Tentative and frightened
Hands waving wildly before me
Don't want to hit a wall
Walking in the dark.
The air is cold and dank
The fetid smell of anxiety permeates
Sliding feet along the floor
Don't want to trip
Walking in the dark.
Looking for a hand
To hold and touch your soul
To find my light
Don't want to be alone
Walking in the dark.
The walk is nothing but faith.
No need to take leaps.
Eyes closed
Dropping my arms to my sides
Relaxed
I whisper your name
Yet hear no response
I've lost you
Somewhere out here
Walking in the dark.
May 31, 2010
May 27, 2010
I can't stop smiling.
Last night something incredible happened. Well, more than incredible, amazing. I can't stop smiling. Where do I begin?
A while back, and I think I blogged about that too, my friend asked me to paint something and get out of my comfort zone for it. Anyone who has seen my paintings knows that I opt for florals and abstracts and rarely, if ever, stray from that. I use color in awesome ways but don't stray from style, usually.
I've always been enamored with space. I've always read about nebula, galaxies, the stars, the planets, and aliens. It's always been something that's with me. I've had some experiences that don't belong in this post, but let's just say - I know we aren't the only accident of sentient life in the universe.
So, I started painting nebulas. Using intense colors and making images of gas clouds and stars and skies and lands - nothing you'd see on Earth really - just color washes, what sunsets might look like in another atmosphere, skyscapes. This was not the part that got out of my comfort zone. For a couple weeks, I've had this color wash nebula backgrounds hung in various places in my house so that I could stare at them and understand the direction I need to take them artistically.
Last night, I took one down off the wall and understood that there needed to be a person looking out from inside the gas clouds. And I drew and painted him on the canvas. The thing is, I want to weep for how beautiful he turned out. I literally stared into his face for 45 minutes with the biggest smile I've ever had. And then - I took a blank canvas and made a woman.
She's equally beautiful, though completely different than the man. Thing is, the man emerged from the painting. The woman, she emerged from nothing. I'm still completely floored by how the whole thing went down because both paintings were done in less than an hour a piece.
I woke up smiling and can't get the smile off of my face today - not that I want to. I woke up feeling enlightened and energized and just beyond words. The me I set out to find, I found - with the swoop of a paintbrush and the sound of KT Tunstall playing in the living room. I was in a zone last night and from that zone I reemerged like a butterfly from her cocoon.
Today is an amazing day. If I could only stop staring at my paintings.
A while back, and I think I blogged about that too, my friend asked me to paint something and get out of my comfort zone for it. Anyone who has seen my paintings knows that I opt for florals and abstracts and rarely, if ever, stray from that. I use color in awesome ways but don't stray from style, usually.
I've always been enamored with space. I've always read about nebula, galaxies, the stars, the planets, and aliens. It's always been something that's with me. I've had some experiences that don't belong in this post, but let's just say - I know we aren't the only accident of sentient life in the universe.
So, I started painting nebulas. Using intense colors and making images of gas clouds and stars and skies and lands - nothing you'd see on Earth really - just color washes, what sunsets might look like in another atmosphere, skyscapes. This was not the part that got out of my comfort zone. For a couple weeks, I've had this color wash nebula backgrounds hung in various places in my house so that I could stare at them and understand the direction I need to take them artistically.
Last night, I took one down off the wall and understood that there needed to be a person looking out from inside the gas clouds. And I drew and painted him on the canvas. The thing is, I want to weep for how beautiful he turned out. I literally stared into his face for 45 minutes with the biggest smile I've ever had. And then - I took a blank canvas and made a woman.
She's equally beautiful, though completely different than the man. Thing is, the man emerged from the painting. The woman, she emerged from nothing. I'm still completely floored by how the whole thing went down because both paintings were done in less than an hour a piece.
I woke up smiling and can't get the smile off of my face today - not that I want to. I woke up feeling enlightened and energized and just beyond words. The me I set out to find, I found - with the swoop of a paintbrush and the sound of KT Tunstall playing in the living room. I was in a zone last night and from that zone I reemerged like a butterfly from her cocoon.
Today is an amazing day. If I could only stop staring at my paintings.
May 20, 2010
All things just keep getting better.
Sometimes life is just like a bowl of whipping cream. The bowl has been chilled, there is sugar and a hint of vanilla added, and life starts a whippin'. Next thing you know you're left with this big fluffy white cloud of awesome that tastes amazing. That's what my life is right now. Things are falling into place slowly but surely and I really don't know what to make of it.
I love that I have patience. I love that I can just chill and relax and go with the flow without worrying about the future or where things are going. Who am I kidding? I worry, but I still chill. I'm not into rushing things or jumping the gun, I just sit back and watch life blend and mix and whip, and then I savor.
I need a vacation soonish, however I can't go anywhere until this show is handled in July, then my baby brother is talking about coming for a visit - so we'll have to see about when we can leave. I might go to Hawaii with a friend - just because - hey, it's Hawaii. Who knows, things are happening swiftly and awesomely for me. I shall ride the wave - covered in whipped cream.
I love that I have patience. I love that I can just chill and relax and go with the flow without worrying about the future or where things are going. Who am I kidding? I worry, but I still chill. I'm not into rushing things or jumping the gun, I just sit back and watch life blend and mix and whip, and then I savor.
I need a vacation soonish, however I can't go anywhere until this show is handled in July, then my baby brother is talking about coming for a visit - so we'll have to see about when we can leave. I might go to Hawaii with a friend - just because - hey, it's Hawaii. Who knows, things are happening swiftly and awesomely for me. I shall ride the wave - covered in whipped cream.
May 13, 2010
Meditation
Sometimes I can sit down and meditate for 12 seconds and suddenly my hearing is amplified by trillions and I can hear everything. I can hear the trees breathing and sighing. I can hear the birds chirping and understand what the tweets are. I can hear everything. If I get to 30 seconds I can see it all too.
Lately, and I don't know if it's because I'm sick, or something more nefarious but I can't get there. I once heard that meditation is next to impossible when you are falling in love. I guess your brain and soul are preoccupied with the "falling" part and the "in love" part. Because everything is preoccupied complete focus and control is impossible or near next to. But the thing is, I'm not falling in love, at least not that I'm aware internally. Maybe I am, I mean it is possible. The thing is sometimes I feel like I am. Sometimes, due to nothing I can explain, tiny cocktail daggers stab me in the chest. Sometimes they are coated in sweetness, like someone ate a cherry off of one before launching it. Sometimes they are covered in salt and they sting, Olives may have been the snack. Either way when I feel this ping in my chest I shake it off. I see who I'm with and where I am and realize that my heart is having a really bad idea. Why? Because as amazing as it could be, it's scary and confusing. As much as my soul knows it's right, my brain thinks differently. I can only imagine the depths of the awkward. I made this decision months ago. I consciously decided that even daydreaming about things being different was stupid. I let it go. However every now and then it crawls right back in, and as much as I shake it off it's there. I really don't know what that means. But as for falling? I fell, and I've been crawling out of the hole for months now. I'm no longer falling, so why is it still so impossible to meditate?
So here I am in this confusion, and because of it meditation is impossible. Getting closer to the Universe is increasingly difficult. Opening my soul to the ether is not inconceivable, but it is laborious. Normally it takes 12 seconds. Lately it's been taking 30 minutes.
Anyone got a rope?
Lately, and I don't know if it's because I'm sick, or something more nefarious but I can't get there. I once heard that meditation is next to impossible when you are falling in love. I guess your brain and soul are preoccupied with the "falling" part and the "in love" part. Because everything is preoccupied complete focus and control is impossible or near next to. But the thing is, I'm not falling in love, at least not that I'm aware internally. Maybe I am, I mean it is possible. The thing is sometimes I feel like I am. Sometimes, due to nothing I can explain, tiny cocktail daggers stab me in the chest. Sometimes they are coated in sweetness, like someone ate a cherry off of one before launching it. Sometimes they are covered in salt and they sting, Olives may have been the snack. Either way when I feel this ping in my chest I shake it off. I see who I'm with and where I am and realize that my heart is having a really bad idea. Why? Because as amazing as it could be, it's scary and confusing. As much as my soul knows it's right, my brain thinks differently. I can only imagine the depths of the awkward. I made this decision months ago. I consciously decided that even daydreaming about things being different was stupid. I let it go. However every now and then it crawls right back in, and as much as I shake it off it's there. I really don't know what that means. But as for falling? I fell, and I've been crawling out of the hole for months now. I'm no longer falling, so why is it still so impossible to meditate?
So here I am in this confusion, and because of it meditation is impossible. Getting closer to the Universe is increasingly difficult. Opening my soul to the ether is not inconceivable, but it is laborious. Normally it takes 12 seconds. Lately it's been taking 30 minutes.
Anyone got a rope?
May 10, 2010
Vices
Everyone has a vice. Those super-juiced workout types who eat grass and tofu and do yoga every day - they have vices too -albeit healthier ones than the rest of us. Some of us adopt less than healthy vices such as smoking, drinking, drugs. Others of us opt for something less obvious, shopping, eating, sex. Then there are those whose vice is the high they get from running, or the feeling they feel after a good long workout. Then there are the deviants... those whose vices include the rush they feel from stealing, from abusing someone, or other such nonsense. Well, it's nonsense to me. To them, they get a high from it.
Recently, I set out on some sort of search for myself. I found myself but then I adopted a less than healthy connection to a vice. You see, this wasn't my vice - this wasn't my addiction. It all started when I got my heart broken last summer. It wasn't a horrible heart break in the slightest. As a matter of fact, I've never been more glad that something happened to me. I was seeing this guy for a while and he broke up with me in a fairly harsh way - in the middle of my day - with no explanation whatsoever. The details are unimportant, it's the broken heart that's the important thing.
I felt nauseous, disgusted, angry, and hurt. I left where I was, in the middle of what I was doing. I was on my way home and I stopped at my local tavern. It was 3 in the afternoon and I walked up to the bar and said, "Some D-Bag broke my heart, make me a drink." Now, I was never the person to drown my problems in ethanol. Drinking was purely recreational fun. If I was out dancing with my friends I'd have some drinks... if I had been invited out by my work pals, I'd have a couple. But I knew that I didn't want to be home alone, so I sat at the bar and had my first ever whiskey sour. (Cue music)
I met a couple of funny guys there that day who said something about drinking like it was a Saturday even though it was a Tuesday. They told me to forget about the idiot who broke my heart - and that not all men were bad. I had 2 drinks and walked home. Then shortly thereafter I hurt my knee pretty badly. I was in a cast and on crutches and couldn't cook for myself or go too far so I decided to go back to the local establishment - they have pretty good food there. For the full 6 weeks I sat there in almost the same bar stool every night which is when I became addicted to what would be my vice for the next 8 months.
You're thinking that this is a story of how I became an alcoholic, don't you? Well, it's not. It's not because I'm not. I was close, but no, that's not this story. This is the story of how I became addicted to the bar. You see, there were a couple of people in particular who I met and connected with spiritually. My friends from the neighborhood all went there with some degree of regularity. The bar was like a petri dish and I thought there was such humor and drama there, that I decided to write a sit-com about it. It was this decision that changed me in some ways that I'm not proud of.
The customers there are some of the best you'll find anywhere. From crazy alcoholics to sexual deviants in bow ties - drug addicts and dealers, to yuppies with their twins in a stroller that equals someone's rent payment. They all converge on this one spot in the universe on an almost daily basis. If you thought of them in terms of elemental gases and energy - they converge and a star appears. These customers, they were what I found transiently amusing, however the true awesome was the staff.
There are so many different personalities at work at this establishment, that it would be difficult to do a psychological profile of the establishment as a whole. One would have to divide and subdivide everything. It made it increasingly amusing and challenging to figure out how all of these different persona could work together under one roof. I was sucked in to this world because it was so familiar to me, the personalities, the problems, the dramas, they could be found anywhere - under any roof where different people converge to do a task. The idea for the Television show is why I kept coming back, taking notes in my phone, researching the microcosm.
Now, the thing about me is this. I can be a chameleon. Not always, sometimes I'm a butterfly, spreading my multi-colored wings and flitting about. Sometimes I'm a dog, loyal to the death. Sometimes I can even be a fox, deceitful and cunning. But the chameleon, she's always with me. I can adapt to fit in to any social situation I encounter. If you see me at the Twisted Spoke, I can sit with bikers and other tattooed "freaks" like myself and do just fine. If you follow me on a Tuesday to the Drum and Monkey, you'll see a completely different set of people - young college kids - that I have no business hanging out with really, but there I'll be having a great time in an environment that most people would tell you I belong no where near. The problem with being a chameleon is a large one. If you choose to immerse yourself in an environment and a culture, you tend to adopt the habits and actions of those within the environment or culture. Hang out in an establishment with abusers of alcohol and you will begin to abuse alcohol.
2 months ago, I finally started synthesizing the notes I'd taken, and got back to the task at hand which was always the script. The thing I'd set out to do, I put on the shelf because of the friendships I'd forged in this environment. I was enjoying the hanging out part and the research part and forgot to do the writing part. When I started writing I'd realized that over the last 6 or 7 months I'd adopted a lot of behavior that I'm really not proud of. I'd started socially drinking at least 4 nights a week, sometimes more. I'd started one thing that I really didn't like about myself or anyone else, judging people. I sat back and realized how often I talk of the people who both work and play there. This establishment, as I sat to write jokes, didn't produce a lot of jokes. I became increasingly more self-aware and came to some realizations I didn't want to come to.
That's when I started doing something different. I started babysitting the first drink. Instead of binge drinking, I was going to slow it all down to the point of normalcy. I stopped doing shots. I started bringing things to do, games, books, even sketch books and pencils. I started trying to spend less and less time there. The drinking problem wasn't a problem, really. Changing the drinking habits was easy, there was a bigger challenge afoot for me - a challenge I still have.
If I'm sitting at home and get even remotely bored, my immediate reaction is to walk over to the bar. My brother and I were raised apart, and I was the only kid with a single mom for years. I'm rarely, if ever, lonely. I can go from extrovert to introvert in 2.5 seconds with no degree of difficulty. I know how to be alone, and am quite good at it actually. It's why I think of my relationship to the establishment as an addiction in and of itself. It's completely unnecessary for me to go there, however I find that if I don't have a task to do at home, if I even think about that place, within 4 minutes my key is in the door and I'm on my way there.
I've stopped drinking, completely. Now, if I could just get passed this other vice.
Recently, I set out on some sort of search for myself. I found myself but then I adopted a less than healthy connection to a vice. You see, this wasn't my vice - this wasn't my addiction. It all started when I got my heart broken last summer. It wasn't a horrible heart break in the slightest. As a matter of fact, I've never been more glad that something happened to me. I was seeing this guy for a while and he broke up with me in a fairly harsh way - in the middle of my day - with no explanation whatsoever. The details are unimportant, it's the broken heart that's the important thing.
I felt nauseous, disgusted, angry, and hurt. I left where I was, in the middle of what I was doing. I was on my way home and I stopped at my local tavern. It was 3 in the afternoon and I walked up to the bar and said, "Some D-Bag broke my heart, make me a drink." Now, I was never the person to drown my problems in ethanol. Drinking was purely recreational fun. If I was out dancing with my friends I'd have some drinks... if I had been invited out by my work pals, I'd have a couple. But I knew that I didn't want to be home alone, so I sat at the bar and had my first ever whiskey sour. (Cue music)
I met a couple of funny guys there that day who said something about drinking like it was a Saturday even though it was a Tuesday. They told me to forget about the idiot who broke my heart - and that not all men were bad. I had 2 drinks and walked home. Then shortly thereafter I hurt my knee pretty badly. I was in a cast and on crutches and couldn't cook for myself or go too far so I decided to go back to the local establishment - they have pretty good food there. For the full 6 weeks I sat there in almost the same bar stool every night which is when I became addicted to what would be my vice for the next 8 months.
You're thinking that this is a story of how I became an alcoholic, don't you? Well, it's not. It's not because I'm not. I was close, but no, that's not this story. This is the story of how I became addicted to the bar. You see, there were a couple of people in particular who I met and connected with spiritually. My friends from the neighborhood all went there with some degree of regularity. The bar was like a petri dish and I thought there was such humor and drama there, that I decided to write a sit-com about it. It was this decision that changed me in some ways that I'm not proud of.
The customers there are some of the best you'll find anywhere. From crazy alcoholics to sexual deviants in bow ties - drug addicts and dealers, to yuppies with their twins in a stroller that equals someone's rent payment. They all converge on this one spot in the universe on an almost daily basis. If you thought of them in terms of elemental gases and energy - they converge and a star appears. These customers, they were what I found transiently amusing, however the true awesome was the staff.
There are so many different personalities at work at this establishment, that it would be difficult to do a psychological profile of the establishment as a whole. One would have to divide and subdivide everything. It made it increasingly amusing and challenging to figure out how all of these different persona could work together under one roof. I was sucked in to this world because it was so familiar to me, the personalities, the problems, the dramas, they could be found anywhere - under any roof where different people converge to do a task. The idea for the Television show is why I kept coming back, taking notes in my phone, researching the microcosm.
Now, the thing about me is this. I can be a chameleon. Not always, sometimes I'm a butterfly, spreading my multi-colored wings and flitting about. Sometimes I'm a dog, loyal to the death. Sometimes I can even be a fox, deceitful and cunning. But the chameleon, she's always with me. I can adapt to fit in to any social situation I encounter. If you see me at the Twisted Spoke, I can sit with bikers and other tattooed "freaks" like myself and do just fine. If you follow me on a Tuesday to the Drum and Monkey, you'll see a completely different set of people - young college kids - that I have no business hanging out with really, but there I'll be having a great time in an environment that most people would tell you I belong no where near. The problem with being a chameleon is a large one. If you choose to immerse yourself in an environment and a culture, you tend to adopt the habits and actions of those within the environment or culture. Hang out in an establishment with abusers of alcohol and you will begin to abuse alcohol.
2 months ago, I finally started synthesizing the notes I'd taken, and got back to the task at hand which was always the script. The thing I'd set out to do, I put on the shelf because of the friendships I'd forged in this environment. I was enjoying the hanging out part and the research part and forgot to do the writing part. When I started writing I'd realized that over the last 6 or 7 months I'd adopted a lot of behavior that I'm really not proud of. I'd started socially drinking at least 4 nights a week, sometimes more. I'd started one thing that I really didn't like about myself or anyone else, judging people. I sat back and realized how often I talk of the people who both work and play there. This establishment, as I sat to write jokes, didn't produce a lot of jokes. I became increasingly more self-aware and came to some realizations I didn't want to come to.
That's when I started doing something different. I started babysitting the first drink. Instead of binge drinking, I was going to slow it all down to the point of normalcy. I stopped doing shots. I started bringing things to do, games, books, even sketch books and pencils. I started trying to spend less and less time there. The drinking problem wasn't a problem, really. Changing the drinking habits was easy, there was a bigger challenge afoot for me - a challenge I still have.
If I'm sitting at home and get even remotely bored, my immediate reaction is to walk over to the bar. My brother and I were raised apart, and I was the only kid with a single mom for years. I'm rarely, if ever, lonely. I can go from extrovert to introvert in 2.5 seconds with no degree of difficulty. I know how to be alone, and am quite good at it actually. It's why I think of my relationship to the establishment as an addiction in and of itself. It's completely unnecessary for me to go there, however I find that if I don't have a task to do at home, if I even think about that place, within 4 minutes my key is in the door and I'm on my way there.
I've stopped drinking, completely. Now, if I could just get passed this other vice.
