intellectual properties

dreamstate

i feel really out of sorts. just so much is……what is going on? the familiar turned uninviting, shifting and without solid ground. unsettled. uncertain. i’m generally into marginal, liminal, elusive, slipstream consciousness, but lately i feel like my whole life has been taken over by someone else’s dream.

this is an edge.

.::.

i just had a 8:15 ecstatic-dancing-with-myself to Seahorse.

if you’ve never put this song on (loud) and listened to the whole progression, i highly recommend it, either dancing free or still with eyes closed.

a holding pattern too tight

i don’t have to create any intricate similes or metaphors to explain this

the pain in my right arm, this constant, chronic pain from my ear down the right side of my body, into my fingertips and hip socket

is most literally

from a tension held so long, a finger cocked, waiting to pull the trigger.

feeling the edges

i have been down lately.  and when i say down i mean like, feeling the bottom. do you know what the bottom feels like?  i thought everyone did, but recently a friend of mine told me he’d just experienced a “bad day” for the first time that he could remember – like, 15-20 years. and my mind was sort of blown. that’s possible for a sane person?

.::.

the other day as we drove  through west oakland i thought about this, about what he said, and i thought that it seemed impossible to me, to have that kind of mentality, when 1. all of the atrocities in the world are visible on every street corner and 2. to me it appears that all of us are always standing on the edge of a cliff. every day, living on the edge, the potential for falling into the abyss present with every breath taken, and that the spectrum of awareness goes from paralyzed with fear at one end to completely oblivious and doing cartwheels at the other.

i am not paralyzed but i am always aware of the edge.

later that night, my head buried in my pillow, i bemoaned my disposition and jay said “you just have to let go.”  and i said: “how can i let go when i feel like i’m balancing on the edge?” he agreed with me, which is why i love him, but i’m sure there is some platitude about “faith” or something.

to be clear i know that there is nothing either objectively or subjectively “wrong” with my life. in fact it is by most standards BLESSED and i am not ungrateful.   i am also aware of this idea of “creating your own reality” and choosing to ignore atrocities.  i can’t.  i can’t live in this world full of torture and persecution and injustice and just “focus on myself” and my beautiful friends and my beautiful life. yeah, if i blocked all that out – starting from my doorstep in west oakland to the regimes of oppression worldwide – life would be fucking grand!

and if you try to tell me you live the best, most non-consumer non-imperialistic socially-conscious life possible and that is all you can do so why not focus on your own happiness the rest is out of your hands/isn’t being a happy human a greater asset to the world than an angry one? i will 1. point out that your reading this on a computer/gadget made in China negates that defense about you not willingly having anything to do with atrocity and 2. respectfully and sort of jealously disagree while acknowledging that this is an ancient philosophical/POV debate.

the weird thing is, despite all this psychological torment i put myself through, and despite these occasions where i feel weighed down, overall i think i’m actually a happy person. just maybe not an optimist.

the point is that some days i don’t know how to take a step back from the edge, that edge where i can feel the present and future stew of everything and everyone, nothing and no one and feel like i am/we are falling forward.

.::.

anyway, stress work existential angst anxiety fear of the unknown self-doubt global unrest blah blah blah i did not have a good weekend and let’s not get any deeper into that other than to say that while yes, it is possible i might benefit from some therapy and/or medication, at the same time i am also always fighting my way back to the top so don’t worry too much (mom). i’m just emotional and dramatic.

as is often the case when i am down, my chronic shoulder/back pain flared up again yesterday to a more than just annoying degree. the fact that it’s been almost a year since i’ve written about it says a lot about how under control i have this still-undefined thing, but it has not been gone, oh no, and i have to be hypervigilant with my PT, and when i am down there, in the bottom my friend doesn’t feel?  i am not vigilant.  i am the opposite of vigilant. i am destructive. and if you are me and you live in San Francisco in the year 2012 you have access to a lot of tools for self-destruction.

so yesterday i was whiny and in pain and i didn’t sleep well last night and needed to not be typing and all that so today i only went to work for a couple of hours but that was OK because it was sunny and 72 degrees in february and so i left work and biked across town and went and hung out outside at cafe in downtown oakland until time for yoga.  I KNOW, RIGHT?  see why i’m depressed? #affluenza

.::.

this DJ person i live with is playing electronic music of whatever microgenre that is he plays (i’ll keep out of that debate) – i do not listen to electronic music unless said DJ is playing it at home or/ i am out dancing.  i was actually quite offended when an old phish friend said “oh right you only listen to electronic music now” when i didn’t know some new band.  on evenings when he is doing this, i am often in the bathroom listening the Velvet Underground or somesuch while i do one of any number of beauty treatments on myself (it’s only been 10 days since i last bleached my hair and i am already unhappy with the color gradient.  UGH.  maybe maryann is right; i should shave my head. ANYWAY.)

so just now i was there in the shower listening to Built to Spill Perfect From Now On (1997) which is still, now, 9 years after i first heard it on KALX, also while in the shower one morning sometime in 2003 when we lived in that brownshingle on Benvenue avenue in berkeley-  wow  that was a long time ago and wow it’s been since 2006 that we saw them live? holy crap. – it is still one of my favorite end-to-end albums to listen to from the first track to the last (my friend Allie talks about doing elliptical workout jams to rock music and i could def bust a long elliptical jam to Perfect From Now On.)

all that is to say that you should listen to it if you never have.

and also if any of you out there are going to good indie/psych/punk/emo rock shows in SF will you clue me in?  i’m looking at you 40goingon28.

.::.

my younger sister used to say i was mean. and i was always defensive – no i’m not!  i love people. LOVE. but the older i get,  i think she was/is right.  i can be CRUEL/i don’t know why.  i mean, a guy i know who has the word “evil” as part of his nickname told me at the club on friday night that he has always stayed away from me because i seemed like someone he didn’t want to fuck with.  am i really that unapproachable?  man.  but i am so soft on the inside.

.::.

and to cap off this completely boring old-skool whatididtoday/iamsoEmo blog post, here is what i ate today: Continue reading »

yoga lessons: balancing tensions

the worst thing you can do for your own karma is to judge someone or an action as right or wrong.  while we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn’t. It’s a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less.

 .::.

the bow and arrow analogy: you need the right amount of tension in the bow for the arrow to hit the mark. not too light. not too hard. find that balance.

 .::.

i generally don’t do hot yoga.  tonight i went to yoga with my friend Faern and sweat more than i have since new york in july. at first i hated it, being all slippery.  but after a while i started to enjoy it. maybe not the slippery, but the feeling of sweat. out of every pore.  in the final savasana, thinking of these two ideas above, i decided to try to change thinking on a few things for myself, things i’ve maybe been holding onto or feeling attached to, tense over, and i left feeling lighter, and not just from all the lost water weight.

You know her life was saved by rock and roll

things have been….interesting.

here is my bitch list:

–rainy season has begun. as a bike commuter, this makes my days way less fun.

–it took 9 days to get my smartphone replaced after NYE (long boring customer service story) and the new one keeps doing all kinds of weird things that i hate

–my fitbit broke. again. there is a warranty but i might as well upgrade.  so far fitbit is costing me $99/a year in replacement costs, but i’m addicted to it so i still recommend it.

–work things i can’t talk about publicly are at maximum stress

–life thing with a deadline i haven’t finished is suffering major procrastination and mind-blankage and ∴ stress

–stress is causing unfavorable physical conditions

–blahblahblah whole foods parking lot

don’t get me wrong. my life is wonderful and full of wonderful things, like redwood hikes and purring cats and good wine and yoga and amazing love.  that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. but yeah, #1stworldproblems and i do try to keep perspective but i can’t even tell what news isn’t real any more so it’s pretty hard.

ANYWAY, i was driving to work this morning cuz it’s raining and it’s friday and at home i’d been listening to this great DJ The Count on KALX who reminds me a lot of my friend Finnius and plays David Bowie but whatever he was playing when i first got in the car  was a bit too something for the rainy I-80 east moment and so i switched it over to  107.7, as um….7 times out of 10? they are playing some some rock and roll i really like. (I HATE VAN HALEN, ALL FORMS.) i didn’t know the song playing but it jammed on for 2 or 3 minutes (of my 7 minute drive) and i got really into it, and started thinking about how much better i suddenly felt.  like, rock and roll in the morning really does make me feel so much better. A LOT. AURAL MEDICINE.  and then i was like this is GOOD and seems like something i should know.  what song is this? and then the vocals kicked in and i realized it was Working Man (Rush, 1974, definitive). (i used to hate Rush almost as much as Van Halen but i’ve come around.) do they play that every Friday morning? because they should.

epinephrine.

the emotional spectrum between frantic anxiety and welcome anticipation is interesting.

look mom no hands

today is almost t-shirt weather, except that the air off the pacific is cold.

do you ever have those moments where you see yourself, unexpectedly, from 20 feet away, like watching a few split seconds of scene from the movie of your actual life?

do you ever feel unsafe with yourself? do you look up sometimes and realize how vulnerable you are? through either the reality of mortal life, or because you’ve lead yourself into a specific situation that is maybe not ok?

people are on guard here, a strange distrust in the fact that we are all only human. it should be safe to be outside in broad daylight on a sunny afternoon. but it’s not. we’re not safe from each other if we are not safe from ourselves.

as i say this i ride down city streets with no hands, my fingers laced behind my back.

snippets

i finally opened my suitcase last night, filled with a mix of sandy bathing suits and smokey winter layers, because i figured i should find my own toothbrush and stop using jay’s. it was thursday. january 5th. taking bets on how long all that laundry sits there. this morning i also took a full shower with all the soaps and stuff for the first time this year.  and after i toweled off  i noticed that my skin was DRY.  like, it looks like i’m molting dry.  this is why i don’t like to shower unless necessary.  it’s not good for the hair and skin.

.::.

later i had a long chat with an old dear friend, and then took a walk through these slanted january sunrays. as i walked and thought of him i imagined having the power to conjure a certain subset of dearly beloved humans to appear around a campfire late one warm summer night with bottles of whiskey and wine, where slowly they would recognize their reflections in one another and melt like pools of multicolored wax into eachothers lives, and i would sit and bask in the warm glow of unbelievable good fortune and love.

snippets

i think the second best thing that happened all weekend was that Rocket Queen –>Devil Inside segue on the iPod yesterday.  man, that was really what i needed right then.

the first best thing that happened was this.

why yes, i am wearing a black turtleneck under a black turtleneck. it’s November. i’m cold.

now that there’s the first new season of Beavis and Butthead in 14 years (and they barely changed a THING, god i love it), i keep laughing like Butthead to myself in my head. heh heh.  <—dork

and i think you might be astonished at how many dollars worth of organic fuyu persimmons i’ve eaten so far this season. as soon as they go away i’ll be saving a lot of money.

carry on.

it’s loud

i shared this on gReader a while ago but i think it deserves more press.
.::.explodingdog.::.

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