Category Archives: Gettin’ Deep

Victory

It’s been awhile, but I always feel bad coming here in this state. Half-asleep, pants-undone, and beanie-wearing. They’re all me, but they’re the points I’d rather not use as perspective. Everytime I think I’m beyond this, the muse strikes, in the usual way. I’m just gonna type and something’s going to come out. Humble-Brag, amirite?

I have always lived a charmed, first-world life, but i’ve never seen it like this before. Getting kinda choked up on watching a condensed forty years of SNL and seeing what a child of television I was. Back when I used to sneak in late night television before I even knew what that meant. Back when network television was everything. Back when I lived in the utter bliss of complete ignorance. Yup, pretty easy for privilege to make connections.

Because really, how could any of this be my fault? It wasn’t on me back then to be self-aware, only to be. Be what was expected of me. That really puts a gash in my zen armor of later self-awareness. If I can be based on other’s principle’s, how is that set apart from my own? How am I in control? And how did I tend to that gash in the armor?

In a sense, dissociation. I am not in control, I am not principled, and there is no gash in the armor. Because I say so. Easy, yet depressing to rationalize.

And yet a dear friend of mine escaped to my bar because of his group discussing the ideas between ambition vs. mortality. I have no idea the motives, because I didn’t ask. I give a “helluva topic” spiel, then peace out. I look inside and know I am stuck in my ways because of what I can only assume is my age and perceived wisdom. I feel like I can’t add anything because ideas like these have always been met in a personal experience for me, be it a book, self-reflection, or a completely unrelated conversation. Never from active arguing, though that has a place too.

For me, there is no victory in this (and most any) discussion, only sides. Which is a tenant of victory. When there are sides, there must be a victor and loser, lest the sides not really exist. And then the logic gets real circular from there. My inner voice yells at me that when you take ideas like these before considering objectivity and subjectivity, you put the cart before the horse. Even then, it’s not the precursor. You can ask “why?” like a two year old until being told “because”, no matter the idea. Or you can fight and force meaning on things, and claim victory.

I just don’t care about victory, though I’m not too keen on defeat, either. Both happen to me on micro and macro levels all the time though, and I grow as a person. It’s nice though. It’s nice that life tends towards victory in that manner.

 

Symbols

It’s kinda fun to sit here and wait for the downpour. Sitting here full of anticipation to write and not really know where it’s going to go feels so full of potential. Potential is such a stupid term of endearment though. I just know that it needs to go somewhere, anywhere, and it will. It just does.

A day as beautiful as today happens less occasionally than it should. Really, days as beautiful as today could be everyday given the right frame of reference. I know that, but deep down I don’t believe it. There is too much doubt in my life for that type of surrender.

Every avenue I look down at this point feels like the paramount of cliche. Who am I, what am I doing and hoping to achieve, why why why why why why off to infinity. It doesn’t matter. It does matter. Everything and nothing is important based on what I dictate. Bring on the ranty existential bullshit that makes up around 99/100 of the content of this blog, and frame it cleverly so you’ll feel like you thought about these things in a measured fashion. Be positive, be negative, just throw out the presentable fashion of you that you want to come through with your writing voice.

This isn’t a true journal and never will be. I am not free to write whatever I want because of self-imposed limitations in my belief of this being a public forum, no matter how limited that public may seem. A true journal has no filters and I come here because operating within limits is where I think true creativity blooms. I like to think that, but mostly  I just want to rant.

Apparently I want something more than this medium can provide, and I need to take some time to find it. It’s everywhere and nowhere, and I realize that honest self-reflection far outweighs a well-written piece.

Outside of my binary star, I see people desperately seeking connection and achieving it because they will it into existence. So much of it brought into reality through sheer force of will, where the stakes seem immeasurably high. I see and try to wrap my brain around ideas again and again with little to win. I see until feel numb, and can’t process anything.

I gaze on passively, and listen.

I don’t want to post here anymore.

Muse

Whoa nelly, stop the presses. This is a bunch of writing in a small frame of time, especially for my present-self. It’s because I’m trying to flex those muscles again, get them pumped. I keep coming back here with massive intentions, with my muse screaming at me to get something down while the feeling of wanting to create is fresh on my mind. It really is strange to think of some muse, but it’s there. There are times I couldn’t force myself to write the smallest tid-bit of stupid, but that feeling creeps in, and everything I write out is pure gold. I come here though, so there’s little self-editing, and zero research, making it beyond easy to sit down and hammer out some non-sense.

What do you dictate of me, oh muse? Bring something out of the inky-black depths of my sub-conscious? Perhaps reflect on something of great importance I hadn’t considered until this moment? Or maybe just vomit all over the keyboard and get it out with all of the concern laid on catharsis and none on editing?

It’s weird because the pull is very real, that pull to write. I’ve been too tired and exhausted recently to do anything, but now here I am, hammering it out. There is no immediate need, no immediate idea, just a need to type something out. Tonight, this is what I will get from my muse. There’s excitement though, because I feel there is so much to type about, so much to write and put into words. I know it’s all about beer, too. That is what I am going to write about, that is what i will draw inspiration and joy out of.

I know this is what  my muse (and gumption) will start pointing towards. My work and passion are starting to come out of the woodwork and fuse together into something I can tame and master.

Or maybe not. Maybe I just need to be able to unleash them and deal with the consequences later. Really, if I could predict my muse, I’d be rich.

Have Nots

To be perfectly honest, I view myself as a have. I have every possible thing I could ever want or need at my fingertips. Sacrifice consists of having my wife dropping me off at work because my car’s busted. Or moving in with my parents because we can’t afford to live in the city. Or not being to be able to fit in breakfast before a long work day because I decided to sleep in a little.

There’s a multitude of other first-world problems I could throw in here, but it would end up sounding as preachy as it already does. This is my luxury though, my time for reflection. I can always bring down the sledge hammer of perspective with off-the-cuff statements like “I wonder how many people died of starvation in Africa today” or ” I wonder how much suffering occurs around the globe due to America”. A bunch of other high-horse-jaded-yet-privileged things pop into my mind, but just feel cliched beyond anything I can possibly come to terms with.

I can keep going in this loop, this endless cycle, but I feel I can at least throw a few of these cliches out there. At the very least I can look back on writing like this with shame and awe of how out of touch I was and still very well could be. Gotta keep an open mind, right? I just feel so out of touch with writing like this, because I can sit back and re-read it and already see the inherent hypocrisy, the conflict of ideas. It might be because I can’t structure an argument properly, but there’s the reason I come here. Hash it out and try and make a modicum of sense. Structure takes thought.

It doesn’t take thought though, because I already have everything I need right here. Everything. Yet I project into the future a better future with what I could have by effort expended now, ideas and work applied to this future self. Things could be so much better than they are now, if only I applied myself more. That idea right there is at the heart of a maddening paradox. Do more to achieve more, if you don’t want to achieve less. Or something like that, I sense over-simplification.

Deep down I think that this is all the rantings of an over-privileged straight white male, clearly sitting in the societal elite by default. So in protest  I rail against it and try and earn it, through merit.  I try and establish a yardstick of accomplishment, but end up not really caring about it because it’s only measured against my projected ideas and self. It’s subjective.

I try and have-not as much as I can because I don’t feel I deserve what I have, which is also completely subjective. I only know that for me it’s much easier to tell myself I don’t deserve things, it seems more fitting.

The kicker is that I have it though, and I get to decide with what to do with it.

I take a deep breath, exhale, and quiet the chatter. The best I feel I can do is listen and keep and open mind.

My open mind tells me to live in the present, and be eternally grateful.

Positive Force

Editor’s note: I totally started this one months ago, and just came back with a gusto to write something. Glad I gave myself the opportunity to polish this turd, it was pretty ranty before. Now it’s been gussied up and is just mildly ranty.

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Here I sit, existing and typing. Existing in a life that I might as well think of as my choosing. Why not? All I can do is exert some action, and let it run. Newton’s second law of thermodynamics tells me that this energy is going to push something somewhere and add to entropy.

On this entropic quest, I am what I am. The more I try and break it down into something that I have control over, the less I’m in control. I stare at this paradox and swing from end to end, trying to determine something subjectively good out of it. Good for me, of course. What else would make it good?

I look around me and all I see is ego. It isn’t really that much of a surprise though, why shouldn’t there be? What else is there to do but express your preference to an indifferent universe? It only makes sense to have a preference, something you would prefer to do given the multitude of choices. So the question is, how to frame said preferences if apathy lies at the root of it all.

I impose importance to the things that I choose, and then….stupid. It doesn’t matter how much I try and self-deprecate, or self-glorify, it all smacks of stupid if I sit here and pick it apart. I guess I’m looking for something right in the middle between awareness and its implications. I’m absolutely sure I can’t put it into words, but here we go.

In the end, ego rules the day. It’s the force I feel I rail against more than any other idea in my life. That idea of self-importance really just gets to me. As a conscious being , the logical next step in any situation is to think of myself as important. It’s just as easy to pull back and look from a distance though, gazing from a detached perspective. Detached-me really has it figured out, riding a wave of zen out to destinations unknown, and loving it. In the meantime,  real-me sits and grapples with trivial things and remains relevant due to the immediacy of its nature. Everything always seems so important with a view from the top.

Despite this immense privilege, I feel it around me, what I perceive to be negative energy. I swim through it dealing in the way I feel is positive. No real reason,  just because. It’s very self-serving and a fine demonstration of delusional thinking to outside observers. It’s just too easy to think without being aware of every angle of that thought, leaving so many gaps and blind spots. Typing it out is one step, at least I don’t have to worry about the thought police (cue the ominous music)…or do I? Nope, probably have to worry if it’s just existential bullshit.

That inherent bullshit just screams at me though, I have no idea why I don’t completely submit and embrace the cynical bastard I am. I have every resource at my disposal to do so. It comes back to the laziness idea, in the end it’s just too much work. Change is exhausting and hard, and my infinitely complex and multi-faceted self reels at the possible outcomes.

Something about my being won’t let the idea (and the feeling, more importantly) of empathy go. Just thinking about it now, it makes total sense. Somehow, my ego feeds my empathy. It seems completely counter-intuitive, but it rings true when I type it. I take all my self-importance, and temper it with a healthy dose of laziness. Apparently, I have decided whatever I’m doing now is the easiest thing to do.

Until more information crops of, of course. Then one more arm can be added to the fractal, and I can continue down the spiral with greater efficiency.

Cheers, you cynical bastard.

Spaceman Spiff

The title says so much for me. It’s a starting point, not an afterthought.

I recently moved back in with my parents, and upon digging through piles of my incoming stuff and stuff I left when I moved out, I found piles of Calvin and Hobbes. It made me happier than I thought it would, as it has really turned into something worth revisiting since I dedicated myself to it back when I was 12.

The dry humor, the verbosity, the philosophical bent, the illustrations that are a world unto themselves. All of it brings me back to my childhood, and then right back to my (child-inspired) adulthood,  a simple comic melding the two into something new. Bringing up ideas that made sense to me then, and makes even more sense now. I believe this has something to do with wisdom, but I’m not going to commit to an idea like that.

Beyond the simple metaphor of comic strips though, so much is going on. It’s strange to think that one of  the northwest’s most violent strings of time coincides with your seeming growth, but there it is, coincidence at the ready to be folded into the narcissistic and selfish ideas of yourself.  Why else would they exist?

I just feel myself letting go. Ready for change, ready to be a master of my destiny and scream off into the cosmos as Spaceman Spiff in a little red ship. A hero of my own design, existing in a world I have no control over. Fate, fortune, and a willingness to show up all melding into something I want, something where I don’t even care that I’m fooling myself into thinking I have a modicum of control.

All I see now is my dreams on the horizon, ready to be fulfilled. Patiently waiting for me to catch up, with full awareness that it was an inevitability. It doesn’t even matter how much delusion these ideas contain, because it is beyond delusion now. It is full-blown acceptance, striving to hit light-speed. My life is malleable, my terms are malleable, but my soul is not. It will achieve its goals by any means necessary, yet prove it can be done while still adhering to the golden rule. It will be fully-aware, but knowing when it needs to turn a blind-eye. It will be a testament to the heights of humanity, knowing just how chock-full of hypocrisy it is.

It will be a paradox. But it will be mine.

Caring

i’m dazed, in a sense.

so much is always happening, and when i try and sit down and hammer out a feeling of serenity, it feels forced. everything feels forced. it just comes rushing back that no one really cares about me, regardless of what i do to try incorporate myself into someone else’s world. i’m the sap who’s trying to help everyone else get along in life while acting as a stepping stone, or something inconsequential.

and really, i don’t care. how can i? i’m so hardwired to constantly feel like a failure at the goals i want to achieve, with a feeling that i’m not trying hard enough or something along those lines. intentions are good, but it’s all talk. no action occurs, and in some strange form of self-defense, i just don’t care.

i am who i am, and am (seemingly) comfortable with it, but still get worked up mostly to my own chagrin. in some sense, what else do i really have to do on this earth, what else do i have to strive for? it’s all so selfish and narcissistic though, and i just feel like i try and horn my way in to other people’s version of the same thing. if it happens, then i forcast into the future a feeling of purpose that ends up in the same realm of failure in the end (with all that hindsight). no one cares, including me, and i can’t bring myself to give half a damn. my expectations are so low that the slightest glimmer is enough to bring up my conditioned feelings of hope, a feeling of self-worth. it then comes crashing down at some point, and in the rubble is still me, not much different, not much changed.

i have somehow ended up being this delusional rock sitting in the middle of a harbor, thinking that i am changing the process of the tides, but am really just being slowly eaten away by them. the fact that i can even write a sentence like that means i have some self-awareness of it, and yet i can still delude myself into believing that i am somehow integral to all that i have surrounded myself with.

beyond my family, there really is just a wasteland of empty promises and good intentions. there’s a trick to becoming more important in this society, to myself and others, but i can’t master it. either the fact that i can’t or won’t (the delineation is small in this case) just leaves me apathetic. i end up in a dead zone of my own creation, with no one to blame but me. just try harder, says a voice in the back of my head, what do you really have to lose? right now, i got nothing on that. it’s right, i do have nothing to lose. i don’t act like it though.

i just don’t have the natural ability to make people care about me or my ideas in a way that inspires people that aren’t family.  and it spirals right back down into not caring. i don’t want to have that influence anyways because it probably will entail consequences i can’t fathom but would have to deal with. if i can get away with doing what i want and have people not really notice, then that will allow me to get away with it longer. start drawing attention to yourself, and then you have to deal with the “king of the mountain” mentality where you have to be on defense from people trying to knock you off, which just seems like an immense waste of energy for something so inconsequential.

i just can’t put that importance on it when i look around and see what this life is. i just can’t live in the moment, project into the future, and learn from the past. call it whatever you want, but all it makes me want to do is go hop on my bike or something mindless where i can do a task just to do it, and not have to worry about what others are going to think about it. i want to just exist in the moment, but am constantly being dragged back into speculation by the rest of society. and that’s completely my fault, because i want to take everyone else with me, which leads me back to wanting to just escape into myself. i care too much, and not at all.

so let’s really get into it now, the seed that planted all this. you might as well write it out to sort out your thoughts.

two weeks ago now, a co-worker of yours died. completely out of nowhere. he was in his late 50’s and was a good guy. always had a kind word for everyone, and spare package of gummi bears to give to you as a gesture. he fell asleep on the night of the 11th and was found dead of a heart attack the next morning. by his wife, no less.

this was the same guy that you met on your first post-college job, where you yourself worked as a warehouse dude, ordering what was needed and receiving packages to be filed away on a shelf for later use. he liked you a lot, because you were competent, and he held that in high regard. you were an energetic and bright-eyed college grad a mere 8 years ago, and when that company went under, you stayed on working in the warehouse because you were a temp they could hang onto to close up shop while they were getting rid of full-time employees. you had respect for him, but he could be a bit cranky, and he was just one of the many faces of people of people you liked that were let go when the company went under.

biotech is a small community though, and 3 years later, he ended up being the warehouse manager at your current job, and you were working in the lab PCRing like a madman. and you were happy to see a familiar face . for years you bantered with small-talk, mostly things about cupcake shops, family, and your favorite topic, beer. of course, everyone talks to you about beer, you won’t shut up about it. he just had the ability to be nice and ask pertinent questions.

a week after his death, there you are, staring down at him in his casket.  you seemingly had a conversation with him just the other day about weekend plans and having a case of the yawns that day. it’s fitting that he’s dressed in a train conductor’s outfit, but the waxen look from the embalming pulls all the wind out of your sails.  then you sit there as you watch family and friends that knew him so much better mourn his loss, their lives shattered and you feel so deeply for them, knowing that if you lost anyone of this magnitude in your life, you would be shattered too. after all of the gut-wrenching eulogies, there is a monet of lightness. with his love for trains, he (or someone in his family) decided to play Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train” as the music to end the ceremony. you find the lyrics are actually strangely poignant considering the situation.

then it’s over, and all you can do is pull inward. you talk to other co-workers, but avoid family at all costs. you feel it’s not your place, and you feel a little ashamed in retrospect. loss is loss, no matter how you were connected. you go back to your regular life anyways, and so does everyone else.

leaving me back here, writing something that is really inconsequential to anyone but myself. i can only realize the impact of the events, and internalize them, because dwelling  is something i can do, but cannot feel on the level i feel should be proper.

life feels precious all the time to me, but of course that level varies. moods and events dictate so much in my life, but i can’t help but look at this with complete and utter sadness. if there’s one thing i learned from all this though, it is to know what i truly care about. there is only one thing in this life i could not bear to lose, and it’s certainly not me or any of my petty ideals or ideas of success in this world. caring about someone on that level just pales everything else in comparison.

there is no ‘me’ anymore, not really. why waste time dwelling and thinking on the inevitable when everything you need is right here.

Jenny

After what has probably been a couple years too long, the family dog Jenny has finally passed on.  I am sad, but also kind of relieved. It was long coming, and for the past year there were glimmers of the dog she once was, but not being able to hear, see, or have any idea of what was going on made it difficult to see her as the dog i grew up with.

What really bugs me now though is that i come here to memorialize my dog, but i never really did with my grandma. actually i did do that, briefly. i didn’t post it though, just printed it out and put it somewhere. I guess there are limits to what i will post.

but really, i’m not here to memorialize, probably more to reflect. and direct it to myself and revel in narcissism, because that’s really what the blog is about. it’s not the prettiest way to go about it, but i imagine it gets me somewhere eventually.

this is the same situation as with Grandma though. I have to come to grips with the death that is occurred, but both were almost blessings. by the time they both passed on, they were shells of their former selves, a ghost of what i had grown up with. i will still miss them dearly, but i was glad that they didn’t have to suffer anymore.

as time marches on, these are the only real signposts i have to go back to. i only wish it didn’t take such extenuating circumstances to make them memorable.

what difference does it make though, if it makes me remember. picking her up from some house way out past carnation not soon after my first dog died.  her being the only puppy that ran away but still licked my face when i picked her up, her black lab mom Oprah tied up to the porch barking.  running around the yard growing up, with her always right behind, just wanting to have fun and be where you were. hiding in the bathtub whenever thunderstorms occurred or it was near the 4th of July. her sleeping on the ground of my room no matter what age i was. frustration with her as i would let her outside to go to the bathroom and she would bolt into the dark woods barking at something, forcing me to chase her out there with a flashlight. the countless times jogging around the tuscany trail, her leading the way for about 5 minutes before getting too sidetracked and tired to keep up and having to wait for her to make sure she didn’t get lost. coming back home for holidays after i had moved out, her always hanging out in front of the garage happily greeting and looking like I had never left. even when she could barely get up to say hi, she still would make it happen,  her demeanor still filled with the sweetness that made her one of the best dogs ever.

it just makes me sit and reflect that i have all these moments. all of these memories i pick up along the way and can look back upon and feel happiness at the nostalgia, sadness at the loss, while everything else just keeps moving forward. with joy eventually must come sadness. but the more i boil it down, the less meaning i find to attach to it. all that matters are all those moments spent together, and that i remember them.

Still Existing

Ya know, I was suddenly struck to come here for no reason at all. Mostly because I haven’t posted anything in months. mostly because I’m bored.

Ideas are still around, and just in these few sentences, I’m realizing how soothing it is to basically type free-form thoughts straight from my head as opposed to an article i try and craft and have to re-read and edit a couple times. and extreme run-on sentences, i love those. it’s freeing to just use my writing voice, and feeling that it doesn’t need to go anywhere, say anything.

that’s been missing for months. just the idea that no idea can stack up to the importance i try and place on it. breathing a little, laughing, and throwing out a few cliches. as a writer of blogs, it’s what i do best.

it boils down to just doing things occasionally, flexing the muscles you think have atrophied, only to realize you’re an idiot and you do things because of obligations self-imposed or otherwise.

just because it’s inconsequential doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. sometimes, you just come to grips with things because it seems like more work to pick it apart into its pieces than to just go with it. sometimes, the components are everything. sometimes, they don’t matter.

everytime, it really just depends on how i’m feeling that day.

Friends & Family

Been awhile since i been here. Mostly because life is busy. That is code for “priorities change”. If i wanted to, I’d write here. Like I am now.

This week has been a big reminder of who i am, as an individual named Ryan. All in this life that i hold dear stems from what i have claimed as an individual, ideas i have come to terms with through my own (supposedly) free-will. Without outside influence though, i would only be left with myself, left with only a mirror to bounce ideas off of. I think we all know that only works up to a point. mental images of “Castaway” come to mind.

So (big shocker here) I went to a local hip hop show tonight. This one was definitely lower key though. it was at the crocodile, and we got there way too early, as usual. it was just Heather and I, but in between chatting, you could just sit back and watch the waves of people come to shore like the tide. more and more friends of friends kept showing up, hugging and slapping hands, sharing gestures of brotherly love. before you knew it, the place  was loaded with beautiful people. because in the end, this is beltown.

the show started, and the artists we saw were great. this was a showcase of the young and earnest, supported by friends and family. this is both sides coming together in a public forum, creating and supporting.  Heather and I are so old that we only made it until 11:30, and only half of the acts had gone up. We were at the front of the stage that entire time though, and really, we can get away with bailing early. You spend enough time out, and eventually, you have to pass the torch of staying out all night and getting hammered to the younger generation. again, “priorities change”.

but we were interlopers at this thing. gawkers, almost. 2/3 of the people there were family, friends, or significant others of friends. we did our best to blend in as we were there in support of our local hip-hop. really though, both acts were good enough to warrant genuine excitement, which made it easier. It still showed everything in stark contrast. this show was a friends and family show, one i have been to before for my own friends and family. looking from the outside-in, i can see the beauty in a way i would never have the awareness to see it from the inside-out.

Tonight was just the point though, there was lots of build-up to this. The whole societal social net showed itself in clearer terms than i had ever seen. it wan’t so much a slap in the face, more like a tweak on the nose with a “gotchoo!” for emphasis. I’m pretty sure it was because i was ready to see it. i couldn’t have been ready consciously, it was always gonna have to come from the sub.

it bubbled up and showed me that all i have in this life is my friends and family. the only reason i’m even close to being the person i want to be is because i want to be that person for them and myself.