It's quiet tonight but not in my head.  I should be worried about all kinds of things, how the recent money troubles can be dealt with, how to get the company website up and running, what new product designs we can invent or discover... further afield I could be wondering whether I will ever be truly independent or whether I really am stuck following in everyone else's wake as they create stunning new ideas and almost as often drop them again.

I'm not a terribly creative person, and my most creative and inspired talent is speaking, outloud, extemporaneously and to a very small audience.  My ideas appear and vanish over a cup of coffee and a slice of cake late at night in a badly decorated coffee shop that only remembers the past glory of the Denver scene.

I really ought to write them down, but then they come out sounding like this, stilted and overblown, stuffy... which isn't to say that's not how they sound when I'm rambling on about mind and spirit and flow and pointing out how badly the art is hung, but at least I don't have to hear it.

I had a new thought tonight, new to me, about the human dichotomy, or trichotomy in some cases... we still have so many issues dividing this from that, mind from body, soul from heart and then we break it down smaller and smaller, to the cellular, the atomic and down to buzzing strings of energy but we really don't want to put it all together and just look at the thing that is, right in front of us and inside us.  The only division in perception that I can make sense of is between the state of precision and the state of the eternal.

Precision is the snap shot, the tiny little piece, and every piece when held up to the whole, is tiny.  A rock, a stream, a sneeze, a planet possibly slowly cooking itself to death, it's all tiny compared to a moment of completeness, even one held for just a second.  Every piece matters and it's not a bad thing to want to see the pieces but you can never see all the pieces, hold every one of them at once.  The mind isn't designed for it and I suspect there are no minds that are.

And the eternal... I have no belief about God in any sense.  I have no idea whether there is or isn't deity or afterlife or reincarnation but a person is a flow, a stream a continuance.  Life is, existence on any level is, continuous and continuously changing.  We can know a person by slices and snapshots or we can step back and just watch and engage with that person and know them as that continuity, not in a way that defines or limits or does anything but be one eternal presence connecting with another.  That eternity always ends, we lose it, start thinking about something else and it's gone, but we can always find it again as long as we engage with ourselves.

It's all very mystical, I suppose.  One creates two, two creates three and three creates all the ten thousand things.

I prefer a balance between a defined world and a world experienced in immediacy.  I can explain all day about a person and miss everything worthwhile, but then sometimes without the words and the explanation, I might forget to look at all.


Babble babble.  On other notes I've discovered that using hypnosis and massage together works pretty well.  I miss being able to get acupuncture treatments that don't require me to explain everything each and every time.  I want to spend a lot more time at Irish sessions and I wish I had the money to buy a bodhran.  Politics is likely to melt my brain as I watch the ineffectual battle with the morbidly obtuse.


Free from desire, one perceives the mystery/caught up in desire, one perceives only the manifestations./Mystery and manifestations arise from the same source./This is called darkness./ Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.  -paraphrased from memory from some translation or other of the Tao te Ching.

Cutting

Self Injury Leads to a Brief Lessening of Pain

Because of how I was exposed to this issue, I will always be fascinated by the ramifications of it.  This is not news to me, but for those who might have encountered it and truly not understood, it might help.  More knowledge might have helped me.

Logic and disbelief

I keep running in to the agrument that disbelieving in something is not a belief in itself.  I have trouble with this logic, most especially when it's presented by people I otherwise like and respect.  The argument that not believing in the Loch Ness Monster makes sense and holds water is perfectly reasonable, but to make the same case for the statement, "The Loch Ness Monster does not exist," is completely different.  It's semantics, but important semantics.  In the first case you are hazily dealing with probabilities such that the odds seem to be against the Loch Ness Monster existing, so I generally don't bother believing it.  If you state unequivocally that it Does Not Exist is a statement that requires proof, not hazy generalities.  Just like proving that something Does exist requires proof and rigorous testing, proving that something does not exist would require some kind of logical or scientific argument that allows for every possible effort of having searched for and not found the Monster.  It is easy and logical to say that such a beast probably doesn't exist as it has been looked for by amateurs and professionals and crackpots for so long that at this point it would seem that someone should have found something.  The trouble is, not finding something doesn't actually prove it doesn't exist unless you can show with a reasonable amount of scientific effort that you have looked everywhere it Could be. 

There is a subtle but powerful difference between saying that something is unlikely in the extreme and that something is impossible and/or truly Does Not Exist.  You can apply this argument to any form of Statement of Universal Truth and I often do.  I'll leave it to those reading to decide whether they can agree with me even if the Loch Ness Monster is replaced with other semi-mythical realities.

Don't get me wrong, those of you who insist on a black and white world, the opposite of belief is in fact disbelief but the opposite of a believer is not an atheist. 

Slowly... slowly...

So yeah, I think I am slowly coming back to myself.  I really like the kind of high-energy buzz I get when faire season rolls around in Colorado, but this year was a bit much and I did a crap job of taking care of myself, my home and my relationships this summer.  I begin to have more sympathy for my truly busy busy friends and I wonder even more than when I had never been there how in the hell ya'll do it. 


I have had an Evil knot about the size of the end of a coke can living under my left shoulder for a week and between the gracious stabbing by Darcy and the brutal crunching of Dr Yoder, it seems to have subsided a bit.  Of course, I then proceeded to work an eight and a half hour day of nothing but belt burnishing following the chiropractor which might not have been the best choice for my own well being but left Terry in a better place for it.  It's nice to see that I really can organize that mismatched crew into an efficient belt-making machine when the need arises.  We banged out somewhere along the lines of fifty belts today.  It's a lot, trust me.  Terry's killing himself trying to get everything done and once again I have some sympathy but only some because a lot of this is bad planning in action.  Every year....

The new vehicle makes me happy.  I'm still getting used to parking it and I tend to overcompensate for the size.  I drive an SUV of sorts now.  Don't laugh, it's an Element and I like it.  It's got room for two.

I'm driving with Ashley to Michigan this year.  It has been... a really long time... since I went on the road With someone.  I mean, I've done some cool little trips with Darcy in the past and other folks too, but really travelling with someone... it's been a long time.  More than ten years, depending on how I count it.  It's good that we're taking some time away this week so's we're both less made of stress when we load up and head out.

Looking forward to Valley View.  Warm water and sun on skin and quiet.  Yeah.  Nice thought.

Our house is still half moved in to, but I did hang some more art and Ashley manages to organize small places more and more.  It's hard when you realize right after moving in that it's not where ya want to be.  I dunno where we'll wind up.  It is we, and that's got a nice feel to it, but we have much to rearrange and not all of it is furniture.

Tired and sore but feeling pretty good.  Need to remember to avail myself of acupuncture more often.  Need to find other good options for moving the chi around too.

Just reposting some thoughts from a comment a made elsewhere:

Here's a thought... we need to find some small portion of the country that we don't really need and let all of the current crop of isolationist anti-immigrationists run it exactly how they want to, so long as those policies don't extend ove...r the border. Maybe build a dome around it. I'm thinking Nevada maybe, or perhaps Arizona. Here's the catchy bit: We fill the dome with billions of on demand cameras and then collect royalties when we sell viewing rights to the rest of the world, most particularly the Middle East and Central and South America. Germany too, they'll think it's a comedy.

I'm thinking we'd have something like the Truman Show crossed with Das Boot and the Donner Party.

Summertime

The last few months have been a whirlwind, and possibly some of the most unhealthy time I have spent.  I've exercised very little and have had to all but force myself to meditate at all.  I've worked weird hours and weird days and never once actually felt any real confidence in what I've been doing.  I smoke too much, wound up drinking myself sick for the first time in my life and am basically a wreck.

I'm glad it's over.  I'm not sorry I did it.


Ashley moved in with me in May, just a month before we needed to move again.  Bad planning.  And then when we finally did move, it was in to a place that time and circumstances have never really conspired to leave us feeling like we really live here.  It was a month before I managed to hang anything much on the walls, we're still lacking some pretty basic furniture, we don't really have a place where anything belongs, least of all us.  And now, we're about to leave back to Michigan for a while.

I took a new job at the faire this year, which started less than a week after we moved in to our new place.  I had to create a new crew from scratch at a job that I wasn't really sure of the dynamics of.  It took me at least half the show to gain any sense that I knew what I was doing and even then I missed a thousand small things and a few big ones.  The schedule clash between me and Ashley has been near horrifying and meanwhile the job that sustains me when there isn't a faire in town is way behind, and even though that's no entirely my fault I'm still tired and disorganized enough that I'm having trouble making up the difference.

But then, we made, it didn't we.  It's been rough and hard and scratchy and both Ashley and I are bruised and battered by it (I won't go into the things Ashley's got on her plate, that's her story) ands still, we smile at one another through the bruises and say nice things and do nice things and we made it.  Not that it's over, not by a long shot, and not that I think it will inherently be easier from here on out, because we're going far away and she'll be confronted and distracted by the novelty of being home but not home and I have a shop to run and a new vehicle to make payments on and really, it's a mess.  It's my mess.  I don't like it this messy, but it's my mess, and it's our mess and if it were easy, it wouldn't be me.

So we cram in the last few gatherings, some laundry and cleaning, a trip to the hot springs and meanwhile I try and help with the worst of the load for renleather and get the car registered and maybe plated and still we're pulling our hair out, but hey, it's an adventure, right?

Oh, and as for the job, I think I made a few new customers along the way, increased sales enough to pay my wages at least (maybe a little more) and it'll be even better next year, or at least I have the skills to start really building something with the masks and the crew and the shop and Tiffany and Lynn and all. 

It has been a rough summer.  I'm in terrible shape.  I need more duct tape, some string and a long vacation.  I get a short vacation and I get to buy my own duct tape and string.

So far the summer seems to be pretty okay.

It's been a horribly good week and it's only Wednesday.  Well... Thursday now.  The music tonight was amazing.  When I got to a show I really like, or even a club where the DJ is just right on with my mood or maybe where I can slot in my mood to be right on with the DJ and the dancers and the floor, all I want to do is let go and dance.  I'm sure I look something strange when I do.  I see how... restrained everyone else looks and I know I don't look like that.  I've been told by some folks, some in particular who's opinions I value, that they love to see me dance.  Secretly I'm sure they're in the minority, and sometimes when I'm in my darkest moods, I'm sure their humoring me.  Logically I know that doesn't make sense, but I also know just how unlikely a thing logic is when applied to how people behave.

People confuse me.  They always have.

It's not just dancing either.  Conversation, self expression of any kind, I have to reach a place where I really don't care what people think about how I'm going about it.  It's a strange place to be, because to make it work, I have to stay connected, connected to the music, or to the person I'm talking with, or anything that I'm trying to stay in a creative and open space with.

When I have energy at all, I have a Lot of it.  I'm overwhelming, I've been told.  Exhausting.  I am fascinated by a spirited exchange, in experiencing the ebb and flow of conversation or of music, of experiencing the dynamic changes as they move through.  I have to stay connected or I'm just flailing my arms and wasting my breath and someone else's time.  It takes a lot of effort.  From an outside perspective, I never know how I look, not when I'm really on and feeling alive.

And there it is.  I start to wonder, to worry and then to stumble.  I lose the beat or I started being too loud or talking too fast.  It would be nice to have a hand up, or just someone to tell me, yeah, you're a little over the top, but it's worth keeping up with you.  It would be nicer still not to need that.  Or not.  I'm still tempted by the tiny little castle, the bricked in monastery of one with a slot in the wall that I can close when I start to feel afraid of what people are thinking.

It would help if I didn't like people.  As painful and frustrating as they are, it's so much cooler to have a friend to share a joke with, or a box full of owls.  It's maybe even a little nicer to be able to say, yeah, wow, I'm not doing so well tonight and I'm feeling like I'm going too far and too fast and I'm a little wild, feeling a little on the edge and it might be a good thing if there's someone there to steer me away from the worst of it or at least to tell me what it was they saw me doing, see me doing.

I still feel like I have got to be embarrassing or overwhelming or just plain obnoxious and yet these are the nights when I feel most alive, most enthusiastic.  I'm not ever quietly enthusiastic.  It's a big thing.

An exhausting thing?

I had a really good night.  I hope the people around me did too and more than anything, I hope I contributed to their good night or at least didn't cut into it.  I worry about that bit.  A lot.