Love: A feeling of strong affection. (Ed. Note: Really? That's it? I need to try another dictionary site . . . )
OK, Webster has it as "strong affection for another rising out of kinship or personal ties." Pretty consistent.
My mother spent a lot of time - just about all of the time she had that didn't involve religion - doing nice things for me, loving things. I was definitely the center of attention. For dad, on the other hand, alcohol was the center of attention. It was the fulcrum around which everything pivoted. It was the Jesus Nut of dad's life, the wheel stud fixing the tire to the axle. You do everything you can to protect those small pieces of hardware. You can fly a helicopter with a disabled engine ("the only thing you can't do is go up," a pilot told me once) but if the Jesus Nut comes off it's sayonara.
So be it. That actually makes more sense to me than the mom thing. Maybe I learned more about love from my father's relationship with alcohol than I did from my mother's love of her kids. That's a scary thought but I bet there's a grain of truth in it. I'd rather get between a mama bear and her cubs than between a drunk and his alcohol. Dad was a miserable SOB when he wasn't drinking.
So I must assume that everything my mother did for me came from a deep-seated love. How can I be bitching about that? My wife didn't grow up in that kind of environment, that's for sure. With my mother everything was done with my welfare foremost in her mind, even the warnings against danger and pestilence and plagues that have burrowed so deeply into my consciousness and caused me so much trouble over the years. She simply didn't want me to get hurt, to suffer at all, as unreasonable an expectation as there can be. I would hypothesize that the best parenting technique is to point your kid in the right direction and hope that they don't screw up too badly. You can't protect someone from all harm and if you try all you're doing is pointing how much harm is out there.
Wear the world like a loose garment.
“A skillful traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving,” says the Tao te Ching.
"Be on the lookout for mountain lions," she told me as I hit the road for my first SoCal hike. I spent the next four hours with the hair on the back of my neck at full attention, bracing for the impact of a leaping mountain lion. Needless to say, it wasn't a relaxing hike. I finally broke down and did some research on mountain lion attacks in my neck of the woods and found that the last one was sometime just after the Dark Ages. I'm more likely to die of The Plague than from a mountain lion bite.
I think I slipped right back into bitching! Man. My mother would be mortified if she knew I was reminiscing like this which is why I prefer to believe that souls in heaven can't see what we're up to. Either that or the souls have an infinite amount of patience and understanding.
My dad came to most of my high school basketball games, often driving a long way on country roads in the dead of winter to find the small schools with which we competed. This is the extent of his involvement in my high school life. I think he took me to one college basketball game and one at the pro level, and one major league baseball game. Never a football game. And this from a guy who worshiped sports. The money thing again, I suppose.
Mom fed me well and took care of the laundry and fussed over me on fuss-able holidays. I never really got any direction on money and sex and relationships. I could have figured out the washing machine.
I'm really becoming aware of the fact that I was a fearful, anxious human being right out of the womb and that there is nothing anyone could have done about it. This is why alcohol was such a godsend - it took this angst and made it vanish. Unfortunately for me this technique is equivalent to sending a wide receiver with a shredded knee back onto the field after injecting a big syringe full of Novocaine into the joint.
Does the knee hurt? Not anymore, it doesn't. Will it hurt tomorrow? You better believe it will.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Rancid Can of Worms
Rancid: Rank in taste or smell.
Man, I opened a rancid can of worms talking about my mother. 😞
I expected the writing to be more joyous, frankly. The therapist suggested at one point that I write about my sponsor, mom and dad, and our evil cat to see what came out. I started with the animal and frankly, really enjoyed myself. I had nothing but good memories.
Animals. They're so amazing. They give and give and never take anything. Animals are another reason that I believe in Heaven. Come to think of it I'm not sure that Heaven isn't filled exclusively with animals. Maybe people just go away: no heaven, no hell, no purgatory, no additional lives. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is it, folks, so live it up.
Genesis 3:19 (King James Version): In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
All mom ever wanted to be was a mother. I don't think she ever had a higher aspiration than to raise children - I don't know if she had any other aspirations. That woman was always thinking about her kids. I mean to tell you that birthdays and Christmas and the 4th of July were well-scripted and elaborate affairs. She threw a legendary Derby Day party for chrissake. Who outside of Louisville, KY, and debauched gamblers cares about horse racing? There is no We Love Horses Day where the horses get to lay around and eat premium hay. THAT would be worth a celebration.
She got saddled with an overly sensitive, skinny son and a fearsome, cantankerous daughter. Man, my sister had a lip when she was growing up and yet she ended up being the normal one, the one who fashioned a life after my mother's own heart. I went to Cambodia.
I didn't visit my folks too often after I sobered up - it was a tiresome chore, I'm ashamed and chagrined to admit, and this is only in part due to my normal antsy constitution. I simply didn't enjoy it - these people didn't do anything but sit around in a music-less room and talk, the TV droning on in the background. And in my dad's case he really didn't do anything. It's not that I didn't love them but that I didn't have anything in common with them. I've been to 40 countries and I don't think I was ever asked anything beyond did you have a good time? and how was the weather?
This sounds critical, probably because it is critical. I mean I never asked about the sermon or who won the golf tournament, things my parents cared about. I didn't dispense carefully wrapped and well thought out birthday presents. They weren't that important to me.
I brought up the fact with SuperK that so far the score was Cat: 111 - Mom: 27. She said: "No. This is why you write - so you can separate nostalgia and memories from facts."
She encouraged me to remember that the mother mania cut both ways: mom doted on her children but then looked for comfort elsewhere when SuperK and I didn't have kids. She would happily spend hours at my sister's house - where there were two granddaughters - while making the long 15 minute drive to our house about 1.5 times per year, then sitting there with her coat on as if there was a rotting corpse under the floorboards. SuperK reminded me that mom came out to visit us in Vacation City for three weeks a few years back and then spent all but one night with my very religious, very conservative, very traditional cousin as our guest room lay fallow.
I wasn't offended by this. I certainly wasn't surprised by it although it annoyed me at the time, permitting me to wallow at length in a bog of comfortable, annoyed superiority. But these our facts of my life that show how I reacted - fairly sometimes - to the way others treated me.
"See? See how wrong this is? How poorly I've been treated?" I thought.
And then there was the time I invited all of my relatives to our house - our barren, childless house - for a summer cookout. I didn't ask anyone to bring anything, only stipulating: No alcohol. Talk about eating and fleeing - there were vapor trails behind the vehicles as they exited the area. On previous occasions my folks actually used the excuse that I had a very steep driveway they found hard to navigate as a reason not to visit. I suggested that if they gave the horn a couple of toots I would have been happy to come down and pull the car up for them. My chauffeur skills went unused and the frequency of visits did not increase.
I guess in the complex world of human relationships very little is clear-cut. There is plenty of blame to go around when things don't run as smoothly as everyone would like. While I understand that the solution is always with me it is understandable that I'm going to react sometimes when I'm not treated very well, whether the other person had good motives or not. Most people aren't doing things to me - rather they're out there living their lives. Just because I'm all I think about doesn't mean that everyone is thinking about me, too. I NEVER think about anyone else yet I think everyone else is ALWAYS thinking about me. It's preposterous.
Preposterous: Absurd, or contrary to common sense.
I can spot a character defect from 1000 yards away, at night, in blinding snowstorm, while I'm making a very complicated omelette.
Man, I opened a rancid can of worms talking about my mother. 😞
I expected the writing to be more joyous, frankly. The therapist suggested at one point that I write about my sponsor, mom and dad, and our evil cat to see what came out. I started with the animal and frankly, really enjoyed myself. I had nothing but good memories.
Animals. They're so amazing. They give and give and never take anything. Animals are another reason that I believe in Heaven. Come to think of it I'm not sure that Heaven isn't filled exclusively with animals. Maybe people just go away: no heaven, no hell, no purgatory, no additional lives. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is it, folks, so live it up.
Genesis 3:19 (King James Version): In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
All mom ever wanted to be was a mother. I don't think she ever had a higher aspiration than to raise children - I don't know if she had any other aspirations. That woman was always thinking about her kids. I mean to tell you that birthdays and Christmas and the 4th of July were well-scripted and elaborate affairs. She threw a legendary Derby Day party for chrissake. Who outside of Louisville, KY, and debauched gamblers cares about horse racing? There is no We Love Horses Day where the horses get to lay around and eat premium hay. THAT would be worth a celebration.
She got saddled with an overly sensitive, skinny son and a fearsome, cantankerous daughter. Man, my sister had a lip when she was growing up and yet she ended up being the normal one, the one who fashioned a life after my mother's own heart. I went to Cambodia.
I didn't visit my folks too often after I sobered up - it was a tiresome chore, I'm ashamed and chagrined to admit, and this is only in part due to my normal antsy constitution. I simply didn't enjoy it - these people didn't do anything but sit around in a music-less room and talk, the TV droning on in the background. And in my dad's case he really didn't do anything. It's not that I didn't love them but that I didn't have anything in common with them. I've been to 40 countries and I don't think I was ever asked anything beyond did you have a good time? and how was the weather?
This sounds critical, probably because it is critical. I mean I never asked about the sermon or who won the golf tournament, things my parents cared about. I didn't dispense carefully wrapped and well thought out birthday presents. They weren't that important to me.
I brought up the fact with SuperK that so far the score was Cat: 111 - Mom: 27. She said: "No. This is why you write - so you can separate nostalgia and memories from facts."
She encouraged me to remember that the mother mania cut both ways: mom doted on her children but then looked for comfort elsewhere when SuperK and I didn't have kids. She would happily spend hours at my sister's house - where there were two granddaughters - while making the long 15 minute drive to our house about 1.5 times per year, then sitting there with her coat on as if there was a rotting corpse under the floorboards. SuperK reminded me that mom came out to visit us in Vacation City for three weeks a few years back and then spent all but one night with my very religious, very conservative, very traditional cousin as our guest room lay fallow.
I wasn't offended by this. I certainly wasn't surprised by it although it annoyed me at the time, permitting me to wallow at length in a bog of comfortable, annoyed superiority. But these our facts of my life that show how I reacted - fairly sometimes - to the way others treated me.
"See? See how wrong this is? How poorly I've been treated?" I thought.
And then there was the time I invited all of my relatives to our house - our barren, childless house - for a summer cookout. I didn't ask anyone to bring anything, only stipulating: No alcohol. Talk about eating and fleeing - there were vapor trails behind the vehicles as they exited the area. On previous occasions my folks actually used the excuse that I had a very steep driveway they found hard to navigate as a reason not to visit. I suggested that if they gave the horn a couple of toots I would have been happy to come down and pull the car up for them. My chauffeur skills went unused and the frequency of visits did not increase.
I guess in the complex world of human relationships very little is clear-cut. There is plenty of blame to go around when things don't run as smoothly as everyone would like. While I understand that the solution is always with me it is understandable that I'm going to react sometimes when I'm not treated very well, whether the other person had good motives or not. Most people aren't doing things to me - rather they're out there living their lives. Just because I'm all I think about doesn't mean that everyone is thinking about me, too. I NEVER think about anyone else yet I think everyone else is ALWAYS thinking about me. It's preposterous.
Preposterous: Absurd, or contrary to common sense.
I can spot a character defect from 1000 yards away, at night, in blinding snowstorm, while I'm making a very complicated omelette.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Overwhelmed
Suffocate: To overwhelm, or be overwhelmed (by a person or issue), as though with oxygen deprivation.
Such a powerful force, love is. I don't understand it at all. I can only imagine how much good it does, how it shapes everything with which it comes into contact. I find that too often it's so easy to hate and so much more difficult to love. At least it's a lot easier to ignore love, to take it for granted, and concentrate on that which festers and devours. The negative is compelling - the positive is boring.
I was at my local grocery store today. One of the employees there is a woman who is going to retire in a couple of years - she has the day count ticking off on her phone, mostly as a joke, a conversation starter. I found out about this in the midst of one of stream-of-consciousness, non-sequitur laden interactions with people that I so enjoy. If you think it, say it - that's my motto. Because today is Sunday the store was empty, giving me the chance to stop and talk with her for a while. With a lot of women I know even casually I open my arms for a hug as I approach them, letting them make the decision as to whether this is appropriate behavior or not. I got a big hug, surprisingly big. I must ooze harmlessness. Clearly, I'm still not a player.
Is this love? I really enjoyed that 10 minutes.
I can't even get my arms around how much my mother loved me. I know dad loved me, too, but it was more oblique with him, less important, sort of an off-the-shelf requirement. Mom showed me through her actions and her words that she loved me while dad did what he wanted most of the time so it was a lot harder to tease out what was going on with him emotionally. It wasn't that he didn't love me but rather that he had other things on his mind, typical of most alcoholics. When I was drinking ya'll were contributing to my fun somehow or you were just getting in my way. But I do know intellectually that all this love helped in large measure to shape me into the person I am today.
Now alcohol - that's a love/hate relationship. For me that's love and that's hate in its purest form.
With most people that are important to me my memories are studded with specific instances that populate a wider ebb and flow. When I think of someone I think of events, an action of some kind. When I think of either my mom and dad I have the sense of a presence more than a person, a background hum. I'm sure this is as much my fault as it is theirs - I was, after all, being chased by a lot of demons that demanded a lot of my time and I wasn't very good at opening up and letting people know who I was. There was a lot of scary shit banging around inside my head that it seemed wise to keep hidden behind drawn curtains.
Perhaps this is typical of a parent-child relationship? At least for some of us? I truly believe that one of the greatest and most traumatic events in my life was when I chose to go to college 500 miles away from The Old City. I mean I was homesick for the first year, so depressed I could hardly catch my breath half the time, but it was my metaphorical toss into the deep end for someone with no swimming skills. I was a barnacle on a rock and I wasn't coming off without some dynamite. College was a cattle-prod to my forehead. Get going, dude, get on with your life.
During this time the overriding sense I had was that my mom and dad were freaked out about the money they had to spend. Now I worked during the summer and at school - this cash going towards my education - and I had both a large scholarship and a few loans, but still money drove the equation and very reasonably so as my parents weren't wealthy. That being said I recall clearly that as I was unable to afford a phone I had to walk to the student union, once a week at a preordained time, so that my folks could go to dad's office and make a toll-free call to a pay phone.
I don't believe money was that tight. I believe this was an irrational fear of not having enough money - fear of financial insecurity, to coin a phrase stolen directly and verbatim from our literature. My inheritance - while not huge - confirms the fact that there was some money that could have been spent on a couple of phone calls that wouldn't have broken the bank. What I would give to take some of my inheritance, time-travel back to my freshman year, and start feeding coins into the pay phone so I could talk to my family whenever I wanted to.
What do I see? Fear. Not enough money, too much danger, sickness and illness on the prowl. Man, I was terrified as it was - I didn't need anybody piling on.
But wait! I might be going to hell!
Such a powerful force, love is. I don't understand it at all. I can only imagine how much good it does, how it shapes everything with which it comes into contact. I find that too often it's so easy to hate and so much more difficult to love. At least it's a lot easier to ignore love, to take it for granted, and concentrate on that which festers and devours. The negative is compelling - the positive is boring.
I was at my local grocery store today. One of the employees there is a woman who is going to retire in a couple of years - she has the day count ticking off on her phone, mostly as a joke, a conversation starter. I found out about this in the midst of one of stream-of-consciousness, non-sequitur laden interactions with people that I so enjoy. If you think it, say it - that's my motto. Because today is Sunday the store was empty, giving me the chance to stop and talk with her for a while. With a lot of women I know even casually I open my arms for a hug as I approach them, letting them make the decision as to whether this is appropriate behavior or not. I got a big hug, surprisingly big. I must ooze harmlessness. Clearly, I'm still not a player.
Is this love? I really enjoyed that 10 minutes.
I can't even get my arms around how much my mother loved me. I know dad loved me, too, but it was more oblique with him, less important, sort of an off-the-shelf requirement. Mom showed me through her actions and her words that she loved me while dad did what he wanted most of the time so it was a lot harder to tease out what was going on with him emotionally. It wasn't that he didn't love me but rather that he had other things on his mind, typical of most alcoholics. When I was drinking ya'll were contributing to my fun somehow or you were just getting in my way. But I do know intellectually that all this love helped in large measure to shape me into the person I am today.
Now alcohol - that's a love/hate relationship. For me that's love and that's hate in its purest form.
With most people that are important to me my memories are studded with specific instances that populate a wider ebb and flow. When I think of someone I think of events, an action of some kind. When I think of either my mom and dad I have the sense of a presence more than a person, a background hum. I'm sure this is as much my fault as it is theirs - I was, after all, being chased by a lot of demons that demanded a lot of my time and I wasn't very good at opening up and letting people know who I was. There was a lot of scary shit banging around inside my head that it seemed wise to keep hidden behind drawn curtains.
Perhaps this is typical of a parent-child relationship? At least for some of us? I truly believe that one of the greatest and most traumatic events in my life was when I chose to go to college 500 miles away from The Old City. I mean I was homesick for the first year, so depressed I could hardly catch my breath half the time, but it was my metaphorical toss into the deep end for someone with no swimming skills. I was a barnacle on a rock and I wasn't coming off without some dynamite. College was a cattle-prod to my forehead. Get going, dude, get on with your life.
During this time the overriding sense I had was that my mom and dad were freaked out about the money they had to spend. Now I worked during the summer and at school - this cash going towards my education - and I had both a large scholarship and a few loans, but still money drove the equation and very reasonably so as my parents weren't wealthy. That being said I recall clearly that as I was unable to afford a phone I had to walk to the student union, once a week at a preordained time, so that my folks could go to dad's office and make a toll-free call to a pay phone.
I don't believe money was that tight. I believe this was an irrational fear of not having enough money - fear of financial insecurity, to coin a phrase stolen directly and verbatim from our literature. My inheritance - while not huge - confirms the fact that there was some money that could have been spent on a couple of phone calls that wouldn't have broken the bank. What I would give to take some of my inheritance, time-travel back to my freshman year, and start feeding coins into the pay phone so I could talk to my family whenever I wanted to.
What do I see? Fear. Not enough money, too much danger, sickness and illness on the prowl. Man, I was terrified as it was - I didn't need anybody piling on.
But wait! I might be going to hell!
Sunday, April 8, 2018
33,000,000 Gods
Monotheism: The belief in a single deity (one god or goddess.)
I wonder if I've spent so much time trying to break the mold because I grew up in one of the three big monotheistic religions? One huge, big, bad god who ran the entire show with an iron fist. I hate being told what to do and I hate hate authority figures, especially people in charge whose competence or ethics I question. Which is almost everyone. The idea that some human being can spend a lot of time studying a great but flawed text, one that was modified over and over during the last 2000 years, sometimes by people with less than honorable intentions and definitely self-serving motives, can stand up in a raised dais and tell me with great certainty that this is what god meant. I dunno. Sounds like a stretch to me. Who the fuck are you, anyway?
I also wonder if some of the fear and negativity comes from having to make the choice between Good and Evil, Right or Wrong, Heaven or Hell. Jesus H. Christ on a stick, my choice is an eternity of bliss or unimaginable agony forever? C'mon. Meet me halfway. What if I just fuck up a little sometimes - I still get to have a million demons prodding my mucous membranes with white-hot needles forever? Wow, that is harsh, dude. That's like saying your destiny is no cookies or a world comprised entirely of cookies. Can't I have a couple of cookies after dinner?
Want an anxious child? Threaten a four year old with eternal damnation, dispensed by an unseen and totally humorous being.
"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity." - Arthur Schopenhauer
You have to do it this way or you're doing it wrong.
Says who? Says you? I don't think so.
I've had the opportunity to travel to some areas of the world where the rules are a good bit more relaxed. There are 33,000,000 gods in Hinduism, for god's sake. Tell me I couldn't find a pretty custom-made-for-Seaweed god in that mix, and I don't think anyone could say with a straight face: "This is what god wants you to do." Which one? And those big, fat, goofy-faced Buddhas - they don't look like they're on board with the idea of an eternity of pain as punishment for the frailty inherent in the human condition. The Eastern temples and churches are really fun and happy, brightly lit and festively decorated affairs. The alters are piled high with all kinds of odd crap. The people visiting the temples look happy.
People in my church looked constipated. I guess if you're being threatened with eternal damnation it takes the fun out of the whole process. Faith seems to be a warning, not a promise. The idea of heaven being a very pleasant place paled in comparison to an eternity of suffering. THAT got my attention, the suffering part. The altar was sterile - candles, a bouquet of flowers, some flatware and a big mug of wine that we all drank out of. And above the altar was a cross that represented death by crucifixion, some faiths actually leaving the god impaled with nails and a crown of thorns hanging right up there. No wonder I was terrified of everything.
Now, I'm not an idiot or at least I'm not always an idiot. I realize I'm presenting all of this with a jaded, jaundiced eye. I realize many people don't see these things in such a negative light but then again many people aren't me with my chemical imbalance and my scared mother and angry father, full of the residue of alcohol and illicit drugs even on a Sunday morning.
Do you know how hard it is to kneel for five minutes without retching when you've got a good hangover working?
I wonder if I've spent so much time trying to break the mold because I grew up in one of the three big monotheistic religions? One huge, big, bad god who ran the entire show with an iron fist. I hate being told what to do and I hate hate authority figures, especially people in charge whose competence or ethics I question. Which is almost everyone. The idea that some human being can spend a lot of time studying a great but flawed text, one that was modified over and over during the last 2000 years, sometimes by people with less than honorable intentions and definitely self-serving motives, can stand up in a raised dais and tell me with great certainty that this is what god meant. I dunno. Sounds like a stretch to me. Who the fuck are you, anyway?
I also wonder if some of the fear and negativity comes from having to make the choice between Good and Evil, Right or Wrong, Heaven or Hell. Jesus H. Christ on a stick, my choice is an eternity of bliss or unimaginable agony forever? C'mon. Meet me halfway. What if I just fuck up a little sometimes - I still get to have a million demons prodding my mucous membranes with white-hot needles forever? Wow, that is harsh, dude. That's like saying your destiny is no cookies or a world comprised entirely of cookies. Can't I have a couple of cookies after dinner?
Want an anxious child? Threaten a four year old with eternal damnation, dispensed by an unseen and totally humorous being.
"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity." - Arthur Schopenhauer
You have to do it this way or you're doing it wrong.
Says who? Says you? I don't think so.
I've had the opportunity to travel to some areas of the world where the rules are a good bit more relaxed. There are 33,000,000 gods in Hinduism, for god's sake. Tell me I couldn't find a pretty custom-made-for-Seaweed god in that mix, and I don't think anyone could say with a straight face: "This is what god wants you to do." Which one? And those big, fat, goofy-faced Buddhas - they don't look like they're on board with the idea of an eternity of pain as punishment for the frailty inherent in the human condition. The Eastern temples and churches are really fun and happy, brightly lit and festively decorated affairs. The alters are piled high with all kinds of odd crap. The people visiting the temples look happy.
People in my church looked constipated. I guess if you're being threatened with eternal damnation it takes the fun out of the whole process. Faith seems to be a warning, not a promise. The idea of heaven being a very pleasant place paled in comparison to an eternity of suffering. THAT got my attention, the suffering part. The altar was sterile - candles, a bouquet of flowers, some flatware and a big mug of wine that we all drank out of. And above the altar was a cross that represented death by crucifixion, some faiths actually leaving the god impaled with nails and a crown of thorns hanging right up there. No wonder I was terrified of everything.
Now, I'm not an idiot or at least I'm not always an idiot. I realize I'm presenting all of this with a jaded, jaundiced eye. I realize many people don't see these things in such a negative light but then again many people aren't me with my chemical imbalance and my scared mother and angry father, full of the residue of alcohol and illicit drugs even on a Sunday morning.
Do you know how hard it is to kneel for five minutes without retching when you've got a good hangover working?
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Through The Looking Glass, Darkly
So maybe my nickname should be Dark Seaweed. I don't think anyone is drawn to me for my whimsical, serendipitous, light-hearted view of life.
"Oh, that Seaweed, he's such a joy to be around!" Yeah, right.
"You know who I saw in the park yesterday? Seaweed! He was prancing and mincing and laughing, spreading joy and light, scattering rose petals, brightening our very existence!" That's our Seaweed, alright.
Compulsive: Uncontrolled, or reactive and irresistible.
More about my mama . . .
I know I was loved. I know that this love and support helped me develop the strong sense of self-esteem and self-confidence that I have today. Mom got me to church - a lot - which I have to acknowledge - through clenched teeth - instilled in me a strong sense of justice, an intuitive feel about the difference between right and wrong. I hope I behave well because it's the right thing to do and not just because I'm afraid I'll be punished. I had the example of moral behavior - in my family and in my religion - to show me how to live an ethical life, a moral life. Not that I always chose/choose to . . . . you know . . . . actually do this but I'm on the path, moving forward, however falteringly, stubbing my toe, but giving it an honest shot.
Why, given all of this, are my memories of my mother so dark? Dad, I get. Dad was a time-bomb, a man who presented a public face, casually, and a private face, ominously. I just don't remember relaxing into anything at my house. It always seemed like something was amiss, something was going to go wrong. Things felt compelled. Life felt as pre-planned as if I got up each morning and pushed off from the top of a long slide. Down I went, safely hemmed in by the side rails, the end in sight, and inevitable.
Everything my mother did was off a script - stock characters, predictable situations, by the numbers, right outta the book. I don't recall a sense of spontaneity or creativity. Music was non-existent, as was reading anything besides the paper, Sports Illustrated, and The Bible. I can't imagine anyone wrote anything. Holidays and celebrations were carefully choreographed - wonderful, generous, extravagant. Sports was transcendent.
"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question." HAL 9000
So here I am an impulsive, erratic, random human being. I rarely do the same thing twice and I almost never do anything by the book, unless I tweak the shit out of the instructions. I can't imagine how this fosters any peace of mind. I was programmed to be a certain kind of guy and I'm totally fucking with the programming all the time.
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do." HAL 9000
I can't see how this contributes to my peace of mind. I'm rowing upstream. I was given a very nice canoe to float slowly, boringly downstream but I want the biggest goddam outboard motor so I can BLAST back upstream. Why? Because no one else is doing it Why not? Because it doesn't make any sense to go upstream.
What?
"Oh, that Seaweed, he's such a joy to be around!" Yeah, right.
"You know who I saw in the park yesterday? Seaweed! He was prancing and mincing and laughing, spreading joy and light, scattering rose petals, brightening our very existence!" That's our Seaweed, alright.
Compulsive: Uncontrolled, or reactive and irresistible.
More about my mama . . .
I know I was loved. I know that this love and support helped me develop the strong sense of self-esteem and self-confidence that I have today. Mom got me to church - a lot - which I have to acknowledge - through clenched teeth - instilled in me a strong sense of justice, an intuitive feel about the difference between right and wrong. I hope I behave well because it's the right thing to do and not just because I'm afraid I'll be punished. I had the example of moral behavior - in my family and in my religion - to show me how to live an ethical life, a moral life. Not that I always chose/choose to . . . . you know . . . . actually do this but I'm on the path, moving forward, however falteringly, stubbing my toe, but giving it an honest shot.
Why, given all of this, are my memories of my mother so dark? Dad, I get. Dad was a time-bomb, a man who presented a public face, casually, and a private face, ominously. I just don't remember relaxing into anything at my house. It always seemed like something was amiss, something was going to go wrong. Things felt compelled. Life felt as pre-planned as if I got up each morning and pushed off from the top of a long slide. Down I went, safely hemmed in by the side rails, the end in sight, and inevitable.
Everything my mother did was off a script - stock characters, predictable situations, by the numbers, right outta the book. I don't recall a sense of spontaneity or creativity. Music was non-existent, as was reading anything besides the paper, Sports Illustrated, and The Bible. I can't imagine anyone wrote anything. Holidays and celebrations were carefully choreographed - wonderful, generous, extravagant. Sports was transcendent.
"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question." HAL 9000
So here I am an impulsive, erratic, random human being. I rarely do the same thing twice and I almost never do anything by the book, unless I tweak the shit out of the instructions. I can't imagine how this fosters any peace of mind. I was programmed to be a certain kind of guy and I'm totally fucking with the programming all the time.
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do." HAL 9000
I can't see how this contributes to my peace of mind. I'm rowing upstream. I was given a very nice canoe to float slowly, boringly downstream but I want the biggest goddam outboard motor so I can BLAST back upstream. Why? Because no one else is doing it Why not? Because it doesn't make any sense to go upstream.
What?
Seaweed: Complication
I have a tendency to move tirelessly into the future, leaving the past to molder on its own. I never look at old photos or travel mementos, never watch a movie a second time, or reread a book, but I do, from time to time, read the stuff that I've written. It's pretty interesting seeing where I was in the world, what was going on, what was occupying my mind. I found this entry revealing and frustrating, no doubt written when I was going through one of my periodic realignments: planning on doing new things, eliminating bad habits, moving further this way or reigning in a shift that way.
I look back over my life and I see fear and anxiety. Worry. A vague sense that I'm looking at a bad outcome. Childhood. High School. Awful college experience, buried with work and classes and money concerns. The Lost Years after I got booted out of Optometry College. Chicago. The awful CSE/OTP work debacles. Travel and weather fears when I was relentlessly traveling in sincity. Moving to Portland and realizing what a mistake that was.
Life is such a war with me. I fight and fight and fight. I never relinquish anything without a fight. I never turn over anything until I've done every last thing that I can do on my own, all by myself, to get the result that I want. Screw god. I'm certain I have the power to change circumstances, people, places, and things, bend them to my liking.
Complicate: To modify so as to make something intricate or difficult. (Ed. Note: I like how there is no implication that the process of making something more intricate or difficult actually improves anything).
Complication: A person who doesn't fit in with the scheme of things; an interloper. (Ed. Note: Hah, hah, hah).
I wonder at the origin of this war I wage with peace. What is it about me that is so resistant to calm? I have to assume that part of it is chemical. I have to assume - and love to assign blame elsewhere - that my parents installed some of this stuff in my. Mom worried - Dad took anything bad and stuffed it way, way down inside until it came out explosively, in a fit of furious pique. Some of it may be societal or the result of behaving in a certain way for so long that it becomes who you are. The question is how much control I have over changing how I am?
Does anyone imagine that they've won the lottery?
Optimists are horrible, horrible, terrible people.
I look back over my life and I see fear and anxiety. Worry. A vague sense that I'm looking at a bad outcome. Childhood. High School. Awful college experience, buried with work and classes and money concerns. The Lost Years after I got booted out of Optometry College. Chicago. The awful CSE/OTP work debacles. Travel and weather fears when I was relentlessly traveling in sincity. Moving to Portland and realizing what a mistake that was.
Life is such a war with me. I fight and fight and fight. I never relinquish anything without a fight. I never turn over anything until I've done every last thing that I can do on my own, all by myself, to get the result that I want. Screw god. I'm certain I have the power to change circumstances, people, places, and things, bend them to my liking.
Complicate: To modify so as to make something intricate or difficult. (Ed. Note: I like how there is no implication that the process of making something more intricate or difficult actually improves anything).
Complication: A person who doesn't fit in with the scheme of things; an interloper. (Ed. Note: Hah, hah, hah).
I wonder at the origin of this war I wage with peace. What is it about me that is so resistant to calm? I have to assume that part of it is chemical. I have to assume - and love to assign blame elsewhere - that my parents installed some of this stuff in my. Mom worried - Dad took anything bad and stuffed it way, way down inside until it came out explosively, in a fit of furious pique. Some of it may be societal or the result of behaving in a certain way for so long that it becomes who you are. The question is how much control I have over changing how I am?
Does anyone imagine that they've won the lottery?
Optimists are horrible, horrible, terrible people.
Friday, April 6, 2018
MaMa, Catastrophizer
Catastrophe: Any large and disastrous event of great significance; a disaster beyond expectations.
There's this idea that your parents have a lot of influence in your life. While I tend to reject the status quo, preferring unconventional concepts to popularly held beliefs, I'm having a lot of trouble disputing this one. You could come up with a lot more supporting documentation to back this theory than I could refuting it. The contest would be a rout. Common sense would suggest that someone who controls your life for most of your first ten or twelve years is going to leave an imprint on your personality. Plus, they weigh like 150 pounds more than you do so you might as well add in the fact of physical domination.
I bent over and tweaked something in the side of my knee yesterday. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac but I seem to bitch about my health all of the time. I've decided not to look up the definition of "hypochondriac" this morning. I don't want to know what it means.
My mother was a great woman. I'm biased, of course, but almost everyone thought she was great. A person who always had a smile on her face and something kind to say. She was universally liked. I honestly can say I never heard anyone say anything negative about her, which was not the case with my father, but that huge topic is for another day.
In public. Her persona in our family was a good deal darker. She would be mortified to hear me say this and she would also be mortified to hear that I think she was a moderately depressed person in a time when depression was stigmatized and under-medicated. Today everyone's on something. It's almost cool to be crazy. The only thing better is to be a crazy drug addict and alcoholic.
I'm three for three.
My mother catastrophized. Whatever was happening, no matter how wonderful, was going to get worse. If it was bad it was going to be a cataclysm. I swear to god that woman could always find something to worry about. My dad just got mad. A depressive, over-protective mother and a withdrawn alcoholic father is a recipe for anxiety.
When I'm ill or injured I have a difficult time separating the rational thoughts in my rational mind with the disastrous outcomes that my emotions foresee.
"It makes absolutely no sense to worry about this," Bob says. (Bob is a metaphor for my rational mind).
"Be afraid! Be very, very afraid," replies Bob. (Bob is also a metaphor for my emotional being. What can I tell you? I like the name Bob. I call almost everything Bob).
My mom had ears that stuck out and dad was blind as a bat. In a non-humorous universe I would have been born with 20/20 vision and cute well-formed ears.
Guess what happened?
There's this idea that your parents have a lot of influence in your life. While I tend to reject the status quo, preferring unconventional concepts to popularly held beliefs, I'm having a lot of trouble disputing this one. You could come up with a lot more supporting documentation to back this theory than I could refuting it. The contest would be a rout. Common sense would suggest that someone who controls your life for most of your first ten or twelve years is going to leave an imprint on your personality. Plus, they weigh like 150 pounds more than you do so you might as well add in the fact of physical domination.
I bent over and tweaked something in the side of my knee yesterday. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac but I seem to bitch about my health all of the time. I've decided not to look up the definition of "hypochondriac" this morning. I don't want to know what it means.
My mother was a great woman. I'm biased, of course, but almost everyone thought she was great. A person who always had a smile on her face and something kind to say. She was universally liked. I honestly can say I never heard anyone say anything negative about her, which was not the case with my father, but that huge topic is for another day.
In public. Her persona in our family was a good deal darker. She would be mortified to hear me say this and she would also be mortified to hear that I think she was a moderately depressed person in a time when depression was stigmatized and under-medicated. Today everyone's on something. It's almost cool to be crazy. The only thing better is to be a crazy drug addict and alcoholic.
I'm three for three.
My mother catastrophized. Whatever was happening, no matter how wonderful, was going to get worse. If it was bad it was going to be a cataclysm. I swear to god that woman could always find something to worry about. My dad just got mad. A depressive, over-protective mother and a withdrawn alcoholic father is a recipe for anxiety.
When I'm ill or injured I have a difficult time separating the rational thoughts in my rational mind with the disastrous outcomes that my emotions foresee.
"It makes absolutely no sense to worry about this," Bob says. (Bob is a metaphor for my rational mind).
"Be afraid! Be very, very afraid," replies Bob. (Bob is also a metaphor for my emotional being. What can I tell you? I like the name Bob. I call almost everything Bob).
My mom had ears that stuck out and dad was blind as a bat. In a non-humorous universe I would have been born with 20/20 vision and cute well-formed ears.
Guess what happened?
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