Start Where You Are

I find myself swimming

In an infinity pool—

logging the miles

for some outside demand.

Is this life? Just a series

of punch-ins-punch-outs-

happyhours-and-feelings

oftimelost?

I did it: I got a great place to live, great roommates; a job in my field that is challenging and constantly expanding my skillset; a city I’ve come to know and love that surprises me with her hidden gems; a fellow social-justice aficionado boyfriend who tells me I’m a goddess and refills my jameson without pause. I make enough money to be comfortable, but still tight enough to feel like a ‘struggling (I don’t want to say artist).’ Still on my parents health insurance. Fucking killing it, right?

Then why

am I choking

on tar,

impending doom?

‘You’re wasting time,

You’re stagnant.

You’re not peterpan.

grow up.’

 ‘a single moment is all we need to establish our human will and attain truth.’

fuck yeah

you can change everything in a moment!

But what  about sustainability?

Fucking zen masters—cherry blossoms in a blizzard.

‘DO MORE!’

she says--How guilt-ridden and pathetic,

negating the real truth

that I was born whole

and that nondoing

is a more powerful currency

than any form of accomplishment

in this society built on objectification.

I cherish those moments late at night before I get off my swing shift when I zip up my raincoat and meander outside to breathe fresh air. I watch people utilizing their street-skills—charisma to snag a pull on the bottle; resourcefulness to pick up half-smoked cigarette off the concrete; audacity to snag someone’s tarp from their neatly stacked pile to secure their own survival.

We have moments of pure truth and understanding.

They tell me of their home planets,

That justice will be served for WWII,

That Jesus is coming.

I glimpse into their world and it all makes sense.

These homeless angels are crippled by their ability to feel

—pain, suffering, prejudice, and institutionalized oppression.

The rest of us numb in heated homes with ‘could-be-better’ wages and expensive hobbies.

It doesn’t add up. The people doing all the work

—the cooking, cleaning, building, nurturing, counseling, advocating, caretaking—

get fucked by the system. What an exhausting insight to behold—breathing new definitions.

Social Work: the art of balancing self-preserving ignorance while kindling fire for change.

With this awareness, I too feel crippled by the depth of corruption

Crippled by the paradox of change-within and change-without.

The yogis say to ‘make yourself whole,’

—how can one integrate when surrounded by souls swept out to sea by tides outside their control?

‘Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate, they are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose and to turn the course of our action either towards the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant it utterly critical to the whole world.’

Paralysis by questions of purpose

direction, and intent—a diagnosis met by many aficionados before me.

The answer is there is no answer.

The fact is we are all alone—

single islands of consciousness

in this vast illusion of import.

The only meaning we can glean

are the stories we tell ourselves of ‘truth.’

Sometimes I drink chardonnay in the afternoon like my mother and sisters before me and gaze over the precipice, contemplating the time it would take me to fall and the feeling of inertia and gravity and time suspended. Even for a short while…

Sometimes I sit by the window like my jade bonsai, phototropic, growing towards the light in the shade of doug-firs during my 15 minute meditations and I feel like ‘I got this, I am whole.’

up, down, same thing. 

*The quotes in italics are taken from the character Jiko, a 104 year-old zen buddhist/feminist nun in the book A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Be Ourselves

I must first say, however American and idiosyncratic this sounds, that it feels amazing to be back on my laptop, my generation's source of identity--where we filter the abstract influx of media messaging with our tabs and bookmark bars. That said, I am once again excited to share a post from one of my favorite sites, Brain Pickings, talking about 20-year-old Hunter S. Thompson's advice on living an authentic life and basically, not giving a fuck. Enjoy.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…”
And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you.

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.)* There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal) he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. 

-----Hunter S. Thompson

A Reflection:

            Why is it that us creative types feel so much more inspired when we are in the midst of turmoil or ‘newness’? Coming home I am faced with ‘the OTHER EYE’ and all its buzzing questions grounded in our societies’ idea that plans equal wellbeing.

The only hard part is that I spent all of my time in India denying plan making, surrendering to the wave of life before me—and it worked. So the part of me that found peace in not knowing and simply living is being marched to the guillotine by those American scripts, “What will you do next? What is your plan? School or work or boyfriends or babies?”

 I feel like this urge to ‘have our shit together,’ makes people negate the space for confusion and the unknown in our lives. No wonder artists drink. I welcome this space as a transition, but also as a progression. I believe that unknown is powerful, surrendering to it opens yourself up to the possibilities of unexpected beauties. While in India this perspective was respected by my fellow comrades and travelers, in America people just think I am smoking too much weed.

            Before I got on the plane from Mumbai, a friend of mine quelled my worries, “Kendall, you are going home, there should be nothing scary about it. Everyone has to at some point, its good for the soul. If you don’t go home, you’d be running away from how you’ve changed.”

            And I realized, without going home, the baseline of living, how else would I be able to measure and appreciate the growth?

            Amidst all of this readjustment, I can’t help but wonder, ‘are we so preoccupied with ‘who’ we will become that we forget to BE OURSELVES?’

Insane Fantasy

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Maybe we never truly grow out of our fantasies. Imaginations morph into projections and introjections within relationships. I’ll say it here and now, introjection and projection are the source of all suffering in relationships. Just like my parents did with me, I project fantasies or ideals upon people, myself included. Instead of being in reality I live in a fantasy world where I selectively choose to see or feel things that confirm my ideals. 

 From time to time, I make an ‘us’ up in my head-- this great thing. Then I write about a ‘lost potential’, but where does this potential come from but my own fantasies about what could be? There is a pandemic of women playing make-believe in their relationships. I see this with every woman I know. We make excuses, ignore red-flags, capitalize on amiable qualities and so-on to keep the ‘play script’ accurate in our heads. Do we all want to believe in love so bad that we refuse to acknowledge reality? Because if you objectively replay all those ‘magical memories’, moments defining your passionate affinity and compatibility, you will observe the times he changed the subject whenever you tried to talk about your sister who went to rehab or the fact that you quit ballet or when your close friend died or when you were doing drugs to keep the great sadness at bay.

My therapist asked me a question today, a seemingly simple one she has asked me many times before, “Did he ever ask about YOU? Inquire into your wellbeing or feelings or past or future or anything to do with you?” Ahhhh, I smell an insight, “Kendall, the men you choose suck you dry--you pour yourself into them until you have nothing left to give.” I twiddle my thumbs. “But it makes sense, because you feel uncomfortable when you are the center of attention—that has never been your role.”

At this point I began to ramble about how this guy was different, how he savored something of reciprocity, “Kendall, these type of men can always be present in the moment, they can be caring and affectionate and shower you with compliments—since they have shut themselves off from the idea of anything deeper they are capable of being truly present. This is exactly what they want, to selfishly bask in your light while you drain yourself dry.” 

Freud called it repetition compulsion, Einstein called it insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. So how to we break the pattern? Awareness is the easy part; reflection comes so naturally. What is it about me that I am attracted to these men who are never truly interested in me and what I bring to the table?

I digress

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Are we all still children who have gotten better at hiding our bad habits? We hide, lie, steal, pick, bite, rub, suck, cry, whine, go green with envy and struggle to share. We are all just playing at this adult life. Except the money is real and the stakes are higher. Or have we just made it up in our heads to be more important?

When we are kids, it is okay to mess up. We try, we fail, we pick up and try again. And no one expects any different from you. When we are ‘adults’—we live in fear of failure. At what point do our parents, teachers, friends, stop supporting our iffy endeavors and demand only success?

Why do we stop trusting ourselves? When we are children, we are so very present—if we’re are so busy worrying about your previous mistakes or your potential failures, we miss the very nuggets of wisdom we sought in the first place.