How Did I Get here?

I, am not often at a loss for words.

Sure, that statement it is rooted in an ego-maniacal complex that I’d formed from a lifetime of having an answer to everything, even if it’s created from an assumption of an observation that I quickly made and deduced on the spot. I still had words for it.

This. THIS. I have no words for. This, death of an idea, this complex of too many structures held together by thousands of hours of cultural and environmental factors that I subconsciously took note of, then proceeded to either neglect halfheartedly or accept with a conscious disdain for what might be. Both have led to nothing more than misery and the occasional bout of despair, on the part of my intent to not inflict any sort of negative vibes into the world.

Now i’d like to believe, that in my heart of heart’s, within the core of my being, like the god particle holding everything together (but still it goes further), is based in fact that existence is a continuing feelings of angst the never wants to precipitate except that point where it really doesn’t feel welcome, but none the less welcomed, because, what the fuck else is there to do?

So how the fuck did I get here? Now, of all times, assaulted by responsibilities that I never signed up for, but invariably accepted because there is honor in it. Forced to show a side of me that doesn’t actually exists but as a caricature in the pantheon of nothingness that is this existence. Always seeking just the mildest escape from this restless comfortable existence that, is there to show me that existence cannot be won, but sometimes patience is probably a better trait then actively wasting away in an attempt to fill that void with things that are probably worse.

Biding my time as though regrouping and becoming that thing that I was always meant to but never really seemed to have the time to, because I spent so long trying to understand how everything could be so different. Pretending to be this badass with not a worry in the world, but making sure that everything that happens has a happy ending so that no one in the end should be sad but my self, because i can bear it, i can hold it upon my shoulders and make sure Atlas knows his rest.

I got here because this is where how things were supposed to be, and I seem to be locked in a cycle of not being worried about where whatever existence is will take me, then overly concerned, then not concerned once more. Always moving back and forth as though neither truth too false to deny, or too honest to affirm trust. But I knew one thing, and that truth definitely held true, but its a painful truth, much like finally learning you can’t do it on you’re own, or that the world open to infinite beauty, but also just as much worse.

This truth will remind me that these utter ramblings are the signs of madness, a true madness that the world has forgotten, one that says delusions of grandeur are not built upon words, but on the fact that actions were taken to ensure those delusions were just premonitions of things to come. That the intentions and the executions may have been slightly off, but the path was true. Built not of want of self, but want for others once more, but only by improving the idea of self through accepting that even the good and the bad aren’t as bad not knowing.

How did i get here? I thought too much, and said too much, drank too little and smoked a lot. I let the world find out that I stand on a structure of nothing and so nothing will ever stop me from becoming whatever there is to be. That my lack of formal education and experience were never fun, but they do not have to define how anything is done now.

So really? How did i get here?

I did the most important thing I think I could have done, I let it all in, i let it all hurt and I let it all tell me to one degree or another, that I am alive, again. That living in perpetual state of giving is okay, that by giving I received everything I had ever sought, to show that there was still good in this world, and that even if it sucks sometimes, it can be worth living it. Even if the happiness is rarely felt back agin its existence made it good enough.

My ego is rooted in wanting everything to make sense, and it took a big blow too, so that may have caused it to go a bit haywire in its perception of what was happening, but its a little sharper now, just a bit more focused, so i guess that’s helped.

What else is there usually for one to say when reaching the point where, explanation in common verbiage is no fun or possible? Switch to another form? Maybe later, for now. I want to be here, making sure here is finally okay.

The Subtle Cacophony

Because shit might seem to heavy.

As I begin many of these rambling works of utter madness (totally okay calling them that) in the same manner, it seems only appropriate to start this in the same manner I always have: with an anecdote. Because in the end all we ever are or will be are a series of anecdotes that we decide to reflect on, regardless:

Music festivals and–well, subsequently massive concerts, have always been fascinating looks at how silence fits into the proverbial cracks of our lives and live’s there almost absolutely, since such little attention seems to be paid to it we relegate to a place of calm and peacefulness. But isn’t the silence the thing that tells use that there is noise in the first place? The negative space around you that tells you there’s something happening because you keep going back to the still roar of the wall of nothing.
The discomfort when having to deal with absolutely nothing is rather a peculiar phenomenon. One’s senses become enveloped in this whirlwind of their own reflections, wherein even iota of sound would bring about a ripple of chemical reactions and neurological transmissions of over indulgent ilk that we cannot hope to understand until we realize that they’re just needed, because they are, until the day science comes back and give us empirical proof that it exists otherwise or affirms it (if that last sentence, wasn’t read in one breathe, I’d highly recommend reading it as such out loud, genius)

so when the bottom, well– Bottom’s out, how sure are we that there’s nothing there to hear? To be fair, through many sensory deprivation studies in the 1960’s( if need be i can cite them, but for the time, let the rambling commence), patients subjected to zero pressure, sound proof chambers, many experienced a sort of madness that could only be described as a weariness because the sounds they began to hear were themselves. The beating of their own hearts, the blood in the veins, the extensions and depressions of tendons and ligaments. The paints are said to have gone mad, and the absolute silence of the environment around them had done it to them. Rather, the silence of the external sensory input, that allowed the mind to focus on base processes, began to turn on itself and rapidly changing itself.

Giving credence to the idea that changing a person can be done primarily with absolute silence. Even more so, someone looking for the silence can use it as a means to understand something pretty fundamental about how one perceives sound and thus find music festivals and massive concerts the perfect venue for luring out the true beauty of the silence we seek ever so dearly, by giving ourselves a space in between to love it ever the more.

So I propose, that the next time one goes to a musical show of some kind, to listen for the silence, the truly uninhibited stillness between the notes, the chords, and the inevitable harmonic lead. Or while at a massive music festival, particularly edm festivals where the music is predictable to a relative degree and one see’s the crowd engaging in similar matters, stop. Look around at the cacophony of sound and movement and oscillation around. See how the music is reverberating not from the speaker but from the sound of the people around you.

Finally, when the beat does eventually drop, which is a strange manner in which to refer to a piece of music having a particular sort of trigger in order to make people go absolutely berserk, stay perfectly still, and notice the subtle cacophony of silence that envelopes you as the wall of flesh and bone around you reflects the longitudinal wave as the Doppler effect reverbs the bass at you, you feel where the music sits, where it holds itself when its not trying impress anyone, or make sure an idea has been expressed at the appropriate time, because its the time that takes the bulk of the want, making the being there with the silence, the infinite rhythm of breathing in and out was a desperate attempt to find out that the silence might just show you nothing.

That you may find the inside the cracks that there is nothing to find, that the silence is just there to remind you that there was something before, and there will be something after. Its the space in between, that tells you that you might just be good enough to keep going to keep up with the idea of yourself that keeps having to change.

But the silence is getting longer and longer, it see’s less and less as to what came before, and what it means to look ahead. At what will be and how it will come to be, a subtle cacophony of whimsy and hope, that maybe, the silence is like me, just trying to find its way to the next place where it would hope to understand and hope for a better moment, where it can rest. At the middle of the sine wave, where it is not pulled up or down, into madness and through eternity. But then again, where’s the fun in that?

Psychic Automation

Sometimes I wish, I could just write without feeling “it,” and by “it” I mean that utterly insane desire to get an idea out into the open just so its not just bouncing around my head and taking pleasure in knowing that its something that exists in the pantheon of things that my brain enjoys knowing exist. “It” is so cumbersome sometimes, finicky almost, when trying to realize what it wants to be that that words to describe it are often lost in an attempt to try and understand it first, “it” is not really a fan of this, “it” prefers anonymity til after the fact, which is in fact, whenever it comes to realize its own existence outside of my mind. If this was a logical statement, it would be perpetually stuck in a looping pattern of not knowing what it was.

But inevitably, “it” has been the thing that has guided every idea or thought that I have ever expressed out in the open. So maybe it’s just parallel dimensions or Karma or that natural “gut” instinct– OR for all intents and purposes: God. Either way, it has brought me here now, ignoring more pressing matters of code that needs to be rewritten or documents that need to be emailed out to users of applications that I manage. No, “it” wants me to sit here, dumbfounded at the idea that I could have been expected to do anything different after burning myself out for the last few weeks, attempting to understand why one problem existed without existing. “It” wants me to remember something I never forgot, but chose to ignore for a long time. What might that be you might ask?

No idea, “it” is real secretive about where its origins are, so I don’t bother asking. All I know is that when it comes knocking its quite hard to ignore, quite incessantly it will badger then proceed to “fuck” with physiological processes. It doesn’t tend to be a fun time when “it” gets that way, because it knows I’m ignoring something fundamental. “it,” is an asshole like that sometimes.

Enough expository bullshit, in an attempt to justify what I’m about to write.

You were right, and that’s really hard for me to admit, because I like to be right. That’s not so say I’ve ever minded being wrong, but rather, I have certain preferences and I like them so I keep them around. Being right or rather knowing things to be a certain way have always helped me to stay as objective about any situation as I could have. That hasn’t worked out as well as I would have hoped it would, but I’m cool with that.

The thing about change, is that there’s no such tangible thing, we’re always in flux perpetually in this state of death and rebirth. Cells die and new ones form, hopefully not as aggressive ones, though that only adds to the idea that change is very much possible even at the cellular level, but that’s just a tad moribund. I neglected that at an organizational level in the place that I’d called my mind. I thought I’d always be this person with the same core values. As it turns out, my core values were pretty different than what I thought they were, which also reinforces this notion that thoughts are but tools we must use and discard, in the processes changing out the idea’s often.

So the part that you were right about, the part that I didn’t want to believe, the part that’s taken me something like a month to dust off and understand once more? That I can easily change and be whatever I need to be, because I don’t have to be this idea of what I think others want me to be, because that’s not me. The people pleasing part of me died with the idea that people can be happy because they see that its okay to be happy. It doesn’t work that way unless they are open to the idea in the first place, again, far too simplistic in its execution and acceptance of a paradigm, but I’m a fan of being reductive.

But this was all bound to happen. So i guess there isn’t much else to say. Except maybe, that I may have skipped over something pretty in important:

You may have been right, but not about the whole thing. Its been weeks since I’ve been able to write anything, because I was trying to reach for “it” to find the words. There was a problem to all that however, “it” wasn’t where I had expected it to be anymore because I didn’t “know” what “it” was anymore, because I had changed. Without knowing it, something cracked and the dam of whatever I was holding back flooded existence with something new, and what was the first thing I attempted to do?

Swim right back to where I was because that’s where I thought “it” would be, but as the life would have it, it wasn’t there. “It” in fact had ridden the wave down to the a calm little stream by a rock near a mountain that I had to climb with a passive indifference to bad things occurring. It really was that easy.

The power of habit is a powerful thing (Both the actual power of Habit, as well as the Charles Duhigg book by the same name), and breaking all of mine, including all the good ones was, actually extremely beneficial to accepting things outside of my control.

Though I’ve only just hit the marker for forming a new habit; 3 weeks or rather 21 days; by not habitually not doing anything really based in habit, again loop based logical statements, who’da thunk they work, for now at least.

Its sets up an almost automation of recurring processes, that I personally didn’t know I was capable of. I wasn’t necessarily not trying to make my habits not stick anymore, but I was trying to notice when and how I had managed to trigger them in any given situation, which isn’t unlike watching watch i did with mindfulness, but rather that, I invariably was opening myself up to a lot of self judgement and criticism, cause since i was pay too much attention to what was, and not what was without my knowledge that the hilarity that ensued was just gaffaw worthy.

So this “psychic automation” (coined from the amazing track by Inventions, I’ll link below), its a funny thing when you’re no longer relying on it as a means of getting through things. It tells you, that things are just more comfortable when handled with quiet disdain instead of abject understanding and acceptance. The ladder, is a frightening place, a cold place, where loneliness becomes this strange ally in the fight to make sure that I don’t try and look back because its just not where “it” wants me to look. Just the most fucked up place you can be, and it’s not at all comfortable. So why the fuck would “it” want me there? Why would it choose the path of the most resistance?

Because, “It” knew something I didn’t. “It” knew that the only way to break away from an archetype, was to leave it all together, and see what comes of it. The only way to do that was a conscious separation from the idea that anything is supposed to make sense. Which wasn’t hard considering nothing made sense anyway (Inevitably leading to a walnut brownie habit i had not anticipated, but enjoyed none the less).

But from this realization that nothing made sense, I was able to return to a place where the idea that anything had to make sense was a pompous pipe dream that had no quantifiable benefit to anything I was doing. From that I extrapolated that: maybe just maybe, i’d been fine all along and if i’d just bothered to acknowledge its want to change i would have been fine. Considering, the underlying person within me was pretty much the same it’d always been, just the filter of perception that I put up to block out the things that I didn’t want to make sense, makes sense, was my way of reminding me, that maybe its okay to change, because, even if the change does the impossible, change me, I could still feel who I was, and that wouldn’t change. The attitude? Sure, by leaps and bounds. To me that’s all the clarity I ever needed.

So you were right, I have changed, i will change, and I will always be changing, but the things I say don’t come from that place of ever changing ideal and aspirations, they come from “it,” from my body and not necessarily my mind, though it does help spit out vast amounts of jargon that no one will read (this post), its still something that I had to do. Well at least over an afternoon, while I sat and tr to figure out if the procrastination of a systemic societal problems is the root cause of all the ignorance to the ilks around everyone, or if we’ve just evolved into a species of pleasure seekers with powerful abilities of ignoring the ilks around them as things they don’t have to deal with.

Either way, I’ve been tired for a long time (sleep deprivation), and I’ve grown weary of this notion that I’m not allowed to change without an incredible downfall of which I have avoided thanks to wanting to be comfortable. So here we go, into the proverbial unknown, with an it guiding me, and a sense of curiosity that I haven’t felt for months, just trying not to automate too much, but just enough that I don’t try to make sense.

Have fun everyone! I love you all for reading this, Yes, i sound like a rambling lunatic, take that shit up with “it.”

A cup of Coffee and a Croissant

6:30 in the morning, I’m lying in bed trying to fight the morning wood that seemingly has over taken my mornings. “One-hundred conscious breaths,” I tell myself, as I attempt to re-frame my mind with some form of meditation in order to use it for something workable and and sustainable for today. I focus on the tiles on my ceiling, the ones with the holes that are mostly covered in paint. They’ve always been there, well for as long as I’ve been there, but this morning I remembered the pattern they repeat.

With a deep inhale from my nose, not uniform because my insides are all plugged up, I start counting. “One.”

I exhale as slow as possible, the out breath is the strangest sensation. It might not feel like anything at first, but at some point its expelling something that I was not aware was there. Something I’m glad isn’t there anymore, though its possible that that just means my body is approving the expulsion of the carbon dioxide that its expelling, regardless, the flow of air from my tracheae through my sinus cavities and expelled through my nasal cavities, is kind of glorious.

“Two”

What comes out now is in the form of a cough, as my entire being is being shaken awake. My alarm went off a half hour ago and here I am on my second breathe thinking… “I should go back to sleep.” It would not happen.

“Three, Four, Five”

I managed to get through three breaths without paying too much attention to anything but the paint covered holes on the ceiling. This is what it was, focusing the mind in order to make sure I didn’t lose anything along the way in the shuffle of the day.

“Five, Seven, Eight”

I lost count for a second there, but I think I’m still on track. No need to be worried about the mistakes I’ve made, just keep moving forward. “The numbers are just pointers,” I tell myself, trying hard not to stress the mistake.

“Nine”

I took that last breath from a wide open mouth, it was powerful, as if i was drowning. I wish I didn’t know what that feels like, I think to myself, “no one should know what that is.” The oxygen floods my body, I can’t really feel it anymore, just this sensation of internal flooding. The wood is still there… ever present, ever uncomfortable.

“Ten”

I count to this number and have a small celebration in my head. Then I realize that I’m only a tenth of the way through, and I probably should wait til the whole things over before I make any rash celebratory thoughts appear.

“Eleven, twelve, fourteen, Fifteen, Fifteen.”

I missed and doubled one somewhere. But that’s alright, the paint covered holes are still there. looking Like constellations that I always neglect because the sparse star here and there in my night sky gives me the assurance that I need to keep going with whatever I’m doing. “Okay,” I have to assure myself,”keep breathing.”

The numbers continue, “twenty-five, twenty-six…”

By this point, I’ve managed to forget whatever thought I was thinking about and was thinking about how nice the birds were, outside
There’s no direct sunlight this morning. The clouds are low and swift, as if the earth’s rotation synced perfectly with direction opposite of that of the clouds giving them a slight streaking quality in the sky. I was glad for that moment.

“Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Three”

A thought about something I’d rather not have has entered my mind. Its not something unpleasant, but the more the thought progresses I’m unable to refocus my mind with the breaths, the way that I had before. I am not concerned, this too will pass.

“Forty”

My breathing is shallowing, I can’t remember what the thought is anymore. I remember what its about, but I am no longer concerned that it will overtake my thoughts and thinking. I’ve forgotten the number.

“Forty” I say again

The thoughts are all flooding back. The ones I was really hoping to avoid. They’re always there, ever prevailing, but today, they’re back but sitting there, hanging almost at the end of the my breath.

In the microcosm of the time between the next breath and the one I had just taken, the thoughts wait there, transfixed by where they’ll be headed next. I’m not actually all too sure where they went in the end, but the next ten breaths lost them to the void.

“Fifty-One”

Another thought has entered my mind, the phrase “This is boring and hard” creep in, they’re accompanied by no justification.

“Fifty-two”

I leave the thought behind.

“Fifty- Three”

The breath leaves my lungs, and I lose myself.

“Fifty-Four”

Where am I? The ceiling stars are no longer the stars.

“Fifty-Five”

The thoughts are no longer coming…

“Fifty-six, Fifty-seven, Fifty-eight”

The goosebumps are ever present, as if I was flooding my body with something I wasn’t yet aware.

The breaths continue, and I keep counting. I’ve managed to ignore the discomfort, its going to come back somewhere else.

“Seventy-five”

Everything is blurring, I am counting, but I cannot remember what the last number to have been uttered is, but the numbers keep going.

“Seventy-six”

I don’t want to finish, the urge has returned to stop and break.

“Seventy-seven”

The word “rise” is heard by me somehow. I keep counting.

“Seventy-eight”

The memory of croissants has entered my mind. The warm flakey buttery warmth of a Ground Central organic croissant, with an Ethiopian light roast… that is a thought.

“Seventy-Nine”

The want of the confectionary goods is strong. Had this thought come earlier, I’d have been lost. I can’t think about it now.

“Eighty”

I feel tense. There is a discomfort inside me, I’m not sure what it is.

Another dozen thoughts, another series of breaths I hope will be consistent.

The next breaths are fast, and intense. They have an impatience about them, one that I cannot hope to overcome this morning.

“Ninety-Nine”

Everything is gone. The impatience, the insufferable thoughts, the broken patterns. They all have been vaporized, by a breath.

“One Hundred”

The breath leaves me and I am already worried it was not enough. It hasn’t worked…

The reframing, the focus, it was all for nigh, I continued what was already there.

“One hundred and One”

Something in my mind screams, yells at every cell in my body, and forces my eyes to darkness.

“Wake Up”

The rain begins outside the window. It envelopes everything I hear.

I sit up, and feel as though I am going to vomit my soul. It doesn’t want to be there anymore.

The morning wood is gone. My mind is in shambles and the rain is still going. I look outside.

Who am I again?

The Earthquakes of Trampolines.

The Bissy Backson’s are getting to me. They seem to know that the way is not their way and so they don’t want to let anyone, who also knows the way, go about said way. It really is a silly means of doing things, since no one can go anywhere, no one can find anything.

Like looking at the world through a backwards telescope, wondering how one day you can get to what you see on the other side. Though its right there, its like the elephant that grew up in captivity, the chain definitely won’t hold it, but it doesn’t know any better. Locked behind this door that we keep trying pull open with all our might, ignoring the “push” hidden behind the mental blind spot. Its the relativity of it all as Einstein said, we can’t judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, nor can we expect a wolf to serve High tea.

We’re strapped into these parachutes, expected to jump and know where to pull. Where we land, we can’t tell, the earths curves are too expansive to see. We’re like snowflakes falling on a winters day, controlled by outside forces, each individual moving free in the storm of their own existence, reduced to water and floating away ones the dust has settled and chosen it’s own way.

Mixed metaphors and bags full of books I won’t get a chance to read, cause time doesn’t know that Kings Cross isn’t as cool as Harry Potter made it seem. Never trying to hide the fact that we can’t dance in the moonlight, because its just the sun we can’t see, instead we dance in the candle light with the fixed gear bikes overhead.

I saw light once all hazy and heavy, I didn’t believe it existed, it was just sitting there as if the photon’s had decided they didn’t have to move, they were on holiday and they just wanted their Mojito’s and a way to express all their heat. I chilled with them a while, they were cooler than I thought they’d be, they had great ideas, about oscillations and dreams, dreams about being small but always being bigger than anyone who said they weren’t. I like them, too bad the laws of the physical worlds woke up and told them to get back to working.

Sometimes the sky’s cry, because they can see the world and how dreadful it can be, with their heavy hearts and ions buzzing they can’t help but lighting the sky, and scream with their thunderous roar, it doesn’t know that its doing it, its just is, and crying and throwing its tantrum, it too can’t see beyond the horizon, beyond the backwards telescopes gaze.

The relativity of our lives are contingent on our ability to see without seeing what we want, to feel without needing to feel, to hear because we care to listening. When we forget, we start to question why its all there. We lose ourselves in the idea that we might be different than everything around us, further then the sun or the moon, and as meaningless as the speck of dust on my nose. But in really, we’re just panicking from the tremors of waking up, on the trampoline that shakes incessantly, we can only see the shaking, feel the shaking and hear the tremors uproar. If’ only we remembered, that we could get off, stare not at the latex stretched across but at the grass it sat upon, the earth below our feet the silence of the wind around us with the stability of the ground between the infinite spaces between our knees.

So smile, Backsons, I know your game, there’s no reason to block the way, unless you wanna jump on this trampoline, just remember where you’re going to land, the earthquake might just be you.

The case for headphones

I feel like a pariah most days.

Walking around with rather ridiculous headphones, sauntering along as though life didn’t mean shit except the sounds I was listening to at that very moment. I’ve never had any qualms walking around with massive open back headphones with, smooth jazz and post rock bumping along, but I made sure the reason I ever wore them was because the audio quality on everything else was shit. But a great deal of the time it still is for most other headphones.

I mean, take for example your average pair of Beats by Dre headphones, it doesn’t matter which one, they all have the same level of balance built into all of them. Which is to say they all produced a mushy, bass-y overly overly high frequency noise, that has no sound stage in my experience.

I mean, sure, the reason most people have them, is not because they’re good headphones in anyway, but because nether regions of marketing personnel we’re sweaty with the prospect of the being able to sell a piece of shit product for an exorbitant amount of money, because well society doesn’t support whats good, they support what they think they’re supposed to. (Reminiscent much of past posts?)

So, clearly I should detest the massive headphone second coming that seems to have overtaken the idea of rich sound stage for tinny sound derived from the cheapest drivers on the market.

If I wasn’t about to answer the question myself, I would have said yes, but in reality, I don’t mind. People will listen to shit sound because they can’t tell the difference, and that’s fine by me. What I will attest to however, is that shit sounding headphones, and this includes the entire subsection that are known as ear buds, are fundamentally altering the ways in which we perceive sound and in turn are able to internalize brain function and perception.

Yep, finally got to the meat and potatoes. Earbud’s and bad sound stage have for a long time been a longstanding hindrance towards what I deem: being able to hear whats around you. By listening to the earbuds your attention is not focused on the nuances of the sound but rather on attempting to extrapolate from the sound what you believe will be the necessary feedback. The problem is it seems to, in my personal experience, put you in a bubble and lets you stay there. You’re not connected to everyone around you, you’re just silo’d off like guinea pigs trying to figure out how the next game of candy crush can be won.

Again, it comes down to they type of earbud of course, as with headphones, that their quality is very dependent upon the care of their design as well as hardware. Yet, as someone who’s used, dozens if not over a hundred different ear buds at this point, some I was told would give me what I was looking for. I always came away with this feeling of them sounding great, but me losing something in the process, an underlying space to the sound. They would immediately hit my cochlea and the vibrations would always feel so deliberate, it didn’t give me a chance to feel its sound.

Now I’m not knocking at all the convenience and portability of earbuds, but what I lose with convenience I lose to, is far worse than a massive pair of headphones on my head making me look like I stepped out of studio recording with the massive coil dragging behind me. I lose unconscious attention.

Alright, maybe I lost whoever read that, and its understandable, its a new one to me as well. But please, bear with this madness. (Inception tactics, remember?)

When I listen to anything with a sound stage, wherein the acoustics’s bounce and resonate, I feel the sound more then I hear it. Its something I don’t have to consciously process, while still retaining all the fun of listening to a sound. So when I listen to music, I’d rather have it out where the sound bounce, like a decent sound system (yes, even that has to be decent), or a great pair of headphones. The sound isn’t just hitting my inner ears, its spreading out, and being given room to live.

So, my problem with the shit headphones and well all ear buds?

When we don’t let the sound live on its own, and attempt to “hear” it more then we feel it, I feel as though we lose touch with anything we’d being doing at any give moment, we relegate conscious brain function to “listening” instead of feeling it. That’s why its so easy for most people to pop them in/on and just lose what they’re doing, because all their doing is listening instead of feeling as well.

When I speak of feeling, of course I speak to the idea that we pay attention with our bodies as well as our minds. I probably should have explained this earlier, but that’s job for people who edit.

In ridiculous conclusion, I’ve learned through an incredible amount of shitty trial and error, that I know how something affects me, at a fundamental level. That listening to something with shit, will make me feel and perceive everything as shit. Conversely if it sounds amazing but i still don’t feel the sound, my brain tends to go haywire because it thinks a conversation with itself is cool since it can’t pay attention to much else.

I should really write these more often, with more of a purpose in mind. Fuck it, Next time join me for a discussion on why Inception might actually be the best movie ever in the history of cinema of all time… or finding achieving zen in a server room. Ladder doesn’t sound promising at all.

Want good headphones? Go get these: Ma Babies…

You’re funny Brain

Sometimes I attempt to explain how my mind works. It usually comes out as incoherent psychobabble, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but being as its rather unreadable,it would seem inappropriate to expose anyone not as privy to my insanity to decipher such porridge.

I laugh sometimes, its the only thing really left to do, when you’re mind doesn’t want to stop. When its thought patterns and neural links are so codified to some degree that I’m unable to see what’s right in front of me because everything that came before as well as ever after, would be conjured up as a means to tell a greater tale than that which is in front of me.

The old adage goes: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” I feel as though that statement could be the guiding light that governs my mental processes. For a long stretch of my life, a statement like that made sense. I couldn’t do anything but look forward, and work through everything, because it was the only game in town.

There was not reminiscing about happy memories, because they only reminded me of where I was then. There was no going to work because i wanted to, until there was something worthwhile to do at the store, or whatever job worked over the years. There was none of this because in my mind, I was doing what I had to do, and the grass was going to be greener on the other side. What did that mean to me until i turned the ripe old age of 23? “Nothing is going to get better, just keep going, keep fighting. ” And that’s how it went

So I lived a life, forgoing everything. Like seriously, all of the things. I didn’t live my life, I was on auto-pilot for the burned out. I was accepting things as they came in my life, and I was content with this idea that money would eventually buy my understanding of the world that I had to neglect. The one where I could be what most would call their lives, something that I wasn’t fully aware of because I’d been so systematically conditioned not to feel what my life was. Not to have a wonderful adventure but a cautious stream of affirmations that just continued to happen, with no end in sight for me, and that didn’t bother me until I got this strange feeling.

Now my gut is pretty good at letting me know about what’s up, and six months after breaking my back and questioning a lot of things, I finally realized it was saying something I should probably pay attention to. It was saying, “mother fucker,Stop!”

Its a funny thing, when you feel like you’re brain is on the brink of collapsing on itself because you’ve dug yourself into so many logic problems with everything in your life that it all seems so bleak and futile, It was incredibly fascinating that something I considered myself, was something I didn’t agree with, and as such why couldn’t I just change it? It was something I hadn’t noticed at all until it crept up on me at times when I was attempting new things. I wasn’t just doing them, I was trying to instantly be as good as I could at them, because that’s what I knew how to do, assimilate into most any situation. Adapt and die or as I like to call it. I had learned this through years of watching others literally never being grateful for what they had or where they were, which tended to make me confused as to why that was.Turns out I ended up doing the same thing.

I had managed to fill my mind with all the information I could fit in it in order to make sure I was ready for anything that could happen. Why the fuck was I attempting to overwhelm myself? In case a game of life or death jeopardy broke out, where the stakes were everything and my brain was the only thing I could think would keep me from my untimely demise, that I had so will fully accepted years prior (that’s a different conversation all together). This system of retention and regurgitation, because that’s what I knew everyone wanted was one of the first things I’d noticed was off. I wasn’t learning to see the world, I was learning just to keep the data stores up. I had managed to turn everything I’d done into an information gathering exercise, that inevitably killed any interest I had in anything because I was once more, doing as I had always done.

So I laughed, this was before realizing the fundamental problem, and I laughed a lot. Mainly because of err, substances, but also because I found it so hard to stop this compulsion that did nothing but constantly think and retain and attempt to understand any and every situation. Life had molded me, and as it turned out, I hadn’t really learned beyond how things worked, and even that was a basic understanding at best.

So I broke myself… a bunch.

At first it was just a basic understanding of what home meant (see previous post), but because I was so lost in thinking about where I belonged i never stopped to ask for what it was, I searching for?

Was it the ultimate answer to all things?

Neatly defined in a package that resembled the appearance of that of falling star, I gave up looking for that after I read Feynman.

Next I tried to re- organize and relabel everything in my mind to refocus what I thought I wanted to focus on. It was a like a five year old with a sack of sand attached the them, waking in circles attempting to clean up the mess they were making from inadvertently creating a hole in the bag. It was futile. I ended up falling to a depressive state that repeatedly told me I was shit at organizing. It wasn’t a fun time.

So I kept laughing, realizing that my mind was fickle being, with so many safeguards to ensure that I couldn’t attempt to fuck with it quick. I just stare and laugh these days. I just look at it like the greatest well of knowledge ever, but it occasionally likes to flood when I try to grab too much too quick, and spill all over the place. Its the cause of, pretty much any strife I’ve perceptively acknowledged. Literally every “problem” I’ve thought I’ve had has been because my mind was trying too hard, and playing a dangerous game of “How fast, and how far before he crashes?”

So I meditate, Medicate, and wake up everyday believing that my mind might shut up. So that it might give me a 20 minute period where I don’t know how to out myself because I’ve analyzed my surroundings enough to tell. I mean as much as this isn’t a laughing matter, its still hilarious every time I managed to realize what’s happening. Just because I grew into a mind that wasn’t designed to be going all the time, doesn’t mean its not my greatest asset, its just gets a little pointless sometimes. Sometimes.

So I laugh and hope that one day, I can slow down enough to teach these turtles the wonders of arts and possibly crafting. I know it’s not easy, seeing as they lack opposable thumbs and all, but this patience thing is a new-ish concept to me… i think I’ll try that.

Finding home

According to most popular definitions of the word home, the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household, I should consider the apartment/house/area/neighborhood in which I occupy to be home. Therein lies my problem with popular definitions of words that are not static in their definition, they don’t account for the mutations and connotations associated with the existence of such a place. I wish it did but then I wouldn’t be writing all this.

I am currently living in the same city that I always have. It feels no different than any other period in time. Sure the people have changed a little, and things have gotten cleaned up(or dirtier depending on the neighborhood) but its still at its heart the same place its always been. It is not a particularly nice place, it teaches us to be pretty ruthless in every endeavor we might hope to take because nothing gets done otherwise. It also gives you a snapshot of every culture and subculture you could ever imagine so believing something is strange in an of itself a strange reaction. Its the biggest place in this world, while trying to always be bigger. But small enough always to be there no matter how far you have to reach sometimes. I can’t hold it because its not mine, but I can feel it because it lets me. i can’t know it, because its never the same, but i can see it never really changing.

So if this city is where I live, why doesn’t feel like home?

That is a question i have yet to successfully answer. But I think i might know where home might be. But to define it i have to explain where it intrinsically came from.

I began asking myself the question about two years ago. I was, as we all were, a very different person back then. I had no idea where I was headed, I had a degree, but that wasn’t doing much.

I had a couple jobs, not really going places, except frankly places i didn’t really care to be.

I had friends, all busy with life, and the woes of coming of age in an era where nothing made sense socially, and jobs were not designed for those without the experiences of other jobs.

I was just trying to find meaning in everything I did. I was looking to the strange words i would undoubtedly fill notebooks with, that told me that there was light somewhere in this perpetual night. That i might not be alone in this miasma of confusion and self doubt which plagued my very existence for as long as I could recall, because i was at that point conscious enough to see that they existed outside of who I thought myself to be. I would write, and I would fling myself into despair because all the roads that I sought had closed due to one circumstance or another, but mostly because i never felt safe enough to risk anything.

I grew up with this need for stability, for abject permanence that I could never understand. That there was a single thread of my life that would always guide me along my “path” in life and that “thread” at that moment in my life, had run out months ago. I was now floating without a paddle, down an uncertain stream that I had never anticipated, to nowhere.

I had this vision of crashing into some rocks and having my skin torn to shreds so I could cut into myself and fix the maladies of my insides as i took the time to heal, but all i felt was the calm motion of the creek, slowly floating along to what I would call, the end of time. For time, as I had known it, had stopped. There was no more progression, no more infuriating but fleeting romances, no more, finding the time to squeeze in one more project that would inevitably go by the wayside but was more fun to think about and dick around on then any project ever worth completing. I had had enough of the doing nothing, and I wanted to go home.

Home, the place where I did not have to view the world as a project, or view the projects as things I needed to let consume my life. Where I could calm the madness of my heart, mind, and reclaim the idea that I might have a soul, that could once again exist except not as the “rules” I imposed upon myself but the wondrous freedom that every human feels when alive. It was a place where I didn’t have to be, but I was happy being there because it didn’t need to be. It was where my mother wasn’t trying to do anything but enjoy knitting on the couch without having to make sure that a clash of egos wouldn’t break out. Where my Father was still himself, in a position that could be there for me in my madness and my confusion, to teach me that life goes on and that we never stop becoming whomever we would eventually become. Where my siblings could pursue whatever they would want to because they weren’t looking for happiness outside anymore, they could be happy with who they were in everything they did.

Home, a place where I could exist without feeling like the world wasn’t about to collapse all around me if i didn’t work to make sure it wasn’t falling apart.

Home, the place where when I had nothing, I could sit and realize that I had so much more then nothing.

Home, where furniture was optional and the warmth of my being able to see the world as it was meant to be seen, was possible.

A place more ideal then possibly heaven.

That is what I pined for, all I wanted was a break from the sameness of the days prior, and the madness of not knowing what the days ahead would bring.

But what ended up happening, was me burying it. Digging a large grave, letting it die. Because, as I’ve mentioned in the past, It wasn’t real. I was looking to take a break from the reality of things and I was making sure that I couldn’t move forward without the “rest” at home.

But before I took the leap into the shallows of murder, I was sent away, to a place where I really didn’t want to be, but couldn’t have been more glad to end up. I was in a place where all I had was myself and occasionally the outside, but it was an average of 100 degrees a day, so my outdoor activities were summarily limited. I had met a few people, but mainly hoped the entire time to get out. To get back home.

I was still consumed with this desire to find this ideal place, where everything would just make sense. Where people were rational and not confusing to each other, where again i wasn’t consumed by this need to find the next thing that would potentially make things simpler in my life.

So I first turned to the thing that I thought would get me there the fastest: Hypnosis. Oddly enough it did change me slightly, but it mostly just let me think differently for short bursts of time. I will expound on what I learned from those experiments at a later time, because that was fascinating journey in an of itself. That showed me that home was literally nowhere to be found, and that success is something that you can just whisper to yourself in your sleep? Suffice it to say, I couldn’t stick with it for longer then a few weeks.

Then my embattled soul turned to the great minds of the last few hundred years. I was looking for my answers in their lives, and I was finding myself following down their paths. Searching for anything to remove me from the clutches of abject mediocrity, as they once had, I began planning to plan again, a futile task that led me back to the start because I was too blinded by my inflated “genius” ego that I forgot to acknowledge that things had actually changed since these men once had a chance to live. Their lives were not necessarily their own but those of the circumstances to which they accepted and owned, they went living to separate themselves from what they already knew, they would work to go deeper and deeper in order to see where they might one day end up, not hoping to get there, just hoping to be anywhere.

That was helpful but still did not answer my question, could I ever go home?

So then i turned to meditation and Taoism. At this point approximately 15 months have passed and I am back where I was originally, but with wildly different circumstances. I am gainfully employed, for a company that doesn’t want to strip-mine me for any and every skill set I have, as well as having gone through the first phase of a physical transformation that would propel me into thinking about being healthier as well. I was still looking though, always watching to make sure I wouldn’t fall into despair because I did not know what the future would hold.

But the want would always return. In the most devious of manners it would infiltrate my psyche and make me question what was next and why I wasn’t going home. Why I couldn’t feel at all content with anything that I did. It didn’t feel right, even with the armament of consciousness and awareness that Taoist teachings had endowed me with, I could see the discomfort, I could sit with the discomfort, but I could never do anything about it.

So I let it go.

I decreed that as much as I wanted to go home. There was no home for me. That home was now figment of the proverbial imagination that I was letting run wild in an uncontrolled environment. So it learned to die when it needed to.

The problem with killing things yourself, is that they’re never dead. They always come back in some way shape or form and again beg the same questions, with different phrases.

I’ve found it a few times since I’ve started, but never alone, and every time, I lose it again I know that its gone, but it doesn’t stop me from instantly starting to look for it again.

So here I am, not looking for anything in particular, just trying to love as much as I can, Finding Home.

What did Malcolm Gladwell actually say about the 10,000 hour rule?

Said it better then I could have.

The Hardest Science

A new paper out in Intelligence, from a group of authors led by David Hambrick, is getting a lot of press coverage for having “debunked” the 10,000-hour rule discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. The 10,000-hour rule is — well, actually, that’s the point of this post: Just what, exactly, is the 10,000-hour rule?

The debate in Intelligence is between Hambrick et al. and researcher K. Anders Ericsson, who studies deliberate practice and expert performance (and wrote a rejoinder to Hambrick et al. in the journal). But Malcolm Gladwell interpreted Ericsson’s work in a popular book and popularized the phrase “the 10,000-hour rule.” And most of the press coverage mentions Gladwell.

Moreover, Gladwell has been the subject of a lot of discussion lately about how he interprets research and presents his conclusions. The 10,000-hour rule has become a runaway meme — there’s even a Macklemore song about it. And if you google…

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The Comparison Dilemma.

I am not often afraid, when I am afraid I acknowledge it is fear, but more for others less then it is for myself. I’m not sure where it comes from, presumably it is a subconscious desire to either hope the future will be better without me or that whom ever I am saving is or more value a live then I am. Both seem to have rather morbid connotations associated with them, and both are assuming that I am giving my life for them.

Yet, I find myself making the ladder comparison more and more. I’ve managed to convince a very intrinsic part of me that, any situation that does not involve me fully sacrificing myself, is not something truly worth doing. That, seems like a fundamental problem that would inhibit most of what I try to do in my life as I don’t see it as worthy towards any cause.

Now where does something like that come from?

I seem to be answering my own questions, so I’ve also deduced that its from a significant lack of experience in my life that didn’t involve giving a 100% because otherwise it would end. I grew up with the idea that everything is to be sacrificed, and everything is impermanent, nor people nor things could fix that, and that was what I was meant to feel.

This was because not only would I grow up with this mentality, the limited pool of experiences that I had, had, I took a lot of external influences from the media that I consumed. I was by in large a product of my teens, because that was literally the only example that I had. So things life film, art, books and in particular music all led me to have these metal habits, where, the extremes were the only occasions okay to be free, for we had to suffer for life would never let us live.

This fantastic numbness covers everything that happens after you change over to this mentality. And because you never realized it was happening, there was nothing you thought to do about it, and as such it was just how you were supposed to live. You go about doing what you have to. Living exactly how you thought you were supposed to, chugging along towards anything but where you were at that moment, because maybe that next station, that next sacrifice, that next fall on the sword will allow you to finally be redeemed for being where you were.

Cause that place…

That ideal place. That place where I would be able to kill myself enough to not be where I was anymore. That place was never real, that was an imaginary place to accept that realities of those moments that had to be dealt with. That place, was never meant to hold me up permanently as an individual but rather to help prop me up as a functioning member of society, just enough to do that.

But when you’re on the train, waiting to go somewhere just because you need to get out of that same old reality you think you’re in, and you’re writing about the great tragedy of being unable to see the cyclical nature of ones own life as it seems to repeat the same patterns because we are inevitably the same people we’ve been since childhood. You realize something. You realize if you can see it happening, whats stopping the wrench of self choice from stopping it?

What’s stopping the disintegration of the comparison? The One that you needed for so long just to get through the years, because they were the only lights and you clung to them every time in order to cover your own sense of emptiness because you didn’t have anything else more intrinsic to look towards?

Is it that there isn’t aren’t dire enough consequences to lead you into what you might entail as worthy enough self sacrifice that will inevitably change you?

Therein lies the dilemma. Do we choose to live by the mantras of our past, which while they did not lead us negatively, certainly not me, but never gave us the stability of foresight that we needed as well? Its really just a loaded yes or no answer.

And its that simple. We are not who we once were, we became what we did because of the circumstances of our lives, and used the tools we had available to our disposal to get us through those, and now that tool is no longer the metaphor that we can use to fuel our lives, because the words we couldn’t say aren’t the things that stop us anymore.

And yet again, i’ve managed to write a lot of ramblings about overcoming misconceptions imposed on myself by myself thanks to my past which I had no choice over. Have fun with it. I certainly did.

Arts and Crafting for Turtles.

Well that's certainly… an idea

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