there are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth... not going all the way, and not starting.
~ Buddha

sometimes there’s a big gap between what I want to say, and how I’m actually feeling. so then I just don’t say anything at all.
which I kind of hate. but i’ve realized that most of the time people don’t want to hear the truth. they just want to maintain their own version of the truth. I suppose they think that if they don’t say it out loud, it’s not real, that if they refuse to hear it, it will dissolve; that if the facts are ignored, they will cease to exist, or something like that.
we might avoid telling the truth to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. or, more to the point- to avoid facing that we’ve hurt someone’s feelings.

I saw some movie about an old guy who killed his wife. when the cops were booking him, they asked him: “why didn’t you just divorce her?”’ and the old guy replied: “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings”.

that is so accurate. so many times in order to avoid facing what we’ve done, we go ahead and make the situation about a thousand times worse.

oh humanity. you’re so dumb.

this is the first year in 10 years that I’m not working through the holidays. the first time that I don’t have to drive off or fly off or worry about an inevitable emergency. it’s the first year in a decade that my holidays haven’t been laced with some kind of guilt that I should be someplace else. that I should be helping someone.
I’d forgotten what it’s like.
of course I still do worry about some people. I think about them. I’m concerned about them. but that’s just how it goes. that’s just who I am.
It’s just that at the moment I don’t feel personally responsible for someone else’s well being.

I feel really lucky to have this time. I know it’s temporary, which makes it all the more precious. I’ve been able to start working on my own stuff and sort through some things and see most of my good and lovely and amazing friends and have really great talks and work on projects and go to fun parties. and feel like a normal person, kinda.
I’ve also had time to think.
which can be good and it can be not so good.

I’ve had time to ruminate and go over things and try and fail to make sense of situations in my life. I’ve had time to spaz out and then calm down and feel like a loser. I’ve had time to be mad and then feel bad about being mad. I’ve had time to write things and then regret writing them. say things and then regret saying them. time to know that I really just want to be a good person and that sometimes the bad just comes with it. time to realize that I’ll never be perfect, no matter how hard I try. I’ll never be without reactions of some kind and that I’ll probably always say too much and probably plainly say the wrong things sometimes, and probably always feel a little or sometimes a lot misunderstood. i’ve had time to worry about other people’s business and moments to know that I should know better.

I’ve also had time to feel really, really grateful. I’ve had flashes of knowing what it feels like to let go. I’ve had time to be really, painfully honest. I’ve had time to figure out that I don’t have to have everything figured out, and then time to immediately forget that.

I want to learn how to play the accordion

I want to be a better cook

I want to start a supper club

I want to take pictures

I want to go to India

I want to make a sculpture that I’ve been thinking about

I want to go back to school

I want to make a book

I want to tap dance

I want to read Ulysses, finally

I want to go back to Europe

I want to wear gumboots in the english countryside

I want to go back in time and have a drink with Ted Hughes

I want to get there

I want to finish knitting that blanket

I want to not be afraid of flying

I want to find a polka dot bikini to wear at the lake this summer

I want to transcend all this

"Your picture of yourself, your self-illusion is in process of being broken. This places you in an unusual position, very close to the truth, and that proximity is part of your pain...you hate your damaged self and feel you cannot live with it, yet you desperately cherish it at the same time. You describe your grief as a system. Indeed it is, a defensive system of mutually supporting falsehoods instinctively produced to defend your old egoistic self-image which you cannot bear to lose, you cannot bear its death which seems so like your own. Your endless talk of dying is a substitute for the real needful death, the death of your illusions...you say you live in pain. Let it be the death of the old false self, and the life-movement of the new real truthful self."
~iris murdoch

it’s our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.

I keep looping back to this. I keep seeing and hearing about people who fuck up colossally and horribly and cruelly and I wonder why and how and why it keeps working for them. it works and they get what they want. for a moment. for a spell. until the next time and then it starts all over again...

and then I think that some people can be so stupid and un-evolved and awful.

I’m too judgemental.

I cast stones.
I do this because I hold myself to a set of moral standards and then judge other people by those standards.
I’d never do that, i’d never sink so low. I’d never behave that way.
that’s what I think.

I should be more empathetic.
some people don’t know any better.
so I should be kinder. they just don’t know any better.
they do what they know. they use what they can and who they can to get their needs met.
I shouldn’t be so judgmental.
I shouldn’t care.

LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.

why do we let ourselves become involved with people we know aren’t good?

occasionally we perceive life’s patterns through a sudden shock, or what we might call “moment of being.” Suddenly the cotton wool parts, and a person sees reality, and his or her place in it.

that’s it.

something happened. something has changed. sometime between this morning and this afternoon i realized something:

I don’t care anymore.
I don’t care anymore.

this thing that has bothered me, now just seems ridiculous.

pathetic even.

what was I thinking? where was I? where was my mind? why did that make me feel so low? why did I let it?

last month someone told me that they used me.
they actually said that. out loud. in a matter of fact way- like I should have known it. like I was dumb for not just knowing that already.
they said all sorts of awful things. and then said that they were only using me.

that really knocked me over emotionally. it knocked me over in all sorts of ways, actually.
I haven’t talked about that conversation to anyone, because I’ve been so terribly embarrassed about it.

it’s even more embarrassing because instead of dismissing it, I let it in. and I let it take hold. I let it make me feel awful and yucky and low and stupid.
instead of being mad, I let it in. I let it do what it was intended to do: hurt me.
(why? I don’t know why)

what kind of a person does such a thing?

that’s what I’ve realized. I get it now. what kind of a person does such a thing!?
it’s not okay.

I’m telling you, it’s not okay.

I want to say something.

somethings. many, many things... I’m spilling over the sides.

but I think I have to find where the boundary is in relation to the context in order to be able to be kind of articulate.

did something happen?

I want to ask.

and then I take a breath and the breath gets stuck and I think that what if whatever it is I want to say will just come out all wrong. or all in a scream. or something.

I've always found it easy and natural and, more importantly, necessary to express thoughts and feelings and fierce emotions.

but it’s not easy to have them heard. you made me all self conscious. you made me doubt my motivations.

i never say anything to manipulate a response. I know that now. if I want a response, I’ll ask for one.

i see why you’d think that. i see that now. given the context. given the history and the context. I see that you’d assume that.

I am honest and clear and kind. I just want you to know that.

what about saying it face to face. what about covering your ears with your hands and filling the space with static and noise and proverbial crumpled paper. or speaking to a wall or to a void or to nothingness.

I’m changing. I’m making changes. I want to tell you about them.

but only if you will listen.

I had a beautiful party. it really was beautiful.

occasionally we perceive life’s patterns through a sudden shock, or what we might call “moment of being.” Suddenly the cotton wool parts, and a person sees reality, and his or her place in it.

every time i have a party I think about Mrs. Dalloway.

I try to find my place in it. sometimes I go to my room for a few minutes. just stand there, adjust myself. close my eyes. take a deep breath.

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.

sometimes I hide.

Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind . . . a desire for solace, for relief, for something.

something. some relief, some reflection. something.

the part of us which appears, is so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that.

recovered and moved away, gone with them. some parts belong to some people. they go with the person who recovered them. that’s what missing is, missing the parts that they opened.

There’s a term used in economics: opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost is the value of the next-best choice available to someone who has picked between several mutually exclusive choices.
(but please don’t start talking to me about economics, cause I’ll cry, or my head will explode or something).

I was thinking about the paradox of choice and the cost of opportunity.

When we are faced with too many choices- we may just choose nothing. or, if we have to choose between mutually exclusive choices, we might regret the choice we’ve made; because there is a chance to regret passing up the next best choice when making a decision... the cost of opportunity is that the imagined alternative induces us to regret the decision we’ve made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction we might have from our choice. even if we’ve made a good decision.
the more options we have the easier it is to regret what could have been.

the way in which we value things depends on which we compare them to.



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people refuse to recognize complexity.

To truly know yourself is to understand the ironies of your life. These ironies really capture truths that might be hard to face.
Respect is the infrastructure of any solid relationship. Respect is the only way we can help each other grow.

I’m more interested in capturing some kind of fascinating insight into your soul.

We would like to know what, as moral agents, we must do because of logic, what we must do because of human nature, and what we can choose to do.

do you want me for my conversation? do you want to talk? I’m very interesting you know. strange and interesting.

and what should we do about these inarticulate moments of modern ethics, good and supersensible realities?

you have a mysterious quality, unrepresentable and indefinable.

What does good mean? He was wrong to answer the question. He was right to say that good was indefinable. But wrong to say that it was the name of a quality. Good is indefinable. Because judgements of value depend on the will and the choice of the individual.

Morality is not the image of vision but the image of movement.

it’s the action, not the concept.

metaphysical entities were removed and moral judgements were not weird statements, but something much more comprehensible. like finding beauty in persuasions and commands and rules.

do you like my dress?

photo of:The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
by Damien Hirst

I still don’t have a door knob on my bedroom door.
it fell off almost 2 years ago and I still have not had it fixed. maybe that’s symbolic of something.

maybe I should put an ad on a dating site, but just to get my door knob fixed:

listen, I’m not ready for a relationship per se, but what I really just want is some man hands to like, fix my door and install a dimmer switch in my hallway. how about it?

I don’t want that. I really don’t.

I don’t want someone to just fill some time or space or need or some person to fix things. we aren’t empty in that way.

Throughout the last century the concept of freedom has been treated with an unconditional reverence which has made it seem illicit even to ask, on any particular occasion, which freedom? Freedom from what? Freedom from scruple? Freedom from friendship and the bonds of affection? Freedom from principle? Freedom from all tradition? Freedom from feeling? These freedoms are the easy privileges of psychopaths, oafs and depressives.
~Iris Murdoch

Sometimes when I’ve said that I want to do what feels good, some people have assumed that’s a call or an excuse to be led by some primal or animalistic baseness or stickiness of feelings; guided by some obscure emotion. but that’s not it. when I say good. I mean good, higher than moral and deeper than the external guidance of morality.
It’s a filtering of the messy, warm empirical psyche through the clean operations of reason, to goodness.
what it really is, is a matter of our freely choosing, against a background of morally neutral facts, and then standing up and taking responsibility for our choices.
like some people don’t want to clean their house because they think it’s hard, maybe they believe it feels good to just sit, because it’s easy... when in reality- it does not feel good, it feels messy and chaotic. chaos breeds chaos.
feeling good includes making the choice to work. it includes making decisions based on goodness, based on something higher than some murky or low instinct.
Kant said: In addition to being ‘naturally selfish’, human beings have a power of Rationality, which they can draw on to govern and oppose their ‘selfish energies’.
We can choose. but often people don’t. they don’t navigate that way.

Last night I was talking to a man. He was hitting on a married friend of mine. I said to him (scoldingly) she is married, as are you- what are you doing? (which freaked him out, as I am prone to do. polite conversation isn’t something that I’m good at). He started to make some bullshit excuse about his wife, I could hear the tone coming- she wasn’t fun anymore, he thought he deserved something more... or some other empty line all based on some want inside of him. he wanted some feeling or reflection to come back and justify his behavior or to make him feel better about himself. I asked him why he married her, maybe thinking that he’d remember something good or real... but instead, he said he married her: because she was a real knock out, because was beautiful. he wanted to compel the attention of something beautiful.

Beauty is the only thing we love by instinct. free from principle. is that love?

I believe that real love is a training in self-discipline, so far as it involves a constant refining, an awareness. it’s a choice. it’s not an easy privilege.. it is not based on some reactive instinct. but instead, guided by a sovereignty of good.

"For surely I was not a bad person? I had accepted what had been offered; now I saw that what had been offered had been insufficient, and worse, that I had over-invested in something that was intrinsically worthless, or at best of no consequence."
-The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner

Last night I dreamt I was synchronized swimming in a pool at night. smiling when I came out of the water, like we were supposed to, and then panicking when I had to go under the water again, unable to breathe. my partner pinched my nose for me so the water wouldn’t come in and I trusted him to not let go.

I’m busy working my way out of a kind of foggy stasis.

If feelings are pushed to the background they will sneak back into the foreground through physical symptoms or other creative efforts. Emotions will naturally move on and change if they are not ignored. There is a balancing act to learn in managing emotions. Responding is the goal rather than knee-jerk reacting. Each emotion deserves respect and, at the same time, needs to be kept in line.
Feelings are a guide to who you are. Your feelings do not define another person's reality or a greater world view. Some people need to be reminded that their feelings are not the lynchpin to the universe. It is important not to be emotionally lazy and just go along for the ride. Do the work to sort through feelings and learn to make distinctions.

where was I?
feelings... what feelings?

I wish I was elegant and I wish I was beautiful... lithe. I want to be lithe. I want to be lithe and graceful... or smart and interesting... or fun and charming...

I focus on one thing, one part at a time, and not the collection of the whole. Not at all balanced. That’s my problem. That was my problem. I focused on a pinpoint and then something somewhere else would start to break. or would inevitably get thrown off balance, off kilter. until it, or I derailed.

a collection of parts create the whole. interdependent.

It doesn’t have to be one, without the other.

TAGSmy life

“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is so ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”

- from the book American Pastoral by Phillip Roth

what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people? when I am wrong and you are wrong. you’ve got me all wrong and I got you all wrong. but I try. and I’ll try.

TAGSmessy and obscure

I have a cold. a debilitating cold. a I can’t get out of my pajamas cold.
because of this cold I’ve been watching TV. I’m normally not a big tv watcher, cause there generally isn’t ever anything good on. I had to turn it off though, cause I was finding it really depressing; every channel is talking about Tiger Woods and his sleazbagishness. Why are people so willing to throw their morals out the window?! why are people so willing to hurt and disrespect others!? it’s very, very sad.

anyways... enough of that.. other than bitching at the TV, I’ve been planning my annual holiday Christmas cocktail party.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to have it this year or not, for a couple of reasons. One, I am afraid of my neighbors. I already feel like the freak on my block and after my rager of a birthday party this year they planted a row of trees between our houses... but you know, whatever. I’m a good neighbor and a couple of parties a year is really not a big deal. I’ll just leave them a bottle of wine and a warning note.
and two, I’ve been suffering a horrible depression since like, August and wasn’t sure I could muster it up to plan and host. However, I am feeling much better now and then a few people asked when it was going to be this year and that got me feeling all warm and nice cause I realize that I DO have friends and I have not lost them all cause I never answer the phone....So, party it is. I just downloaded the Boney M christmas album and am putting together the invite.

I love having people over. I love hosting parties. just planning it is making me feel better. anyone want to dress up as santa for me?

the other day I went to a bookstore (I love bookstores, a lot. and yes, maybe I will marry a bookstore and we would be very happy together, thank you very much). anyways, I found myself inching toward the “self help” section, and I felt kind of like a perv about it... I was looking around over my shoulder to make sure no one I knew was around... As I stood there, perusing the sad people books, the voice in my head said: “oh no buddy, you’re turning into Bridget Jones...”

I walked out with nothing. which I’m pretty sure is a good thing. I’m not sure if it was good common sense, or stubbornness that guided me away; but I just decided that I need less information, not more.
I don’t need to think that anything else is wrong with me. I don’t need anything else to become neurotic about.

I think that if I had been left to my own devices, raised by wolves, or lived alone in the forest (a la Nell, staring Jodie Foster) I’d probably be okay... maybe have some hygiene problems, but my self esteem would probably be in tact. Because, when I get down to it, I think I’m a pretty good person. I try to be anyways. I try to be honest and loving and all that... I’ve been figuring out that fundamentally: I’m not the problem. my problem (or one of them) is that I have a belief that I am whatever other people think I am. If someone has an opinion of me, or a question or criticism, I fully accept is as the solid truth. Like, if I’ve had a fight with someone and they say: “you’re a jerk”. I will define myself by that: I am a jerk. I’ll feel bad about it and try to change my jerkiness... instead of being objective or thinking: hey, we were having a fight. I’m not really a jerk.
I have in many ways defined myself by the way others perceive me, even if it’s incongruent with who I actually am. which can be pretty confusing.... I’m working on it.

some days change is easy and liberating, and then some days it’s hard, like wearing in new shoes, like climbing a hill. but it’s a process... that’s another thing- the process. I was thinking the other day as I was cleaning my kitchen- my kitchen will never stay clean. it will be clean at times, and then it will get messy and I will clean it again... everything is a process.

(*ps- just to add to my neurotic-ness- I’ve just figured out that my email hasn’t been working- I haven’t been receiving anything for weeks and I thought that no one liked me anymore (maybe they don’t...?) but then I found out it’s been bouncing back messages- so if you’ve emailed me and its bounced back, try me again, cause I think I’ve fixed it- it’s not you, it’s me)

TAGSmy life

I bumped into my guidance class teacher from the 6th grade last night. she was very warm and sweet. she held my hands in hers and told me that she remembered me well. she said: “I recall that you always DID have a mind of your own, it appears that you still do... are you an entertainer? you look like you could be an entertainer”
(An entertainer? like, a stripper?)

I have a mind of my own.
I’ve heard that a lot, that I have a mind of my own.
I don’t know if this is a good thing.

When a person has a mind of their own, they’re just asking for trouble. if you have an opinion and you state it, you set yourself up for getting shot down. life is a series of dodging bullets... and if you say how you feel, or state your mind, you better be prepared to get shot down from time to time. that’s the risk.
now, I don’t care if strangers take a shot (cause it rarely happens) but its hard when people you know take shots. why do people do that?

I was thinking about something in the cab home last night- in our life span, how many people do we let in? I mean really, how many people will we really let our guard down with? 5, 10? (and not inc. family, but people whom we will meet randomly) out of the thousands and thousands of souls we will come across in our lives, how many people will see behind the curtain? how many people will genuinely care for us? Not many, a precious handful. So, why do we so often choose to hurt those people? Why are we so afraid to have people care about us? How is that bad? Why do we choose to be hurtful to the people who have generally been the most generous and the kindest to us?
I don’t understand that, I really don’t.

perhaps we spend too much time thinking about how people treat us, and not enough on how we treat others.

It takes me a while to commit to things. I don’t take commitments on lightly: work, friendships, relationships, projects. Cause i know that if I do, when I do commit- I have done it full force, I’ve jumped in with both feet. I either am totally committed, or not. on off. hot cold. that is just how i’ve been. A big piece of why I don’t take things, or people on lightly- is because I am blindingly aware of how attached (I’d like to think loyal, as well) I can become to whatever I’ve committed to. I’m aware of that.
However, what I have not been aware of, until now, is just how brutally hard I hang on to those attachments. I haven’t been aware of how much I take on, how personally I take things, how responsible I feel, and how these attachments can become something else for me to try and control...

tight fists, hang on, hold my breath. fix it. I’m committed, It’s my responsibility...
it’s like I’ve put on blinders and all I can see is what I need to do to hang on, fix it, control it, or whathaveyou.

and really, I don’t need to do that... and I don’t want to do that.

I am seeing so much. I am learning so much. This is so good for me. really, I can’t believe how good I feel right now. this all makes sense. and that’s all want. I want the truth. I can work with that, I can work with the truth.

I don’t find therapy hard in a painful way. It’s a good bad feeling. I love it. I don’t care if she makes me cry, that’s what I pay her to do. I want to figure this all out, I want to know how I am contributing to my life, in the negative and the positive ways. I want this. If I don’t know about the ‘negative’ stuff, how can I learn and grow?
I can handle anything, as long as it’s the truth. I can forgive anything, as long as I know the truth, and that includes the truth about me and my behaviors.
I love the honesty of this process. I’m finding it really liberating and enlightening.

I wish I had started this sooner.