Monday, December 15, 2014

Rebirth

Source: Dylan Guest Art

I've been thinking hard, in some deep places, in my background processes. There are hard times ahead. The world is about to fall apart. I am about to permanently change the lives of everyone in my family.

I will lose a lot in the processes. I hope to rediscover lost parts of myself, and build new ones of only happy and strong parts, that will make a framework for the rest of my life and every relationship I'll have from now on.

I am scared. Shitless.

The only greater fear I have is that of nothing changing, of staying trapped in this unhappy place, which is not awful, and has become comfortable. But is not happy.

So I know I must get myself out. And despite the overwhelming fear of this, I know it's only temporary. Or I am beginning to know. I can feel the solidity and purity of that kernel of a new beginning. And what sweetens it is love.

Love. From friends, for and from the children, and of myself. Love to be felt and shared in days and nights yet to come that I can't even imagine except in after-school-special caricatures of what a real life of contentment and fulfillment and building something together with people might be.

I feel this undeniably beneath the despair: quiet, still, and patient beneath a hulking grotesque inflated mass, mostly transparent but still huge and formidable and terrifying. That mass is called Fear.

Fear must be dealt with.

I don't know how to do this. I will fall apart. I know I'll misstep and have to retrace my path, berating myself over lost time and wasted effort. I will screw this up over and over again before getting it right.

So be it. This is the process of emerging. This is how I love myself and, ultimately, my family, including my wife: by becoming the very best human being I can be, the man I was born to become. There may be dark days but I will find the light.

SCWA

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Fragile Things

Image Source
My body is becoming more sensitive to the environment of my mind, or specifically, my heart and soul.

Emotions which swirl and would overtake me that can normally be quelled by a good workout, or a satisfying fuck, or a long walk with the dog, or a bucket of brown bottles, are no longer so easily controlled. I would not say that I am losing control of the emotions, that is not so; what I would say instead is that I am losing control of the valve that allows me to prevent them spilling into the arena that is my face and body language and social interaction. The arena that is my public life.

This presents some interesting problems. My work is affected, in some ways more so because of how I deal with coworkers than how I actually perform the work. The manner in which my marriage is being addressed is crucial to my ability to control what comes trickling or gushing out of the aforementioned valve and is therefore at great risk of a flat spin earthward resulting, no doubt, in a terrifying crash and the resultant splattering of every piece of the Life I'm hoping to hold together when that business is concluded. Indeed I feel at times (like this one) my very sanity is at stake, when I'm typing out thoughts on the keyboard and I don't notice when I say my vary sanity is at steak until it's nearly too late.

I am losing cohesion.

I sincerely hope this is part of a rebuilding process, the kind bodybuilders talk about when they discuss resting phases and building phases and plateaus. I like this analogy because I've done more than my fair share of heavy emotional lifting all these years past, and I used to think and feel like I was emotionally stronger as a result. Now I feel like my emotional body is failing me, as if I were bent to deadlift a heavy bar with a stack of 45 pound plates on each side, which I'd done successfully for weeks before but now, when I bend and lift, I feel a plink in my back, and my forearms can't hold the bar, and the blood drains from my face, which has somehow become covered in a cold sweat. I sincerely hope that what my body, my heart and soul, are telling me is that I what I need is rest, and better emotional nutrition, and spiritual rehydration. But of this I am not sure.

Not that it matters; I have little choice, and so that is what I'll do.

Maybe this goes back to what Screwtape says: that as humans, we inhabit both the physical and spiritual worlds, and the boundary between those, within me anyway, is thinning. Maybe I'll end like those characters in The Celestine Prophecy, evaporating into the air as I transcend physical being... hah, not likely. And not that I'd want that, anyway. I like it here, for the moment, and this vehicle is an ample lodging with plenty of reasons to enjoy existing and indulging and twisting around in the celestial mud with others of my species a little while longer.

I want to live. I just want to do it with full awareness, and I feel like I'm losing that. And this I mourn.

* * * * *

Today I found this: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/06/man-who-forgot-ray-bradbury.html and listened to it on Spotify. It's worth putting into text that I want to be Neil Gaiman when I grow up, or like him: the sad introspections that lead to happiness, the pure and uncovered thought and emotion that weave into beautiful words and concepts as they explore each other. The beautiful Muse by my side (yes, I am still that human. All those moving parts are still doing their jobs fantastically, sometimes to my disdain.) I even want to be recognized for all the sad happiness and beautifully woven thoughts, and I know this makes me vain. And I don't care. The problem is I am still too afraid to Become.

But I'm working on this.

SCW

Monday, August 11, 2014

Desperation of Clarity, Clarity of Desperation

Image Source
I occasionally see glimpses of myself through the fog. Whether by music, poetry, literature, tea and solitude, or some other means, the life I see so far away is something blissfully undefinable.

Thoreau says, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and I am one of this mass, painfully aware of the plight but ignorant of how to free myself. I suspect there is hard work involved, and the moving mass which surrounds me is actively resistant to my efforts to experiment with such work. And so I have spent the majority of my forty one years allowing its currents to flow through and carry me in ways that will keep me safely down in my duties. I fear the only way to free myself will be to hurt those I love around me. They know not the viciousness and ferocity with which they work to keep me held down in the place that was chosen for me, and because I love them, I allow this to happen every day, every year, every decade.

Til death do us part.

SCW

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Internal Dialogue...

Image used without permission. Ooops!
...Regarding Leftover Cake Sitting Out At Work

You really shouldn't be doing this.
-You are right.

You really shouldn't have had the first piece.
-That is true.

But you did, and that was fine. But a second is too much.
-Yes it is.

You'll feel gross later.
-Probably true.

Haven't you worked hard to get fit the last year and a half?
-Yes I have.

Now you'll have to work harder.
-Yes I will.

You sure this is worth it?
-No I'm not.

You're even hiding it from your coworkers. Don't you think that's a giant red flag that you shouldn't do this?
-Absolutely.

Then why are you...
-Oh shut up.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Innocent Fantasy

Written November 2006.
* * * * *
There's a new girl named Missy. She's tall and blonde, with long wavy hair and hips that are sloppy but not overly large. She's pretty in an imperfect way, and her smile is genuine. With other professionals around, she matches suit, but face to face she's adoringly shy.

I couldn't tell Missy liked me right away, but I did like her. We did our business and shook hands. We met later for an appointment, and we were alone. She only occasionally met my gaze. Her almost flirty nature, that one I'd become so comfortable with before, was gone. Her voice was quieter, and her smile more girlish. It was only then I detected an attraction.

Some of her appeal was gone, but only that part that goes with forward women that aren't afraid of anyone. In its place, something new took over. It felt like a secret that only her and I shared, and that made it sweet. Soon I will go to her office and steal glances at her over a magazine, knowing she will steal them at me via the mirror.

Friday, January 17, 2014

55: Privacy Please

Image source: internetevolution.com
Queuing for the checkpoint, I noticed the NSA was doing its routine download from my phone. The call to my Controller would wait; not that it mattered: the implanted GPS would tell her where I was.

I reached the front of the line. The officer didn’t even look at me as he spoke.

“Papers, please.”
* * * * *
FFF-55 Vol. LXVI. Tell a story in exactly fifty-five words. Go see G-Man! It's his 350th 55!

(A little cynical commentary on President Obama's anticipated address on the NSA's surveillance programs today.)