurts so much, my personal journey lately has taken me from bible summaries to farming to being kind of an arborist with a bunch of extra steps. I drive a company vehicle either way and I have much to be proud of, aside from the aforementioned heartache, or headache, which is what ultimately brings us here. 

My writing hiatus was largely due to finally finding my muse. She made me realize that you can look for love your whole life and never really know what it is that you're looking for. Love is inspiration, to be your best. Love is hope, for the future. Love is a reason to get out of bed in the morning and motivation to get you to go straight home after work, instead of the bar. 

The last time I've ever had any type of disposable income, it mostly went to support the Primanti family and all the good work they do with their charitable eatery in the South Side on Carson street. Also a large number of the south side charities, some call them "cantinas", or sometimes "bars", but that was all behind me for a while because I was kind of depressed and living in a tent with only enough money to afford the occasional bottle of spirits.

My muse also made me realize that I didn't need to write to express my frustrations. I could get triggered by my insecurities and take out my frustrations on her, but that wasn't the way it was at first. First was the passion, the ecstasy, heights of love and loving and being loved in return. In the span of 37 years I've only ever been loved a handful of times. Romantically, I really can't say if that's true because emotions are strange and I just made the mistake of including all of my 37 years which has a lot of overly emotional teens and twenties and a long history of an internet diagnosis of autism, or something. 

One of the reasons my teen years were so wrecked was because my Pap died when I was a but a youth and left me with a shitty dad. I had to tell my dad he was a loser when I was 22 and then I went out for a pack of cigarettes and some scratchers and never looked back. I was definitely sober when I did that, but I may have been hungover. This stuff happened so long ago it's hard to remember, but it's important to inform ourselves of who we are by what we've done and where we've been.

I owe my whole future to a beautiful woman whom I loved and loved me back. True love too, not the kind you find at the bottom of a bottle or the end of a bar, the kind you want to find at the end of the day, everyday instead of the bottle. The kind of love that makes life easy. Makes decisions easy, just do whatever leads to the happily ever after. The kind of love that pushes and pulls when you need it, not just when you want it. The kind of love that's everything I've ever wanted and billions of things I had no idea I needed. Basically, it took me a while but I hit the love and life lottery with one of those scratchers. I was ready to cash it in for the mega millions jackpot but instead, as she so eloquently put it, I "shit all over the whole house, and both of us" and then I gave her a high five with a bunch of shit in my hand and it "got all over both of us and in our faces and mouths". Quite understandably so, she's disgusted. I'm also disgusted but I'm the one that metaphorically shit the whole house instead of just the bed or however the phrase goes. Coining phrases is just another reason I love her.

However, it was due to my inability to let her help me fight my demons that I shit the whole house and got it in our mouths and, I assume, hair and all of our stuff. Also in the fish tanks and on the cats and there's usually a fan running somewhere. The metaphor is a powerful one, which makes sense because our love was so potent and the destruction so devastating. 

It wasn't even like we weren't aware I had a drinking problem, I sent her a link here to this compendium of cathartic alcoholism. Which made it so no one was overly surprised when I was secretly consuming alcohol. Which, also not surprisingly, I had either before or after this event ridiculed a neighbor for doing the same exact thing.

Essentially, everything I'd written with or without an alcohol reference (and if you look through, there's far more of those than should make anyone comfortable) was in some way probably influenced by alcohol. Because I was an alcoholic. It's not defined by physical dependence but by the negative effects the use of alcohol has on one's life. 

I drank. I lied. I cheated. 

I don't know if that's all part of the theme of this blog but the first part definitely fits the bill. I also disrespected, but that was the whole time because I'm an asshole and don't value properly that which I should. I did not listen to love. I listened to the demons we both knew I had and had both tried to actively work on, her more than I! Her gut feelings (she is far more intuitive than myself) always work on overdrive. On instinct she can pull over and find a cat in need. She has supernatural hearing for all old people that fall over. She has the patience to spend three years with an old man while he continually fails to defeat alcohol or the its grip. But it doesn't really have a firm grasp, it just has deep roots. And shame and embarrassment and Javier Nelson. 

I can't say for sure whether this whole Javier journey started as a nom de plume or guerre: pen name or war name. I definitely fought some demons with Javier Nelson, but I think in the process, I definitely created a few more. There exists this catalog (of sorts) of events and it is also my recollection of stuff, but what else have we accomplished other than scapegoating alcoholism and mental illness?

I call her my muse earlier and yet there's no outpouring here. Or elsewhere, I assure you I only took the time off here because I felt like I had control over my life and didn't need the therapy. Well, I do. I also didn't have the need to write because I had other notions on my mind: farms, trees, pigs, goats, cats, and most importantly kids. All these things have one thing in common: life and love and hope and all that for which we seek in life. I have no words to describe what happens when you find your purpose in life, which is why I didn't write much once I'd found mine. 

I did. I did things for her, for us. Or, at least I thought that's how to love back, you see another theme here is the desire for but the lack of, actual love. I had a bit of luck once in my twenties but nothing like the glory and purity of the mega jackpot super win I just burned away. 

Of course I want her back, of course I hope she could forgive me. I don't know if she could, I took a vulnerable little bird and pretended to take care of it for a period of time then threw it on the ground and let the cat play with it for a while. Maybe the creature survived but say she's able to get back to safety, she's never going to want to deal with the person that nearly did a cold ass murder. So I guess another theme is loss.

I'm a thousand percent better now than when she met me and it is because she gave me purpose. 37 years of essentially floating through life with alcohol as a crutch changed me nearly completely. Obviously I still kept my crutch, but I went from homeless adjacent to home owner adjacent, finally, after 40 years. I don't own a home but I do have multiple certifications and many minor accolades to the credit of my muse. We created a breakeven profit pig farm on a farm we got kicked off (also because of me, which should be a separate entry eventually) but it was ultimately for the best ... or not, depending on where you stand, I suppose.

This is a rather anti-climactic conclusion but I still hope you enjoyed. I don't know what the future holds and I have no particularly hopeful words to share at this time about any of this. It feels pretty fucking bleak, and I think it is a weird sensation to know how things feel but that's something else I've learned from my muse over the last three years even though I'm still terrible at it: feeling feelings.