unburdened

It feels like nothing is and it's everything I've been. The radio isn't friendly with the cop out thin line of friends and strangers not so very fine. The feeling I understand of what's going on leads to how I am no more. I am a lost cause to myself, others, and to this blog. So this is how it'll be. Wrapped in tin foil. Not to spoil.

Although I must say this whole understanding that dates way back when... gives me a way to explain the strange ways people behave when talking about these hidden issues. I think there are basically a couple kinds of people. One group wants to believe in a world where miraculous things can happen. This belief inspires them and moves them and makes them feel like their life has meaning. They feel attacked by the other group, who doesn't feel the need to believe in things for which there is no evidence, or even for which there is evidence to the contrary. Of course, the second group feels put upon by the first group because they just can't imagine making any kind of decisions based on beliefs which are demonstrably false.

Both groups are right. People will be less likely to feel attacked if they're allowed to believe whatever they want to believe, and they'll be less likely to be attacked if they don't insist on suggesting their particular beliefs make good public policy.

People can sometimes resent scientists for "taking the magic out of the world" for centuries. It's no difference today, but somehow we've gotten the idea that it's not ok to hold irrational beliefs because they make us feel better. People have been made to feel ashamed of their beliefs and have responded by concocting things to justify themselves.

But let's not lose the plot here: the most important thing for some people is to continue to believe the things that make them feel better. It used to be that you could believe whatever you wanted to, but still function as a good public servant, and no one made you feel silly or challenged your right to sit on a school board because you could keep things separate. Scientific theories were best for science class, evidence(or, at least anectdote) based policy was best for public decisions.

How do we get back to that? How do we do the opposite of what happens in the middle east and tears whole societies apart? Well, first, we have to make sure everyone has permission to believe whatever they want, without being ridiculed or threatened. Then we have to make sure that decisions about the world are based upon sound evidence.

That's the route to consilience. The other way leads to madness and the truth... of ourselves.

If I'm to find myself in the near future reminiscing about last night's trip to the cafe and how much time I spent in some character, as opposed to the strip of carbon-copy, boringly and predictable populate surrounding me, maybe I'll blog about it.

Years ago it would have been impossible to envision a massive amount of time spent in waste in front of screen continuously typing what is now a undeniable loss in my minds own bewilderment, and while those who visit have still no clue as to what I am or once was, quite a few of us that have lived a considerable amount of time recognizing that we have become side from a few considerable things something almost diametrically opposed to our former selves.

May the grit and diversity, all but memories now, be swallowed up by the boring unoriginality that has gripped this poor native son. In many ways, I feel I have become one-dimensional, a playpen for the ever-expanding monotone of those who climb ladders constructed of low self-esteem away from real potential opportunism in self-realization and self-standing. I am a stranger to myself and alone in this phenomenon of mine.

Holding the phone, I look out my bedroom window, conversation diverting to the progress of my departure into a dead star. How are things going? I'm asked. I stood there, prisoner to a moment of extreme sadness, one that can only be described as the recognition of something special forever lost. It is a terrible conclusion to come about and even more so to convey in words. But there it is. Here I am.

odds and ends

After emerging from years of seclusion in blog form and determined not to get trapped into criticizing the demise of my myself in the first 20 minutes of any discussion, I certainly find more comfort here where I take my time to explain why I am not an individual who's able to exult his education for I indeed have the very bare minimal. Nor am I accomplished at writing as typically revealed throughout the twists of sorts in my blog. I am merely a loner at odds with the world gradually closing. The blog I am is self-therapy for recognizing the underlying reality of situations I'm coming to terms. It does a fair amount concerning, but as I've also noticed, it also does really little to defuse the tension from burning me alive inside.

These past few weeks I had dropped my tools and cracked a cheap beer to celebrate the lesser degree of life of not selling off some freedom by the hour. As the deficit rose, I've been out of work for nearly a month and unable to do what I thought I would be. In dire need of a shower, shave, and a haircut, what with the summer settling in and out of the mess of me. The mental gymnastics encouraged my isolation into someplace you're not interested in finding and all too ready to immediately dismiss.

Prospects of further employment and established interviews are set for next week so I can actually say the dust may settle. I hope to say there is lots of content yet to come, but what I really mean is I think it's time for me to pull back the curtain and hope that people like you enjoy what I've done thus far. Some words are probably broken, or look weird, but I've tested myself for sometime now and it looks pretty good to me. Maybe I'm crazy, who knows. If you have problems, it'll help me if you were to drop a line and tell me. Until then, bookmark the site and pass the URL on to friends and neighbours, ex-lovers and therapists, your mom and the guy who sells you your drugs. Have a good weekend folks.

the willing participant

Personal functions aside, I take incidents only at hints of the possibilites of the dark side of mine. In a attempt to cocoon the kind of enigma that does provide a alternative perspective to help train the mind to establish deeper thought and meaning while reading - if you're one who reads into everything of mine but is lost, maybe you deserve not to know something you couldn’t realize. All I can say is, every word rang true in the perspective from which I see it.

As I got up this morning and opened the windows. A fog of wasted years, wasted savings, wasted work and planning all come to fold. Don’t think for a second that I am so stupid to believe myself innocent. I am the willing participant of my own life, and couldn't have it any other way. But I could have pulled the ripcord long ago. That admitted; also never assume for a moment that I am anything other than a complete idiot.

Right now, as I am sitting back and laughing about all of these past entires I think, "Man, that was about Wookie Space Pirates. What was I on?". At any rate, one could guess at the number and nature of people all they like to eventually find we are a public of practiced minimalists brought to face value. We're all methphorically challenged these days and obviously an allegory for situations can be the collapse of the whole house of cards for one who prefers a manner of direct indication.

In a vision of the philosophical "when a tree falls in the forest" number. I thought of a world in bed and what it is like when there's no one around. This cover up to fall off the face of the earth. In a dreadful, ugly thought of how I can't remember what you looked like in the sort of way, where the sun swallows me up high above the clouds. Miles over mountains in doses prescribed for the condition I am not proud of. Target practice on the self by the other, anguish, the pain and insomnia of suffering worse than any case, the radiant indulge of self sweet sweet escapes that keep me tired and walking around. Tired of the futile effort of the ceased to be. Desperate to try to find restful sleep. Fascinated by the construction within a construction, pitched in a small tent for sleep, pitched in a larger tent for enclosure. Cut with a piece of memory foam to fit the inside. These are the days of keeping the company offline on my way out to mutilate nightmares, curled up together among the cushions, completely awake, listening, and trying to talk myself to sleep.

In a while I imagine myself soaring into the clouds over miles and miles of dark, dipping below the surface into a world of infinite peace and darkness. A place where, respite our imagination that had once worked when younger, we're slowly learned to putter around and to remember breathing.

that thing over there

The Associated Press ran an interesting headline this morning - Bush Sees No End to War on Terrorism. In the article, the President is quoted as saying…

"America is safer than it has been, yet it is not yet safe. The enemy has got an advantage when it comes to attacking our homeland: They got to be right one time and we’ve got to be right 100 percent of the time to protect the American people."

The ‘100 percent of the time’ that the President is referring to cost the lives of 110 Iraqi civilians a day in the month of July alone, which now holds the record for being Iraq’s deadliest month. Ironically, pro-war pundits would argue that those deaths were the result of sectarian strife - despite the fact, of course, that Iraq was invaded under the pretense of having something to do with September 11th, among other ridiculous and now denied claims, and that the current state of civil war in the country is a direct product of the ineptitude and sheer arrogance of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation. I’ll not even bother getting into the war crimes that have been committed by US personnel, among them the premeditated and repeated rape and murder of a child, or their blatant disregard for the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, and international law.

These days Iraq is back-page news. Give it another year and it’ll become ‘that thing’ that’s happening ‘over there’. We’ll talk about it over Starbucks, interspersed with pathetic diatribes about celebrity break-ups and the rest of the shite that seems far more important to us than actually discussing the very troublesome realities of living in an age in which a perpetual war is being waged against an ambiguous enemy that, despite our vast and menacing capabilities, cannot be subdued – forget the gross rise in global defense spending and decline of human rights standards.

Likewise, Afghanistan has become another convenient sinkhole that keeps the wheels greased and turning back in the land of domestic bravado. Speaking of which, despite the claims being made by military Grand Pubahs, many within the ranks of the Canadian Forces about to be deployed are anything but supportive of the mission. In the words of one anonymous officer…

"…at first they told us that democracy was the goal. And now that there’s an elected government we’re just wandering around in the hills waiting to be shot at. We have fire superiority when we’re engaged – that’s true - but nowhere near the sort of belief or conviction of the guys we’re fighting. We’re not there trying to change anything. We’re just there now trying not to get killed."

Kids in school had best actually start paying attention to 1984 when it’s thrust upon them. After all, they may very well end up living, and dying, in a chapter of it. In the meantime, I’ll have a no-foam, double shot, latte with a side of who gives a flying fuck what the cock sucker (insert celeb name of your choice) did yesterday with his/her entourage, thank you.

great depression of the mind

In my never ending question to optimize my wasted time, I've cotemplated what activities would allow me to be as productive, and comfortable as possible, I've done some work on it lately. Early this year I had intorduced some new furniture items to my bedroom to give myself more space. I was finding that I was too often bumping into things or running out of walking room and that this was fairly constantly raising my stress levels. The new layout position is quite nice, it looks a lot like a futurists bedroom. The reorganization and decoration definitely give it a different ambiance which is a welcome change.

I've also adopted a view of my life as going in expansions and contractions. Basically, during periods of expansion, I rapidly take on new items, experiences, and ideas. During periods of contraction, I digest and integrate these new things into my existing world view and state of existence. I scale back a little bit from the myriad of ventures currently engaged in to have the energy to solidify a base so I can reach out again. The general goal is that this way one can continue to grow while not accumulating things in disjoint layers that would allow it to fall apart.

Integration is key.

But all in all, I feel intergration has it's own course, it needs to jump past the occasional state of genuine fear that powerfully effects our own identities significantly. FDR once said "only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He was referring to Great Depression economics, but we'll ignore that part and take it with its general cultural usage.

One method of treating fear and phobias is to expose a person to the object of their fear and when they see that in spite of the exposure, nothing bad happens, they can begin to decouple the fear and the object in their mind and eventually the fear or phobia is gone or reduced to manageable levels.

In contemplating how to overcome some of my fear-laden inhibitions, I've thought sometimes that if I just exposed myself to whatever it is then I could treat myself that way. Then I realized why this plan has never really been actualized to conquer any of my fears.... I'm afraid of fear itself. I've had enough anxiety and paranoia before to know that there certainly is a physiological correlate to anxiety/fear.

I'm terribly jealous of life and afraid of death (don't worry, I won't try to conquer that one via exposure). Whenever I think about exposing myself to some of my other fears to conquer them, my thoughts fixate on the anxiety and fear that will be generated from this exposure. Approaching exposure of various items has confirmed to me that the anxiety and fear will be present. Each step closer brings me closer to the moment of truth. Either I will reach the peak and see that nothing too bad happened and I will begin recover or my heart rate and blood pressure will soar and every capillary in my body will simultaneously explode. Okay, okay, that's an exaggeration, but my mind still thinks of the of the death it all as a real possibility. So, I guess the real question is: is it worth risking death to subjectively truly live?

killing on high school

You don't have do be from Venus to argue that the warriors from Mars have seriously miscalculated what it takes to achieve peace and security on Earth. Military superiority can be used for many things, but arguably not for defeating religiously or ideologically fundamentalist movements for whom chaos is a hotbed, fear a source of energy, humiliation a source of legitimacy, provocation a calculated strategy, and terror a favoured weapon. At any rate, not if military superiority is legitimized as a means to spread and defend freedom and democracy (which is still how US military superiority is legitimized), meaning it cannot reasonably be used for the destruction of civilian populations not prepared "to do our will". What the militarily superior Rome could allow itself to do, what Tacitus described as solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant ("making a desert and calling it peace"), the militarily superior US cannot do without destroying the political foundations of its dominance

War recruiting in schools. Killing on high school curricula : Canadian high school students can now earn credits (and cash) learning to shoot machine guns...

The federal government of Stephen Harper, along with school boards across the country, is sending teenagers a decidedly mixed message these days. On the one hand, kids are told to stay away from guns in their communities, a warning that’s backed by a law-and-order agenda of prison, prison, and more prison for any kid who screws up. However, if you DO like guns and want to learn how to kill people in communities half a world away, you can actually earn not only high school credits, you can also get paid for it. Increasingly, through the auspices of high school co-op placement programs, 16-year-olds can sign up with Canadian Armed Forces, an outfit whose big boss, General Rick Hillier, makes no bones about goals and benchmarks: "We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people." - read more.

Never too young to get out of the stress test of exams. Why not shoot a round of country farm newborn babies while you're at it to keep your head away from crying overnight.

visible rites of passage

This weekend we started having a garage sale. Yeah I know, it’s alot of work, but junk does often have the tendency of piling up. It’s true what they say, we’ve become a throw away society. A society of rampant consumerism, consumerism without purpose, simply to buy things for the sake of buying things. The only thing that holds people content is a certain amount of drug taking and buying things to simply take home and watch it dispose of itself before your very eyes to be bought, destroyed, recycled, and bought again. I can’t afford it anymore. It’s almost to the point where whatever I buy, I think about what it's going to cost and how I will eventually get rid of the item, and then tack that on to the price. I’ve tried to blame the situation on the basement not being large enough, but today I realised that, in the end, I’m the one to blame.

I've never experimented with buying or selling on eBay, nor did I take this as an opportunity to start. Through speculation, I'm not sure, but I think you can print out shipping labels and leave the packaged item on the porch and the post office will pick it up and mail it, without you ever having to speak to an actual person. I’m the one not putting the crap to good use, which is why I’ve decided not to sell. I took it out of the box, dusted it off and figured these things must still be good for something, so here I am blogging about it.

Eventually I said forget the hassle of a garage sale and give the old stuff away to the Salvation army or Goodwill store. It helps others and the profits from such places as the Salvation army continue to help maintain a Soup kitchen for the homeless. The garage sale is just one of the only visible rites of passage in modern suburban life of haggling with neighbours over the price of twice-used power tools and never-used souvenir T-shirts.

At the end of the day you'll find letting the public peruse your purchasable goods can lead to such courageous acts of self-realization. Shed your possessions for the greater good! I qualified the thought of it when I attended the film, Buddhist Trilogy at the Bytown cinema after closing shop and found that if Buddha owned a blender that "works pretty good, but doesn’t really fit right on our counter," well, he’d do the same.

days of diversions

It is said that I mysteriously disappeared and am now assumed dead. Anyone of mindful curiosity (and internet) would know this is not entirely true. For those of whom are out of touch, I'll have you know I have been unemployed for the past 2 1/2 weeks. When my job at justice ended, I was yet to have found a job that, in my view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid. So instead of heading to work, I've filled my days with diversions: playing the guitar, reading novels, writing about an artist who is incoherent and delirious, fallen into a mute trance, oblivious and unresponsive to everyone. Essentially all activities once relegated to spare time.

I'm open to anyone who's willing to catch up or bring up a few targeted prospects for optimizing my financial income to my attention. In the meantime, here are... Ten Reasons Not to Have a Job. Steve Pavlina provides ten good reasons not to have a job ever. A must read.

motion sickness

I'm neutralized in empty thought. Legless and on a chair. A million miles from nowhere. How could intense natural development be of use if you purposefully play yourself down? A reason for a friend with a mandatory assignment to inject on the situation and ask if there would be a difference if he were to invite me on a road trip measured miles across broken parts of land. Tinkering with the idea of it, I realized the gung-ho beats the cold turkey. And there was a ferry ride.

I borrowed a seat for five hours heading north of the capital. Doing it by the numbers. There was work to be done and it was time to make a change. Change. A word invented to provide high drama, moments of hilarity when you least expect it, and with in many aspects an altogether elusive and unattainable destination full of hills and sidewinders extremely effective in capturing your curiosity along with what you just ate. Hold me up. Phase me out.

Motion sickness.

dedicated to the distinction

Laying off the fraught over with severe anxieties and sadness that has left me in a nervous exhaustion, these days, I'm felt powerless in having to learn to live with my indifferences regarding something that I have always considered quite essentiual part in our commitment to the world. A healthy mind for a healthy lifestyle. At a time I sought professional help, it wasn’t something that was an option. And as the months progressed everything slowly slid further into a dark fog from which I have so far been unable to emerge.

I’ve essentially been holding my thoughts in, in regards to subject matter building on constructive critcism, most often it is useful and intended to help one improve on something, often with an offer of possible solutions. What I believe I'm trying to say is, we're all essentially very nice people with good intentions, indeed, said to come up with the best and brightest of outcomes in all our most hopeful of dreams. Note incurred with an error in judgment I might add, an entire bunch of us tend to do it or deal with it at some point and time, it is social error, life-style.

The future. Tomorrow. In this particular life-style I describe the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once living, and happiness is but a memory. It is a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from the life-style we may be used to living, it is only faster. It may take place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.

If anything I refer best to transcending youthful adolescents. It is not at all a mockery as it is a acceptance of our growing idenities, happy of hearing we're dedicated to the distinction of ourselves.

Remnants of my past, parts of it a distant memory, I played with comforts in comrades whether or not they were beings with existence in their dark reconciliation. I witnessed them being run over, maimed, destroyed - but they continued to play. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it.

Something like giving your life away. Something like the weekend. Something not. Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy but I forget how. It's a lost art. Maybe there's an instruction manual on it. Achieved ruin of the walking brain-dead.

little love

The sensation being described here is not exactly nostalgia, but it’s close. I understand it directly because I’m living in it right now. With the following aspects pertaining to myself and my experiences, you'll find you can’t help but feel hopeless when you realize that an important person in your life is gone forever. Truly we all have to learn to walk away with what’s left of ourselves and never look back. To look back is to remember and to remember is to never forget.

I never sleep, but certainly when I happen to it’s difficult to wake up in the morning and think beyond the confusion and tension that grips me on a daily basis. I know that it will one day subside, perhaps not entirely, but were I to impart any advice to you given my experience - make sure that there is love in your life. Test it to its limits and ensure that it is not something easy to walk away from. Over time I've found that there are those that would claim love and at the same time claim they need space - know that is not a sign of love more than it's a hypocracy. True love really isn't real when a person has the inability to simply be honest and straightforward, to admit that their understanding of love is limited. True love lost, or the loss of love is not something replaced within a year, months, or even weeks. And if someone that has claimed love can so easily abandon their feelings and look to secure greener pastures or bluer skies with little regard for the heart, then they were never to be trusted. You may think I'm speaking of someone else. Although you may be right to say the least. I'm not.

I am not so jaded to think that people can’t endeavor to change, or to right those wrongs committed, but it is so rarely done these days that to expect it, or even hope for it, is usually time and energy wasted. But that should never deter us from wasting a little time now and then. I wish nothing but happiness for all here, and even for those who will never come again.

marked loser for life

If you are politically correct you really do not want to proceed past this sentence because you’re going to get really pissed off. Here is the straight dope from the heart that pulls no punches as a prime example of why I’m a loser.

I’m not going to give you the intimate personal details so don’t bother asking. I’d venture that most of the men in my position, who are not alpha males, that I’ve been friends with also know that feeling to one degree or another but we don’t talk about it. Men are taught from birth to be tough and not talk about their feelings, and except under exceptional circumstances, are punished many ways if they do.

It’s politically correct in modern society to paint men as brutes. Callous, misogynistic, abusive creatures whose only goal in life is winning and when it comes to relationships, the belief of winning can only be accomplished by dominating women, preferably by physically abusing them. There’s no question that some men are that way but the vast, overwhelmingly vast, majority are not. That vast majority of men are really ordinary people who want to love and be loved, who want to be respected and treated kindly, the same thing that apparanty women want. Funny how that works.

If you’re a woman you can not imagine what it does to a man to be treated to the kind of abuse that society expects men to be. Strong. In command. There are a thousand ways to punish a man who is not, all of them designed to make him feel a failure. So many I’ve known, myself included, have suffered enormous amounts of emotional abuse, sometimes at the hands of the woman they loved. So why do they stay in the relationship? Some of the same reasons women stay in abusive relationships: insecurity, love, fear of failure, children (men do not stand a chance in a custodial battle), financial reasons, broken spirit. Many in such relationships live lives of quiet desperation, sick at the thought of staying, afraid to leave, afraid if they do they’ll never have another partner, marked loser for life, some invisible cabalistic signal planted on their forehead that only women can see and immediately reject them as a loser not worth her attention. Oh, most guys in my place have experienced that feeling well, but we don’t talk about it.

When you take emotional abuse into the picture in male- female relationships the rate of abuse is pretty even on both sides. When it comes to physical abuse women are much more the victim than the abuser, but when it comes to emotional abuse it is very much the other way around, but we’re not allowed to acknowledge that in this society. In this society, in the 21st Century, only women and children are allowed to be named victims of abuse and that is not healthy for our society. How do you think men feel knowing that they can’t even open their mouths about it without being made to feel like a failure.

I'm in a relationship and I'm not alone but I’m a loner. Once you get past what I've described, I'll have you know I choose my friends and companions very, very carefully. Anyone who acts in that manner simply is cut out of my social circle instantly so I don’t really see them much anymore. Guys like me are very easy to abuse. We love fully, unconditionally. We care deeply for our partners and we do not like confrontation, in fact we avoid it at all costs. That’s what happens to non-alpha type males in this society, if you can’t strut your stuff and rise to the top of the pecking order you better be non-confrontational or you’ll be destroyed. That makes it very easy for women to abuse us as in me included, emotionally, making us feel even more like a loser.

This is a very sick society. Both genders are basket cases and I’m not optimistic about the chances for change. There are too many forces in society that need this for their own sustainability and those are the forces that rule this society: money, power, big business, social status. I no longer have time for people, male or female, that treat others that way and in this society that makes me a loser, but I’d rather be a loser than walk over other people for whatever reason. I’ve known plenty of couples over the years and it has always been the woman who was the real abuser in this way. In some cases, I’m sure some of the men must have been real stinkers behind closed doors as well - you can’t fight the odds. But when it comes to public degradation and disrespect, it happens way more than my stomach can handle.

When it comes to me, women make me feel defensive, maybe even a little less open towards consummating shared relations. Things such as speech difficulties that are just par for the course I live with. SO I just relax and try my best to nod and smile when someone says something to me. But the fact that my inner monologue is just as poor as my outer one will always be freaking me out enough as it is. So trying to make sense of anything will simply be a waste of time. There's really nothing I can do about it but bother to live with it and let bygones be bygones. Yet preferably, when this occurs I try to remain calm, locked in a room without windows, sharp objects, or lava lamps.

utilize a mental construct

I give into the trouble. The trouble of sputtering synapses that are here in my brain -- my therapist says that makes me a thousand miles long and a foot deep. I acknowledge that most stay away from such occurances by being constructive and forward looking in their discourse. However, I have always made an exception.

Yeah, it's tricky buisness all right. You've got to watch your back before you get smacked. At the same time you could miss that you've got to watch yourself all around and with good, solid reasons... not to run into a variety of extremely stupid things. Things like lawn chairs or the shallow limitations to specific job pools.

The good example of how best to utilize a mental construct had asked if I were available tomorrow for a round of golf, dead broke I said, 'Starting this weekend I'm afraid I will be too busy playing a pretty good drunk. Although, being truly drunk is always more fun. I'll have to settle. Settle with things like Spam. I have a gun and I took all the bullets out of the gun except one. I spun the thing around and pointed it at my head and said all the spam in the world are messages from the aliens. Should I or should I not pull the trigger?' I asked. 'I've always loved Russian Roullette...lets see how lucky you really are?' a talented kick in reply. Check me tomorrow. I said.

toying of potential ways

The toying of potential ways of making a living are made of cut and dry leaves. Everyone is equipped with personal pursuit. Mine is of my Gift, that uniquely being art as I'm good at it and wanting to enjoy doing that has been beckoning me as a purpose. Purpose in itself is painfully far from being close to accepting or being truly realized. Everyone has the potentially life-changing, important opportunity awaiting -- all of which carry enormous stress, which I have always handled badly. At a time I thought I lacked courage, but now I realize I wasn't equipped for the journey, my constitution wasn't up to it, and my body was telling me so every way it could. What appeared to be procrastination, or opportunity squandered, was in fact the instinct of self-survival doing my 'thinking' for me.

What's more remarkable is that my passion in art has been shifting dramatically and inexplicably over the last few years -- to aesthetic conveyances that are much less ambitious and stressful, more peaceful, more local and more personal. My instincts are driving this, and my brain has, as always, been slow to catch on.

Looking back at all these changes, all of which had people doubting my sanity, I realize now that I've been trying to start taking much better care of my myself, and that does happen to need recovery especially at regular intervals due to lifes various exhautions.

When I started the blog I knew something was very wrong, but wasn't sure what it was -- just that I needed to figure it out. As the saying goes, "Regret and fear are twin thieves that rob us of today". Leaving my conflicts behind me is a necessary and liberating step, but if I know myself well -- I need to work hard and quickly to find something fulfilling and valued properly for those I hold closest to me and inevitably with introspect -- to help myself heal.

This is the internal analogue of course, the way I use it is very different from the external space under my care. But whoever said it would be easy? This will be a lifelong program. We can never hope to understand let alone undo all the damage we so called civilized humans have done and are still doing to ourselves, but we can learn and remediate and improve through trial and error, one tiny bit at a time. There are hundreds of possible elements to a treatment, only by working painstakingly, while being holistic and modest in embracing complexity we become a little more complete at the end of our day.

the malady of discontent

I walked in the rain, further and further into the unknown. The humid air mustering foul smell from every direction that one can only wonder what is keeping everyone waiting for great big ball of gas to go off. Besides the idea of your insides being cut open like candy and the in's and out's of your oxygen quietly guiding you behind the scenes of all your lifes' decision-making until the disease hits you, is it quite possible that we are all consciously motivated to do what we never really want or have to because of it? How does one experience living within us, more or less instinctively without our understanding or of why we're still doing what is leaving us as disgruntled, underutilized but none the less extraordinary people, in constant conflict with a self-constructed intellectual ghetto?

For me, a number of unfulfilling or unappreciated stress related problems this past year have left me already coping with the malady of discontent in a number of ways I could possibly conceive of handling (and yes, even some things I haven't told you about, dear readers) I don't consciously give up soft drinks, caffeine or (most) alcohol. My instincts at work, I've been only enabled to strongly mitigate the debilitation of this stress through the positive affirmation of those closest to me.

Perhaps, this 'psychological' disorder that has been plaguing me all in this time with endless coping and forced adaptation and struggle is the same demonic creature of culture sickness that has already been wreaking havoc on everyone including my system. Since I can remember I've been always hit with some constant force that has left me at some level of a disappoint to a lot of people including myself. I don't think it's likely that the causes of these 'psychological' anxieties and/or diseases are principally genetic (though a predisposition to contracting them may be -- that's not the same thing). I also don't think it's likely that the causes of these diseases are bacterial, viral, parasitic, or prionic in origin (though exposure to such agents could catalyze onset of the diseases). I believe the causes are likely to be environmental, the chemical cocktail of artificial toxins we eat, drink, wash, breathe, brush up against and otherwise take into our bodies every second of every day. Those who are skeptical that the same poisons that are destroying the soil, the water, the atmosphere and global ecosystems everywhere are also destroying our bodies' microspheres, should review the case against tobacco.

It is quite likely that even when these hypotheses of environmental cause of most remaining illness and disease have been compellingly argued, we will not be able to do much to prevent or 'cure' our bodies of what we have been doing to them. We're too late to save our planet from the scourges of war, famine, and global warming. And we'll likely be too late to save our bodies from the man-made painful, wasting deaths that are quietly wreaking us.

But at least we'll have tried, and at least we will know. We will know, for example, that the executives of ExxonMobil and Monsanto and Koch Industries and the rest of the world's megapolluters will ultimately be remembered in history as the most monstrous, willful and indifferent mass murderers of this civilization they have so effectively and greedily exploited. Just as Big Tobacco, with the armies of expensive lawyers and the politicians in its back pockets, will never pay for its crimes against humanity, and just as ExxonMobil will for the same reason never pay for any of its other environmental holocausts, we are going to have to settle for knowing, not retribution, compensation or even remediation from the corporate monsters killing us all.