My Sleeping Wife

Every morning starting at 8, I begin the long process of waking up my sleeping wife. She sleeps in the nude and at around 8am all the blankets are pulled off and her naked and supine body just rests there. Sometimes I imagine that this is how she would look if she were dead. The bedroom is completely dark even though the sun is very much new and alive outside.

I tell her it is time to wake up but she does not respond. I go back to reading my book.

At 9am I remind her that she is missing the best part of the day. Mornings are a time of renewal. Everything has a fresh start and is yet to be destroyed by the rest of the day and night. I try to entice my wife with a cup of two hour old coffee heated up on the stove, but her body refuses to move. Looking at my wife I often think how good her body looks in the nude but how much better it would look if she would just move.

Sometime at around 11am I return to the dark bedroom and remind my wife that she is sleeping her life away. By this time her body has shifted into a different position. Often she is laying on her back and I will notice if her pubic hair remains untended to. Sometimes I will receive a response from some part of her that is still alive, which says something like, I don’t want to get up. Please just let me sleep. I love you. She seems agitated but calm and indicates that she wants to be left alone. What kind of thirty-year-old woman sleeps like this? Isn’t this the time when a young person should be most engaged in life? But I keep these thoughts to myself and let her sleep.

At around 1pm I will ask my sleeping wife if she would like me to bring her some lunch and she always answers no. Sometimes she will even say that she needs to be careful with her weight so please do not entice her with food. But doesn’t she need to eat? I will think about all the things which could go wrong from a lack of nutrition but not say anything about it. Not to mention what happens to a body when it goes without any sunlight. It seems as if my sleeping wife just wants to hurry up and be old.

In mid-afternoon I confess to becoming mad. What kind of way is this to live? She is neglecting so much in her life? Why can’t she just get it together and wake up? If she would just start exercising everything would feel better. She needs to wake up and tend to her life! It is just not healthy to be in bed this long. All these thoughts and more start racing through my head at around 3 pm. What I do not seem to understand is that my sleeping wife is tired of life. She can not handle the load of responsibilities she must tend to as an adult and would rather just remain asleep. I don’t think this is a good coping mechanism.

I realize that my wife is a shy person who does not enjoy interacting with most people but this is no way to avoid the world. At around 5pm I will tell her this. I will tell her that being an adult involves doing a lot of things that you do not want to do and this is why most adults are terribly unhappy and addicted to so many things. Rather than sleeping all day I tell my wife that she needs to find healthier ways of being an adult in this messed up world but my wife just continues to sleep. At this point she is usually laying on her stomach, on top of our comforter. I notice how healthy and appealing her butt still looks. I feel my libido spike and I want to reach out and touch her butt. I always abstain because I know she would become violently angry if I invaded her space.

At around 7pm I go back into the bedroom, this time frustrated and indignant (it is the same every day) and notice that she is not there. She has finally gotten out of bed and is either standing naked in the kitchen or she is naked on the toilet. If the human animal could be in a state of hibernation all the time I know my wife would never get up. But because she exists in a human body she must wake up. Often I will find her standing in front of the refrigerator eating various forms of vegan food. I will ask her if she wants me to make her something and she always says no. I will ask her if she heard about the most recent terrorist attack and she always says no and that she does not care.

At around 8pm, after taking a long shower, my sleeping wife is back in bed and will remain there for almost another twenty-four hours. At this point I no longer bother her even though I am completely frustrated by this on-going situation. I understand that this is how she is choosing to respond to living in the messed up adult world but I feel like there are more proactive and responsible choices that she could make. But what can a man do whose wife has decided to remain asleep? You try waking a sleeping wife up. Any attempt to intervene just pisses her off. I have learned through time and effort to let her be and instead make friends with my own loneliness and turn it into a comfortable solitude by reading a lot of books.

I am usually in bed around 10pm and try not to bother her.

Conversation With A Record Store Clerk (#Post 419)

*This will be my final post for a week or so. I will be finishing a short novel, which I hope to self-publish in full on this site. Thank you.

 

I am not a conversationalist. At least this is what I tell myself. When I do engage in interesting conversations with certain people, I often find it a relief to get out of my own head for a bit. I then wonder to myself, what would I be like if I was more of a conversationalist? What would I be like if I actually struck up conversations with random strangers? But I don’t. Normally I keep to myself and pretend not to see other people.

Maybe if I took a small dosage of a certain psychiatric drug I would be more of a conversationalist? Or, maybe if I drank beer or consumed marijuana on a regular basis I would be more interested in talking with other people? What would it take? In my normal state of sobriety I don’t really want to talk to anyone. This is why I was so surprised when I walked into the record store yesterday and started up a conversation with the record store clerk.

I startled even myself when I said, “Hey, how are you doing?” Startled, because when I said this I was actually interested in hearing his response. Normally I am not. I use this question in the same way I use soap, it’s a habit. Do I really care about the response? I’m not certain. I am often asking the question before I know I am asking the question. Hey, How Are You Doing? It’s a question in a can that I have been trained to pull from without thinking about it.

Hey, How Are You Doing?

Hey, How Are You Doing?

I feel bad about how often I have disingenuously utilized this question. I try not to do that anymore but like all bad habits, it sneaks in. For whatever reason, I meant it this time. Maybe it was because I have a deep respect for anyone who works in a record store.

Walking into a record store (for me) is always a feeling of walking into a happier place. A record store is a place filled with endless possibilities, endless new discoveries. Very rarely am I more excited about life than when I walk into a record store. What new discovery will I make today? I am no different from a child walking into a toy store or a religious person walking into their holy space. My mood is instantly lifted every time I walk into a record store.

“Oh, I don’t know. I am existing I guess,” the record store clerk replied in a defeated kind of way. Shoulders hunched, back bent from carrying too much psychic weight as Sade played on the sound system. I don’t know why or what this says about me but immediately I could relate. I stopped at the counter and he moved towards the counter. I wanted to hear more of what he had to say.

“Other people just really suck, you know? The mass human beings just fill me with such disdain and disgust. I really don’t like other people at all. Such a selfish and ugly species, destroying everything we touch. Like cattle or something. Just a really stupid people. You should see the crap I have to sell everyday. I don’t know man, I just don’t like other people one bit,” he said while looking me straight in the eyes.

He looked like a nice guy. A guy that was once a cute kid deeply loved by his parents. He had wide brown eyes and a boyish smile. His hair was short, black and parted to the side but his style (Guided By Voices t-shirt and black jeans) indicated that maybe he stopped caring about fashion after the nineties ended.

“I understand man, I really do.” I meant what I said rather than saying something I did not mean just to be nice. I have found myself thinking similar things about other people from time to time.

“Other people can be really troubling, I know. I get it. We are in a really difficult period in human history. I get it man,” I said.

“You do?” he said with a smile breaking through what I assumed was a permanent grin on his face.

“I do, I really do.”

“You know, I think my day just got a lot better. I am so happy to know that I am not insane for feeling the way I do,” he said.

“No, you are not insane at all. I get it and don’t disagree with you but the question is what are you going to do with the set of circumstances you have found yourself in? You live in this society surrounded by people you have immense disdain for. What do you do?” I asked. I was hopeful that maybe he would provide me with an answer.

“Suicide?”

“Didn’t Albert Camus write that the only real question is whether or not we should kill ourselves?” I asked not thinking that he would know.

“Yeah, but Camus advocated against suicide in favor of making life as meaningful as possible within the meaninglessness of life. In his book The Myth Of Sisyphus, Camus wrote about how we, like Sisyphus, are doomed to have to roll the boulder up and down the hill every fucking day for a lifetime and that we should learn to make the best of it even though none of it means anything and it all sucks,” he replied. I was impressed.

“I thought Camus thought that suicide was the only reasonable answer given the situation human beings have found themselves in?” I asked.

“No, he argued for making the best out of a life that would always be filled with suffering and ultimately has no meaning. That is existentialism,” the record store clerk replied.

“I see, I guess I had that one backwards.” I was slightly embarrassed by my ignorance but glad to finally get it straight.

“So then what do we do?” I asked him again.

“Roll the boulder with a smile? I don’t know man, I just spend most of my time reading and listening to records. Outside of work that is all I do. I am a consumer of culture. A culture whore. I consume but do not produce. I don’t produce anything. All consumption with no production. I just read and listen to records. It’s pathetic, I know.”

“I dont think its pathetic at all. How old are you?” I thought he might say 32 or 33.

“I am 40 man,” he said as if it was something to be ashamed of. As if he should have all of this figured out by now.

“40, that is tough. It definitely gets harder at 40, I know,” I replied sympathetically.

Again his eyes opened wide and his back straightened. “Really. Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate that. Everyone is always telling me that No Everything Will Be Fine, Everything Is Ok, Don’t Get So Down but no one seems to acknowledge how much harder it actually gets. I am glad you do.”

“Yeah, it does get harder,” I said. I wanted to say: Yeah it does get harder especially if you have a lot of self-judgement, are working retail and have a strong dislike of other people.

He kept looking around the store trying to see if his manager was looking at him and getting frustrated that he was taking up so much time having a conversation with a customer. I didn’t want to get him in trouble, so I started moving the conversation towards an ending point.

“Reading and listening to records all the time is not a bad thing. Someone has to do it in order for there to be writers and musicians,” I said. “Some of the greatest artists, musicians and writers were obsessive consumers of culture.”

“Yeah I know but I am not producing anything, just consuming.”

“So what? That is great that you have something you love to do!”

“Yeah but I am not consuming stuff that the mass of people consume. I can’t stand all that crap. I consume obscure books and records that no one reads or listens to so it can feel really alienating and isolating,” he said while looking around the store.

“I know man. I like all of that stuff as well. It does make you an outsider,” I replied.

“Thank you, an outsider. That is exactly what I am. A doomed outsider.”

“Oh common, you are fortunate to have discovered and cultivated an interest for music and books that the mass of people have no idea exists. Don’t look at it as a bad thing. By working at a record store you are just buying time. Buying time so that you can spend the rest of your time reading and listening to records. It’s a very noble pursuit in a time where most people’s interests are shaped by massive advertising and entertainment companies making a fortune from figuring out how to feed the mass of people a steady diet of mind numbing crap filled with propaganda,” I said.

I really wanted him to know that he was not alone. That we were floating along in the same boat.

“Maybe so, but I’m not producing anything. A person should produce something.”

“You just need to stop judging yourself for that one. That is your real problem. You got to just let yourself enjoy what you love doing. Stop beating yourself up about it. Listening to obscure records and being a reader is a perfectly productive way to spend a life.”

It seemed like he was becoming a bit lighter. Like his mind was backing off from the beating it was always giving him. He told me about his two divorces and his recent break up with his girlfriend. I asked if the decline of these relationships had anything to do with his misery. He said no, then yes, then definitely his first two marriages but not the recent break up with the girlfriend. I asked him his name.

“Anthony,” he said.

“I’m Randall,” I said reaching out my hand to shake his. I felt like I was meeting someone who I could be good friends with but probably never will be. We seemed to be similar in many different ways except that he was still spending much of his time beating himself up. I like to think that I finished with that long ago.

He looked around the store again, this time he looked worried about being reprimanded by his manager who was walking around the store pushing a cart filled with records and then filing them away into their correct resting place.

“Well, I am going to go buy a record. It was really nice talking with you,” I said.

“Really nice talking with you as well,” he replied.

I walked further into the record store, ready to make a new discovery.

Love At The Bottom Of A Well

 

“My lifetime dream is to be sitting at the bottom of a well.” –Haruki Murakami

Down the street from where I live there is an empty irrigation well, with nothing but an old wooden ladder reaching far, far down into it. The ladder leads all the way down into the bottom of the well and as many times as I had followed the ladder with my eyes to the bottom, I never had the courage to step down into it. I approached the well with the same kind of fear and apprehension that a person might when approaching a potentially intimate relationship or an airplane. Every time I pulled my head over the edge and looked downwards into the well, it was as if a gravitational force was pushing me in the opposite direction. I often felt upset with myself for feeling afraid to do the very thing that I knew I needed to do most- sit at the bottom of the well.

Life seems to have a rhythm all of its own making. Undoubtedly things happen in a non-quantifiable way. Those who try to quantify life’s rhythms, tend to lose a certain quality of magic and spontaneity. It’s a Faustian bargain I suppose. I have never been one to believe in metaphysical explanations for phenomena, but I do acknowledge a fundamental and uncontrollable rhythm that is always pulsating. We can hear it if we are willing to just stop and listen. Sometimes this rhythm creates the most mind-blowing sounds, other times the rhythm causes us such pain and suffering that all we can do to protect ourselves is plug our ears. Why it was that I was suddenly compelled to walk into the well that summer afternoon, I will never know or try to explain. All I know for certain is that as I looked down into the bottom of the well (for the hundredth plus time), I felt a complete absence of fear. Without hesitation, I draped one leg over the side of the well and put my foot on the first step of the ladder. Everything else seemed to happen on its own.

For a few months before prior to that afternoon, I had not been feeling well. My spirits were low and I was apprehensive about so many things. I felt like I was coming down with the flu but never really manifesting any visible flu-like symptoms. There was anger present but my anger had no specific object to release itself upon so I slipped into a subtle but always present depression. I felt physically fragile and knowing that I no longer possessed the invincibility and reduced odds that my youth afforded me, I was acutely aware of the impermanence of all things. When reflecting upon my own life and everyone and everything in it, I felt sad. In my sadness I was desperate to figure out away to make everyone last forever, and the best way I had found thus far was to push everyone away. The moment that I draped my right leg over the edge of the well, the negatively charged chemicals that seemed to be turning my thoughts against me, disappeared.

Step by careful step, I proceeded to walk down the ladder- further into the darkness. The ladder made strange, hollow, grunting sounds. Only an object that was really old could produce such sounds. I knew that what I was doing was not a dream, because as I climbed down the ladder the splintered wood pushing into the skin on my hands caused me to clench my jaw. I have always struggled with a form of claustrophobia that has always gotten in the way of my freedom to roam. I was glad to notice that as I climbed down the ladder I felt no shortness of breath, no tightness in my chest, no sweat on my palms and zero frightening thoughts in my head. I was on an adventure. The first really exciting adventure I had been on since I was an anxiety free kid.

When I put my foot on the bottom of the well, I heard what sounded like the crushing of little pebbles into sand. The same sound was made as I placed my other foot on the ground. The sound echoed off the concrete walls and caused my skin to vibrate in tune with the rhythm. I released my grip from the ladder’s wooden handles and felt an absence of pain in my normally tension-filled finger joints. The bottom of the well felt so uncomfortably cold that I contemplated climbing back up the ladder and returning home quickly to grab one of my winter coats. Even though there was an absence of detectable light at the bottom of the wall, I was still able to see a few feet in front of me. I noticed liquid slowly dripping out from the cracks in concrete wall, oozing down the wall until it disappeared before touching the ground. For a moment I tried to figure out how the liquid could evaporate so fast. I assumed that maybe it was because of the sharp cold, but deeper down I knew there was no logical explanation for what I was observing.

My superstitious nature prevented me from going beneath the ladder. I kept myself positioned on one side of the well. I looked around with curiosity and interest. I checked to see if my feet were actually on the ground and when I realized they were I felt a victorious kind of feeling. It was the same kind of feeling that I imagine a person would feel after they accomplished something they never imagined they could. I let out a loud and enthusiastic “yes!” Finally, I had made it down to the bottom of the well. As much as I often doubted it, at that moment I knew for a fact that I was experiencing happiness. Yes, happiness. I knew it because of the large smile on my face. I could feel the edges of my smile poking me in the eyes. I was beyond the fear that had hobbled me for so long.

As I looked up at the top of the well, I could see a small, tubular ray of light hanging out above me. The ladder that I climbed down seemed to become smaller and smaller the further up it went. My smile was causing my mouth to open and as I looked up I could taste the light. I know that it makes no sense to attribute a taste to light, but ever since that moment I have always been able to taste light. If I try hard enough- I can smell it. As I looked up at the small circular patch of light above me, I was again perplexed by the absence of fear. I was alone, in a small-contained foreign space. If anything happened to the ladder, I could potentially be trapped forever. There was no help to be found anywhere. But still I felt calm. The kind of peace that in my punk days I would have pointed my middle finger at. I could have cared less about anything going wrong. I was at the bottom of the well and that was all that mattered.

I exhaled a deep breath and felt chilled dust settling on my hair and face. My smile started to adjust itself accordingly as I slowly squatted down onto the ground. I put both palms of my hands down onto the ground and then lifted myself into a four-legged position. I don’t know why but I started to laugh a little. I investigated the ground with my eyes and hands. How long had these pebbles I was sifting through been down here on the ground? When was the last time another human being was down here? I saw no footprints and nothing that resembled the imperfections that occur upon human contact. It seemed as if I was the only person in the world. Claustrophobic me, a discoverer of an entirely new world. How cool was that? I didn’t care that the threads in my $159.00 pants were being ripped away by the small pebbles on the ground. No one discovers a new land, without getting a rip in their pants.

I will never be able to represent accurately with words, what happened next. If I was able to compose music, a song might better describe what took place. I am not a very spiritual or religious man so I don’t attribute my experience to anything supernatural. It was what it was. I’m ok with the mystery.

I sat down on the ground in a kind of tangled lotus posture, with the side of my left shoe resting upon the inside of my right thigh. My right foot was being compressed into the ground by my left leg. My spine was attentively upright as I rested the palms of my hands on the top of my thighs. I closed my eyes and began listening to the sounds of my breath moving in and out through my congested nose. I noticed the sensation of microscopic vibrations, in perfect tune with the rhythms of my breathing. I was not trying to explain to myself what was going on. I was present. Not one step ahead. Not one step behind. For once there was an absence of madness in my mind. I was no longer a slave to thinking about all the things that need to get done and all the things I didn’t like. I was letting my ego slip away. Time disappeared and as a result, so did I.

—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-

I’m not sure how long I was gone for. Could have been a few minutes, could have been hours. With my eyes still closed (I did not want to open them yet) I realized that my hand was holding what had to be my heart. It felt like the frog that I had dissected in junior high school, except this was palpitating. I was not afraid or freaked out (as you would think you would be if you realized you were holding your heart in your hands). I was just enjoying the peculiar sensations without any need to know how it got there or to validate its presence with my own eyes. I felt a cold, lactose like liquid dripping on my hand and assumed it was blood (which, strangely was not there when I opened my eyes). I can’t remember the last time I cried but in that moment, tears were streaming down my face and onto my chest. I wish I could use another word to describe my experience but the word love fits perfectly with what I felt. There was an abundance of love coming out of this pulsating muscle that I held in the palm of my hand. The feeling was upsettingly bliss-filled. Even with my eyes closed I could see all the pulsating light waves that were illuminating the bottom of the well. If I had been around another person earlier that day I would have been certain that they managed to slip LSD into something I consumed. But just like most days, I had been alone.

It is not like me to feel like this. As I type this account now I am finding it difficult to find the right words to describe the experience. As I sat there, I knew for certain that what I was holding in the palm of my hands was not just a heart, but also the physical manifestation of love. I had so much love in me towards everything in my life. My dogs, my birds, my wife, my family, my teachers, my enemies, the world. A stream of thankfulness was pouring forth from the center of my chest where once there had been so much constriction and heaviness. Everyone who ever caused me hurt, I thanked. I thanked all the people I could think of. Everyone. Instead of the Oscar for best screenplay in my hand, I held my heart high in the air and thanked, and thanked, and thanked. What a liberating feeling it was, even though within a few short hours the feeling would be gone.

Occasionally I wonder, if in those few moments I was able to somehow heal my heart from the harmful effects of all my anger and fear. I’d like to hope I did. I have heard neurobiologists talk about how the heart has neurotransmitters that are stronger than the ones in the brain. When a person feels love the heart is able to flood the body with these feel good neurotransmitters, which in turn has a healing effect upon our entire organism. Even though I did not see it, I like to think that it was the neurotransmitters exuding out of my heart that illuminated the bottom of the well. Who would have thought that on that afternoon, at the bottom of a discarded irrigation well in the middle of a lower-middle class neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles County, a middle-aged man would be conducting a symphony of love and neurotransmitters with his heart in the palm of his hand. That’s got to be worth something.

The moment I opened my eyes, I knew it was time to go. I looked down at my hand. My heart was not there. I was perplexed since I did not doubt that I was holding my actual heart in my hand. My hand was resting flat on my chest just above my heart, which was safe behind ribs, tissue, skin and my white t-shirt. I smiled and laughed a little as I tried to comprehend what the hell just happened. Maybe I imagined everything. But it all felt too real. There was no way this was all a creation of my imagination. No way.

I looked around at the walls and noticed that all the liquid that had been dripping was also gone. Not a drop was anywhere to be found. Was there ever any liquid there in the first place? To say I was perplexed would be an understatement. It was not as easy as I will make it sound here, but I lifted myself off the ground and back on to my two feet. I bent over and dusted off all the dirt from my pants. As I put my aching feet and hands on to the steps of the wooden ladder and looked up towards the daylight (it seemed to be almost dusk), I prepared myself for my ascent back up the wooden ladder. One final time I looked around the bottom of the well and said goodbye to no one. Then I began taking step after step up the old ladder. The more I stepped up the ladder, the more vibrant and excited I felt. I had not felt this way in years and climbed the ladder with the energy of a teenager. Mid-way through my climb I realized I had completely forgotten about how cold it was at the bottom of the well. That was strange, since it was the kind of cold you would find on the inside of a glacier. I looked back up at the daylight, which was not much further away, and continued to climb towards the opening.

I returned to the well a few days later to see if I might still have the courage to climb back down and sit at the bottom of the well again, but the ladder was gone.

Am I An Anarchist?

I have always thought of myself as an anarchist. I don’t like being told what to do, I disdain the word Boss (I like to say: “no free person has a boss”), I think that government is a huge failed experiment in the endless possibilities inherent in the human condition, I do not trust people who wear uniforms, when I hear media people or politicians saying things like “Americans believe…” I know they are not talking about me, I am not a big fan of capital, sports, pop culture or competition, I think voting is a scam that the mass of mislead people still think actually matters, I feel that soldiers have been terribly manipulated and indoctrinated by those in power, I don’t watch television or identify with any “leader,” I think the president is a limp puppet and every time I see a police officer I have to hold back from shouting out, “Wake up!”

But am I an anarchist?

The last time I confessed to being an anarchist was over dinner with my Republican father. That was a mistake. Fortunately, I had been practicing meditation regularly at that time and was able to not get caught up in the hundreds of angry thoughts that were steam rolling through my mind as my father told me that I was not an anarchistic and that anarchy was a bunch of bullshit. “Anarchy is an impossible dream, it is violent, misinformed and could never work. You are much more intelligent than that son,” my father said as everyone picked at the cheese plate and Caesar salad that sat in the center of the table. That night was one night that I wise enough to realize it is futile to argue with someone who thinks they know everything but really knows nothing at all.

But now several years later I am starting to wonder if my father was right? Shit. I have been reading a small book that I picked up at a zine fair called, “The Anarchist Tension,” by Alfredo M. Bonanno. In this little book Bonanno speaks of anarchy as having nothing to do with what we traditional consider as political and more to do with a way of being, a way of existing in a conformist world. What threw me into doubt about my own anarchistic identity was this sentence: “Instead, the anarchist is someone who really puts themselves in doubt as such, as a person, and asks themselves: what connection do I manage to maintain each day in everything I do, a way of being an anarchist continually and not coming to agreements, making little daily compromises, etc?”

Shit.

I like nice things. I like the home that I own with my wife. I am grateful to have a job where I can help others and make a decent income but for the past year or so I have been struggling with one question that I keep asking myself: Am I living authentically, true to my beliefs, true to who I really am? I keep coming up with the same answer: I’m trying but not really.

All throughout my twenties and thirties I wanted to exist as a writer and an artist. I wanted to be my own agent and not have to go outside of myself to earn a living. This was real anarchy as far as I was concerned. I admired the plethora of artists, musicians and writers who were able to build a life out of their true selves without having to compromise their own identity. This is what I wanted for myself- problem was that I was always broke and had to work at various low paying jobs that I did not really like. I had to have a boss.

After working as a high school teacher who also tended bar I realized that I could not do this anymore. I chickened out. I came to terms with the fact that there was no way that I was ever going to be able to support my desired lifestyle as an artist and writer, so I went back to graduate school and became a psychotherapist (a painful process). And now that I am working as a “professional” in a government regulated, very conservative profession- I can not not help but wonder, is this really me?

Bonanno writes that “for the true anarchist the secret of life is to never ever separate thought from action, the things we know, the things we understand, from the things we do, the things with which we carry out our actions.” So many of the individuals who come to see me for psychotherapy are suffering from deep depressions because they are stuck in careers that they want to get out of but can not. They are experiencing what Sartre called, “No Exit.” They are stuck living a life where thought and action are completely separated. For years they have been trying hard to connect the two but it just does not seem to be working out. Is this happening to me also? Is this the fate of the majority of Americans who live in a capitalist system? Could this be the main cause of mental illness in our first world, highly sophisticated and systematized society?

Maybe so.

But even more importantly- now that I have a legitimate and professional career that demands that I appear in a fairly standardized, conservative and professional manner- am I still an anarchist? Even though I have gained more cultural legitimacy, credibility from people like my parents and financial security have I lost that way of being that characterizes living authentically as an anarchist? Have I become what I always used to refer to as a sell out? Maybe not. Maybe there is a way to function within the system that keeps a person’s autonomy, truth and freedom in tact.

But if I can’t find that way………..

is it possible that I can at least be an anarchist on the side?

The Climbing Tree

When I was a very young boy, maybe six or seven, I used to love it when my parents would bring me to the park by our house. It was not all the grass, open space, wild life and swing sets that I loved. It was the climbing tree. When my parents and I would arrive at the park I would run away from them as fast as I could. In the distance I could hear my father’s voice yelling “slow down kid!” But I did not. I ran towards the climbing tree and then once I got to it I would climb up the tree as quickly as I could. The reason why the tree was called the climbing tree was because it was easy to climb. Everyone was always climbing on it. It looked as if it was bending towards the ground because so many people had climbed on it. The top of the tree was only about ten feet off the ground and the length of it was around thirty feet. I would quickly make it up to the top of the tree and straddle one of the trees branches. Beneath my feet, which were hanging in mid-air, I could see the top of my fathers balding head. I would stretch out the tips of my feet and try to touch his balding spot. He would always look up at me and with a perplexed grin say, “Knock it off kid.”

As a teenager I spent a lot of time in that park. Girls would jump on the guys backs and we would have a race to see who could get to the climbing tree first. The girls would laugh out loud and kick the sides of their male carriers and yell, “faster, faster!” The rule was that whoever lost the race had to tongue kiss in front of everyone. We would all climb quickly to the top of the climbing tree and sit around in the shade of the branches and leaves. It would take a half hour or so to convince the shy losers that they had to make out in front of us but when they finally did we all watched as if we were studying for some kind of exam. It became so silent that you could hear the interaction of their tongues. We would spend hours mingling in the climbing tree. When someone brought it, we would drink alcohol and smoke weed. We carved our names into the branches. Sometimes we would couple off towards more private areas of the climbing tree. It was up in the branches and the leaves that I had my first contact with bare female breasts (I remember thinking that they felt like water balloons). At some point during the day or early evening a parent would always come, stand at the foot of the climbing tree and shout out, “Time to come home lovely children!”

When I returned home during college breaks I would see a few high school friends of mine who were also home. We would meet in the climbing tree, smoke weed and spend hours in the branches and leaves gossiping about what happened to various people we knew in high school. We had no idea then that those were some of the final times we would spend together before going our separate ways.

After graduating from graduate school I returned home to live for a year or so. I was unable to find a job so I spent a lot of time reading novels and writing in my journal in the climbing tree. The sound of the leaves rustling in the wind would often lull me into a restful sleep. I would look up into the blue sky and contemplate eternity. What did it mean to be alive? What did it mean to die? Was there any meaning at all? I would look for various familiar names carved into the branches. My name was still there. It had a heart next to it and under the heart was the name of the girl who let me touch her breasts. The last I had heard about her was that she was married and in a medical residency program. I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life.

After living in Portland, Oregon for a year I returned home for a visit. I was in need of a break from my impoverished life and despite my parents frustration with me, I needed some love and financial support from them. I was working as a bartender in a seedy little bar in downtown Portland. I hated the job. Between the constantly gray weather in Portland and the fact that I had no idea how to improve my life situation, I had fallen into a deep depression. One evening after my parents had gone to bed I decided to walk over to the climbing tree. I brought with me a fifth of whiskey and a joint. I climbed to the top of the climbing tree and straddled one of the branches in the same way that I did as a little boy. I wondered if the branch was high enough and strong enough to hang myself from. I felt like a complete failure and I hated myself for not being able to accomplish more in my life and I hated my parents for giving me so much anxiety and grief about my failures. My friends all seemed to be independently finding their way in life but when it came to independence it felt as if I was constipated. Stuck. In a moment of despair I carved “FUCK LIFE” into the branch I was straddling. The next morning I awoke on the grass, directly under the climbing tree. I had a painful bump on the side of my head and the left side of my body was sore.

A few years later when my father died, I returned home with my wife. After the funeral my wife and I went to sit in the park. While sitting on a park bench we got into a fight. Rather than being sad about my father’s death, I was still angry at him. I took my anger out on my wife. After our fight, my wife and I were not getting a long very well so we never ended up going to the climbing tree. The day after the funeral we returned to Portland.

When my mother died a few years after my father, I returned home with my daughter. I had been divorced from my wife for over a year. After my mother’s funeral I brought my daughter to the climbing tree. I let her make her own way up towards the top of the tree and I followed slowly behind her. As I climbed I could feel my heart palpitating in my chest. I was short of breath and I felt tightness in my chest. When I finally was able to make it to the top of the tree my daughter and I sat silently together in the branches and the leaves. My daughter asked me why her grandmother did not move or talk at the funeral. I did not want to fill her with anxiety about mortality, so I told her that her grandmother loved to sleep. “All those people were there to watch grandma sleep?” she asked me. I told her that grandma was really good at sleeping her way through life and sometimes people like to come and watch her. Then my daughter asked me if I had played in the climbing tree when I was her age. I told her that I had. Together we straddled one of the branches and watched our feet dangle together in the air. I held her tight to my chest and when I looked down towards the ground I could vaguely see the top of my father’s balding head. The day that my daughter and I were returning to Portland, I quickly went to visit the climbing tree with a sharp kitchen knife in my pocket. I slowly climbed the tree and had to concentrate hard in order to maintain my balance. When I found the branch where I had carved “FUCK LIFE” into it, I used the kitchen knife to scratch it out.

After selling my parents home I bought a house in the suburbs of Portland. I had fallen in love with a woman who was a psychotherapist and together we had two children. Even though I was much too old, I returned to school and became a psychotherapist. My wife and I started a private practice a few blocks from our home and for the first time I was beginning to feel good about my life. It had been almost a decade since I had last returned to the climbing tree but my wife and kids wanted to see the tree that I was so often talking about.

My three kids, my wife and I returned to the park for what I knew would be the final time. That day was sunny and I could swear I smelled the far away ocean in the afternoon breeze. All kinds of multicolored bugs hovered all over the grass as my family and I walked to the climbing tree. The tree looked as if it had aged so much from all the years and people who had climbed around on it. One by one my family climbed up the trunk of the tree. The climb was not so easy for me anymore. My back hurt, my temples pulsated and I felt like my chest was going to cave in. Halfway up the tree I looked up at my wife and kids who were all waiting for me at the top. They yelled down, “Common old man you can make it!” I put my head down and continued to climb. When I made it to the top I felt one of my daughters use her hand to pat the balding spot on top of my head. Short of breath and slightly wheezing I looked up at her and said with a smile, “Knock it off kid.”

We all sat together in the branches and the leaves and I told them about various memories that I had about hanging out in the climbing tree. We all found my name with the heart carved into the branch. Strangely the girl’s name had faded away. When I told them about the first time I kissed a girl in the tree my daughters all yelled out, “gross dad!” My daughters then climbed around on the branches and I sat silently with my wife. We observed all the names carved into the branches as if we were looking at art work that was centuries old. I saw a lot of my high school friend’s names. It had been more than thirty years since I had seen any of them. My wife put her arm around me and I cried a little. I noticed the spot where I had scratched out what I had written in my moment of despair and I decided not to tell my wife about it. I watched the birds and the squirrels and then climbed over towards one of my daughters when she  yelled, “Look! A butterfly cocoon!” We studied the cocoon and then we all carved our names into the branch, just under the cocoon.

My wife and kids climbed down the tree and I told them that I just needed a moment alone. I maintained my balance by holding on to a branch and I looked around. I could see the vague outlines of a lifetime of memories. I saw myself as a little boy, I saw myself in high school and I saw that young man drunk and deliberating over hanging himself from a branch. I could not help but think that if it was not for that tree I would no longer be alive. I leaned over and gave the climbing tree a kiss. I put my aging face up against one of its branches and I thanked it for everything it had given to me over the years. I told it that not a day would go by where I would not think about it. I felt stupid saying these things out loud to a tree but I believed that someplace beyond my human ability to perceive, the tree understood me. I then looked down and saw my children and wife running around in the grass. Slowly I climbed down the tree. Step by step by step until I had made it firmly onto the ground. And then just for fun and without purpose I yelled out, “Time to come home lovely children!”

It was not long after that day that I heard that the climbing tree had fallen down.

 

 

The Sunbather

Every afternoon that the clouds are not obstructing the sun, I become a sunbather. I do not wear sun tan lotion nor do I take any of the typical modern precautions against the sun. I am a sun lover and I do not see its golden rays as a threat. I’m afraid of many things in my life but the sun does not seem to be one of them. Instead, I strip down into the nude and shower in the sun light in the same way that I imagine a religious practitioner would bathe themselves in their god or goddess. I see the benefits of sun: a darker complexion, uplifted mood, more sex appeal and higher vitamin D3 levels. As far as I am concerned sun exposure is equally as important as a regular exercise.

However, sunbathing is not without its disadvantages. I have been sunbathing since I was a skinny youth but now that I am in my early forties I am noticing a new, less enjoyable experience when I sunbathe. For as long as I can remember sunbathing has been pure pleasure. Time well spent. Pleasurable abandon. But now after about twenty minutes or so of “laying out” in the sun I notice this unpleasant feeling creeping over me. It is a sensation that is usually accompanied by a metallic sensation in my mouth and a slight pulsation in my temples. I am naked and stretched out on my sun lounger with the sun light showering down all over me yet I am very uncomfortable.

Birds and various other forms of wild life will be active all around me yet my thoughts and a feelings seem to be tethered by a negative and unsatisfied quality. These feelings and thoughts make it very difficult for me to be still. I feel like I should be doing something else, accomplishing more, working more, being more ambitious. I notice this voice in my head that repeats words like “lazy,” “depressed,” “unambitous,” “failure,” ‘looser.” The feelings in my body seem to be shouting, “Get going! You should be doing anything but wasting afternoon after afternoon doing nothing! You do not deserve to do nothing!”

If you were to look at me stretched out on my sun lounger you would think that I am a man without a care in the world. You would not know that inside there is a battle going on between the forces of being and doing. You would not know that I am feeling like I am wasting my life and am terrified of going broke because of my laziness. You would not know what a great effort it is taking to stay still on that sun lounger.

In Eastern philosophy they talk a lot about people like me. When reading books that have an Eastern philosophy influence, I often come across the opinion that people in the West suffer so much because they are stuck in an endless cycle of doing and as a result our minds are always focused on things outside of ourselves. The moment that we stop and turn our minds inward we are confronted with the negative effects of always doing and focusing outwards. There is an immense amount of guilt, discomfort and negativity that is present because we feel that we need to be doing something. In order to avoid these uncomfortable feelings and thoughts we continually do things! Anything to avoid sitting still. While laying out on my sun lounger I am aware of this, yet this awareness does not seem to make enjoying the afternoon sun any easier.

I suppose I have been conditioned by that capitalistic logic which says I do things, therefore I am. I suppose when I am not doing anything my very being gets put into question. Who am I? What am I doing? Do I matter? Am I wasting my life? Maybe the intensity of these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are the result of the fact that I am older now and am aware that I have less time left on this earth to “make my mark.” When I was younger I would spend my entire days “laying out” in the sun. Lazy and without a care in the world. I had plenty of time then.

Or maybe my uncomfortable feelings are more the result of social conditioning. Maybe in the culture where I live a man is expected to have made something of himself by the age of 40. He is expected to be financially independent and accomplished by the age that I now am. If he is not, then he is seen as a loser, a failure. Maybe now when I am laying out in the afternoon sun the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that are present are the result of my father, my mother, my sister, my in-laws, my wife, my government, my teachers, my culture all telling me that I need to do something with my life! However the irony is that I feel that the most productive and important thing a human being can do at this stage in our overly productive and destructive history is learn how to enjoy just being. To stop doing so much and spend as many afternoons as they can sunbathing.

The Man Who Befriended Butterflies

One afternoon, many months ago, I was sitting in a chair on the lawn in my backyard. The sun was gradually turning the pigments in my bare chest a reddish-brown-color. I sat with my head rested against the back of the chair and my eyes closed. On that particular afternoon I remember feeling relatively peaceful. The chronic stream of negative thoughts that normally afflicted me were not present. I was not worried about money or all the things that I needed to take care of but was procrastinating on. Instead I allowed myself to surrender to resting under the afternoon sun.

As I sat there thinking about nothing in particular, I remember feeling a slightly odd sensation in the palm of my hand. I lifted one eye half-open and noticed a brown and tan butterfly perched in my palm. I opened both eyes to get a better look. For a moment I was afraid that my surprise would startle the butterfly and cause her to fly away. I wanted her to stay. I remember saying to myself: “be calm, breathe slowly, let the butterfly feel that you are a friend.”

I said a few words out loud to the butterfly: “Hey little lady. You sure are beautiful. Thank you for gracing me with your tiny presence.” As I spoke I moved my unclenched hand closer and closer towards my face. I wanted to see if I could look directly into the butterfly’s eyes. I admired the beautiful textures that decorated her fragile wings. I noticed two nodules that looked like lollipops sticking out from the butterfly’s forehead. Just below the nodules I noticed her miniscule eyes that seemed to be looking straight up at me. The butterfly was as curious of me as I was of it. Its eyes looked at me in the same way one looks at a friend. I smiled at her and she immediately blinked back at me. I believe it was from that moment on that I was forever changed.

I have always been known to mess things up. In high school my father called me the “messer upper.” I seem to mess up almost everything I touch. I have destroyed almost every opportunity that has come my way. Some people who know me well tell me I have a fear of success. I just think I am not very good at being an adult. At least I thought this way until the butterfly came and perched in the palm of my hand.

Every afternoon after that first encounter with the butterfly I would go outside, sit in the exact same spot and see if the butterfly would come visit with me. Sure enough, within a minute of sitting down in the chair the butterfly would come and sit with me. She would land on my shoulders or head or hand. Once she even landed on top of my heart. We would spend an unknown period of time together and then when she had her fill of me she would fly away.

Over the course of our first week together the butterfly would gradually bring a few other butterflies a long with her. It was as if she told some of her friends that she had met this nice guy whom she wanted them to meet. First there would only be two or three butterflies that would come a long with her. Then there would be four, five, six. And then well into the second week there would be dozens of her friends. They would leap around on the various parts of my body as if I was some kind of playground equipment. I had never seen such beautiful coloring. Every color imaginable was represented on the wings of the butterflies. I had once been a painter and was very aware of how difficult it was to achieve these bright and brilliant hues. Nature’s genius seems to render most artwork mediocre at best.

I would carry on conversations with the butterflies. When they had enough of me they would fly away in unison as if they were all given the same command by a central headquarters. As the butterflies flew away I would thank them for their time and then walk back inside. I felt overcome with appreciation and joy. It was as if I had been chosen by the butterflies and I could not figure out why. But being chosen provides a person with a feeling that they are indeed someone special and this feeling of being special seemed to diminish my negative feelings about myself. For the first time in my life I did not feel like a mess.

As the weeks passed more and more butterflies would come and play around on me. I am unaware as to what kind of butterflies these were but they all looked so different. Their wings moved like skilled ballerinas and when they landed on my bare arms, chest, legs and face they were careful not to cause even the slightest pinch. Their fragility and care with me brought tears to me eyes. I could not remember the last time I was treated with such care by any human being.

If my neighbor was to look over the fence that divided our yard what he would of seen would of looked like a scene right out of a magical realist film or novel. I was completely covered in a plethora of colorful butterflies. Even though my face was obscured by the butterflies if my neighbor looked closely enough he would have noticed a large smile on my face. I had never been happier.

One afternoon while the butterflies covered me I decided that I wanted to see if they would come home with me. I wanted to fill my bedroom with butterflies. So I did what I had never done before when covered in butterflies- I began to move. I slowly stood up. As I did this I noticed that a few timid butterflies flew away but the majority of them stayed with me. I moved slowly so as not to scare any others off. As I walked towards my house I noticed that all the butterflies were staying with me. It was as if the butterflies did not want to let me go. As I arrived at my back door I made a ti-chi like movement with my arm so I could carefully open the door. I then walked through my kitchen, down the narrow hallway and into my bedroom. Carefully I shut the door behind me and then sat down onto my bed.

There were butterflies on my head, eyelids, nose, lips, shoulders, arms, chest, neck, legs and feet. I was a human butterfly blanket. While sitting on the side of my bed I remembered a dream that I often had when I was a kid. In my dream I would be sitting up in my bed watching hundreds of different colored butterflies fly around in my room. This memory caused a tingling sensation to shoot up my spine. Almost all of the dreams and ambitions that I had as a child have not become a reality in my adult life. I had had to accept that more often than not dreams remain dreams. But as I sat on the side of my bed I was realizing that for the first time in my adult life one of my dreams was turning into a reality. I was actually filling my bedroom with butterflies.

For the next few days I would go into my backyard, sit in the same spot and collect more butterflies. Dozens would immediately fly over to me in the same way a toddler would take a leap into their parent’s arms. It was as if the butterflies felt that I offered them the same kind of salvation that they were offering to me. I would thank all of the butterflies for congregating all over my body and then very slowly I would walk into my house and bring them into my bedroom. After a few days of this my bedroom was like a butterfly forest. Even better than that- the butterflies had transformed my ordinary bedroom into alternate universe.

I remained in my bedroom for days with the butterflies. I would lie on my bed, with my hands folded behind my head and watch the butterflies dance around my room. The butterflies covered every inch of ceiling, wall, floor and the entire space in-between. Purples, reds, blues, oranges, greens, yellows and brown colors palpitated in the air. This is what I imagined an LSD trip must be like. At night when I slept I would not need to warm myself under the blankets. Instead the moment I turned out the lights the butterflies would cover my entire body like a blanket. Feeling the butterfly’s pulsations would lull me into a deep sleep.

Those few days in my bedroom with the butterflies are worth more to me than anything I could ever own. The butterflies helped me to believe that I was no longer a mess waiting to happen. Instead I felt like a sense of magic that gets blurred out by negative thinking had returned to me. The butterflies showed me that there was so much more to life than what I had come to believe was true.

I believe it was on the morning of the third day that I realized I would have to let the butterflies go. I knew they would not be able to survive in my room for much longer. I wanted to keep them in my room but I knew that if I did it would be a very selfish act. I had to let them go. I opened my bedroom window and like air from a balloon they all swarmed out. I watched them fly through the trees, across the street and towards the distant horizon. After all the butterflies had left I shed a few tears, closed my window and turned around to go sit on bed.

As I turned around I noticed that there was one butterfly that had remained behind. She was perched on the nightstand besides my bed. I felt what I can only describe as joy begin to flood into my chest. It was who I hoped it was- the brown and tan butterfly who I had met on that peaceful afternoon many, many weeks ago. I reached out the palm of my hand and immediately she came and rested in it. I then lay back on my bed with her in the palm of my hand. I looked at her in the eyes and told her I was so happy she stayed.

I decided to keep the butterfly in my room. I have done some research on Google and learned about what she needs to survive. She seems happy in my room. Every night before bed she will fly skillfully around my room. Watching her delicate movements will lull me into a deep sleep. During the day she hangs out on my head or shoulder as I read a book. I am now more satisfied than I have ever been in my life. Who would have ever thought that all it would take was befriending a butterfly.

Just Leave Me The Hell Alone.

I am writing this to help myself. I am letting you read it in the hopes that maybe it will help you. If not, I do not care- not my problem.  Or maybe it is my problem- I do not know where I stand on this matter. Anyways, sometimes I am in a crappy mood. I should write crappy with a capital C. I wake up this way in the morning. Upon lifting my lethargic and heavy head from the pillow I am not sure if a foul mood will be there to greet me, but often times I know I am feeling that familiar blue tone of grumpiness by the time I am standing over the toilet, taking my morning pee.

I just realized that this is a particular chronic problem that has followed me around for most of my adult life. I am 42 years of age now and the other day I was reading through my journals from when I was 27 and came across the line: “I woke up in a foul mood this morning.” Suddenly I realized that I have been waking up with this foul, indignant, bitter mood for a lot longer than I thought. For some reason I thought that maybe it is only as of recent that I have been a grump in the morning time, but I guess I have been a morning grump for a lot longer than I wanted to believe.

When I wake up in a crappy mood one would be best advised to just leave me the fuck alone. I am often as bitter as rotten fruit. If you talk to me I will bark. If you come near me I will freeze up. I will unfairly judge you and I will view humanity as nothing more than a bunch of monkeys dressed up in clothes. I do not always wake up with this tone in my soul. Some mornings I wake up as chipper as a puppy. I am ready for a hug, love and am inclined toward silliness. I am optimistic about the future, content with the present, eager to start the day and to do something fun with my wife. But this only happens a few times a week. The rest of the time I am bitter and foul. I am lethargic and short of breath. I am heavy and congested. I am ready to fight. Just leave me the hell alone.

It must not be easy to be married to me. My poor wife never knows whom she is going to wake up next to in the morning.

What is even more frustrating is that I do not even know how I am going to feel when I open my eyes in the morning.

And what is most frustrating is that I have no idea why I am this way.

It may have something to do with the fact that I am not satisfied with my life. But this cannot be it. I have a nice life with a god amount of room for improvement. But maybe I am just unhappy with certain things or myself? Maybe I worry too much?

Maybe this is apart of aging?

Or it may have something to do with my health. Maybe I suffer from a particular sleep disorder. Or maybe my unhappy childhood and often-angry father are still playing out inside me. Maybe I have certain emotional blocks that create some kind of energetic constipation. I have noticed that often the mood that I am in in the mornings reflects how I felt before going to bed. If I went to bed in an unhappy mood I will often wake up a bitter man. If I had fun the night before chances are that when I wake up in the morning I will be ready for a hug. But this is not always the case. Often times I just wake up feeling like shit. No one likes to feel like shit in the mornings and I think morning time lethargy, shortness of breath, grogginess and lower back pain could put even the holiest of enlightened human beings in a bitter mood. So this is what they meant when as a kid I was often told: “don’t take your good health for granted.”

For the past few months I have been reading a lot of spiritual literature. I work as a psychotherapist and I feel it is my responsibility as a psychotherapist to not be as stuck and unhappy as some of my clients. I need to be content and in good spirits about my life so that I can show them the way.  My relationships need to be healthy. I do not feel right about taking my clients money when just before meeting with them I had to snap myself out of a foul mood. I should walk the talk; feel on the inside how I appear to be on the outside.

The one spiritual philosophy that has captured my attention is non-duality. In a nut shell non-duality does not recognize a separation between the inside and the outside. We are all one entity playing itself out on the screens of our consciousness. Nothing exists “out there.” Everything manifests in consciousness, not outside of it. This idea gives a person a lot of freedom around how they chose to experience the experiences that they have in their life. A person can choose to get swallowed up by the waves (which are negative emotions and feelings often the result of unfavorable experiences) or they can stay connected with the ocean. After all in a non-dualistic universe, who we really are is the ocean and not the waves.

Often times I begin my days deep beneath the surface of the water, forced under by powerful waves. I drink green tea to wake up and eat something sweet. Sometimes I exercise. I try to come up for air, I tell myself to focus on the ocean and not get caught up in the waves but often as soon as I do this I am facing another wave that is about to come crashing down upon me. Often times before the hour of 2pm- it sucks being me. I have massive amounts of salt water up my nose and my head is sore from getting pounded against so much.  It feels like I have a cotton ball stuck in my brain. “Just leave me the hell alone,” I often catch myself thinking but deep down I know I do not mean it. I want you to love me. I want you to take me in your arms. But just go easy. Be gentle and realize you are dealing with a man who is fighting against a stubborn undercurrent, fierce waves and an ocean that is often far out of his reach. Give me until 2pm- by then I should be all right.

The Box Collector

I would sit there hiding behind a heap of weeds and overgrown rosemary plants, spending my afternoons watching. People would always come, but on average no more than two a day. When a person walked up to the back of the building and stood at the edge of the descending stairway, I would lift the binoculars that I kept wrapped around my neck and try and get a good look at them. Their shoulders would always be hunched in defeat. Some dressed nice but others looked disheveled. When I got a glimpse of the person’s eyes I would notice the same thing every time. There was blankness, as if no one resided behind those eyes anymore. No matter who they were, everyone who walked to the edge of that staircase would always stop for a minute or longer. They would look down the stairs as if they were staring into an abyss. In those moments I would always feel this uncomfortable sensation come over me because I knew that I would be the last person seeing them alive. I knew that in that moment I could jump out from my hiding spot in the bushes and try and convince them to remain alive, but that was not my role. I was just a spectator and as a result I would always remain in the bushes, waiting for the person to walk down the stairs towards the box.

The city in which I live started the box program a year or so ago, around the time I lost my last job. They started the program in response to the immensely high suicide rate that the city was experiencing. The economic recession was in full swing, banks were swallowing up everything that hard working people owned and jobs were vanishing like mist on a hot summers day. The majority of people who live in my city are middle class people who take great pride in their homes and jobs and when they found themselves without either suicide seemed to become a popular solution. Entire families were killing themselves. At one point it seemed as if everyone was doing it: teachers, electricians, gardeners, construction workers, architects, dentists, chiropractors, therapists, housewives and children. The cost of sending out paramedics and police to the scene of the suicide, hospital and clean up fees were all causing the city to go broke. In response to this crisis the mayor decided to sign into action the box program.

The box program is the cities alternative to messy suicides and to having to pay to send paramedics, police and clean up crews to the scene of a suicide. The program offers individuals the opportunity to climb into a brand new clean white box long enough for someone who is over six feet inches tall to fit comfortably in. Inside the box is a single, complimentary cyanide capsule. There are no questions asked and the individuals final moments can be spent in complete quiet. The person climbs into the box, swallows the cyanide capsule, lays back and then closes the box lid over them. Simple. Every morning city officials come and collect the box and then leave a new one in its place. Bodies are cremated and this is the end of the story as far as the city is concerned. “Everybody Wins,” was how the box program was initially marketed to the general public. For about a year now the box program has been incredibly successful. It seems as if those who want to commit suicide much prefer this method to the more messy ones.

The white box sits against a cement wall in the back stairwell of the cities community center, which was shut down some time ago. The box is on the ground, in the left hand corner and the head of the box is pushed against a locked black door with a sign on it that reads, “Do Not Enter.” Beside the box there is a smaller box of tissue papers and several pamphlets, which offer individuals information about why suicide may not be the best option for themselves and/or their families. On the lid of the box, in bright red letters is written: Please swallow the capsule first and then place box lid on top of the box BEFORE lying down to rest. Thank you.

During my time observing from the bushes I witnessed a few individuals walk down the stairway and then a few minutes later walk back up. I was always glad when I saw this. It was as if the person was getting back something that they almost permanently lost. Their eyes were always bloodshot and filled with tears and they looked as if they were about to collapse. I always wondered to myself why they decided to come back up from the depths. Did they read the pamphlet about suicide prevention and then decide to give life another shot? Or was there someone else already in the box?

It is well known in my city that those who want to participate in the box program should show up first thing in the morning so as to get an available box. The boxes do fill up quickly and even though on many days they are empty way into the afternoon, it is still considered wise to try and get there early. Few things are as disheartening as showing up to commit suicide and then seeing the lid already on the box and knowing you have to wait another day, maybe more. Must be difficult to return home after you assumed you were leaving for the final time.

I would hide in the bushes and observe people participating in the box program a few times a week. I really did not have better things to do. For some reason engaging in this activity added a certain element of excitement and adventure to my life that was not there before the box program. In a strange way I felt as if watching those people gave me a kind of purpose. I would pack myself a bagged lunch, bring a foldable stool and a pair of binoculars and then claim my spot within the weeds and rosemary plants. I would wait there in the bushes behind the community center until I could catch a glimpse of a person who was heading down towards the box. I found it strange that I was so morbidly fascinated by this, so much so that I was willing to spend 4 or 5 hours hiding in the bushes.

It is fascinating to see a person in the final moments of their lives. In my head I constructed a narrative, trying to make sense about what brought them to this point. I was also curious to see if I would recognize any of the individuals who showed up to participate in the box program. It was always the strangest sensation when I recognized someone that I knew. I saw my third grade teacher, my old therapist, my dentist, an old dog trainer my family used to use, a girl who bagged groceries at the local supermarket that went out of business and my parents gardener. Even though my heart would always pound when I would realize that I knew the person- I still never did anything to stop them from climbing into the box. It was not my place to do so- they had made up their own minds and I knew that I needed to respect that.

When I initially lost my job as a librarian I also struggled with suicidal thoughts. I did not know what was going to happen to me or how I would survive economically. I felt like a failure. Bills were piling up and all of a sudden a chronic feeling of impending doom invaded my life. Suicide seemed to be a less painful way out from the difficult situation I found myself in.

Before I became a regular observer watching from the bushes, I was one of those people who made their way down the stairway and into the box. I climbed into the box and held the cyanide tablet in the palm of my hand. I looked around and saw the tops of trees, birds and I could hear the distant sounds of the little league baseball team playing on the old baseball field not far from where I was. As I held the capsule in my hand, I was violently shaking. I felt a wave of fear come over me, since I was not sure about what came after death. I also felt like I was not a hundred percent ready to leave this life. I read through one of the pamphlets besides the box, searching for a sentence that would give me the strength to want to continue to live. Fortunately, I realized that even though I was broke, depressed, without a job and with little hope I could still enjoy being. I could still enjoy the pleasures that hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling and touching had to offer me. I heard the distant and beautiful sound of a bat connecting with a baseball and decided to put the cyanide capsule down and make the most of whatever life I still had left to live.

Since that day when I managed to climb out of the box I have been fascinated with those people who are in a similar situation that I was in. Maybe it made me feel less alone to see others who were struggling just as much as I was. When I saw a person stop before those stairs I was convinced that I knew what they were thinking: “Do I really want to do this?” “I don’t think I can take any more of this life,” “I am such a failure,” “I just don’t want to live anymore, death will be easier.” When they decided to walk down the stairs I knew that they had just made the biggest decision of their entire lives.

For the past month or so I have decided to quit hiding in the bushes. I think that I have seen enough from behind the weeds and rosemary. Ironically enough, several months ago I applied for a position with the city working as a box collector and last week I was fortunate enough to get the job. Every morning, seven days a week, I come with my partner to collect the box. I still find it interesting that there is never a day where there is not a body inside the box. We lift the box together, carry it up the stairs and then put it in the back of a long white city van. I then take out a new white box and put it in the old box’s place. My partner is in charge of lifting the box lid and placing the cyanide capsule inside the box. We both try and leave the area in as nice of a condition as possible so that those who are going to participate in the box program spend the last few minutes of their lives in a clean space. The other morning when we were bringing a box up the stairs I noticed something that made me laugh out loud. My partner asked me what was so funny and I said, “nothing.” What I noticed was this older gentleman hiding in the bushes, dressed in tan pants and a green button down shirt observing us through a pair of binoculars.

The Smilist

I have decided that my form of protest is smiling. I have always wanted to be more of a social activist but have just never been one to involve myself in large causes. I seem to stray away from any kind of cause that can not immediately have an effect on the thing I am trying to change. Maybe this is why I have always enjoyed protest as a solo act. Throughout my life I have done this in many ways- being a vegan, holding a protest sign on the side of a busy road day after day, spending my days reading novels, making art, spending the afternoon walking around when I should be working, turning American flags upside down and now I am smiling.

For the past few years I have been observing other people’s faces. I look at their faces while they walk down the street, sit at bus stops or drive their cars. One phenomenon that I have noticed is that the great majority of people have what look like grimace on their faces. The opposite of smiles. In the past year I have noticed that the sides of people’s lips have begun to droop even further downwards indicating a feeling of defeat and distress. Brows have become chronically furrowed and more and more people have wave-like distress lines on their foreheads. I began to feel that the smile was becoming in danger of extinction. As a result, one morning many weeks ago, I spent hours practicing my smile in my bathroom mirror. I also had unconsciously developed a chronic grimace and it was tiring to keep the sides of my lips and cheeks in an upright position. I had to retrain myself to smile by holding a smile for as long as I could and repeating the mantra “life is good” over and over. After a few days of practice I was able to keep a smile on my face all day long.

Every time that I leave my house I am actively smiling. I smile at whomever I pass by. I smile when I walk, talk and browse in the supermarket. I am making a conscious effort to look strangers in the eye and smile. Some people seem to appreciate this and reflect a shy smile back at me. Most other people seem to be put off by my smile and tell me this by looking the other way. I suppose unhappiness gets really comfortable after awhile and the sight of a person smiling at you may be too much to handle. I am compassionate about this so I do not take other people’s dismissiveness personally. What I do take personally is the people who seem to enjoy trying to wipe the smile right off my face.

There are always those few people who are so unhappy and miserable inside that they want the rest of the world to feel this way also. As a person who is making the conscious effort to save the smile from extinction I try to continue to smile at a person even when they are calling me “gay,” “idiot,” or any other derogatory term I have heard shouted my way. There have been a few men who have tried to physically attack me when I smiled at them- I assume this was because they are insecure in their own sexuality and assumed I was coming on to them. The other day I was run out of a record store because a large man with tattoos was threatening to cut my balls off because I was smiling at him. I admit, maybe I was partially to blame for this. The tattooed man looked so deeply angry that I had to smile at him a little bit longer than I should have.

I have heard it said that smiling is contagious but what I have found to be true is the opposite. Smiling can also be offensive. Maybe it is because we are living in a time where people are so stressed, over worked and worried about money that smiling represents a kind of mockery of the average Americans situation. People in America are really suffering at the moment and smiling as a result is not in fashion. I have found that to fit in you have to frown, or smile just a little bit. The person who decides to walk down a city street with a big smile on their face is considered to either be mentally ill or unstable in some sort of way. When I walk through the town where I live I am continually hearing names hurled at me from passing car windows. What I have heard most often as of late is “there is that smilist again.”

So be it.

Maybe I am the idiot but it is my belief that we create our reality from the inside out. There are things that happen to us that are beyond our control, but we do have control over how we choose to think about these experiences. If a person decides to shout a negative name at me, or be disrespectful towards me because I am smiling it is my choice whether or not I allow myself to get mad or just let it go and keep smiling. As far as I am concerned- if each individual does not take responsibility for his or her own inner well being, then the smile is doomed to become extinct. For now I will keep working to keep the smile alive. I will walk, drive, sleep with a smile on my face despite the danger that this seems to be putting me in. When others try to bring me down I will continue to smile. If they want to shout “smilist” from their car windows at me, then I will smile more. Please, if you can- join me and start smiling. Life is better this way.

Interview With Myself #7: On Self Love, Loving Others and Thinking Your Way Out of a Depression

It is 10:19am on a Tuesday morning when this interview begins. I have already eaten breakfast and meditated. It will probably be no surprise to you that I am again sitting at my round kitchen table and am dressed in the clothes that I slept in. I am not sure why this is the place that all of these interviews are conducted. It seems that I am most open to interviewing myself in the mornings. As the day progresses, my head fills with all the things that I need to do so I am less inclined to stop what I am doing and sit down to be interviewed. Mornings are a convenient time for me. My mind is freshest in the morning. I feel that I am more willing to be honest and open in the mornings. By the afternoon, it seems as if my ego is in full swing and I am less willing to be open about my life. After one in the afternoon I notice that I get more defensive, judgmental and negative. I would like to add that I am working on this. In the mornings when I wake up I do a loving kindness meditation where I try and fill my body and mind with positive and loving vibrations. My meditation teacher tells me that if I do this consistently, every morning, positive and loving vibrations will be imprinted in me and I will no longer be such a jerk come mid afternoon.

Interviewer: Good morning Randall.

Randall: Good morning to you.

Interviewer: Good morning.

Randall: Good morning.

Interviewer: Wow, you seem rather up beat this morning.

Randall: Thank you. I do feel in good spirits.

Interviewer: And to what do you owe this emotional sea change?

Randall: What do you mean by emotional sea change?

Interviewer: Well a few days ago you were suffering from a low-grade depression and now you seem up beat and well, relatively happy.

Randall: Ah I see- you mean how is it that I have gone from Z to A?

Interviewer: Maybe not Z to A but from Z to R.

Randall: Ok whatever I don’t want to argue over the alphabet. I think I get what you are asking me. Yes for a few days I was stuck in a depressive state but fortunately I was able to think my way out of it. Along with the help of a few friends I realized some things about myself that I had not considered before.

Interviewer: Such as what?

Randall: Well for one my life is not nearly as bad as I often think it is. I occasionally sink it to these ruts where I compare myself to others and I even tend to envy them. But I realized that this is a very misguided thing to do. Who knows what these individuals deal with in their life and just because they have fame or financial success does not mean that they are any better off than I. I realized it is futile to compare myself to them. We are all human and we all have our own struggles to deal with and it is silly to think that their life is any better off than mine because they have more money.

Interviewer: So basically you realized that it was the way in which you were thinking about your life that made you depressed as opposed to the actual realities of your life?

Randall: Yeah the reality of my life is very good. I am in many ways a blessed man whose problems are manageable. Things are not out of control. I may not have a lot of money, I may have huge student loans that I need to pay back, my health may not be 100% but still I am doing well. You know what realization helped me most?

Interviewer: What?

Randall: The realization that I never was the kind of person that had making money as a priority or goal. Most of my adult life I have shunned the idea of living for the buck. I dreaded living a life that was all about earning cash. To me this was how to get on the path towards a quiet life of desperation. Instead I wanted to live fully rather than work hard. I wanted (and still want) to spend my afternoons wandering around with no destination in mind. I wanted to be able to have the freedom to do what I wanted rather than have to do what a boss or society tells me to do. Chosing time and freedom over career and money has set me back financially- but what it has given me can not be compared or measured.

Interviewer: This is true my friend. I would not describe you as someone who has wasted their time.

Randall: NO that is the thing. I feel like I have spent my time wisely. I feel like I have lived a full life and done things that mean a lot to me. I do not feel like I live a quiet life of desperation.

Interviewer: So you realized that your life is very blessed, that you live a full life rather than comparing yourself to people who may have accomplished more in terms of financial and worldly success?

Randall: Yeah. I realized that deep down those things are indeed meaningless to me. Financial and worldly success really do not mean anything to me but like everyone else- I have been conditioned by the society in which I live and occasionally I fall into the trap. Fortunately this time, with the help of a few friends, I was able to pull myself out and get back on track. I also realized that for being someone who has lived more for the moment I am lucky to have the things that I do. I consider myself to be an artist, a writer and a wanderer who has not made very much money from these activities. I am lucky to have a beautiful wife, an amazing house, a car and a fridge filled with food. Most artists, writers and wanderers that I know have not been so fortunate. So really I have nothing at all to be down about. I know now that there are people in my life who love me for who I am and will support me in being who I am rather than punish me for not being who they want me to be.

Interviewer: You have people in your life who punish you for not being who they want you to be?

Randall: Oh yes. Most of my life was spent in this climate but I don’t want to talk about it. It is not important anymore. What is important is that I found a doorway out and I have come to a place where I feel supported for being who I am. This is an incredible feeling.

Interviewer: Yes must be very liberating.

Randall: It is. It has also taught me a lot about love. I have learned that love is supporting another individual to be who they are. When we are being critical, judgemental or unaccepting of another because they are not being who we want them to be, we are not loving them. In fact we are hurting them.

Interviewer: Yeah I would say that this is a good definition of love. It seems to me that in today’s world it is really difficult for people to love each other.

Randall: Yeah it is. Everyone is so hurt and angry inside that they are stuck in a continual cycle of projecting their hurt and anger onto others. This process is never-ending. I think that it only ends when the person who is hurt and angry works really hard to diminish the hurt and anger within themselves for the good of others in their life.

Interviewer: You mean the angry and hurt person changes who they are mainly so that they do not continue to hurt the ones that they love?

Randall: Yeah, I think this is correct. Of course they do it for themselves also because when we are liberated from our hurt and anger our lives can become so much fuller and richer. As long as we remain angry and hurt our lives are diminished because we are missing out on having the kind of relationships and experiences that a person who is not filled with anger and hurt can have.

Interviewer: How are you doing with all of this?

Randall: What do you mean?

Interviewer: Well you talk a lot about other people and what they can do. I am curious how you do with this.

Randall: Well to be honest, I have a lot of hurt and anger inside of me.  Much of my life has been lived under this influence. I am someone who has to work hard to be loving. I literally need to be mindful of my thoughts and actions because my automatic response to others is one filled with judgement, criticalness and over all negativity. I need to really watch this and make a conscious effort to be loving and accepting instead of judgemental and critical. This is why I do a loving kindness meditation each morning and it is also why I really envy people who are able to be so loving and accepting towards others.

Interviewer: But is it true that they are able to be loving and accepting towards others because they are this way towards themselves?

Randall: Yeah, ultimately I think this is true and I am working on it. I have 41 one years of having a critical and judgemental voice in my head and I am working hard to exorcise it. To become loving and accepting towards myself- this is my goal as silly as that my sound.

Interviewer: Does not sound silly at all. I wish you well in your endeavors.

Randall: Thank you- I think it will be a life long journey.

Interviewer: Without a doubt it will.

Randall: Yes.

Interviewer: Well this interview went rather well, don’t you think?thank you for meeting me for our interview today.

Randall: It did, yes. I rather enjoyed it.

Interviewer: See these interviews can be productive rather than just argumentative.

Randall: Yes.

Interviewer: So what do you say next time we meet someplace different- such as the garden or the living room.

Randall: Sounds good. Why don’t we meet in the living room next time?

Interviewer: Ok. Sounds good. See you there.

Randall: Until then.

Interview #6: Death, Depression, Existential Hang-Ups and the Unbearable Beauty of Life.

It is 10:48am when this interview begins. I am again sitting at the round kitchen table and am dressed in the clothes that I have slept in. I have not looked in the mirror but I presume my hair is a mess. I meditated for a few minutes this morning and then proceeded to make myself some cereal and green tea for breakfast. I “surfed” around the internet, wasted time on facebook and youtube and am now ready to begin the interview. Outside my window it looks as if the day is going to be filled with blue skies, sun and heat. Strange weather for mid October.

 

Interviewer: Good morning Randall.

Randall: Good morning.

Interviewer: Did you sleep well?

Randall: I had a hard time getting to sleep but once I feel asleep I believe that I slept well. I remember getting up a lot to pee though.

Interviewer: Did you drink alcohol last night?

Randall: Not much- I had a pint of beer.

Interviewer: How was it?

Randall: Delicious. Beer is very grounding for me and even though it has drastically increased the size of my stomach I have a hard time staying away too long from my beloved beer.

Interviewer: I see.  How have you been feeling lately?

Randall: To be honest the past few days I have felt what can only be described as a kind of negative, bleak, depressed feeling.

Interviewer: Really?

Randall: Yes, you say that as if you are surprised?

Interviewer: Well I know that you are prone to bouts of depression but I am surprised because it seems as if things are going so well in your life.

Randall: It may appear that way but you know that old cliché adage: “Wherever you go there you are.”

Interviewer: But just a month ago you were infused with the greatest feeling of happiness that you have ever felt. What happened to this feeling?

Depression: Wish I knew. Trust me I am looking for it. Depression is kind of like a weather system. It gets triggered by something and then moves in over you like a rain cloud. It is tough to get away from and all I can really do is wait for it to pass. It is true I have a lot to be happy about- my beautiful wife, my new home, my great dog, my life and on and on. It is true- so why am I not feeling “happy?”

Interviewer: This is what I was going to ask you. Do you have any idea what the cause of this depression is?

Randall: I think that it is a combination of things. One is that I am worried about my finances. To be blunt I don’t have much money and I live in fear of going broke. Why am I 41 years old and still so financially strapped and why am I not more ambitious about changing my financial situation? I suppose in this regard a part of me feels stuck and like a failure. Yes I have everything and more that I could ever want but there is this one thing missing. This thing is this inner satisfaction that I can take care of myself financially. That I do not need to depend on others for economic help. As I think I have said before- in our culture manhood is all tied up with economic success and somehow there is this feeling that has been conditioned into men that if they are not able to be economically independent they are somehow less of a man.

Interviewer: Yeah I have noticed this myself.

Randall: The second part of my depression I think stems from the fact that my life has not turned out the way I thought it would. I never imagined that I would be starting a career as a psychotherapists and have so more financial aid debt to pay off as a result. When I was younger my dream was to succeed as a writer and painter but this is not how things have turned out. Even though it is very difficult to make a living this way I thought I could do it. I never really wanted to be “a professional” with financial aid debt. Seems very mediocre and unremarkable to me. I envy artists who are able to make a living doing their art, to be themselves and get paid for it and the fact that this is not how things have worked out for me depresses me.

Interviewer: Well out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Randall: What is that supposed to mean?

Interviewer: Not sure but it seemed like the right thing to say in the moment.

Randall: I see.

Interviewer: (smiles)

Randall: The third reason I feel depressed is because I feel like I am not able to please my wife sexually at as a result I feel as if I am letting her down. I seem to be sexually inhibited and it requires a lot of effort for me to be intimate. My wife has a very healthy sexual appetite and if I was in the mood we would be having sex at least five times a week. But the problem is that I am often not in the mood and I just don’t understand why. I think my sexuality is all fucked up. I know that I am shy sexually but I just don’t understand why I can not be sexually intimate with my wife more often. My wife is one of the sexiest women I have even had the pleasure of having sex with but still this does not seem like enough. There is something deeply rooted in my sexuality that keeps me from being uninhibited and consistently sexually active and I wish I could find out what it was and change it.

Interviewer: As far as your sexuality is concerned this is a big topic and I would like to spend the next interview discussing it if possible. For now I would like to stay focused on discussing your depression if you don’t mind?

Randall: No I don’t mind but I think that I have said everything I need to say on this topic.

Interviewer: Do you talk with your wife about your depression?

Randall: Kind of. I think she gets what is going on and I try and talk about it but it is often difficult for me to open up and discuss it. It’s embarrassing that I feel this way and plus I just would rather not talk about it. It is a complex problem.

Interviewer: Complex how?

Randall: Well I know there are so many factors involved. There is also the fact that I don’t have a job at the moment. I am trying to start a psychotherapy practice but things are very slow. I also went a few days ago to a memorial service which kind of confronted me with the facts of life and death. At a deeper existential level I think I am depressed because I know that everything we work for, everything we own and love passes away. The cars, homes, art, furnitures all these things remain when we pass away but we are gone. The suddenness and finality of death make life, for me at least, seem very beautiful but also very tragic and sad.

Interviewer: Seems as if you are having a kind of existential crisis?

Randall: I have been having an existential crisis most of my life. I have been aware of these things to a degree which is probably not healthy. Whereas most people spend their lives working and trying to avoid the fact of their mortality, I have confronted it head on. It is scary to think that all of this can disappear in an instant and it is this awareness which has led to my life long struggles with anxiety, hair-raising anxiety.

Interviewer: So it seems as if while you are living you are in a perpetual state of mourning?

Randall: I do not know if it is mourning but I know it all vanishes in a second, that we age and deteriorate and for some reason this scares me and makes me sad.

Interviewer: Yeah I find it a bit depressing myself but at the same time it makes life that much more beautiful. It makes life something I want to cherish, be present with and really drink in.

Randall: It also really makes me want to do things that have meaning, to accomplish things that will out live me. I guess I get depressed when I see artists who are engaged in this process and I know that right now I am not. Having a career, having to pay bills puts a person in a situation where they are investing in things that vanish and do not stand the test of time whereas when you make art you are involved in a process that is much greater than you and the things you own.

Interviewer: But even art eventually will turn to dust.

Randall: Yeah, but if it touches enough people it will be around for a long, long time and there is something deeply gratifying about knowing that you are involved in this process.

Interviewer: So why don’t you involve yourself more in this process?

Randall: I am trying but it seems as if the motivation is just not there. I am also confused. A part of me would rather spend my days on earth working in the garden, wandering around, listening to music, sitting on benches, writing in my journal, walking my dog and just being. I have spent many years of my life making art and now a part of me just wants to do very little and be. Enjoy my life and work on myself.

Interviewer: That does not sound so bad to me.

Randall (shakes his head in agreement).

Interviewer: Well I certainly hope your depression passes soon.  I need to get going but I hope that we can continue this conversation at another time.

Randall: Sure. Thanks for listening.

Interviewer: Try to enjoy your day today. Make an effort to be positive and not think too much. Listen to music, walk around- do whatever it takes to just enjoy your day and get that feeling of happiness you spoke of earlier back.

Randall: Ok

Interviewer: Ok.

Randall: Thank you.

Interviewer: Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Smilist

In the past month I have seen numerous people flip others off, a woman kick another woman’s dog, a group of teenagers pick on a very young boy and two construction workers pin a well dressed man up against the wall. I have heard people constantly judging one another, talking critically about each other and cursing each other. When I turn on the television (which is not often) I am met with gun fire, explosions, blood, fighting and a whole digital community of unhappiness and war. It seems to me like Dante’s Inferno can now be accessed through the television. As a result of all this brutality and negativity the smile seems to have become extinct. For weeks I have been paying attention to smiling. I look for it on people’s faces in the same way a hunter would search for its prey. I must say that if I cared enough about this I would take immediate action and have the smile added to the list of endangered species. With the economic recession, environmental catastrophe, continuous wars and mind-boggling epidemics of starvation- it makes sense to me that the smile would be the first thing to go.

In my search for a smile (it does not even have to be a smile, I will take a half-smile) I loitered around downtown city centers. I sat on benches or out front of cafe’s and spent hours observing people as they passed by. Other than being a bit unsettled by the trance like state that the majority of people seem to walk through their life in, a smile was as difficult to find as a good lover. When I did see a person with a smile on their face it warmed my heart and gave me hope for a future that was not hopeless, broke, downtrodden, defeated and without joy. But these smiles were few and far between and normally only lasted for a few seconds.

I understand that we are living through difficult times. In searching for smiles on people’s faces I am witnessing the fundamental tenet of Western philosophy play itself out- as within, so without or the macrocosm is always reflected in the microcosm. The lack of smiles on people’s faces are simply a reflection of all the breakdowns we are experiencing in our world. Knowing this it feels difficult for me to do nothing. I to have given into the lazy pleasures of negativity and grinning. I to have been walking around with a metaphorical brick upon my back. I to have become cynical about everything, even my own life. So to combat this metaphysical crisis I bought myself a white suit, a white hat and decided to force a smile on my face.

It was the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh who said that if we make ourselves smile, even when we do not feel like it, that smile will release certain chemicals in our brain that will make us feel better. He also said that smiling is contagious. So in an act of protest against the epidemic of depression, stress, worry and generalized negativity disorder I decided that for one week I would put on my white suit, my white hat, go downtown and walk around with a smile tattooed on my face.

I smiled at everyone. Every passer-by I attempted to make eye contact with. My intention was to smile into their eyes. I sat on benches, crossed my legs and smiled at people as they walked by. I walked slowly through various downtown city centers and tried to wipe the unhappiness off of people’s faces with my smile. I smiled at dogs. I smiled at police officers. I smiled at my reflection in the shop windows as I passed by. I smiled at passengers in cars and I smiled at every person on a bicycle. My smile did not discriminate. My smile was not prejudiced. My smile saw every living being as equal and I desperately wanted to save the smile from extinction. The only problem I ran into was that no one smiled back.

Many doctors and scientists will tell you that most systemic infections are very difficult to kill. Once these infections sprout in their host, the body in which the infection dwells forgets what it was like to live without the infection. These are why some infections become so life threatening- they alter the entire environment in which they dwell and gradual colonize the entire body. Infections of the mind and spirit such as negativity, worry, depression, despair, dis-satisfaction, self-hatred, etc., can be very difficult to defeat with a smile. The grin or the long face settles like stone onto its host. A smile is a huge threat to the grin. The grin wants to destroy the smile, it is agitated by the smile and will do anything to not be reminded of the happiness that could threaten its place upon the face. I do not know if it was my white suit that angered certain people, my smile or maybe a combination of both but I was sadly surprised by the kind of response a simple smile could get.

“Fag,” “pervert,” “psycho,” “weirdo,” “freak,” “mental patient” and “homo” where just a few words that were reactively hurled my way. After the fourth day of walking around downtown in my white suit and smiling I was questioned by the police for what they called “my suspicious behavior.” They asked me what I did for a job, where I lived, why I was just wondering around downtown all day? They even asked me if I was affiliated with any religious groups, trying to see if there was a possible terrorist connection. On the fifth day a few people threw things at me. One lady who I smiled at threw her vanilla frozen yogurt all over my white suit. The more I smiled, it seemed as if the more I was triggering the beast. On my last day of walking around downtown with a smile upon my face I was so distraught about how much anger and fear a simple smile could elicit that by noon I was sitting alone on a bar stool already drunk. I will never forget my long walk home that afternoon. It was a defeated walk. A sad walk. A walk in which I had to come to terms with the fact that misery loves company and it seemed as if I was no longer a part of “the tribe.” I felt alone, isolated. I walked slowly, drunkenly with the yogurt stain upon my lapel. I cried and I laughed but I never stopped smiling. Not until I got home.

I still smile. However, the white suit hangs in my closet and I am done playing the role of the smilist. Maybe Darwin was right and I need to adapt or perish. Maybe the race of humans that I belong to is becoming an unhappy race of people who have no use for a smile? Whatever the case may be I now know that smiling can put my own safety at risk so I try not to do it as frequently. When I am home alone I smile. I smile in the shower and I smile in my backyard. I smile when I watch the wind rustle through the trees and I smile when I watch my dog prance around. My smile is a genuine smile- a smile that is not afraid to be happy simply to be alive. But when I go out I try and keep my smile to myself. I don’t grin but I do not smile either. I have found a comfortable position in which to keep my lips that is half way between a smile and a grin. I am adapting but not giving in.

A Few Things I Forgot To Tell My Therapist

I spoke to my therapist for my allotted fifty minutes today. Because I did not feel like driving to the office I spoke with my therapist on the phone. I was sitting in my garage staring off into space for most of my conversation with her. I did not have much to say and it was one of those conversations where what I did say did not seem to accurately mirror the feelings that floated around inside of me. As time floated forward I tried to speak of things that I knew I needed to talk about- but no matter how hard I tried I just was not in the mood to talk about myself. I had spent most of the morning and afternoon alone in my garage- the silence had over taken me and I just could not get into the psychotherapy flow. However, once I got off the phone and a few hours passed, I realized there were several things that I forgot to tell my therapist.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have been spending a lot of time, too much time, calling myself names like “idiot,” “stupid,” “jerk,” “fool” and “asshole” (to name a few). Accusing myself of doing the wrong thing or of being in the position that I am in life and punishing myself for it. I know of no greater psychological pain than to chronically punish ones own self. When I engage in this kind of internal torture I fall into a kind of depressive limbo where getting things done feels as difficult as solving that rubik’s cube thing that was popular in the 80’s. I spend my days hovering around like a hawk with its wings spread in the sky- but going nowhere. It looks effortless up there but in here it is requiring a lot of  energy, so much so that when it comes time for bed I am asleep before I am able to turn out the lights.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I spent all day yesterday counseling one of my old students who was on the verge of committing suicide. She is 18 years old and ran away from home over a year ago. Her father was abusive and her mother enabling. She refuses to return to the homestead and has been left living on couches, struggling for cash (can not get a job because she does not have a green card even though she was born in America) and a few months back managed to almost take her life. She is suffering from a terrible affliction- hopelessness. She feels alone and like there is only one exit. I could relate with her- it was frightening how much I could relate. I made her and myself write down this passage from a Langston Hughes poem:

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
…And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Talking about my problems today after hearing about hers felt futile. I have a roof over my head, people who love me, a couple of dollars in my bank account, a dog, a cat, a phenomenal therapist and a lover who takes care of me, really who am I to engage in self-absorbed narratives? A part of me thinks this way at least. The other part of me agrees with the Buddha. Life is suffering= rwe all suffer (some are better than others at hiding or repressing their suffering) and even though my life situation may be better than many others my emotional pain is still very real and deep. Even though I have much to be grateful for there is still this uncomfortable emotional pain. There are still splinters.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have not shaved in over a week because I do not care what  look like. Where once I took a great deal of concern and care with regards to my image- I now give it maybe twenty minutes of thought a week. Shaving is often the first beauty practice to go when one loses interest with their image. The next thing to usually go (for a man at least) is the flat stomach and my tummy is beginning to take the shape of a round ball.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have started to talk with birds that skip around and sing in the branches of the tree that sits just outside my bedroom window (more about this large oak tree later). It is only fair- they sing to me and I talk to them, thank them. I have also started reading them poetry at night. This is an exercise that I have been doing the past week. I will drink a bottle of organic white wine, smoke one of my fathers cigars and then rather than turn on the television I will go outside and read poetry to the birds whom I can not see sitting in the trees but I know they are there. Some of them start to sing as I am reading to them.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have been drinking alcohol everyday. Alcohol seems to create just the right kind of alchemical reaction within that thing that is often refereed to as a soul. I like and need its temporary effects. I have also been doing Yoga almost everyday- just to assuage my guilt. However I am no fool. Drinking wine and beer on a daily basis is a Faustian bargain- short term gain for long term pain.

I forgot to tell my therapist that most of my socks have holes in them and my underwear is becoming tattered as well. I know that I should care about these things– but I do not put much importance in things anymore. I have learned that things come and they go, why try and get rid of the holes?

I forgot to tell my therapist that I cry everyday.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have resorted to hugging trees for consolation.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I would rather spend my time with a dog than a human being.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I am spending a lot more time now just being present and having little concern for the future.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I am neglecting many things that should get done.

I forgot to tell my therapist that my lover is feeding me well, caring for me and that I enjoy the time that I am spending with her. Life does feel much easier now.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I feel claustrophobic in the shower.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I have this strange compulsion to dress in a black suit and walk around the country club in which I am currently staying.

I forgot to tell my therapist that I now know what was meant by “dark night of the soul.”

Oh, and finally I forgot to tell my therapist about this large oak tree. The one that sits just outside my bedroom window and is making this deep, long, languorous, yawning sound every time even the slightest breeze blows. The tree sways from side to side and has started to rub up against the house. I can see where it is putting pressure on the wall besides my bed. The sounds it is making are hunting, melancholic- so beautiful to my ears. It is as if the tree is trying to tell me something and I just keep carefully listening hoping that one day soon I will find out.

My Brief Love Affair with a Pool Sweep

I am currently going through a separation from my wife. I moved out from our small home in the country and have moved back into my parent’s large home in the suburbs. I am almost forty years old, living again in the room where I experienced my first erection, my first kiss and my first alcoholic beverage. There is even the first pornography magazine from the eighties that I diligently used as a teenager, still stuck in between the mattress and the box spring. My parent’s home sits on top of a solitary hill and is surrounded by century old oak trees, rolling hills, birds and skittish deer. In the backyard there are palm trees (air lifted from Hawaii), a plethora of native flowers and plants, a lot of stones and a large white-bottomed pool.

For six months out of the year my parent’s home is a ghost house. No one lives here. They pack up and go to live in their second home that is situated somewhere in the Idaho mountains. Other than a caretaker who shows up a few times a week to check on things, no one steps into this house. When I moved back in a little over a month and a half ago, I felt like I was moving into a space devoid of life. The furniture was covered in white sheets. The house creaked constantly. I cleaned up cobwebs, killed numerous mosquitoes and turned on the refrigerator and the freezer, both of which had nothing in them. I felt like a middle aged prodigal son coming home to the cruel tricks that time often seems to play on me. What was once my childhood home, filled with life and fervor had become nothing but a four walled remnant of what once used to be. I also could not help but feel like Thoreau returning to his solitary sixty-two acre pond. Except my pond was not a large pond in Concord, Massachusetts- my pond was the pool in my parent’s backyard.

Every morning I would wake up at eleven and rain or shine, the first thing that I would do is go out into the backyard. When I began this minor ritual a little over a month and a half ago I was an emotional mess. I would pull a chair up besides the pool and in the clothes that I had fallen asleep in I would cry. I would cry and cry and feel gut churning sadness for losing the life that I had with a woman whom I deeply loved. I cried for all the grief and suffering that I had caused her. I cried for days on end and after three or four days of continual grief, my grief began to ebb and flow in unpredictable tides. I would be fine one moment and then a thought or something that I noticed reminded me of my wife and I would fall into grief again. I felt like (and still do to a lesser extent) my heart strings were being played by a careless, manic musician.

In my parents backyard the silence is so palpable that I often could not help but to talk to myself. I would console myself out loud, talk to my disappearing wife and push slightly beyond the borders of sanity. Then one afternoon while I was lamenting my fate, a stream of cold chlorinated water sprayed directly into my face. Up until that point I had not noticed the small, amphibious pool sweep that spent its days rummaging around in the pool. With its four wheels, and two long hoses that danced around the pool floor, the pool sweep selflessly had been keeping my parents pool clean for years and I had barley noticed it. With chlorinated pool water stinging my eyes I watched the pool sweep makes its way around the pool, joyfully diving and surfacing, as if my grief meant nothing at all to it. By the end of the day I had forgotten all about the solitary pool sweep and once again was lost in my grief. The following morning while I was sitting besides the pool in what must of looked like a near catatonic state, the pool sweep again sprayed me directly in the face, mixing my tears with chlorine.

I’m not proud of what happened next, but please understand that I was not in my right mind. It is strange how quickly grief can turn into rage and turn a man from sweet to sour. At that moment a rage came over me so strong that I lost all logical reasoning. I was convinced that the pool sweep was mocking me, disrespecting my grief and making a target out of me for its own fun. My rage took over control of my body and caused me to jump head first into the pool, where I proceeded to swim after the pool sweep. But the weeks of grief had weakened and atrophied my muscles and the pool sweep out swam me into the deep end where I was unable to reach. I cursed the pool sweep and told it to stop fucking with me or else I would break its hoses and wheels. I then waded my way out of the water, short of breath and cold. I dried off in the sun- a man defeated by love and the world. A middle-aged man who could not even catch a pool sweep.

I sat there for a while on one of the pool chairs with my wet clothes sticking to my body and watched the pool sweep dance around the bottom of the pool floor. It looked so happy and carefree. It reminded me of distant times where I had felt a similar way. I thought about some of the more meaningful times that my wife and I had shared. The time that we bought our first dog together, the day I proposed to her by a pond in the graveyard, the time we went to an old bathhouse in Spain, the walk on the beach in Australia that was shortened by my fear of the wild dingoes and all the pleasurable times we spent sun bathing in my parents backyard and swimming in the pool. I remembered our days gardening and drinking coconut water in our backyard, the time that I taught her how to ride a bike and the five-course meal that she made for me on New Years Eve. I cried as these memories filled my mind but as I watched the pool sweep make its way around the pool, I felt the thorny edges of a smile crack the rusted sides of my lips. My tears gradually dried and dissipated and I spent the rest of that afternoon falling in love with a pool sweep.

Something about watching the pool sweep made me suddenly feel less alone. I gave it a name as all people do to things that make them feel less alone. I decided to call the pool sweep R2D2 and I even began to anthropomorphize it by asking the R2D2 questions. I told myself that when R2D2 sprayed one time that meant yes, when it sprayed two times that meant no and any more than two sprays meant stupid question. I would ask simple questions, being sensitive to the fact that R2D2 had not had the same opportunities as I for a good education. I would ask questions such as: “would I ever be free of this tormenting grief?” “In the long run are my wife and I doing the right thing by getting a divorce?” and “will we be better off in the future because of all of this?” I specifically asked questions that required more of a heart than a head but I never received much of a reply. Then one morning a few days later while I was sitting by the pool feeling the heat of the early afternoon sun dry my tear agitated eyes, this realization came into my head: Emotion is an energy. It is right to feel pain. Embrace it. Learn. Life is but a blip and time shows the way. I did not need to think about this very much because it immediately made perfect sense to me. Immediately grief seemed to be blocked from colonizing my soul. I felt a sense of unfamiliar calm come over me and when I looked at R2D2 it was resting in the center of the pool staring straight at me. It was then that I realized that my sudden realization had come directly from a pool sweep.

For the first time in months I was overcome with joy. R2D2 communicated to me a wisdom that seemed to patch the holes that were causing love to leak out from my heart. I stood up, walked to the side of the pool and dove head first into the unheated, over chlorinated water. With a smile on my aging face I swam over to R2D2. I lifted R2D2 and held it in my arms. I thanked it profusely for the insight that it had given to me while kissing it from head to hose. Never underestimate the power of a much-needed insight to unite man and machine. Together we swam around the pool until I was not strong enough to swim any more. For the first time in weeks I felt a sense of relief, I felt the possibilities of a new life and the reassurance that my broken heart was not going to kill me. The idea that I could have a new life, the potential to feel good again imbued my body with a detoxifying energy that was slowly bringing me back from the dead. Now looking back on this paradigm-shifting afternoon, I cannot help but attribute it all to my beloved R2D2.

The following day I felt the motivation to begin re-building my life. For the first time since I had moved back into my parents home I did not get out of bed at eleven and go sit out besides the pool for the rest of the afternoon. Instead I would get out of bed at around eight in the morning, do a thirty-minute meditation and then take a long walk. I would go out and get something to eat and then come home and begin looking for a job. I started listening to music again and took daily showers and shaved for the first time in months. Sadness would still come up in me at unpredictable moments but rather than allowing myself to fall into a near catatonic state I simply followed and embraced the energy that was moving through me. Days went by in this semi productive state. I went on a few job interviews, took some yoga classes and went into San Francisco where I began visiting a few friends. I was slowly getting back into a less grief filled life. I was embracing my heartache and learning from it- but while doing all of this I forgot about R2D2.

A few weeks passed by and the bouts of grief were getting less and less. I was smiling more and crying less. I had found a job working as an after school tutor for inner city junior high students and the solitude of my parents home was no longer as frightening as it once was. One morning I awoke early and after my meditation I decided to go sit out by the pool and check on R2D2. I looked forward to visiting with R2D2 and thanking it for healing wisdom it had imparted to me. When I walked out into the backyard the first thing that I noticed was that R2D2 was not moving. I walked over to the side of the pool where ten feet underneath R2D2 sat lifeless. I got down onto my stomach and looked deeply into the water where I noticed that one of R2D2’s hoses was wrapped around its wheels and net. I did not notice any of the usual bubbles that spewed forth from R2D2’s happy head. Immediately I stood up and dove head first into the pool. I do not know if it was the absence of chronic grief in my life and the healing that was resulting or the adrenaline that is released from a person in crisis situations- but I was suddenly strong enough to swim down ten feet to the bottom of the pool, undue the hose from R2D2’s lifeless body and swim back up to the surface with the R2D2 in my arms. I was not hyperventilating or gasping for air but instead I was begging R2D2 not to die, to hold on and to breathe. I swam over into the shallow end where I placed R2D2 on the side of the pool and cleaned out all the leaves that had collected in its net, blocking its air passages. I used both my hands to move its wheels hoping that I could somehow re-simulate life into R2D2. Minutes passed and I felt a few tears begin to fall down the side of my face. I still remember the rhetorical question that ran through my head at that moment: how could God be so unfair as to so cruelly take the life of the one thing that gave me life? I blamed my grief and guilt on a God that not even I believed in. I tried to do everything I could to bring R2D2 back, I even asked this illusive God for help. But the more time that passed the more I realized that R2D2 was never going to swim again.

For those of you who have never fallen in love with a pool sweep before, the ending of my story may sound a bit ridiculous to you. But how can I expect those of you to understand something that you have never experienced before? I understand that I run the risk here of being perceived and judged as a man who has become mentally ill as a result of the grief caused by getting a divorce. I expect some of you to conclude that I am not fit to be functional member of society. But I have always spoken honestly in my writings and I do not want my fear of how you may think of me to get in the way of being brutally honest here at the end of my story. So despite my concerns, I will proceed. After I realized that R2D2 had passed I sat in one of the pool chairs and held R2D2 in my arms. I cried like a child who has just been abandoned by the only two people he knows in the world. I cried out all the grief that could ever exist in the world. I cried so loud that I scared all the birds out of the trees and all the deer out of the surrounding hills. In losing R2D2 I now realize that I was also deeply mourning the loss of my wife. When my wailing seemed to subside, I put R2D2 down on the pool chair and went inside the house and changed out from my wet clothes. I put on black jeans, a black t-shirt and did not have the energy to put on any shoes or socks. I then grabbed a towel from the closet, a shovel from the garage and went back into the backyard. I covered R2D2 in the towel and then I walked into the hills where I began to dig a deep hole underneath an old oak tree. While I was digging my tears fell onto the ground and seemed to moisten the earth, making it less difficult to dig into.

Once I finished digging a hole that would be large enough for me to place R2D2 into I walked back down to where R2D2 lay covered in a towel. I picked R2D2 up into my arms and walked back up into the hills. I placed R2D2 into the dark hole and then stood there for a moment staring at R2D2. My tears momentarily ceased as I thanked R2D2 for its wisdom and friendship. It has never been easy for me to let go of things and people in my life and burying R2D2 felt to me like I was also burying a very important part of my past. I took a few deep breaths and remembered the times that I would watch R2D2 happily and carelessly swim around in the pool. I remembered the time that I tried to chase R2D2 down but it successfully out swam me. I remembered the time that R2D2 gave me a sudden realization and freed me from the shackles of chronic and crippling grief. I felt very grateful for R2D2’s existence in my life and as I took the shovel in my hand and began to bury the R2D2 into the earth I felt at peace with the truth that nothing lasts forever. Once I had completely covered up the whole, I smoothed out the dirt with the shovel and then stuck a large boulder onto of the spot where R2D2 was buried so that I could return to this spot whenever I needed. A few tears leaked out from my eyes as I looked down at my bare feet and toe nails that were covered in dirt. I then looked up through the branches of the old oak tree and stared into the sun that hung in the sky. I closed my eyes for a minute or two and felt the suns warm breath heat up the skin on my face. I could hear the sounds of wind chimes and dried leaves rustling in the light breeze. It was at that moment that I knew that everything would eventually be okay. My wife and myself, eventually time would show us the way. With the shovel in my hand, I avoided looking at the pool and walked back down the hill towards my house. I imagined that it was mid-afternoon and I needed to get dressed for work.