On Solitude….

I’m sitting here alone at my desk. I’m in the writing/painting room in the backyard of my house. The house that my wife and I bought came with a detached garage and so my wife and her mom and dad and I, converted half of the garage into an extra room. We built the walls from scratch, did the wiring, put in the window, floor boards and an all glass front door. We painted the walls bright white and left the floor, which is a nice glazed concrete with some paint and oil stains. The window looks out onto a teardrop trailer (guest bedroom) that sits on the grass under and extremely large maple tree. My desk is up against the window, which I often getting distracted by looking out of it.

In this room it’s quiet, other than the small pond with a fountain outside the door and an occasional dog bark. In the far away distance if I try, I can hear the mechanical whooshing sounds of the 10 highway. If you don’t know the 10 highway in LA, then I should let you know that it’s probably one of the busiest highways in the world. I grew up in a country club surrounded by gold and golf courses, but I prefer living on the fringe of a ghetto with a busy highway in the distance. Helps me to feel less alone.

It’s almost 9pm and I’m tired after a long day spent sitting with people and listening to them talk to me about their personal struggles. I know that they are paying me a good amount of money, which they do not have a lot of, just to feel better. To find some freedom from the pain which weighs them so heavily down. I can’t help but get teary eyed just thinking about it. Anyways, I feel its my obligation to give them my best. To really be with them in their pain and with all my effort help to guide them towards a more ease filled place. If I’m taking their hard earned money, I owe them every piece of wisdom, insight, heart and soul that I got.

But now at the end of the day and well into the evening at this point, I’m alone in the solitude of my backyard room. The only company I got are the insects that bump up against my neck trying to get to my blood and the flies, which no matter how hard I try I just can’t live with in domestic harmony. I always pledge to myself that today I will not kill a single fly. I want to respect life in all its manifestations. But once I’m sitting at my desk or reading a book and trying to harness focus, the hyperactive buzzing of the flies drives me to quickly revoke my pledge. I find a book or a magazine and I swat at the flies like Jack Nicholson’s character in the Shinning did when he took an axe to that bathroom door.

I’m not sure I remember how to be entirely quiet and still. I’m trying to ease my way into the solitude even though my thoughts want to distract me in every way. I think about watching a movie, or reading a book, or surfing around on-line, or listening to music. But I really want to just sit here in solitude. Why is it so darn hard just to be alone with myself? Why can’t I just sit here and listen to the sounds and ease my way into the solitude? I feel like I’m always trying to push the solitude back just a bit, but as soon as I am done writing and re-reading this for spelling errors (I don’t really give a fuck about grammar errors, just spelling), I’m going to spend some time just resting in the solitude. Alone with or without my thoughts. First I might look around on-line a little, read a few things, but I will eventually get there. For a few minutes at least.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Be Isolated And Together All At The Same Time.

Whenever I am online and someone walks up to me and looks over my shoulder, I tense up. I feel my heart rate rise and my body contracts as if I am trying to protect myself from a serious personal space violation. Every cell in my body wants to scream out: “Hey! What are you doing? Get out of here! Leave me alone!” Instead, I freeze up and wait for the person to feel my frozen energy, get the message and walk away.

I never really understood why I have this kind of intense reaction while I am online and someone else comes into my personal space until I read an essay by the writer Douglas Coupland. In his essay, “Everybody On Earth Is Feeling The Exact Same Thing As You: Notes On Relationships In The Twenty-First Century,” Coupland writes:

“It is very hard to imagine calling someone and saying, “Hey. Come over to my house and we’ll sit next to each other on chairs and go online together!” Going online is such an intrinsically solitary act and yet, ironically, it allows for groups to be formed.”

When I read this I thought to myself: so this is how it happens. It was as if I was realizing something for the very first time. In one sense being online is a very, very solitary act but on the other hand it is not at all. When we are online, we gradually become more and more isolated from the things and people that are in our immediate physical environment and closer and more intimate with the things and people that are “somewhere out there.” It is quite the contemporary paradox that you, myself and everyone else online has found ourselves in.

While I am swimming around online in my continually expanding isolation bubble, I am also becoming more and more connected with other people, music, images, stories, ideas, sites and current events that exist in my online universe. As a result I am becoming more and more disconnected from the people, music, images, stories, ideas, sites, current events and other things that exist in my immediate physical environment. I am becoming quite the anti-social loner who stays indoors more while feeling like I have a rich intellectual, creative, social and spiritual life that seems to exists only when I am online.

My wife, my dogs, my house, my garden, my few remaining physical friends, my beautiful backyard, the stars in the sky, the sun, those long afternoons and evenings spent entirely outside alone and with friends seems to be becoming more and more like background sounds as the internet makes is way more and more into my very private life. Please pardon my over use of the word “more” but the more I am online the more I become isolated from the “very real” things in my life but the more together I become with the people, images, ideas, current events and sounds that are delivered to me through a computer screen. What a paradox!

Even as you are reading this now (chances are that you are reading it on a computer or smart phone), think about everything that you are isolating yourself from at this very moment.

I am trying to be optimistic about the way in which the internet seems to be colonizing our minds and bodies. There is currently a massive sea change taking place in our human relations and the ways in which we spend our time. I realize that at this point it may be an unavoidable sea change and as soon as previous generations and my generation die out, existing in the online world will be the norm. But I can not help but wonder if the paradox that most of us are experiencing at this point in our lives has enormous consequences for our personal freedom, our planet, our mental health, our physical health, our intimate and personal relationships, our imaginations, our backyards, our outdoor afternoons and our pets. It seems to be so that the more and more we are online the more and more we become isolated from all these things.

As we continue to live “part-time” in our immediate environments and relationships and more and more online, I can not help but wonder and feel a bit frightened about what you and I and our society is going to be like twenty years down the line.

But on a more positive note….being online is just so much darn fun for those of us who find ourselves all alone.

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.

No More Awards….please!

This blog has been nominated for and given numerous awards. Every other day seems to bring a new nomination or award. I am the only Blogger that has been nominated for so many awards but yet maintains the least amount of interested readers and an all-time low number of comments. Some of the nominations have been for terrible writing style or offensive content but most of the awards I have received have been for worst blog. I am constantly asked by other Bloggers why I write the things I write, what purpose does it serve? I am inept of answers other than the simple response “because it is fun.” But all this fun is bringing me down as the awards keep pouring in. Just this morning I found out that I was nominated for two more awards, all of which have done nothing for my self-esteem. Please, no more awards.

Who would of ever thought that expressing the deep penetralias of my imagination would provoke an onrush of so many awards. I began this blog in the same way that someone would begin therapy. I recognized that I was in need of help and thought that I could either attempt to put my life down in words spoken through the vernacular of stories, or I could continue to suffer in my own private cerebral membrane. I new that I needed to come out of my shell and had remembered the therapeutic effects of writing that a short story teacher I once took a class from- often talked about (even though he had fallen into the rut of alcoholism and animal fetish). I took to blogging like a infant takes to a mothers breast. Stories of perversion and psychosomatic breakdown came poring out of me like lava from the mouth of a crater. Now I am hardly able to control the flow. Bloging has become for me like any other excretory process- I have to do it and if not my health will fail.

So here I am again clearing my body and brain of various thoughts and condemnations I have been feeling this morning. Receiving all the awards that I have has been surprising since I set out not for accolades. The other day I received an award for Least Commented Upon Blog. I never knew that such awards existed but once I received the award for Most Degenerate Content (the award was given because the judges felt that my blog lacked any moral integrity), I realized that any kind of award is possible. There are people in the blogging world with nothing to do but give out ridiculous awards to Bloggers like my self who have nothing to gain from these awards but a lowered sense of confidence to continue writing (and a feeling of isolation because I can not share these awards with my mother, father, sister or wife because it is to embarrassing). To all such award creators who seem to lack a life of meaning- please, NO MORE AWARDS!!

My last entry, The Great Leg Trap, just received two awards, this morning!! I awoke and found in my email the awards which come in the form of a brief letter explaining why I have been chosen and a widget that is offered to me so I can post my victory upon my blog. I have no desire to show off my accolades (like a general does upon his sleeve or a business man does with the quality of his tie). I rather write humbly without any disturbing widgets mentioning that I have won awards for things like “Offensive and Godless Content,” “False Tagger,” “Blogger Most In Need Of Psychological Treatment,” “Defiantly, Worst Blog,” and this morning “Most Ridiculous Entry,” and “Most Failed Attempt To Be Funny Entry.” There is no economic compensation for these awards other than the recognition that comes from humiliation.

So please, I would like to ask all of you who create these absurd award contests for Bloggers like myself to be victimized by…NO MORE AWARDS. It is really starting to affect my self esteem and I am questioning the things I write more and more. I am wondering if there is any point to continue on writing since the majority of my efforts are derided by your ridiculous awards. I have noticed that each time I receive an award I become more depressed and unwilling to write. The corner stone of good writing is in the authors ability to be absolutely honest in whatever he or she writes, and my ability to do so is being compromised by an insecurity that is beginning to form. Each entry that I write I have trepidation about publishing because I am afraid to see what kind of award it will receive. I have even started to delete certain blog entries because I feel they are certain to receive an award that will only increase my despair. Life is hard enough. This blog is only an exercise in cultivating mental health for myself, nothing else!! I do not want your recognition and I certainly do not need these ridiculous widgets!!. So please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart….NO MORE AWARDS!!!!