nondrowsyformula

Do-Over, #13

2011-08-28T13:05:00.002-04:00

My Banger Playlist of the Week:

Second Song- TV on the Radio
I Chase The Devil- Max Romeo & the Upsetters
Helplessness Blues- Fleet Foxes
A Long Time- Mayer Hawthorne
Angel Dance- Robert Plant
Love Lost- The Temper Trap
Everything- Jehro
Tower Seven- Thievery Corporation
Amor Fati- Washed Out
Lifetime- Maxwell

The reason it's been since April that I've posted here is that I have heretofore been minded toward essay within this blog, pressuring myself to craft something weighty and profound every time. But that kind of takes the fun and immediacy out of it. People lose interest, and this turns into another "assignment" in my life. So how bout this? Shorter, more from the hip, and a lot more often, mmmkay? Mmmkay. Agreed.

A brief recap of summer: It was hot. We were poor. I was in class for May and June, and took July and half of August off. After that, I Pee-Wee Hermaned my one-speed Peugeot all over Asheville. I read half of East of Eden. I tended a garden that yielded very little literally but a frickin' bounty figuratively. I had time and space to think and observe my own mind. I could see a maturity and new pathways of thinking that I feel really grateful for and am proud of. Knowledge and understanding really are the most valuable things one can acquire in this life and for this reason, suffering a mostly sucky summer was worth it.

Now, Year 2 of Counseling school (and my fourth consecutive year of full-time studentship) has begun. Every day I feel full from the richness of all I've learned and amazed that there's still so much more. I am practicing learning how to chill the **** out, while at the same time, maximize my potential. This balancing act often feels ridiculous, like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. I am also learning how to be 39, which is to say that I am trying to write my own age-appropriate script for how to live between the two extremes that this culture offers us: Youth's wild-eyed indulgence and Agedness's curmudgeonly reticence. I think I am doing alright, but the question of what to wear everyday, what to eat and drink, and who I can and can't call "dude" is on my mind a lot. In a way it's nothing, but it's a funny thing to have to think about.

This here, I do believe.

2011-04-26T10:16:00.004-04:00

Here is an essay I was asked to write for my Cross-Cultural counseling class. We, the students, expressed frustration at not getting the opportunity to learn as much about each other as we had hoped, so the Instructor asked us to write a short essay modeled after NPR's "This I Believe". This is the uncensored version of what I wrote. Hope you enjoy it.

This I Believe
I believe in the perfection of the imperfect. I believe in the poetry of the accident, the value of damaged goods, and in the hidden symmetry of all that appears misshapen. I believe in the inherent goodness of the universe, even in our suffering. I believe that I understand what it means when it was said that the meek shall inherit the earth, which is that we gain nothing from ego and everything from humility. I believe in the wisdom of the earth, and in its clever ways of keeping us humble. I believe that is why God made us taste delicious to bears, if you follow my logic.

I believe a lot of stuff, but mostly, I believe in the unfathomable vastness of all that I don’t know, and it thrills me to death. I believe that humor is medicine and the truth will set you free, so I must exercise those beliefs in the following confession: I believe that it was really hard to resist beginning this essay with “I believe the children are the future”. I believe that it’s cool that I found a way to slide that phrase in here anyhow.

Speaking of children, hanging out with them has taught me one simple belief: Playing rules, everything else sucks. If something sucks and you still have to do it, make it fun. Hanging out with old people has taught me another simple belief: Don’t freak out, you’ll be alright. I believe in listening to old people and children. Like good advice, I believe that the best things in life are free. In order of importance, they are as follows:

1. Natural spaces that are only sparsely populated by large, hungry carnivorous mammals such as those previously mentioned in this essay.

2. Fruits and vegetables. (They just frickin’ grow out of the frickin’ ground! Crazy!)

3. Public parks. (You can do almost anything there except be naked and drink booze. Sometimes one needs a break from these two things, and I believe there ought to be a space for it.)

4. Libraries. (You can be like “Hey, can I borrow this?” and they’re like “Yeah.” Crazy!)

5. Riding Bicycles. (Okay, they cost some money to buy but are cheap when you find a used one and cost almost nothing to maintain, and besides, your quads will be totally jacked.)

I believe this list could include other awesome freebies like making friends, dancing, swimming in the ocean and something that rhymes with HEXUAL PINTERPOURSE but in the interest of brevity and avoiding disciplinary action, I believe I will stop. These things are free, and I believe that for everything else, God created Target.

I believe that looking for the positive in everything is much better in the long run than dwelling on the negative, however I believe that this is incredibly hard to do sometimes. For that reason, and because I believe that no emotion is without teaching merit or spiritual value, I believe that feeling-bad-for-a-while kicks not-feeling-anything’s ass almost any day of the week. I believe that this is also why God invented Country music.

I believe in the power and ability to transform and to be transformed. I believe that I AM SOMEBODY. I believe that YOU ARE SOMEBODY. I believe that BELIEF is the most powerful force there is and I believe that being a counselor is about helping people to believe that as well. I believe in not letting my mouth write a check that my butt can’t cash so I believe in going out everyday and trying to get better at seeing the SOMEBODY in EVERYBODY which starts, of course, with this guy.

I believe that just about covers it.

Descending

2011-03-04T14:30:00.003-05:00

Today: Bed rest. Ginger ale. Saltines. Cat naps. Magazines. Vicodin. Youtube.

By January of 1986, my eardrum in my right ear was so weak and brittle that it virtually collapsed, and I went into surgery to receive a transplanted eardrum. By all reports, I came out of my anaesthetic fog belligerent and cursing up a blue streak, announcing in no uncertain terms that I had to "take a piss" and wanted to know what was "so goddamn funny" to everybody, a tirade that came to an abrupt halt as I became coherent enough to recognize that our minister was standing there doing his pastoral damndest to keep a straight face and deliver a prayer for my recovery.

Several days later, layed up on the couch at home, watching Love Boat reruns, doped to the nines on an opiate-enhanced analgesic, the ABC affiliate broke away to broadcast the live launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Though miffed at the interruption (I was a 13-year-old home from school on pain pills being entertained by the wacky hijinks of Issac, Gopher and probable guest-star Charo- not too shabby) I'd understood the importance of a teacher going into space, and thus decided not to throw my slippers at the Zenith.

Of course, we all know what happened next. After coming down from marveling at the beautiful, omnidirectional chaos of contrails and burning projectiles descending from the sky, I, like many others, realized something was wrong. I picked up the cordless phone (about the size of a toaster in 1986) and called my dad at work to tell him the space shuttle had blown up. Considering I had been spent the previous few days asking who put these gloves on my hands (no gloves, of course), it is understandable that he told me it was the medicine talking and sent me back to rest with a chuckle. Minutes later, my hallucination was confirmed as a somber reality to him and the nation as the news spread. He called back and apologized.

The operation replaced a dysfunctional organ but did not improve my already sub-average hearing. I began wearing a hearing aid in that ear, as I have ever since. My other ear slowly declined some as well. I kept waiting for it to get better. At 13, all I wanted to do was fit in and belong, and I tried to forget that there was anything that might prevent me from fully participating in any socially inclusive experience. I pretended to hear everything, but I knew that I missed a lot of it. Only recently have I begun to understand the ways that this has influenced my social relationships, my interpretation of the world and my self-esteem. I am only beginning to acknowledge and validate my own experience as a hearing-impaired person.

2011. 25 years later, the surgery needed a major revamp, as my right ear had become chronically infected and my hearing virtually gone. A "Right Side Revision w/ Mastoidectomy" to be medically precise. There was some concern over damage to the bone that separates my middle ear from my brain. I was referred to a guy that is pretty much the Maharaji of ear surgeons. The dude literally told me "I can do this stuff in my sleep." That's confidence.

This time, there was no swearing, just a groggy peace and a craving for strawberry ice cream. Sam and my mom kept me comfortable and supplied and the nurses took my BP and temp about 200 times. I had just been morphined when the doc came in and said that he had successfully managed to repair the damage and reattach the eardrum to the hearing bones so that my hearing was probably going to improve considerably in that ear..."watch this", he said. As he plunked a tuning fork and held it there, my breath caught and tears formed. Even through the bandages and surgical foam packed into my ear, I could hear the resonant hum. He gave me a proud smile and I breathed in deeply and cried, feeling as though I was the one now descending safely after 25 years in my own version of outer space, having survived the long journey. It's too early to tell, but this time, no one is saying it's the medicine talking.

Poison & the Antidotes

2011-02-06T13:25:00.001-05:00

To some, I disappeared. I stopped blogging, facebooking, emailing, phonecalling, contacting, and visiting. I left almost everyone in my life hanging. Old friends from 15-18 years ago, recent friends from the past couple years, everyone except Sam and except me.

Part of me, the polite, people-pleaser, wants to say I'm sorry, and that I didn't mean to. But another part of me, the one writing this wants to say that this leg of the journey has been so privately intense that all my energy has been focused inward and on my relationship with Sam. The creeping sense that I have not nourished important friendships has weighed heavily on me, but it has also afforded me the space and time to explore just what I was looking for in my friendships in the first place- acceptance. I have been hearing a voice say "I don't really need all these friends like I used to" and have been embarrassed and a bit horrified that something so arrogant and selfish could be rattling around in there. But now I am in the second semester of a graduate program for clinical counseling, which thus far has been an AMAZING experience in self-discovery and promises to continue to be, and I think I may be ready to admit that maybe what this voice is saying is that I am OK now. Not that I don't need my friends, but that I am no longer desperate for validation from them, and this insight puts the past several years into such rich perspective that I can really see just how far I've come.

Ok, now, I want to do this. I have a new responsibility to myself, and writing this blog is part of what my instructors in the WCU Clinical Counseling program call "Self-Care". This concept, which would seem to be elementary and enticing to most folks is astonishingly difficult for me to grasp, as it requires a deliberate mindfulness and mild indulgence. I WRITE. It helps me make sense of things. Making sense of things makes me feel better. Feeling better is good. Therefore I must write. Duh.

The first thing anyone studying counseling will tell you is that, whether you like it or not, YOU are your first client. You can't help it, every new empathic and psychotherapeutic concept you inhale is digested and processed and self-compared. This can be transformative, at best. At worst, it's a set-up for major self-criticism. There's a mantra you are given that guides all behavior of the therapist: UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD. I chant it constantly like a psalm. No judgement. Nevertheless, much of the time, I have been a real dick to my first client.

All this self-analysis can make you want to sit in a room by yourself all winter and not come out 'til the dogwoods bloom. That, and a manageable case of mild seasonal depression that you acquired (likely by way of genetics) and the fact that you are assigned enough reading to permanently fuse your neck bones into a right angle and the fact that your gorgeous and supportive life-partner can throw four random vegetables into a pot and have it come out tasting so good that your tongue wants to reach up and smack your brains out and that living on a student budget automatically precludes you from participation in retail or entertainment activities outside of the home and that your girlfriend's dad asks you at christmas if you want this old Nintendo Wii lying around collecting dust to which you say "umm, I guess" and because for the first time since that one detention you had to do in 1989, you have class on FREAKIN' SATURDAYS. Oh, and because it's cold.

More and more I can see that this culture force-feeds us total bullshit that we use against ourselves and each other. The whole point of Advertising is to create a sense of lack in the observer, and our culture is saturated with it. Even in our conversations sometimes, we are trying to sell ourselves, leaving out the details, the side effects, the fine print. Being a more authentic and self-efficacious person is about recognizing the poison we have drunk, and finding the antidotes for it. The therapist-in-training has to try the magic potions on himself first, before he can administer them to anyone else. It can leave you tired, and you have to know when and how to get your rest.

I caught you a delicious bass.

2010-06-07T06:30:00.005-04:00

Heroes: Job in a friendly lil' neighborhood coffeeshop, Bicycle commuting, Irish Breakfast tea, The National's High Violet, Maxwell's BlackSummer'sNight, Somerville Public Library, $8 Indian buffets, World Cup Soccer games beginning, temporarily consuming internal crises that morph into lessons and growth opportunities and deeper, richer wisdom and it is revealed that things are not only not-shitty but in fact they are even better now, efficient public transportation, a pretty woman that can cook her ass off.

Zeroes: $4.50 high-lifes, humidity rivaling NC in June, So many books, so little time, wiping up daily cat vomit, New Englanders that think my southern accent is an invitation to be imitated, bad taquerias, increased population density, fewer trees, less natural open space, unsweetened iced tea, the insufferable drama of all families, being in a dog-eat-dog world wearing milk-bone underwear.

It's going better. The first few weeks were tough- Is there anything more ego-deflating than looking for a job? Add to that culture shock and urban geographical unfamiliarity and you get a brother with a little bit of a complex. Shook it off, though. Landed a solid 30 hr + slangin' coffee and scones at what is probs the closest thing to a friendly neighborhood cafe I could find. Free staff meal, caffeinated beverages, wage+tips, biking distance, nice people, I pass the library on the way. Throw me in the breyer patch (for clarification, ask a southerner over 60).

Now, cohabitative bliss w/ the Armenian Princess can settle in, my ego can return to a status resembling confident and I can do this summer right. Just before I left NC, I grabbed a stack of old journals for shits and gigs and figgered I'd go through them and see what's different, what has stayed the same. Found one from the summer of '90, 20 years to the month, the first summer after High School. Can tell from the first couple entries that all l I wanted to do was bike to parks and read library books and write, listen to my jamz in headphones, play some guitar, eat vegetables and fruit, pine after a beautiful lady and dream of a future pregnant with possibility. Aint a damn thing changed.

Return of the Red-Eye

2010-04-10T08:04:00.000-04:00

I am going to have a good day. I am already aligned with this intention by virtue of committing to stay in bed for as long as my body can stand it today, and the fact that I am writing a blog entry for the first time in almost two months, something I have been avoiding. Why have I been avoiding this, this blog that I started with such pride and enthusiasm last fall, intending it to be a kick in the pants to stay accountable for producing good, creative, insightful writing? Since December, it became a self-induced responsibility I came to dread. I realize now that it's because I haven't been reading. Oh, I've been reading alright, thick, dry drivel on the relationship between genetics and environmental influences on human behavior, the proper way to conduct a One-Way Anova analysis on an independent variable, and so on, along with other titillating page-turners.

I mean reading for pleasure, of course. Wordcraft, not just the bland transfer of academic information. I think most writers will say that they write better when they are reading. I've found that everything I tried to write here since January was totally saltine. This may even be included in that, but I decided I needed to write anyway, kick my ego out of the driver's seat and just write. So, Let's do dis.

I am four weeks away from graduating college 20 years from the year I began it. Think I'm a little antsy? You have no idea. I have the hottest, deepest, raddest mamacita in all the land waiting for me in Boston the second I'm done, and if you know her, you'd know why this psychological research proposal (20 plus pages) that I have to do before then is a little hard for me to focus on. Add to this big decisions about an ear surgery this summer, employment in Boston, and getting set up in Asheville for grad school in the fall and let's just say it's hard out here for a pimp. (For my older readers, this is a reference to a hip-hop song from recent years in which it is proclaimed that being a young man who seeks modest prosperity in a challenging economy can by trying to one's self-esteem and perserverence. This is stated in the form of "dope" rhymes over pleasantly "tight" beats).

I am changing. It is happening fast. I am seeing the world so differently thanks to some good teachers, some bad ones, the bureaucracy and artifice of academia, a great counselor who teaches me how to think healthy thoughts, an amazing partner who lets me be both confidently strong and a sniffling, defeated mess and loves me either way, a higher power that is teaching me how to be a man in a whole new way. I am about to embark on the life I have always wanted and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a small part of me that is scared that I can't live up to it. But, thanks to the aforementioned reasons, and others to be explained and explored in entries to come, that little voice of doubt is rapidly dimming, and the other 90% that knows what it has taken to get here is telling me that I'm the man.

Thanks to all who have read this, I'm sorry I kept you without a strong rhyme to step to (another reference to a classic of the hip-hop canon) and I hope you'll keep reading as I try to get back on this horse. It's gonna get a little better, I think.

2010 (or) Two circle stick circle.

2010-01-17T11:07:00.007-05:00

Two thousand and ten, you better be ready, 'cause it's on now. I have worked hard to to get here to meet you, and I ain't about to let you outta here without you delivering on your half of the deal.

LAST UNDERGRADUATE SEMESTER of the 20-year plan. GRE down, grad school application almost down, this is it. This is the gate, and I'm a-knockin. We shall see how this plays out.

Since my last official blogpost, I had a week of exams, then the second after I finished my last exam, it snowed 15 inches in Asheville, which rendered me housebound and disoriented for 4 days. With no option but to stay in, I had a prime opportunity to clean house, begin packing for my two-week holiday trip to Boston, do some good writing (perhaps on this blog) and catch up on books I can't read during the semester. But as you may know, there's something about the snow that triggers a pavlovian regressive response that goes "I see white stuff - It's sticking - Abandon all responsibilities and activities that require even the slightest delay of gratification."

I drank lots of beer. I read year-old issues of Rolling Stone. I called all my friends in the middle of the day. I napped. I conducted culinary experiments with saltines and condiments. I talked to myself. I did not bathe.

At some point, despite all efforts to look the other way, I felt the cerebral itch of dignity commanding some attention. It said "drinketh some water, wash thyself" (my conscience speaks King James english). So I got it together and did all that, then I sat down and wrote the best song I have ever written.

Being in love with Sam boasts a list of pleasures too numerable to list here, though I will get to a few in later posts. One that is particularly of note is that she inspired me to write music from a place I have never written before: happiness. For the few people that have heard my music, it is a running joke that I can't write music unless I'm miserable or heartbroken, and heretofore, they would be correct. But I knew exactly what I wanted to give Sam for Christmas/Her birthday (they are days apart)- a song. I sat down and it just poured out.

It's totally a pop song with an uplifting singalong chorus that borders on cheesy, but as any man who has ever fallen retardedly in love knows, all self-conciousness goes the way of the dodo, and suddenly you are crooning squintingly upward, beating on your chest and outstretching your arms to the heavens in a brazen expression of romantic ecstacy, or perhaps you are just unconsciously imitating stuff you saw in an old Boyz II Men video. Either way, this is not something you could not predict you'd be doing so unabashedly and it will feel shockingly AWESOME.

Yeah, and so then I went to Boston and we had a very good visit :)

More to come...

WAWMP waaaawmp.

2010-01-14T07:18:00.003-05:00

I was warned this might happen. I'm sure if one was to do a pan-internet study of new blogs, one would find a two-month strong start followed by a gradual spacing out of time between entries, but today makes a month and that's just too damn long. It's hard to keep anyone's interest if I just don't write. Duh.

In my defense, the last month was rich with both stress and bliss, both of which can get you so riled up you just want to take a vacay from communicating anymore than you have to. And they both have lots of S's, I just noticed.

I am leaving for school in a minute so this is just a lil' bite, to tell y'all I missed you and think I oughta commit to writing shorter, more frequent entries. Sound good? Me too. Thanks for giving a dern. More later today...

Done got shot

2009-12-14T08:29:00.005-05:00

Duuuuuuuuuude. So this is what they mean by the "rubber hitting the road". Full-on end-of-semester papers due mania last week. So crazy and stress-rich that this week, exam week, feels like a stroll through Target. I'll be done thursday and then I immediately get to start studying for the GRE which I have to take over the Holiday break. Thanks, Santa (you heartless bastard).

So perhaps this explains my bloglessness. I appreciate those who wrote to say WTF and encouraged me to get back to where I once belonged. I confess that you can also blame Cupid, who apparently sniped me from atop a water tower, inconspicuously. Cause I sho nuff done got shot. Right in the ass. And I think he put a lil' somethin' on the tip of that arrow because I feel real funny. I'll spare you the details but this morning I woke up groggily engaged in unconscious intimate relations with my pillow that may well be illegal in some states. This woman has got me in a bad way. If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right. (At this time, women are allowed to issue a collective, choral "Awwwwww" while guys are excused from the room to vomit).

And on top of all this it's the holiday season! Snuck up on me. A little history: I have historically not done well with the holidays because:
a. I am seasonally depressive.
b. I have worked in retail most years up until the last two. Working retail during the holidays fills you with the opposite of cheer. Also, retail employees can not afford to buy gifts.
c. A deep-seated memory of my parents' 1985 divorce, and the "two christmases" phenomenon symbolizing the death of my childhood.
d. Manheim Steamroller.

But somehow, this has faded. Yes, I still get the winter blues, but I kinda know what works now (exercise, healthy sleep patterns, meditation, Omega-3's, 5-htp, well-timed, but low-quantity alcohol binges). And my family has changed a bit with the birth of my nephews (Spiderman EVERYTHING!). A great therapist and a loving higher power has helped me get for myself what my parents couldn't really give me in the years following the divorce (I know y'all did the best you could- I love you) and I have not heard the Manheim Steamroller Christmas album in a few years although I think that's want they were playing in Rite Aid the other day when I was buying alcohol swabs for my hearing aid, but somehow didn't have the allergic reaction to the synthesized cheese that I have had in the years since Mom's 1986 purchase and subsequent auto-loop broadcast of the cassette featuring the jazzed up "Deck The Halls". Maybe it's wearing off. Or maybe I'm starting to like it (kill me now). And I'm looking forward to watching "Elf", which is the first Christmas movie I was able to stomach in this re-conditioning process. Although I'd enjoy it if it were about Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, too. I rewind that part where he jumps on the tree and it falls over until I can't breathe.

I have many more thoughts to fill blog entries to come. Did I mention I am in love? If you think this one was gross, you just wait. Better do some eyeball stretches 'cause those things are gonna be rollin'...

Pipes

2009-11-21T10:20:00.005-05:00

I did not intend writing blog entries to be just a weekend morning ritual, thought I'd be pumping them out more consistently, and I still might find a way, but school has had me by the macadamias, tightly. Thus, these writings arrive like Sunday morning televangelism. I guess I'm like the Charles Stanley of of gratuitous self-revelation, but without the suit and hairspray, and instead more shaky, tentative confessions and more swearing. Although Jesus is most definitely my homie.

Metaphor of the week: Pipe- an apparatus used for smoking something addictive or generally detrimental to self and/or others. Ex.: "Man, this teacher needs to lay off the Paper-Due-During-Exam-Week-Pipe" or "What, girl I can't even understand you, maybe you should put down the Sarcasm Pipe for a second and tell me what the hell you mean." or "Dude, this assignment is not getting done if I keep hittin' the Facebook Pipe every five minutes." Just so we are clear, this pipe exists very much in the figurative and not at all in the literal in this blog-writer's life. However, I have hit the saltines-and-peanut-butter pipe pretty hard all weekend and I may need someone to stage an intervention.

Right now I am trying to ween myself from the obsessing-over-the-future pipe, as all this patience starts feeling like a tie I want to tear off. The end of the semester is obnoxiously close, so various papers and projects are all due soon, and somehow in all this I'm supposed to study for and take the GRE, which will determine in part whether I get into grad school and if all this undergrad garbage was worth it. Meanwhile, the retardedness of my fluttery like-affair with Sam-From-Boston has reached a redonkulous delirium and, thinking about her and every "what if" scenario and how badly I don't want to lose this feeling or screw this up has summoned every wobbly fear and pathetic insecurity to the surface. It's like receiving a surprise party from all the most annoying people you know and as they sing and present your cake, you realize that you, by virtue of being there, are one of them. Ugh.

So today, I am putting down all my pipes. We are allowed to fall apart a little sometimes, we are allowed what my counseling mentor Marcia calls "Messy Human Feelings". I have come so far in the past couple of years in not beating myself up for my sloppy, misshapen globs of raw humanness, the stuff I don't like or want anyone to see. But I know now that it's not about getting rid of these, necessarily, it's how to carry them with some measure of dignity, how to allow them their annoying, abrasive face-time, let them say what they have to say, and then return them to their hibernation. We continue with the business of learning to love ourselves, of bringing to the material what we know in the spiritual, that we are, like, 90% awesome. Let the 10% stay 10% and not bleed over. Let the dead bury the dead.

Patience

2009-11-14T09:47:00.004-05:00

I have been thinking that patience requires one to live in an semi-altered state where the present moment's small achievements are enough, because a deeper wisdom tells you that the road to what you want is paved with baby steps. I am seeing it everywhere:

1. When running in the park, I know that if I am looking at the footbridge, where each 1.4 mile lap ends (I do two or three, FYI), the first thing my impatient inner critic says is "you can't make it". If I look down and focus on my rhythm, not my distance, I am there before I know it.

2. Every undergraduate class where I am shoe-horning in information barely-related to what I really want to study (Counseling) and reach a point where I want to scream "KNOWING THAT MY CLIENT SCORED ABOVE THE STATISTICAL MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION ON A WRITTEN EXAM DOES NOT HELP ME HELP THEM PROCESS THE GRIEF OF LOSING THEIR CAT!" (Not that I'll specialize in human/pet traumas, but I suppose this scenario could happen). So I quiet down, breathe, think of the despair that this person must feel over losing their little Rufus or J.J. or Midnight and I shut the hell up and start calculating the frequency distribution of raw scores on a somethin-or-other chart and turn in the damn worksheet cause that's the only way I'm gonna earn a chair for hypothetical-future-dead-cat-mourner to sit in and kleenex to snot all over when they are eyeballing my license over my desk, feeling confident that they've chosen the right therapist.

3. (I've been playing this close to the vest...I guess I can share but y'all please allow me to remain vague and cryptic about it for at least a little while)- Long-distance relationships are arguably the Iron-Man decathalons of emotional patience and I'm pretty sure that I am in one now. My aforementioned trip to Boston yielded quite a surprise, and we are having a very old-fashioned, conversation-based courtship through very new-fashioned avenues afforded by the communication age. It is MARVELOUS.

But as anybody who has ever done a long-distance thing knows, at some point in the evening, after a 4-hour brain-tumor-inducing cellphone conversation in which it is confirmed that you both LOOOOVE avocados and HAAAATE Ani Difranco ("Oh my gaaah! Me too!") and that AMAZINGLY, you agree on such potential landmines such as the fact that sleep is awesome and that mean people suck, there comes a time when your giddy voices mellow and soften and sleepiness intermingles with crushiness and perhaps an allowable dash of understandable hornitude and the make-out bonanza normally initiated by this delicious inertia is thwarted by the minor inconvenience of being one-bazillion miles away from one another.

Thankfully, she lives in Boston, and not in...say...North Korea, and seeing each other again soon is well within the realm of probability, and will not require bribes or international diplomacy. (Although my yankee-suspicious grandfather Victor, were he still alive, would definitely require clearance on this matter- it would not go well).

But here is where the patience comes in. I haven't consulted the manual, but I'm pretty sure the heart is not built for this, though it can be conditioned so. Being of the theistic belief that everything happens for a reason can make every single obstacle painstakingly meaningful, and thus, I sometimes envy atheists.......but then I think and smile about having met her and actually, no, I don't.

Ruh-Roh. (or) World's longest sentence (w/ Italics)

2009-11-06T13:05:00.004-05:00

If you happen to be the type of person who so strongly believes in the sanctity of all your experiences, perhaps especially the most intensely private ones, experiences that maybe you wouldn’t or arguably shouldn’t share with others, which may include (just for the sake of example), less-than-compassionate expressions of anger at loved ones, stories of mild incontinence, or the details of weirdly sexy dreams, and you compulsively record this delicate and hyper-personal information in a little black Moleskine notebook that you keep with you at all times, you may want to consider NOT using a seperate, yet identical replica of this little record of unsavories for taking notes in your Psychology of Human Sexuality class because you could (hypothetically) have an experience where you, say, are in said class, open your little black notebook to view the triple-underlined words “Clamping Vagina” and be momentarily uncertain whether you have opened your notebook or your personal diary. A cursory examination of the context of this phrase on the page should provide reassuring clarity, however depending on your language and descriptive abilities at the time this phrase was recorded, this could take up to several minutes and be mildly disorienting. I mean, y'know.....just a little word to the wise.

Overthoughts

2009-10-31T11:40:00.004-04:00

Me and Halloween have never really fallen in love with each other. It's like we were sent on a blind date by well-meaning friends and despite knowing that we're not each other's type, we put on our masks (literally, figuratively) and fake it for their benefit. Today it's raining frogs in Asheville, I've got a heap of schoolwork to finish and I must sadly report that me and Miss Ween are getting a divorce. It's mutual, it's amicable, we have good lawyers, she's keeping the kids. Besides, my perennial Caucasian-Urkel schtick (which sadly requires me to buy no additional clothes that I don't already regularly wear) is growing tiresome.

From my kitchen window, I am watching leaves descend by the hundreds, golden amber confetti, blown earthward by 20mph gusts, scattered across the back lawn like proud, dead soldiers. You have served us well. Fall does not linger like summer, it is fleeting and tempestuous. If you catch a glimpse, you savor the moment, you cannot put it in your pocket or take it with you. Just another way the natural world demonstrates the impermanence of all things. The desire to hold on to, to ensnare, to possess what we love and desire in this world drives us so crazy and so sad, that each small moment of acceptance, of letting go, is a miracle and should be treated as such. Ok, so I have a crush and I'm kinda over-thinking and freakin' out about it, but I have my reasons so leave me alone! (Sniffle, Pout, Devour copious handfuls of chips).

Anonymous

2009-10-29T23:51:00.003-04:00

This blog is about me, but it's also about us. Hopefully I will write something that resonates with you in a way that invites you to share. If you have written me anonymously, please let me know who you are privately or sign your posts, some brilliant messages have been without signature. If you don't want to share publicly, write me at nondrowsyformula@hotmail.com or on facebook. But if you are reading and something strikes you, please don't be a stranger. I need your story.

Each One A Witness

2009-10-27T16:50:00.006-04:00

As little kid, in the sweltering dog days of the NC summer, I'd go to the freezer and stick my head in. I wanted to carry that sense of relief back into the heat, so I'd try to fill quart-size ziplocs with the clouds of icy frost billowing from the freezer and take them outside.

Dare To Be Free. That was the name of the workshop I attended in Boston this weekend and to say it was transformational is an understatement. The idea was to identify, declare, then bury your core limiting belief, that is, the one lie you believe about yourself that keeps you from freedom, happiness and being in love with your life. You then create a new belief based on what is true. There is no way this description can give you any sense of just how cathartic and intense and liberating this is. You really just have to experience it. But I'll say that 9 people who for the most part didn't know each other before Saturday, are now inexorably significant and accountable to each other. The first thing we learned about each other was our deepest, darkest pain, the pain of self-reproach. And then watched as one by one we all decided to get rid of it. It's as if we are getting to know each other in reverse. (thanks, Sam)

Sunday evening just before dusk, I walked out of the workshop next to a new friend, windswept and humming with love for every single thing, as pinkish clouds stretched across the Boston sky like cotton candy. To truly love yourself, to know you can choose to be free from whatever keeps you hidden and small and bound, is to create the space it takes to love strangers, passing cabs, cars under the bridge, weeds growing through sidewalk cracks, concrete and steel, the day, the night, the city air possessing your bottomless lungs, the person next to you you've known for 2 days but already feel so close to. You do not speak to one another, you just walk, side by side, in a swaying silence. Each one a witness to the glory of the other.

Back to the daily, long walks in pouring rain with a heavy backpack, surrounded by peers 15-18 years my junior who cackle and groan during videos of live births in Human Sexuality class, who text each other while the instructor is speaking, I bite my lip and focus on the information, my graduation date, the people who will need my counsel one day not too far from now. I put on my headphones, pull out my ziploc bags full of cool air and I keep going.

My Bad

2009-10-26T01:32:00.003-04:00

Sorry bout comin on strong only to leave y'all hangin. I gots a real good excuse- Boston is keepin a brother real busy, will spill the beans (pun intended) as soon as I get home, which will be monday night. This trip has been off the heazy (that means "incredible" in the queen's english.) Don't nobody jump ship, yet, aiight? I'll make it up to you.

This Mortal Coil

2009-10-21T07:07:00.002-04:00

Forgot to mention one irony about the mistaken-for-Cliff-Huxtable thing: My sister, my own flesh and blood, once exclaimed "I just realized who you look like!!!" I'm all like "Duuuuuh, I look like you, I'm your brother" and she's like "no, I mean on TV....You look like Theo on the Cosby show, you have his smile." My SISTER told me this. One clever African-American friend, upon hearing this story has taken to calling me "Malcom Jamaal Whiter" as a result. This transition from looking like Theo to looking like Cliff has me considering the virtues of eye creams.

No small miracle that I'm awake at 6:30am, I'm soon getting on a plane for Boston to attend a self-actualization workshop put on by my dear friend Shannon entitled "Dare to be free". I'm so stoked (told you I would be using this word). 20 years ago, Shannon and I sat smoking in her dark bedroom in Charlotte, our hair in our faces and listening to This Mortal Coil, both depressed teenagers, sulking about the futility of being alive. Today she is a Life-Coach and I am a therapist-in-training and we are going to spend the weekend discussing actualizing your inner potential through positive thinking. (God, with arms extended, saying "How you like me now?")

Making lemonade out of lemons

2009-10-19T16:40:00.006-04:00

Having a hearing impairment mostly sucks. This is something I will probably write about often here. However, it makes for frequent, hilarious misunderstandings. For example, just now, on campus at WCU, I saw this dude from one of my classes about 50 feet away and he hollered "Stiff Vegetables" in my general direction, chuckling.

I did the smiling "what up" reverse head nod and chuckled with him, wondering what the hell he meant. Had he seen me eating carrots? Did I have an conspicuous rise in the Levis? The former was unlikely since I brought chili today, and the latter? Well, surely, I would have been aware of this, as a spontaneous erection at my age would raise eyebrows, perhaps ESPECIALLY my own.

Minutes after our exchange, as he walked one way across campus and I went the other, I stopped into the library restroom, looked in the mirror and saw my reflection, as depicted in the above photo. That's when I realized: dude was yelling "Cliff Huxtable". I guffawed uproariously at the mirror as my fellow men's room occupants fled hastily to distance themselves from CRAZY-LAUGHING-AT-NOTHING-MAN.

I LIKE FAT GIRLS.

2009-10-17T10:26:00.000-04:00

Not loving how yesterday went down, it seems most of what I tried to accomplish was thwarted by the elements that render all things secondary: cold weather, rainy drizzle, baseball on television. I was hyped for a long walk/jog at Carrier park, had the perfect soundtrack for a mood of focus- Anoushka Shankar's Rise, was sufficiently caffienated, caloricized (perhaps not a word but I'm sayin' it). Half a loop into the 1.4 mile track, my nipples were screaming at the hostile icy wind..."WTF!!! We're still effing SUNBURNT from the beach! Now you're freezing us? What's next...waterboarding?"

In addition, I had a purgatorial gas bubble the size of a cantaloupe somwhere in my lower intestine that would not budge, that made running feel like I had a water balloon up my butt. Now I don't know how you get down, but I like to exercise with a relaxed, unobstructed colon, it's just my personal preference.

Food and exercise are on my mind a lot lately. More than I am comfortable with actually. I exercise because I feel better in the noggin and in the body (sort of) when I do. But the feeling of pressure and desperation I feel comes from having gained some weight over the past year and not liking it. Not much, but that's not the point. It comes from my internalization of body ideals that I intellectually scoff at, but emotionally I can't detach from. I am sure that this knot is exponentially more tangled for women then men, but I can tell you that we are by no means immune to it. I never thought I'd be having this problem, but having recently turned 37, my body is going through a metabolic shift that appears beyond my control and it is a little scary, just by virtue of its inevitability.

The physical weight of aging comes with a corresponding psychological weight on the self-esteem, and the same goes for a decline in physical energy. All the good advice and "knowing better" can't protect you from what happens when, while brushing your teeth in the bathroom mirror, you notice your jiggling man-breasts and tummy and your ego jumps to the surface to point the finger, to accuse and shame you, because this less-than "perfect" body you see is surely "your fault".

It's insane what we say to ourselves. Weight is something we use against each other too, like when we see someone we haven't seen in a long time and they've gained weight, we think of them with pity or speak of them as with less respect, like they have failed at something. But this is madness, and so is our obsession with what we “should look like”. REAL PEOPLE HAVE FLABBY PARTS AND JIGGLY THINGS. So I am using by own taste of this madness to learn more about it, to explore it, to try to counter it with reasonable balance and compassion for myself and for others.

One barely-related last thing on this subject: I would like to go on the record as saying that you full-bodied ladies are sexy as hell and don’t you dare think that there are guys out there who ain’t looking at you because we are and we love your whole-milk drinkin’ curves head to toe. I LIKE FAT GIRLS I LIKE FAT GIRLS I LIKE FAT GIRLS. There you go, three times. I also like all other types of body shapes but I thought y’all BBW’s should get your propers for a minute.

Going now to hike some of this weight off. See what I mean? Madness.

It's on like Donkey Kong.

2009-10-16T11:34:00.000-04:00

Been backburnering the blog idea for some time now, and with fall's arrival in the NC mountains, it seems like the right time. thanks to all my peeps who have encouraged me to do this and who've responded to my facebook posts. I figure I'll have a bit more jabbering space here, and I can get a bit more personal.

I have been an obsessive journal-keeper since 1987. Quite frankly, it's been my life's work thus far. I think it probably began after seeing "The Outsiders" in middle school and identifying with Johnny and Ponyboy, outsiders looking in. At that time, though earnest, I was really just trying on the uniform of "alienated poet" and wrote page after spiral-bound page of atrocious melodrama primarily directed at the crows who fed and cawed out the windows of Piedmont Middle. Oh, and, of course, "society".

It really became instinctual by '87 when I developed a crush on this girl Toni in my french class. Apparently, writing her name on my skateboard in permanent marker wasn't enough, so I laid out my crushy torment in verbage that included skate-culture terms like "rad", "stoked" and "gnarly". Interestingly, this is also exactly the way I described desirable skateboarding spots, good food, and automobile accidents. Had Toni ever had access to my precocious scrawl, she would likely not be able to distinguish whether I was describing my adoration for her or for a 4-veggie plate with cornbread from Lupie's cafe.

22 years later, it's only moderately different. Things are still rad and gnarly and sometimes I get stoked. But I like to think what I write can be read with a little less wincing. I guess we'll see in 20 more years. Thanks for reading, I'll be keepin' it real. Don't be a stranger.