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WALKING ON THIN ICE

PRINCE VALIUM & A COMMUNITY OF COCOONS

May 25, 2011 1 Comment

communities, ideas and twigs

(Explanation of picture: I was thinking today that sometimes we are individuals in a community of others but we can bust through to another shell in which we find in the old otherness a home. Other thoughts about the shell and attributes in layers, too, the yin yanginess of it all vs the whole egg cocoon monad thing. And more. And on anon. Monkeys with typewriters from Shakespearean Gods.)

Feeling mania coming on. I’ve mostly averted it during Smith’s operation and recovery with liberal doses of Gabapentin and the occasional Prince Valium, less coffee, moderate running, etc. The doses of emotional medical joyrides and the forging forward bursting green mother load of spring and its resultant creativity are challenging waters for this raft. Alternately joyous with an hope that I don’t go overboard from into more uncontrollable deluges, which make me feel nauseated with myself.

“I don’t understand why I can’t feel calm naturally, without a pill,” I tell Smith.

“That’s what meditation’s supposed to do,” he says. “That’s what Yoga’s supposed to do. But sometimes it takes years of practice.”

“So meditation is sedation?”

“No, it’s calmness without sedation. It’s the ride without the ticket.”

Lady

MANNA STORMS FROM THE DIVINE

May 25, 2011 2 Comments

phone light

Dear Universe:

Here’s the quote you fed me this morn from my daily “Today’s Inspiration” newsletter:

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell

That said, I should probably make this morning’s letter brief, stop thinking about phones, phenomenology and philosophy, and focus on work. I do not wish to feel a lot of anxiety this morning. It used to be that my flaming thoughts, the flaming creative thoughts, were mostly a joy. Now I see them as:

1) manna storms from the divine
2) manic storms

I get a lot of good thoughts from these manna manic storms. But I feel physically ill. My stomach hurts. I worry about the appropriateness of what I express. Please, let me be appropriate. Is there such a thing as appropriateness, or does the concept stifle? I think sometimes that expression is very important in making the Universe a more humane place to live.

Oh, that I would obsess over art! But I do not feel I have time for art. I feel hurried. I feel that I must chug out a large portion of work and promise for cash flow and karma, respectively.

Dear Universe-God-It-Ess, I need focus. I need only some obsession. Obsession is like focus. But obsession is compelled focus, whereas focus without obsession seems a tad more healthy. Can’t I give myself over to the manna storms sometimes? Aren’t they part of my participation in divinity?

I need to compartmentalize and to be productive in many areas, don’t I? Is the conventional wisdom wise? Why do I feel the need to hurry? Do I need to hurry? I have a list of promises I’ve made. I made one more promise yesterday as well but I’ve got a year to start working on it.

I’m being buried under my own creative compost and good intent.

. .

I have been thinking about memes and dreams. Memes are the fruits of processes, the underlying history not always obvious. I have been thinking that memes are valuable evaluated on their own. But then the underlying history can help one evaluate the consequence of spreading the meme–the underlying history is encoded in some memes depending on the sophistication of the meme’s exploiters and recyclers. These memes are fruits wrapped in vines. On what lode load rests a meme?

I cannot throw everything out because of tainted history. Even the concept of taint is repugnant to me–it requires conformance to some kind of virgin ideal.

This is the huge problem in human reason right this moment, I think. The fear of slippery slopes. The inability to think through complex things in a sequential order, shuffle it, think through it again, shuffle it, etc. We’ve got to get smarter. We’ve got to stop playing to an assumed “lowest” common denominator. We’ve got to assume that most can rise to a threshold that’s going to get us through our severe biosphere problems.

There’s a ridge one can walk for easy ethics, I think. And then there’s utility in footholds on the sides of the ridge. This is called moderation. Walking the ridge is called fear. Dualism is fear. The two-party dichotomy is fear. Either/Or is fear.

The history of memes, how they’ve been used in the past… is the history enfolded in the meme’s fruit on a quantum level? Does it depend on the mindset of the person eating the fruit? Does it depend on the mindset of community? I think so.

“One has to develop a memory,” I told Smith.

“I just stole mine from the Five & Dime,” he answered.

One also has to develop a dream…

. .

Dear Universe, thank you for everything, especially the sky and the lawns and the trees and the woods and the raw uncut metaphorical swaths that are left, the metaphorical wilderness that I’ve not yet explored. I’m thinking particularly about country music as a context in which to understand Smith more, as a springboard for another context in which to understand his biography (one of the projects I’m working on now.)

Dear Universe, thank you for my health, my intelligence, my luck, my love.

. .

Father’s Day Aftermath Mashup

June 23, 2010 No Comments

“We like to say that the ideals have no basis in scientific reality. But actually, they are here, a priori.” Puppet decides 90% of stuff is a bowl of spaghetti, 9.5% of stuff is good stuff, and .5% of stuff is bad stuff.

Omens, Portents

June 16, 2010 6 Comments

I am thinking of omens and portents. Like, I was thinking that if I had given a guy at the West Side Market a piece of blueberry pie like I’d promised last week, that our friend wouldn’t have been hurt. I am seeing everything as an omen. I told a friend Friday I thought something bad was just around the corner & then this bad thing happened so I’m thinking that I’m psychic. This could be a delusion but it is hard to say because I do believe in the spirit world. I met a female shaman last weekend and she says the spirits communicate to her via thought and touch. This seems intuitively real to me.

The other morning we both woke up with a sense of dread and I found out the cat I took care of in London died, hit by a car. I was thinking that it’s another bad omen because I am being bad by making puppet videos. I’m worrying that everyone is going to denounce me, that I’ll finally hit the last straw of the reservoir of good will. Or that my need for reassurance will be the last straw.

I worry, think I’m better, post something, and then worry about it. I want to post things. I want to put things on the Internet. I want to make puppet shows. But I am not sure if my puppet shows are ok. Then I think, yes, they’re OK. Then I think, no, they’re not OK, that I’m stretching the boundary of taste/references to my internal lexicon of worry/offense/ppl I could be offending, etc. Smith says they’re OK and I should continue making them but he says that anything is OK to post and he has taken pictures of his penis with dead fish & the amerikan flag, so he is probably not the best person to ask about appropriateness.

Some of the omens and portents don’t make sense, which is not good. Like I was trying to figure out which cloth bag was safe for Smith to carry when we went to the West Side Market. I gave him the Cleveland Clinic bag and I gave myself the Agent of Chaos tote bag and I thought, like, if he takes the Cleveland Clinic bag, am I indicating that he needs to go to the Cleveland Clinic, and if I give him the Agent of Chaos bag that would be safer. But that if I didn’t hold the Agent of Chaos bag, I would be indicating that I didn’t want to hold the bag, and it is emblematic of Smith, and I do want to hold Smith’s bag. This type of thinking pervades usually every day, actually, but I don’t usually recognize it, it doesn’t usually come out on a conscious level. I do carefully cook his food so that the minimum amount of, say, butter is on his bread, just enough so that it makes the toast taste good. And when I dole out portions I try to give him the bigger portion (if it is a healthy dish).

And I’m seeing little dots sometimes, some kind of artifact. Sometimes I think, no, I am just picking up some artifact and making a big deal about it, but I specifically remember lots of dots when I had a really bad time in Mexico. But I think that I’m like, lucid when I have these thoughts, that they are just thoughts and not beliefs, I think, but I did find myself trying to make this weird decision with the bags, just one of many dozens of calculations I make daily, I think.

I have a bottle of lithium orotate from a friend. I was reading that one should really consult with the doctor about lithium although orotate is supposed to be effective at a much lower dose with fewer side effects–I was worried about it interacting badly with Prozac. I think I’m going to have to see the doctor to try to get more free samples soon of this Seroquel that I take when it gets really bad. I’m also worried about gaining weight–my emotions cannot handle more weight gain–I’ve been running every day for three or more weeks, five miles a day, and eating like, a very light diet, and I still can’t seem to lose the weight I gained the last time I took a lot of Seroquel. I read that this type of substance can really modify the metabolism in a bad way.

I am thinking that if I am lucid and can get work done that I should be OK but then sometimes I am feeling very paranoid so I don’t know. Smith says I am doing a better job at regulating myself although the puppet videos really have me paranoid because I am doing a lot of expressing. I’ve apologized to three or four people about the videos already and they said there was no problem with the videos but then my mind gets to thinking that they just haven’t watched them thoroughly and if they really watched them they would disown me.

And I am having a problem working, at least from home. Everything seems to beckon or inhibit. Like I’ll start thinking that I have to think about something (not-work-related, and I can’t concentrate until I’ve taken some action on this worry.) But then I think, “No, it is that I am not tough enough. If I can type, I can focus on work.” But work seems hard to do. I have to read things repeatedly to understand them. Sometimes I can force myself to be lucid, and pay attention. But it seems hard. But the fact that I can force myself sometimes confuses me. Lucidity is something that waxes and wanes, like a signal. It’s not something that is constant, and then cut off completely, and then restored completely.

A big problem with work is this judgement thing–like I am not sure when to stop working on something or if something is good or not and how robustly I should program it–there are typically hundreds of decisions that need to be made daily in this type of work and decision-making is a big problem for me.

Even though my thoughts are very weird, I think I am just being candid and probably most people have these thoughts and just don’t express them. Albeit most people don’t make puppet videos.

I am really worried about offending someone and having to take the puppet videos down because I really am happy when I make them and when I take the puppets with me outside I feel very safe and not alone. I think I’ve attributed presences to my puppets.

Sometimes I am very certain of specific offenses committed and I try to talk with Smith about my fears but he ends up getting upset with my need for reassurance.

I went to the West Side Market and tried to find the blueberry guy but he wasn’t there so I couldn’t apologize. I couldn’t work up the courage to interview vendors with puppets this time but I did talk to some yams.

Lady