Independence

With the approach of July 4th I've been thinking of my own independence and those people and institutions that have given me the chance to become who I am.

I've been told by several people that I am unable to make decisions for myself - in essence they told me that my views, my way of thinking, and even sexual identity are based on someone else's - that I'd never have become like I am on my own.

At first I was very pissed.  Then after digesting it I realized the were right, partially.  We are all bombarded with external stimuli and it's how we decided to deal with it that defines us.  The places and people that have helped make me who I am are precious to me because they gave me the space and freedom I needed to explore the world.

"It's all that University's fault."

I am moderately liberal (compared to my hometown I'm LIBERAL) and my conservative family and friends have attributed my shift in perspective to the small liberal arts University that I attended.  I accept this claim in so far as my University gave me the opportunity to explore new ideas.  The political spectrum within my group of friends at the end of those four years ranged from highly conservative to highly liberal so really it was how we decided to process the input we received that determined our views.

The opportunities offered enriched my life:

And a handful of people will always be dear to me for helping me find my way including my biology professors, fencing instructor, Matt, Bruce, and especially Warren.

This won't make sense to anyone but Warren. :)

"It's just his influence; you're not really bi."

I lived with Matt for a year after college and because he was open and accepting I was able to puzzle my way through my own sexuality.  When I told Cleo that I was bi that was her response above.  There was real anger and some animosity to her response.  It took some time to let it go, to realize she was projecting her own fears.  Freshman year she, her roommate, and Elanore expresses their terror of being roomed with lesbians.  Cleo and I had been very close during college and I think she was worried about what me being bi was going to do to our relationship.

Actually I'm more of a 2 on the Kinsey scale:

But unless the person you're talking to knows about the Kinsey scale it's just easier to say bi.

And of course I'm grateful for our independence as a country and aware of the costs for my freedom to be who I am.

France, summer 2002.

Have a Happy Independence Day everyone!

In the Moment

In my search for meaning I keep coming around to the idea of living in the moment.

There are handy quotes:

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." Buddha

"Today is life - the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today." Dale Carnegie 

But how does one truly face the present knowing that one day you won't be here.  All my thoughts, my hopes, my being, will be gone.  My atoms will move on, become part of some other organism, or perhaps part of the earth.

I carry a rock from the shore of Lake Superior with me, to and from work, waking and sleeping I have it within reach.  There really isn't anything special about it - most would never look at it twice.  It sat on a shelf for years, but the other week I was drawn to pick it up and hold it.  It fits in the palm of my hand and is made of several types of rock, what I believe was initially sedimentary rock that long ago underwent heat and pressure, receiving intrusions of quartz.  Intrusions speak to me of time.  In an introductory geology class the professor was fond of field trips - we wandered around the county looking at different outcrops, caves, and limestone quarries full of fossils.  Quartz intrusions always drew my eye, "There," my brain would say, "that rock is younger than the other".  My eye would rove outcrops looking for signs of age or indicators of million year old shifts in the Earth.

I thought once that I'd come to terms with death - I later realized it was a view through depression - that death did not scare me because it represented peace.  The reality of life and death snuck up on me the day I picked up that rock and held it.  I was distracted by tv, curled up with a pillow, blanket, and my laptop.  When the tv show ended in the wee hours of the morning, in the dark and the silence with the weight of the stone warmed by body heat resting in my palm, it all came crashing down.  The brevity of life, the seeming lack of meaning.  It was paralyzing.

That rock I carry has and will exist as a whole so much longer than I will.  It has and will interact with so many different beings and elements - in its timescale I am but a blink of an eye.  How then does my life matter?  It is so short and there are so many of us.  Does it truly matter what I do?

I come around to the idea of living in the moment.

The idea of taking advantage of every moment because later they will be gone.  It is difficult for me to do.  It feels like such a weight of responsibility - what if I don't take these moments seriously enough?  What if I waste my moments?

I don't have the answers to life's big questions and I don't know if it matters what I do.  I'm trying to live in the moment - to do the things that make me happy and harm as few people as possible in the process.  I'm not very good at it yet, but maybe with time, and reminders of time, I can get better.

Dreams

I sometimes bemoan the fact that we have one life to live, that we can't have one lifetime then pick ourselves up and transplant into another lifetime.  Books and movies let us have the illusion of the possibility.  Colin Firth can be a painter, a writer, an aristocrat, a pauper father, a king, a gay banker- the list goes on- he can seemingly be and do so many different things regardless of time.   In a movie the character can die, but the actor can show up somewhere else and continue.  If only reality worked this way.

(Design by: desexign)

In some ways I have something that not everyone does, memorable dreams.  It is as if I have two lives to live - one of consciousness and the other unconsciousness or subconscious.  My dreams are in color, vivid, and often full of sensations.  My unconscious brain recreates the five senses, though dormant in my sleeping body, in my dreams.  Not all my dreams are spectacular and not all have every sense, but I have another world in which to live.

Most of my dreams are pleasant, odd and confusing, but pleasant.  I have reoccurring dreams that have been both good and bad.  The first is tornados. Sometimes I face the tornado, I watch it come, knowing that it can't hurt me.  I've been in small broken down houses, skyscrapers, or out in the open when the tornado is bearing down.  I've seen deep green sod and trees seem to burst from the ground, like a bomb went off, as the tornado hits the earth.  I've also dreamt of trying to save people from tornados.  I run through the buildings screaming at people to seek shelter.  I've hunkered down in the basement while the house above begins to rattle.

The other reoccurring element in my dreams are elevators.  The elevators in my dreams never work like a traditional one should.  They never go up and down, at least not solely up and down, and they almost never go to the right place.  I am constantly riding elevators that twist and turn through the building.  I go sideways, backwards, forwards, up, down, in circles. Some have horizontal doors, others vertical.  There is only one dream that I can remember that had an elevator that worked like ones in reality.

With this great world comes some bad experiences.  Usually I don't encounter bad dreams, but after reading 'The Cabinet of Curiosities' I found myself at the mercy of a serial killer.  That dream was tactile and very unpleasant.  I hadn't been expecting it since I'd already moved on to several other books, but I guess the image of what that killer did stuck in my subconscious.  I've also had vivid dreams of my then lover dying.  I hadn't heard from him in weeks and somehow my subconscious translated it as his death.  Once I spoke with him again, the dreams stopped.  So I guess they're not always two separate worlds, but in my dreams I can face feelings I squash in my conscious life.

I have a cache of memories from both realities and both keep me going.  I may not get more that one lifetime, but perhaps I can do as much as possible in my two worlds.

Existential Crises

This is the wrong time to be having mini-existential crises.  They creep up on me, jump into my consciousness, and tear down my avoidance and denial.  My lack of purpose in my academics now extends into the rest of my life.  I can ignore questions of purpose and avoid the knowledge of death most of the time, but de temps en temps the emptiness of it all finds me.

I know someone who would probably mull this over with me, but I don't know if I can let myself get so close to him again.  He has always been there for me - especially when I'm struggling to find meaning or my place.  It would be nice to just curl up and be held, to know I'm not alone in this fight called life.  However, for now, I'm going to keep pushing the boulder up the hill on my own.

Alela Diane, 'To Begin'
"It's hard oh it's hard to help yourself when you don't know where to begin. It's the devil, it's the boil, it's the black of night in your head".

Company of Thieves, 'Oscar Wilde'
"We are all our own devil - we make this world our hell".

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful." Albert Camus

Root of Anger

Warning!! Religious, semi-rant, contents.

     Anger and bitterness are emotions that have in the past entrenched my life - I can't grow as a person if I harbor a deep seeded resentment for someone or something.  I managed to work through issues of resentment toward a friend and it was like a weight lifted off of my shoulders.  Our friendship is healthier and likely will stand the test of time so long as we both accept one another - which brings me to the issue I've been dealing with for, well, as long as I can remember.  My friend is very religious and during college our views parted ways.  We never spoke about it, or rather, I never mentioned it, because I was afraid I would lose her.  I loved her, in more ways than I should have.  We still don't talk about it because I'm still afraid of losing her.  I'm afraid she won't accept me anymore - in the beginning of our friendship we were two peas in a pod with similar beliefs and based on that we grew closer.  Now I feel like I'm on a separate island, belief-wise, a chasm that can't be breached.  My parents, sister, and closest friends (save one) are all with her.  

     I harbor some residual anger toward Christianity, the religion I was brought up in.  It wasn't all bad - I know that I am who I am today because of the influences of the church.  I try to be a good person and treat others fairly.  I also grew up in the middle of nowhere and led a very sheltered life until the age of 18.  By the age of 16 or 17 I was starting to feel at odds with the beliefs set out by the church.  I started to feel out of place even though I'd gone to church camp since a young age, I was a part of the youth group and then a life team, I sang in the youth band, I went to the Nightmare House*, and I was a part of a small Human Video** group.  There was never an atmosphere in my house that you didn't question God or Christianity - it just never came up.  I was slightly zealous in my teenage years and though it may have kept me out of trouble I think it was detrimental in the long run.  I tried so hard to be, to do what was necessary to be, a good Christian. When I ascended to heaven God would say, "You've done well, my child."  I imagined over and over again what that would be like.  I never felt good enough, I always fell short, and I became a master of self-flagellation. Its only in the past few years that I've come to realize how negative I am toward myself.

     I guess my anger may stem from the fact that no one told me that religion is subjective.  I was raised under the idea that Christianity is the only right way - everyone else is wrong and therefore going to hell.  For a long time I wasn't aware of other religions.  I was very sheltered and thought that everyone held these beliefs.  Once I was finally exposed to a more diverse set of people (thank you college!) and my eyes were fully opened the numbers no longer made sense.  There are around 6 billion people on the earth at this very moment and according to my childhood church only a select few would go to heaven - all of the others would go to hell.  That alone rubs me the wrong way. A god that would allow that many people to suffer for eternity - that is no god I want to know.

     There is a lot more to the twisted path that got me to where I am now including stints with the Feminine Devine, Wicca, Buddhism, and Atheism.  The idea that fits me best is Agnostic.  I don't believe in god, but I have no way of knowing, no one does, whether or not there is a god.  I try to accept others' beliefs, but anger still gets me when people try to tell me that I'm wrong and that their way is the only right way.  Anger still sneaks up when people try to console me using religious phrases, "Its okay - God only gives us what we can handle."  I don't mind if someone wants to pray for me, its nice of them to think of me.  I mind when people try to shove religion, theism or atheism, down my throat.  I'm trying to work through that residual anger.

Snapped during a road trip that took us through the bible belt.

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*'Nightmare' was the local version of a Hell House - a Christian built and run version of a haunted house thats meant to scare you straight into Jesus' arms. Hell House Documentary Description.
**If you've never heard of Human Video NPR just did a story on it: NPR story, "Human videos reenacting christian pop songs for jesus". I was part of a much smaller group than the one shown, and allowed to use props, but I can't believe I was ever a part of such a thing.