Dissociation is Time Travel

I think about dissociation a lot because I do it a lot. A few years ago I didn't even know a word for the phenomenon existed. I stumbled across it in some compilation of coherent sentences, looked up the wiki, and boom: oh hey, that's me. Like, most of the time that's really me.

Dissociation is, as I understand it, is a detachment from reality as a reaction to stress, or even just boredom. There are varying degrees, from mild to severe (as the result of trauma generally), but in general, it's choosing to check out for a bit, rather than deal with something that's happening in real space. Or to check out a lot, if you hate your whole life. As an example. For instance.

Have you ever wanted to suspend yourself in time for 10, 50, 100 years just to see what the world is like later? I think about this ALL THE TIME. It occurred to me the other night, in a lovely bout of not sleeping, that dissociation is a poor man's substitute for suspended animation. Right now sucks, so I check out for a few minutes to a few decades and rouse myself to see if the new now is any better. Typically no, for fairly obvious reasons I leave as an exercise for the reader. So in that sense, dissociation is a form of time travel, hoping on a better future. However deeply flawed the logic of it may be.

In the exciting world of weather forecasting, the baseline for a good temperature forecast is "did it beat the climatology forecast?" In other words, was the forecast more accurate than the average temperature on this day for the last 30 years? In this sense, dissociation is the hope that the forecast beats the climatology of one's life so far. Or at least that, on the average, a better moment should be along soon.

Again, this has obvious problems, depending on circumstance. If you're just having a sad day, sure, waiting until tomorrow when you're likely to feel better is a good bet. If you're about to step on a rattlesnake or the car is sliding towards the edge of a cliff, now may not be the moment to bust out your phone and check twitter. Of course, there are many moments that don't seem immediately threatening, just irritating, where checking twitter isn't the ideal solution either, but that's the problem. It's not IMMEDIATELY urgent, so why not put off this annoyance for a few more minutes. Of course, no one here is claiming dissociation is rational.

Dissociation is closely related to procrastination of course, perhaps as a subset? Procrastinating on dealing with immediate reality. Procrastinaton, of course, ultimately being an existential problem (note how I say, of course, to skip lightly by arguing this point). That problem being" I'm going to die someday. I'd like to feel like I got some things accomplished before then. How good do I feel about how I spend my time? Most people seem to be banking on having some time to cram a late-night study session in before the big one hits if TV binging trends are any indication. Procrastination is the refusal to admit time is a currency and we apes have precious little to spend and probably shouldn't just fling it carelessly about. Procrastination is a delusional relationship to mortality.

Not to paint dissociation as evil. As a human being, you can't get away from an emotional response to stress, and dissociation as a way of taking a moment to collect one's self is probably not a bad thing. It's when one stretches that moment out indefinitely that problems might start to creep in. Or, worse yet, when one even procrastinates on recognizing the problem, because defining the problem might drag one relentlessly and ruthlessly into dealing with it.

My dissociation of choice is gaming. At 40, I'm ready to call my relationship with games "addictive" although that is a separate issue to some degree. I have a peculiar mixture of ADD and OCD (not-too-seriously self-diagnosed) that leaves me relentlessly focused on chasing ever-changing pixels around a screen. I receive video game tasks like labors from mighty Zeus himself. I'll just play this one more level before bed. One more chapter before I write those emails. One more play through of a 40-hour campaign before I clean up the apartment. Just 10 short years of exploring an MMO before I take a hard look at my career. Just 5 short lifetimes before I get around to figuring out what these impatient, and frankly increasingly rude, lights at the end of the tunnel keep sending me back to learn.

But games have been, and frankly remain, a form of time travel for me. It doesn't help that almost every game on the market these days is consciously addictive and loaded with feature bloat to keep me playing as long as possible. Every game wants to be the only game in my life. I'm at the point now where "120+ hours of gameplay!" sounds less like a feature and more like a death sentence. But it beats dealing with my life, so hail mighty Zeus and Mercury, lord of games, how can I bring you glory with these pixels today?

Dissociative gaming has really been a form of time travel for me. Every time I finish a game I look around bleary-eyed, wondering what the world outside looks like now.  Like Scrooge throwing his window opening wide shouting, "Boy, what day is it?" Except it's mid-March, Tiny Tim is dead, dead, dead and it really is too late to deal with the problems of late-December. This humble blog post is written in just such a moment.

I don't emerge entirely unchanged, of course. The body has gotten flabbier with lack of care. and I do get the occasional moment of inspiration and beauty from game worlds. And I want to say maybe those moments are not worth the hours of repetitive button-mashing that lies in between them, but as I've been realizing, those timeless, beautiful moments of dissociation are probably, in fact, the point.

I figure once I solve the need to dissociate, the gaming addiction will largely solve itself. On an emotional level, it just needs to feel more worthwhile to deal with shit and try to build a better life than to keep jumping forward in $60, 120+ hour increments hoping my life has solved itself. Intellectually I know that's true. But the inner child who, astride my inner animal, rules my mind like a petty, perpetually-distracted tyrant doesn't buy it yet.

How I find inspiration in the world as it is, is a different blog post of course. If I can stop jumping recklessly through time I'll let you know how it goes.

Hellection Part 2

...Now it's personal. Wrote this a couple days later. Just trying to vent but also connect oddly enough. Also cross-posted on FB.

*************

So I know "liberals whining about the election on FB" is SO OVER, and I already did this a couple of days ago, but I'd like to add personal context to last week. Maybe this time with less swearing.

I've had a terrible year. Not as a victim of anything other than my own decisions and malaise, just a bunch of things all in a row. I know I'm not alone and I know I haven't gotten thew worst of it. Spiritually sick is how I'd describe myself. Been that way for a long time.

Part of the problem is, I was trained to function in an Adventist environment and I'm never going back to Adventism. The hypocrisy of adventist actions vs words bothers me yes, but I flat out don't believe I was born into an alien empire as a de-facto lawbreaker and need to condition myself to feel bad every day and seek an authority figure to absolve me just to feel even a little good about myself. I think training children to hate themselves for making mistakes and insisting they grovel to adult authority figures as the only way to feel good is emotionally abusive and I'll have no part of it again. I know adventists hold this idea in cognitive dissonance with "love yourself as god loves you." but they are flatly incompatible frameworks. It's not a holy mystery, ya just gotta pick the one that makes more sense to you. I pick "ya gotta love yourself" because you can't hate yourself and love other people. These are not thoughts I picked up from anyone else, these are the responses that naturally formed after living in an oppressive religion for two decades, paying attention, and coming to my own conclusions. And that's not even starting to get into the issue of being queer and adventist, which is not a picnic. 

That said, I have found living in the secular world no picnic either. A lot of the hypocrisy and tribalism that drove me nuts in adventists culture is all over the place out here as well. As of yet I have found no replacement community where I feel like I belong and will never feel like I really belong in adventism either. You know how easy it is to explain to non-adventist people that you don't feel comfortable dancing because your childhood religion was so terrified of sexuality that they couldn't risk letting children learn how to dance? Not very. I am caught between worlds and I do not enjoy it.

So I've been depressed and isolated, this year in particular. The only place I understand is adventism and I'm never going back. And I have yet to find another place in the world that begins to make sense to me. I have no replacement spirituality or philosophy to hold onto either, just the vague remnants of adventist morality and a general "try not to be an asshole" feeling. These are not strong principles to guide one through hard times.

So an election that has been ripping bright division lines through our culture, when I already feel fairly separated from people, has been kind of depressing. 

In addition, my job may finally be imploding. Research science always has fluctuations in funding and you never know when or if they're coming back. And as a climate scientist, a political party taking unfettered power that has convinced themselves that climate science is the haven of charletans and liars is not a good omen for future funding. So thanks for that.

Voting in a party traditionally hostile to gay rights isn't helping with the "hey, you don't belong here." feeling either. We'll see what they actually try and do I guess, but I'm not optimistic. People like Mike Pence dont' give me reason to be. So thanks for that too.

On the flip side, I get that I now feel the way conservatives felt under Obama, scared and uncertain. I think your leaders lie to you shamelessly and exploit your fear but I get that this is how you felt. I watched Obama extend a hand in friendship for 8 years and watched Rush Limbaugh scream "he's reaching for your guns!" every time he did and every one ducked and cowered and thought he was a monster without checking with their own two eyes to see what he was doing. The same kind of misinformation exists on the democratic side to a lesser degree, but they're nowhere near as good at is as the fox news/conservative talk radio complex is at convincing their own people up is now down. That said, I do feel the empathy for how conservatives have felt. I'm feeling it now.

Conservatives are crowing and clucking at liberal protests like "we see how you really are now." which is kind of fair, but I see how conservatives are now too: people who delight when liberals are sad and scared and upset. I get that it's a sort of comeuppance, but I'm not seeing a lot of halos on the right now either. Thanks for feeling good when I'm sad.

I think we all trust bad filters to feed us information, FB foremost among them. Facebook's feed algorithm works to isolate us into tribes and, we've just learned, feed us an alarming number of outright fake news articles. I suspect we're all less informed for being on Facebook at all. I worry that we've entered a new era where facts and truth no longer really matter, and we'll believe whatever is most entertaining, or most in line with our fears and prejudices, and that goes for the right AND the left. I don't know how we come back from that without it blowing up in our collective spaces in such a damaging way way that we're forced to take a deep breath and go "Woah, what are we doing?" The longer we delay that moment, the worse it's going to be I think.

That's probably going to be how climate change goes too. It's gonna be a liberal conspiracy and a pack of hysterial lies right until Florida sinks below the waterline and then it will be true believers and bitter recrimiations all around and then hasty, far-too-late damage control. 

This election was an awful choice between Democrats holding minority rights hostage at the cost of little change and Republicans voting to blow the whole thing up, not really realizing it was going to blow up in their face too. We were probably going to feel bad any way it turned out. But this feels really bad for so many reasons that don't look to be getting better. I want to be optimistic, but I don't see where that comes from in the near term. But ultimately I was hoping Democrats were going to do what they said, and Clinton was going to be who she said she was and you're hoping Trump was lying about a lot of stuff. I know one of those votes was more nihilistic than the other.

So here's what I've realized. I can't do anything about the Trump administration, nor do I plan on running for office any time soon. So I'm going to try and worry less about that (although things get bad enough to require I join the protests, I will). Instead I'm going to focus on being a better person, because I am far from the person I want to be right now. I'm going to try and find a community I belong to, I'm going to try a philosophy or spiritual practice that makes sense to me and that seems to increase the overall amount of good in the universe and that helps keep me focused on being an agent for the same, and I'm going to try and find a way to be optimistic, hopeful, kind and enduring in the face a world that currently seems to be heading toward a selfish and angry place. Because the theme for the last year has been losing hope for me and this last week has done little to assuage that. But ultimately I am only really the captain of my own ship, so I'm going to spend some time trying to make things shipshape. Hopefully that will mean less time on FB and more time focusing on things that make the world a more bearable place.

I don't write this so anyone worries. Once I figure out this job situation and find a community and some reasonable sense of purpose that makes sense to me I'll feel much better about everything, even Trump's America. This is just me admitting out loud it's finally time to stop feeling bad for myself and actually try and make those things happen. And that probably starts with NOT endlessly scrolling twitter and facebook, hoping for something that's never coming down the feed.

I wish you all well through the holidays and hope that above all else we can keep a level head and good heart in what is likely to be a trying few years.

Hellection

Cross-posted from my FB account. Was writing to conservative friends kind of?

***

First, some concessions. The Democrats and their supporters have been unbearably smug at times. Once liberals felt they had the cultural momentum and had been endowed by gods unseen as unstoppably on "the right side of history" they mostly stopped any pretense of trying to convince people and started delivering a message that more or less boiled down to "join the only moral side you hateful pieces of shit," which, as I have been trying to tell people, is not a message the unconverted are going to be inclined to buy into. Bullied into maybe, but who wants to win that way? Conservatives had not made kindness easy, nor are they shining champions in the "kindness to the other" department, "but you treat people like shit so I get to treat you like shit" is an argument stuck on stupid from both sides and it spirals into nothing good. 

In addition, democrats ran a bad candidate and a bad campaign. Trump, for all his many, many faults at least had the presence to make a slogan that referenced something bigger than himself. "I'm with her" was a slogan for a vanity candidate. It pointed to what you could do for Clinton, not what Clinton could do for you. They completely misread how fed up people are with "business as usual," and trust me, I am too, and put the thumb on the scale for Hillary because it was her turn. And then ran with that attitude running into the election. As it turns out, people don't like it when you just assume you should win without making much of an argument for why you should. I would have preferred Bernie, or even someone to the left of Bernie, or, god forbid, some viable 3rd parties, because I want some fresh blood in government too, but I didn't have those options. I would have enjoyed a conservative option that seemed reasonable but that wasn't on the table either, so I voted Hillary. It seemed the least bad option in a situation where there were no great options. But she ran a bad campaign. So bad she couldn't beat a reality TV-star with zero political experience. And I accept that he won, GOP efforts to curb the vote in the few states and an FBI investigator with wavy hands and nothing to show aside, more or less fair and square.

That said. Donald Trump is not a good man. His obvious lack of qualifications aside, he ran a venal, vulgar, mean-spirited campaign, and I only say that because I've listened to what he's said and watched what he's done for a year and a half. He's hurled insults and accusations and childish retorts and so many lies it was hard to keep track. My dad once had a student who was a compulsive liar. He watched him break a window right in front of him and confronted him on it, but the student replied, "No, Mr. R, I didn't do that." "Well, I saw you do it." "Nope, I didn't do that." That's my overwhelming impression of Donald Trump. Show him a tape of him lying and he'll just calmly deny it happened at all. The debates alone had multiple incidents just like that.

If people describe him a petulant bully it's only because he's behaved that way for years, on stage, in writing, on video. a dozen women came forward alleging sexual harassment. He's on tape bragging about all the groping he can get away with as a powerful celebrity. Not to mention all the race-baiting. Promising to keep mexicans and muslims out. The KKK loves him. Asserting again shortly before the election that the central park 5 should have been executed, long after DNA evidence exonerated them. It's fair to say not all of his supporters are racists, there's no basis to even claim the majority are, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to pretend there isn't a racial animus in his message when I can see and hear it with my own ears and eyes. Nor am I going to pretend he and his movement have been misunderstood when I've seen the harassment of minorities and women from his supporters with my own eyes. I've seen the chants at rallies. I've seen the armed guards the press hired to keep themselves safe at his rallies. Donald Trump has spent the last year and half showing me exactly who he is, and friends, I take him at his word.

I believe we are in for a bad time. I believe Trump voters have made a terrible mistake in choosing a hero. I believe Trump fights for Trump first and last. I never seen behavior in him that I would describe as "selfless." There is no evidence he's ever donated to a charity that wasn't Trump-related. He certainly doesn't have a temperment I would describe as presidential. All a foreign leader needs to do is mention he has tiny hands and watch him get red in the face and wait for the ensuing impulsive over-reaction. It may just be an angrily-worded tweet, but hey, that's just how our new president rolls.

Liberals are scared right now because he has fostered an atmosphere of hate and suspicion towards minorities that some, let's assume, minority of his followers may act on. You were mad that liberals thought you were hateful pieces of shit (and that's admittedly a maddening attitude to be confronted with). Liberals are afraid their minority friends are going to be killed because enough of you are willing to look the other way. Is that overly hysterical? Maybe, but like it or not there is some history here that justifies the concern. 

LGBT like myself are worried a man who chose Mike Pence as a VP are going to have their rights taken away again. Controversial things like the right to marry the adult, consenting person you love and the right to be employed while openly homosexual. Trans individuals are worried about their rights to use a public bathroom (hint: they want a quiet place to pee like the rest of you. They don't care about your business.). Are those fears going to be born out? God I hope not (and I see some hysteria on the left right now that seems overblown), but given the tenor of the campaign and the rhetoric coming from Trump for years now, we have good reason to believe life is going to get harder, especially for those of us who are a little different.

I thought about going all self-righteous on you and declaring Trump voters irrideemable, that's not fair. I think they've made a bad choice they will come to regret, but it's not my place to punish people for their vote (obviously), and like I mentioned at the beginning, liberals have some serious, serious soul-searching to do on their own on how they treat people and what kind of inspiring message they're going to present going forward. Any party that's been losing so many state legislatures and governorships and now the presidency needs grapple with the fact that they're doing something wrong. And to be honest, I suspect living under a President Trump and living with the knowledge that you voted for him will be punishment enough. But do I understand why so many "good christian people" could vote for such a transparently vulgar, unchristian man? No, no I do not.

Here's the thing though, going forward. You control the presidency, congress, and are on the verge of dominating the supreme court for a generation. For the first time in my adult life, I would like to see conservatives take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and hold their leaders accountable. If your president is plagued with scandals, that's on you. If Obamacare is repealed and healthcare isn't suddenly sunshine and roses because they don't have a real plan to replace it, that's on you. If the economy craters because of austerity measure or tax cuts for the wealthy, that's on you. If we go to war, that's on you. If the war goes badly, that's on you too. Because I'm tired of the endless finger-pointing at every convenient scapegoat and now that you run it all, you don't get to do that. And considering the unprecedented obstructionism of republicans in the Obama years, you don't get to complain about that either. If you're going to be the party of suit-wearing grown-ups then fucking act like it. Similarly, if liberals consider themselves the standard-beares of a kinder, compelling, more evolved future, then they need to fucking act like it too. I admit democrats/liberals/progressives have some work to do on themselves but goddamn it you need to admit you guys do too. Claiming to be on the right side of history is not enough. Claiming to love Jesus is not enough. Do more. Do better. Believe people when they tell you how your behavior affects them. Consider the possibility that you're wrong.

At this point, I don't know who started with the smug assholery first, but we're all locked in a death spiral because we can't admit we might be wrong and we can't see ourselves in the other half anymore and friends that leads nowhere good. There's very little room for reconciliation and kindness in demonization, and acres of room for violence, despair and misery there. Literally, it leads to death if you're not careful. If your opponent is not human, then how bad should you feel if they die? That's the scary territory we've been edging towards for years now.

I'm sick to my stomach about President Trump. But I'm willing to admit that good man or not, he could bring about a new and beautiful age for us all. I think it unlikely given his unsubtle displays of character, but I'm willing to believe what my own eyes tell me should that come to pass. I guess the question I'm asking is, if Trump turns out to be as incompetent, divisive and dangerous as liberals fear, are conservatives willing to admit they were wrong too?

At this point, I have little hope things will get better before they get worse, but manoman would I love to be surprised. You've made a huge, reckless gamble with President Trump. We're all understandably nervous. I hope to god it pays off.

Thinkin'

I watched the Accountant last night, and while not an amazing movie, it did make me think about autism a little bit. I've wondered off and on if I don't have some sort of cognitive disorder, where I'm still more or less high-functioning but perpetually unable to get my thoughts/life together for a variety of reasons.

It's not that I want to feel special, although that's a tendency I have and try to kill when i feel it germinating, it's that I'm wondering if there aren't practical, non-medical cognitive therapies that could help me get some of it under control. I'd like to be able to leave the house without going back checking the door/stove/sinks three times. I'd like to be able to leave meaningless tasks unfinished. I'd love to not shut down entirely in crowds or with loud noise. I'd love to be able to complete a single goddamn task with meticulous detail instead of getting bored and half-assing the end of it.

There are some general practices I'm still dragging my feet on implementing. Like less screen time, and more time devoted to meditation, yoga, just literally taking the time to let me body unclench every now and then. I've slowly been picking up book reading, and that feels good. Working on Not checking my phone when I need to wait 15 seconds for something. Writing, of course, always the writing. I'd like to feel like I can read a thing, or a few things, and then put intelligent words together and talk about it.

Cutting way back on pot his helping. Although the concurrent rise in anxiety probably needs I need to cut back on the caffeine as well. These chemical balances are all so delicate aren't they?

In short, I am not happy with my behavioral and cognitive habits and I aspire to function at a higher level than I currently enjoy.

stubbornly locked on decay

So, I reached the 10k eliminations point on Overwatch, if that's a helpful indicator of how I've been spending my time recently. Eliminations are the record of how many video game action figure deaths I have contributed to. It makes me feel bad to play it a lot, because I don't play with friends, and I realized recently I play it less because I'm hooked on the game, and more because I'm hooked on feeling bad about myself? So that's a problem. My tunnel vision obsession with various activities may  be a separate problem all it's own though.

The long and short of everything about me right now is I'm disconnected from people too much and I'm living in a way that feels out of synch with what I want for my life and in some cases my values and those things are driving me a little nuts. I think I'm trying to reach bottom, or at least a cliff overlooking bottom, in a controlled landing, so I can start building up again. I'm going for a tabula rasa moment, while being frustrated about how boring that is.

I had, unexpectedly, a magical evening with a gentleman that might be a doomed relationship or the potential start of something really good. I don't know which yet. It was a nice reminder that I can feel better, things can be better, and there are people I genuinely do connect with. Also, a pointed reminder that I desperately need to create space in my life for that kind of thing to happen. Currently that space is filled with video games, self-loathing and apathy.

I have a post I keep meaning to write about this shithole of a year, but it would be more catharsis than anything.  So be excited for that.

I've been watching Star Trek: TNG obsessively recently, and it's been a nice antidote to this godawful, never-ending presidential election. I read a pretty interesting article on the limits of the humanism in that show, which I ended up largely agreeing with. In short, cultural relativism only takes you so far. But it has been nice to watch stories that trod that fine line between holding your values and continuing to work towards amicable and peaceful solutions with even the most aggressive and personally repugnant of enemies. It's a quality we seem to be losing as a culture and I miss it dearly. No one can see themselves in the other anymore and that bodes poorly for prospects of peace in the near future.

I'm taking this ramble as a writing victory and you can't stop me.

All Overwatched over

Overwatch is fine, really. I'm an old, sad, introverted man so I don't enjoy team play games that much, but it really is sparkly polished. The DLC loot boxes are bullshit of course. I paid $20 hoping for an american flag McCree (nope!), but they're still a bullshit micro-transaction mechanic as it relies purely on gambling. It seems more appropriate for a collectible card game than a team shooter, but whatever. Blizzard wants your addiction and your money so I guess it's the obvious path forward for them.

Regardless, my real "complaint" is that it isn't a game with a strong single-player storyline and campaign. I know that wasn't the game they intended to make, but the Overwatch universe is probably the most interesting IP Blizzard has ever created and you can only really do the equivalent of play with the action figures from it. I would like to dive deeper into that universe but I can only ever skim the very surface. Frustrating!

I finally figured out why i was so angry on dating sites.

1) I don't feel seen. I'm either invisible to the guys who only like "fit" people or I'm a fetish to someone who chases chubbies but doesn't actually know much about me as a person, they just see a shape they like. I know it takes time to be seen, but still. For me people can be attractive right away, but an actual urge to fuck them doesn't appear until we exchange words and they say interesting things.  I just don't feel like anyone can actually see me past their projected desires, self-hatred and/or over-whelming fetishes.  And I'm too cranky to be patient about it. I guess I want someone who does the dance the way I do and I haven't run into it yet.

2) Perhaps more importantly, I'm not the version of myself I want anyone to fall in love with right now. So I'm cranky if you're interested in me, because this is not the me I want to be. And my desire to people please means there's a part of my brain telling me to stop changing so I can be this thing you currently desire. Which makes me angry because I don't want to stay this way. I'm miserable. This is why going off of dating sites was a relief. This is why I'm stand-offish with people. It doesn't make me a delight at parties, but this is something I can work with. I don't want anyone to fall in love with me and my shitpile life right now. Because I'm pretty sure no one sees the me I think of as my true self through this carbuncle I've grown over myself in rage and self-defense. That's okay. I think at this point it's just good to know where to focus my energy.

As you might have picked up from previous posts, I'm not the most stable top on the table. I'm not sure why more people don't see that.

My goal is to operate kindly to myself and others and have a positive impact on the communities I interact with and friends, I have a long way to go. So far being angry at myself and the world has not been a good path forward.

Who's gonna drive you home?

My mother hates to drive through central Portland. It's too confusing she says. I think the real reason is that my mother likes the "story of cars" that we told for the last half-century. Cars are the ultimate space/time annihilation device, and we should build roads the maximize that capability. The problem, i think, that my mother really has with central Portland is it does not tell that story to itself.

 Cars still dominate, yes, but walking and bicycling are much closer to parity in terms of what is deemed "important." After living here 8 years I am much more like to walk a few blocks and kickbike a few more than I am to grab a car and go. So much so that I actually sold my car after a couple years of light use because it didn't seem worth the cost right now. Central Portland is still not my ideal transportation environment, but it's much closer than most any other western city in the U.S. where cars and the cultural and philosophical assumptions that come with them absolutely dominate.

For instance in Boise, where my mother is from, the lanes are wide and the speed limits are high. This used to be largely because point A to point B usually had nothing but safely fenced farm animals on the side of the road. Over the last 20 years, every farm I used to drive by between church school and anywhere else has been slowly converted into suburbs or shopping centers. But the speed limits are, if anything, higher, the roads are even wider, and while there are sidewalks, it's a trek of at least a mile or two to get from the housing communities to stores of any type. But the sidewalks are generally empty. No one is really expected to walk. The mass transit system in Boise is, well, it's not a priority and is generally only useful in the downtown area. Downtown Boise is the historical remnant of a time when the walkable communities were the cultural norm which as long since been cast aside in favor of living in quiet suburbs and spending an hour or two a day in one's car.

Cars prefer to dominate at speed. Less than 45 mph and the car and drive are operating sub-optimally.  Ideally, the car proceeds at the highest velocity in the maximum amount of comfort. This is all my mother wants from a vehicle. The problem being, nature and virtually every other element of civilization move at a much slower pace. This is why freeways exist. Paved lanes built specifically as anti-natural spaces, where time and space can be neatly annihilated with no worry about ecological concerns.

Of course, any animals who wander into these anti-nature zones are quite likely damned. This is because animals don't understand 80 mph. Except maybe for the speedsters that live on african savannas. But in most of the world, 80 mph might as well be witchcraft. An animal that sees a car moving faster than 25 mph, give or take, will not be able to react to it sanely. There's no predator in nature that moves like that. And so they make the wrong choice and are damned. Generally, we don't care how many animals we sacrifice, the need for the speed and dominance of the automobile is so strong. I only say that because we seem to have tried very little to prevent roadkill on our highways. We kill an acceptable number of wild animals in the name of speed and that is as far as we tend to think about it.

This is also why freeways are usually cut separate from the other roads in a city ecosystem. The ideal speed for cars and their occupants is generally hostile to community ecosystems as well. It's hard to work safely or quietly, take a stroll, talk to friends with vehicles moving at speeds greater than 45 mph or so right next to us. Life in a city is built for slower speeds. What is sanity for the driver is insanity for the pedestrian or the bicyclist. Any attempt at parity between them will simply result in bicyclists and other vehicles slowing down to speeds the pedestrian animal can make sense of.

This is not to damn cars as evil things. I just sometimes wonder if the cultural mindsets surrounding them aren't out of balance with equally important things. For instance the survival of wildlife and the health and happiness of people not currently driving.

Teleportation is Murder

My new theory is picard was killed in season 1 when he beamed himself into that cloud. Rest of series he's a replicated clone.

— James Haus (@SoylentHHH) July 28, 2016

My real Star Trek theory is the teleporters actually kill everyone who uses them. They are destroyed at one end, and a perfect clone is recreated at the other. To the outside observer the same person has been transported. But in terms of the individual, their consciousness ceases to be and is then replicated.

And somewhere in the Trek afterlife, soul after soul finds its way to whatever lies beyond, astonished to find yet another almost, but not quite, like them. Hundreds, maybe thousands, over time. And whatever guardian exists in these dark halls watches with increasing vexation as each doomed soul pops into the hereafter, with a look of shocked recognition at the mirrored faces before them. This is not how it's supposed to be. It's not right. The natural order WILL be restored.

Crossed Wires

One of my favorite moments in "America: the Book: the Audio Book" is when Stephen Colbert reads a blurb about himself and ends it with, "He is personally unpleasant." I mean, I shift uncomfortably, but I love it.

My social interactions feel off to me. Promising friendships seem to evaporate because of the signals I send, I think, and I'm not sure what signals I'm sending exactly. Some days I don't have "social energy" and I'm mostly matter-of-fact with people. But it doesn't mean I don't like them, it means I don't have the energy to throw up a friendly smile and engage the chit-chat subroutines about how their day is going. I don't know if that' undiagnosed autism or insufficient finishing school training on basic politeness coupled with a disciplined "polite is what are you are even when you don't feel friendly," kind of thing. In other words, maybe I'm just poorly socialized and my skills are rusty.

I don't know, maybe I'm just personally unpleasant.

#1 Crushed

So, a week or two ago I read probably the only good profile I've ever ready on Scruff of all places. It let me to this dude's blog. And friends, I have not crushed this hard in quite some time. In a fit of madness, forgetting that am currently a stubborn train wreck, I messaged him. He didn't seem too interested, which is fine, I'm not too interested in me currently either, but still.  *CRUSH*

The intensity of "the crush" has floated back down to earth (he's great and not interested and I have to clean up this fucking train wreck anyway ...), but it was such a long-lost and powerful feeling that it all feels notable somehow.

Things I thought I had forgotten:

•  The kind of person i want is out there. It may not be this guy, but it will be someone very much like this guy. I complain that people don't want me, but this isn't really the problem. I get a few messages a week on Scruff that I largely ignore because their approach is too sexual or just plain wrong. And the issue is partly self-worth/confidence/existential crisis but also largely they just don't seem to be what I want. I think I don't give myself enough credit for knowing what I want. I do. I just don't meet someone who embodies it very often. I am holding out for great chemistry and someone I am genuinely excited about and that's okay. 
• Related to above, the kind of person I want EXISTS. I admit, I was losing faith in expecting a sense of resonance with anyone in particular. It has been a long, lonely year for me in Portland, partly because I just don't seem to be meeting a lot of people who I grok or who grok me at all. It is incentive to keep searching, and maybe leave the house. I rarely read a sense of humor that is exactly mine and it is exciting to know that exists. Maybe the key is not flopping over and giving up.
• I am both happy that I now have motivation to get my shit together and irritated that it once again took an attractive, funny guy to get me motivated. I want to figure it out independently of someone else dammit. How will it mean anything otherwise? Of course, this is just motivation to get myself cleaned up enough to be appealing to someone very much like this guy? Is that a vague enough desire? That may be okay. I've learned several times over now that bettering oneself for someone else specifically is a fool's errand, because the motivation all goes to shit when it inevitably doesn't work out.
• I am still capable of reason-destroying crushes. Warning! Danger!
• I miss my sense of humor. I miss being able to make people laugh with one self-deprecating joke after another. I miss laughing until my stomach hurts. I miss me. Come back me. To I.
• I'm as attracted to a pretty face as much as the next guy, but I don't really operate on a "must get sex with randos!" level. I wish I did. Might be fun. I imagine the people who can chat people up and into bed (*coughs* like the ex) live careless and joyfully orgasmic lives, but idk really. It's not something I've ever really experienced. But my sex drive doesn't really kick in until the crushening starts, and the crushening usually starts with words and a good sense of humor. That's okay. Apparently I'm not the only one! It's easy to forget in a world of dating apps, that not everyone is looking for the quick hook-up. Again: the kind of people I want are out there, I just need to keep looking. I just need to find a way to look that works for me. And maybe work on my scruff chatting skills, for those fits of crush madness.

I guess that's it. I had forgotten I could crush this hard. I have saved a drop of this feeling in a crystal vial near where my heart used to be. It seems important to remember the possibility of feeling this way again in the future. 

Out of the Darkness, into the Weird

And now for something completely different ...

It's been occurring to me recently that one can be closeted about anything. Sexual orientation is certainly common. But a person will basically "closet" any personal information they don't feel will be accepted/understood by their peers. In this case of sexual orientation, this is damaging, as feeling free to pursue a meaningful sex life is an important life. Actually choosing to pursue a meaningful sex life is another matter entirely (ahem).

One of the closets I've been hiding in concerns my interest in the paranormal. I feel like I somehow have to defend the fact that I like to read about UFOs and ghost stories, even though the vast majority of our pop culture entertainment is based on related topics. I like to read about UFO sightings, and ghost sightings and near death experiences. I don't think considering the possibility that there may be more to those things than mass delusion is completely unreasonable. And even so, these various phenomenons are interesting purely as a social psychology topic, if one must insist that nothing one has not personally experienced could ever possibly be real.

That said, and here is the defensiveness, there is such a thing as taking an interest in the paranormal too far. There are a lot of charlatans looking to sell lies (and associated products based on said lies) to the public that wants to believe a little too much. And there's are certainly people who fixate on these topics and associated conspiracy theories to a completely unhealthy degree. But the fact that charlatans exist does not mean that paranormal things are not "real." They might not be of course, but they might also be real events playing by rules we simply don't understand yet.  My simple theory is anything that seems to have happened, and turns out to have happened, however surprising, will have happened.

In this, as in many things, I do my best to remain agnostic. I don't see a reason to start a UFO cult, but neither do I feel the need to dismiss the huge number of weird encounters as delusions, simply because it's something I haven't experienced. Sometimes it's okay to say, "i don't know, but that's interesting to think about."

For me, I think a large part of the appeal is partly simply scientific curiosity, but also a deep dissatisfaction with modern life that powers a powerful desire for new information that would upset our collective applecart, be that confirmation of alien life or life after death or whatever. When I'm disenchanted by my choices, fanciful alternatives become more appealing. And friends, I am deeply disenchanted by the choices presented in modern life.

So that's all I have to say. I may mention the paranormal from time to time with the above mindset. I might not. Who knows. But I think it's silly to self-censor myself on a topic just because I'm afraid of not seeming rational. That hasn't stopped me otherwise, so why start now?

Bigfoot though, that's just bullshit of course.

The great pruning

So, I just spent a few days going back through my blog and reviewing and removing posts I didn't want to keep attached to this blog anymore. Mostly boring game stuff, crass commercialism or stuff about exes that I don't want to relive too much. Those blog posts about how much I missed my girlfriend while she was on a month-long trip and, as it turned out, cheating on me for instance (the first of many exciting infidelities in my relationships!). Most of the more recent posts made the cut though. There were some things from when I was younger that seemed too unkind that I didn't want to keep either, so those got cut.

It was surprising how much unresolved crap it dredged up though. Maybe one good reason not to burn it all into the internet forever is so you don't have to relive hard times over and over again. But it does really strike me how much I have changed in some ways and how little I've changed in others. There are some posts from deep in the closet that I can't really relate to anymore, but there are other posts about depression and trying to relate to people and find a community and date and keep a reasonable goddamn sleep schedule that are just as true today as they were then. So I'm torn between "Hey, look how far you've come!" and "What ... what are you doing that you haven't budged an inch?"

A worthwhile exercise overall. I think.

Upon receiving revisited

I still like this poem. Still reflects FB for me in too many ways.

8 years later ...

Found another old post about sleep habits. Still true. Could have been written this week.

Is it possible there's just nothing in Portland worth waking up for?

11 years later ....

and this post still accurately reflects my relationship with my sleep schedule, albeit with a touch more sexism than I'm comfortable with today. 

Let's do the Time Warp Again and Again and Again

Currently going back to posts in 2005 on this blog and watching me whine about problems I STILL haven't resolved. That sound you hear is my banging my head on the table.

So many thoughts ...

... so little ability to share them.

I do not have a sound daily practice for reading and writing so once again I have far too many posts queued up in my head that haven't been written. I think we're about to the breaking point so expect some in the near future. I want to tell you they won't be entirely solipsistic but ... I can't promise that. 

Solipsism is the death of writing, I know, and it's probably why my writing is dead. I mean, you can only read about someone whining about how they can't get their shit together before you're just ready for them to get their shit together, or even be on the fucking path to getting their shit together and not wandering off in some field stepping on the same rake over and over and over and over .... 

But I yam what I yam. And someday hope to be less of a yam.

Coming to some conclusions though. Action items are forming. One is: I hate this blog. I hate the solipsism, yes, but also the format and the platform. The platform doesn't deserve to be hated, it functions fine, but none of the themes are quite what I want. They all feel pretty dated at this point. A few blogs I've seen recently (more on THAT later), have convinced me I need to spend some time imagining what I want this blog to be and working on it. Should I finally get that together, I will, of course, put a link here somewhere. I just want to have a website that accurately reflects me. I'm not sure I have that yet.

In the meantime, I may go back and prune some less fortunate posts. Maybe the words of a younger, much stupider me don't need to be burned into the internet forever.

James vs the Volcano

"I wonder where we'll end up?"
"Away from the things of man, my love. Away from the things of man."

Every now and then, when I'm deeply miserable enough, I remember Joe vs the Volcano and pop it into the DVD player. It's about a man who works at a job that is not just bad, but makes him feel sick all the time. Like he's dying. When DeDe asks him what's with his shoe, he says, "I'm losing my sole."

"I know," she says.

The only thing that pops him out of it, after countless tests, is confirmation that, yes, he is in fact dying. Of a brain cloud.

"So I'm not sick except for this terminal disease?"
"Which has no symptoms. That's right."

It's a beautiful fantasy of someone wasting his life away in the deepest, darkest bowels of industrial capitalism finding freedom, epiphany, love and a deep and meaningful sense of how big and beautiful and dangerous and tragic the world can be.

"I don't know what your situation is but I wanted you to know what mine is not just to explain some rude behavior, but because we're on a little boat for a while and ... I'm soul sick. And you're going to see that."

The journey is beautiful and whimsical. The characters engaging and entertaining. It is my favorite Meg Ryan movie. It is my favorite Tom Hanks movie. It is my favorite Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie. It has some of the most thoughtful and heartfelt writing I have ever encountered in a film.

It is both secular and sacred. A deeply agnostic celebration of rediscovering that connection to something bigger than ourselves.

"Dear god, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how big... thank you. Thank you for my life."

It is not, however, an imagining of how to reconnect to humanity. Humanity, after all, created the machine Joe is escaping. Good or bad, with every scene moves him further and further away from civilization and the sick people it produces. It's not that he hates them, but he just can't relate to them anymore. And he can't stay in a place that makes him sick. And no one understands when he tries to explain.

"I have no response to that."

There is only joy as he leaves civilization behind. Living well is the only road left to him, given his new perspective. And, lucky unlucky man that he is, he finds another soul sick person to share it with.  And it's crazy and it's unbelievable and they decide to go for it, because what else had they been doing? What had the rest of the world ever offered them that surpassed what they'd found in each other? So they jump.

"Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump and we'll see. That's life."
"I saw the moon when we were out there in the ocean, shining down on everything. I've been miserable so long, years of my life wasted, afraid. Been a long time coming here to meet you - a long time, on a crooked road. Did I ever tell you? The first time I saw you, felt like I'd seen you before."

In they end they sail off together. No reunification with the human race desired or necessary. He was never dying. Convincing him he was was the last desperate attempt by the machine of civilization to kill him.

It's a desperate fantasy of a movie. And it speaks to me in places I forget I had about things I forgot I knew. Every now and then I watch Joe vs the Volcano and it tries to save my life.

Here's to remembering the things I already know. Here's to finding the soul sick and being understood. Here's to finding the path out.

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

Here's to waking up.

Meanwhile

I wish I wrote here more often. Or would actually get around to making a more "modern" blog. I feel like my writing reveals too much of how fragmented my thinking has become though, now that I've used technology to train myself into a state of perpetual ADHD. And I still haven't gotten over smart kid syndrome enough to embrace humility. I think mostly what would fix that is less gaming, more reading and writing and maybe less caffeine. But still, it's been a slog to get over myself and just write, garbage though my writing may be.

Acedic

I learned the word "Acedia" today. The wiki about it is quite instructive: "Acedia is essentially a flight from the world that leads to not caring even that one does not care." Ominously it says it can take it's final expression in suicide, which is a bummer.

I am not suicidal, nor do I think I will ever be as I enjoy suffering a little too much, and I think I care that I don't care, but a flight from the world born out of an apathy for both the good and the bad of it more or less describes my current state. I just don't know where I fit after leaving the church, I don't know who my people are, I, in short, don't know why I get out of bed in the morning. I am that stereotypical actor asking in scene after scene, "what's my motivation here?"

Acedia is described as a cousin to depression, although it is typically described as a more spiritual sickness, typically countered with a spiritual practice of some sort. Both the diagnosis and the solution seem resonant to me, but I have yet to motivate myself to do it. I'm not sure what my spiritual practice is anymore.

Part of the problem is that "spirituality" and "spiritual" are overly broad words with a definition I am still trying to pin down. The plain definition is "of or relating to one's spirit" which really narrows it down oh-so-helpfully. So the root word in dire need of coherence for me is "spirit." What do I mean by that? I'm not sure, but I think mine is a little sick. And it's difficult to talk about, in a world where dogmatic materialists roam the streets, eager to jump down my throat should I be perceived as believing anything too "woo woo." 

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of my critical thinking skills, I believe in reason and evidence. I'm a mother-fucking scientist and you're not, maybe I should mention. Most of the people who try to jump down my throat in defense of science and reason are, themselves, NOT motherfucking scientists, just passionate groupies who have forgotten how much they don't know about the world. But I digress.

But the humanities exist for a reason. There is a portion of human nature that is not fed by and does not function in the service of reason. It is not meant to. We are born with high-powered learning systems that help us process past events and convey their relevance to the current situation in the form of our feelings. Sometimes those feelings get in the way, or lead us astray, but they are generally quite helpful as the sum of all of our experiences with something from birth to the present (more or less). My goal is not to discard them or the body. I am not engaged in a holy crusade of intellectual domination over my animal nature or some clever hack around the body's limitations. Rather, I intend to reach some harmonious accord between my feelings, my body and my intellect. Somewhere in the sum of those things is something I am calling my spirit. Although still, that seems too fuzzy and vague for such an important idea. Still, mine seems sick, even though I find I have a hard time unpacking what "it" even is for you. 

So where should I turn when my spirit is sick? My general impression is that the secular world has no time or respect for even the concept of the human spirit, so I am left with the traditional guardians of spiritual knowledge: organized religion. Shit.

Christianity's out immediately for me, of course. However much it may still contain universal truths, the institutional sicknesses and authoritarian nonsense that pervades much of it still blinds me to the more positive qualities. As a man who tends to love other men, I don't find their current stance on LGBT individuals too welcoming.

Honestly, I'm terrified of getting caught up in another cult of some sort. I'm too skeptical to take anything at face value anymore, but still, my spirit is sick. I am worried about the intellectual concessions I might make in order to feel better. I am worried about embracing cognitive dissonance again.

This is probably a good time to do more reading on this kind of thing, if I'm being honest. Buddhism as a practice appeals to me, of course. I'm not sure I could ever believe in the more supernatural aspects, but what I've experienced of meditation leads me to believe it might actual be a useful exercise.  I guess I'm coming around to the idea that while supernatural beings may not exist (although who I am to say, other than to say I haven't seen any myself), spiritual practice may keep my mind and spirit healthy in the same way that exercise keeps the body healthy. Maybe intellectual/spiritual/physical exercise needs no story stronger than "you will feel better if you do these things." But I know this, and still find myself asking, "but what's my motivation?" This is the point where most people just want to kick me in the ass.

I don't think it would bother me if these supernatural constructs turned out to have some basis in "reality." As in, they are real and intelligent and out there somewhere. Mostly because I think everyone would be surprised at what they were really like. But since I don't have much direct evidence of that at present, I tend to think of them as ideological constructs to orient oneself toward. Even my intolerance of christianity abates a bit when I think of God more as a bundle of ideas and ideals to aspire to (forgiveness/charity/love/etc.) and prayer and weekly church attendance as the humble admission that we are limited beings who need to be reminded frequently of our higher ideals and to support each other in trying to embody them. This could be as true of the humanist as it is of the buddhist as it is of the christian I think. 

I am currently in search of the ideological constructs that I want to orient myself towards.  Whether those take the forms of pre-packaged gods one can find in the currently available pantheons or just some simple concepts expressed in a buddhist practice, I'm not sure yet. Maybe both! Maybe neither.

But I'm still looking. Because my spirit feels sick. Acedic.

Vaporware

I had a few things I wanted to write about today, but they have gone, gone away.
Not today.

This whole week has kind of been a wash.
I've basically checked out for most of it and nobody really seems to have noticed.

I'm kind of in an in-between place in my life right now and I'm still trying to make sense of it.
I've left the fold but not joined another yet.
I am foldless.
Ideologically formless.
Unaccountable and unaccounted for.

More pudding than jello,
more jelly than mellow.

Hoping to figure it out a bit at a time.
Hoping the thoughts that have been circling find a place to land.

This is an update with blank space.

Post-Finale

Like, the highly controversial How I Met Your Mother Finale, I have been unable to look at Seinfeld's previous seasons the same way after the series finale. I seem to be one of the few who both enjoyed those finales and found them a fitting end to each series, even though they weren't the end I saw coming. Actually, maybe BECAUSE they weren't the end I saw coming.

In watching previous seasons of Seinfeld, I knew they were kind of selfish curmugeons, but I never thought, "oh, these are truly awful people." I feel like a lot of the controversy came from some small misunderstanding about what these people were. Seinfeld finalized the series by laying out just how much those four miscreants had screwed over anyone else in their lives, because to him that was probably always how he viewed them (he and Larry David seem big into mining their self-loathing as comedic material), and the fans kind of recoiled in horror. "What kind of people have we been rooting for?" they asked. "Well," replied Jerry, "what kind of people did you really think they were?" I think for all of their faults, the characters were easy to get attached to, and I think suddenly pointing out that these were, in fact, terrible people made people a little defensive, because they had grown fond of them.

Of course, the complaint may have been largely tonal. The finale kind of had a "well, you four have had your fun at the expense of everyone else, and now the joke's over" kind of tone, which is kind of a down note for a comedy series to end on. It was the equivalent of turning the house lights on and telling everyone it was time to go home. Seinfeld had always existed in an absurd alternate universe, and to end on such a "realistic" note just seems discordant in retrospect.

Still, I find I appreciate it. Initially, I liked watching a "show about nothing" and just kind of laughing along with the loveable goofballs. Now, I can't help but notice how every single episode involves one of the 4 screwing up something important for one of their friends out of sheer selfishness, short-sightedness, and insecurity. Now that I rewatch it post finale, I can't believe I never really noticed just how terrible they all are, and how entertaining it is to watch one spectacular implosion after another. I think when I first watched it, I subconsciously attributed their troubles to sitcomical bad luck. But of course, they brought it on themselves every time. OF COURSE they did. How did I not see that until the last episode?

Nothing brings home "the party's over" feel of the finale and just how oblivious the four are, than the moment after the verdict is announced, and most of the series regulars cheer triumphantly and leave to celebrate. Left behind are the grief-stricken relatives, which are partly played for laughs (Frank Costanza shaking a collapsed Estelle shouting that he wants to beat the traffic out of there), but frankly the look on Jerry's parents is just devastating. They are deflated, defeated and sad. I find I want to hug them. And, of course, his family isn't even on Jerry's radar. This is not surprising, coming from the man who sincerely remarks that using less milk in his cereal is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. It seems a little too real though for a light-hearted show though.

And finally, they end right where they started, with the same conversation that started the series, having gained nothing and grown not an inch, on their way to a prison sentence they will likely learn nothing from. Honestly it seems apt. They are cartoonish caricatures of people, eternally selfish, narcissistic and shallow, who learn nothing. It's why they're funny. They'll never do anything surprising or out of character or new. And I love them more now than I did then.

The Last Man on Earth

I'm still fascinated by this show. It has very unusual pacing and is a weird mix of comedy and melancholy beauty, and I find it utterly fascinating. It manages to capture intense loneliness and cringingly awkward insecurity, poor social skills and painful, agonizing personal growth all at the same time.  Tandy's ongoing nightmare, where the end of the world erased the socially awkward side of his life entirely, only to have it return with a vengeance as he find survivors is so painfully resonant.

It's kind of a painful truth to realize that no matter how you change your situation, or where you go, the problems you need to work through to be a happier, saner, healthier person follow relentlessly. In Tandy's case, even the end of the world isn't a big enough distraction from the problems created by his severely arrested development. He hovers constantly on the precipice of self knowledge, but neurotically drives himself back into his old habits, and it's so painful to watch. And beautiful. I can't look away.

Totally not a Cult

I'm watching the new Hulu series called The Path right now. Which seems like a really good and a really bad idea. A surprising amount of the portrayal of cult life reminds me of Adventist life, which I am surprised to find surprising. I mean, we used to talk about how Adventism used to be a cult, but was now considered a respectable religion. We were all jazzed to realize we were not technically part of a cult, despite the many cultish aspects of the lifestyle. It is both helpful in confronting it, and borderline triggering.

The major difference of course, is that you can leave Adventism without threat of violence, which is important to note. Which isn't to say there aren't guilt trips, peer pressure, mind games and loss of community involved, but no real threat of force or overt coercion. So that's positive. Also, Adventists are strict teetotalers, so the pot and the ayahuasca would be right out.

That said, a lot of the portrayals of cult life were uncomfortably resonant. The jargon, that you all use so much you forget it sounds weird to outside observers. The focus on The Future, where sinners will be destroyed for their sins and a chosen few, the cultists of course, will be saved to create a bright new future. The prophet, widely believed to have access to divine wisdom. The strict legalism, especially concerning sexuality and marriage. The resulting sexual repression leading to weird and neurotic sexual behavior.

I'll probably keep watching it, but it's a roller coaster if you've ever lived anything close to something like that experience. On the bright side, feeling constantly weird is starting to make more sense to me. I grew up in a weird religion, that was totally not a cult* apparently!

*It just felt like one. Frequently.

That Hideous Strength

I'm two chapters into That Hideous Strength, the final chapter in C. S. Lewis' 1946 space trilogy. I'm reading through some of his work again from a post-christian perspective, as I believe I've mentioned. So far, it's been a lot of university politics, which was something Lewis dealt a lot with in his life. Having read Alan Jacob's biography on the man, it's interesting to watch some of his complaints about academic culture work itself out in his fiction.

In particular is the loathing Lewis had for the "Inner Circle," which must have been a dynamic that irked him in his dealings with people. Actually, you get the real sense that that kind of thing stuck in his craw. This is the all too human tendency to throw all principle aside in order to fit in with some exclusive social circle that fancies itself the cream of the human crop. The story starts with a small college campus being taken over by a small cabal of professors who fancy themselves the progressive element in order to sell off part of the college to the bad guys.

My favorite part so far though was the small aside about spending some time in a small wooded area kept by the college, with an ancient well at the center that has been preserved for centuries. The quiet seemed nice just to read about. I think I just need to get out into the forest more.

I don't know, the jesus talk doesn't move me much, and his views on women can be a little cringey, but there are some sensibilities C.S. Lewis had that I really resonate with:  college life is nice, people are frustrating, there's magic in the forest. Check, check, check. Good stuff.

Such as they are

The thoughts I have
such as they are
well up in the shower
or on my walk to the office
and before I get them out
onto paper
or maybe a screen
they're gone

I get distracted
by a small dog
some noises and lights
bells and whistles
half-remembered memories of a past life
an unending parade of human beings
and other stuff
that has left my thoughts
such as they are

Poisoned Sweets

I leave poisoned sweets for ants
and they take it
and they give it to their mother and their friends
and then there's some indigestion
and then they die
hopefully not screaming

 they send a scout from a neighboring colony
after they haven't heard from their friends
the entrance to the colony is dark
no sound but his own nervous scuttling
he doesn't understand shotguns but he wishes he had one
corpses everywhere
it's a real goddamn ant horror show
but he finds some sweets to take back
 back to his mother and his friends

 I leave poisoned sweets for ants

Perelandra review

Up at CMS. I wish I cared more about copy editing.

Badman vs Sad God

Batman versus Superman: No matter who wins, we lose

I don't know what's wrong with Zach Snyder. This is probably unfair, but it's what I walk away from all his movies thinking. There's just a vital, human element completely absent from his latest blockbusters (see also Michael Bay). I appreciate the attempt to answer the glaring moral issues presented in Man of Steel, but the sequel still feels like a robot trying to figure out what human feelings are and why it's bad to kill; a conundrum it largely fails to compute.

I think most professional reviews have addressed the host of cinematic flaws, so I just have a few bullet points to add.

• It really does feel like a series of scenes stitched together. I didn't feel much about the characters or what was going on, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.
• Eisenberg's Luthor is not a compelling villain. There's a scene where he's babbling, and it's nonsense, and he realizes it's nonsense, and he just stops and says, "thank you for coming." "Hi, I'm Lex Luthor, I play the villain, thanks for watching the movie this evening." more or less sums up his character. No deep exploration of his motivations, just some awkward guy who doesn't make sense.
• The best part was when the music changed like it was a WWE match and Wonder Woman showed up. "Mah God, I think that, is that, that's Wonder Woman's music. Yes, she's here! The amazon princess is here!" She was great, but wasn't really on screen long enough for Snyder to fold/spindle/mutilate her character.
• Affleck was good as Batman. With better writing and a director that understands the emotions different facial expressions indicate, he could be great.
• Cavill was sexy, but I still loathe the politics his parents taught his character, framed for some reason as "good" in the movie. "You don't owe those fuckers nothing." is the main philosophy of the Kents, which is why their son turned out to be a sad murder god (whoever said this was brilliant) who thinks consequences are for other people. 
• Batman and Superman never resolve their taut erotic tension by making out. It might have saved the movie for me.
• I went out to get a second beer, because it was that kind of movie, and came back to a weird scene I didn't understand. "Wait, is that a apocalyptian fire pit? And, oh hey, parademons? Parademons!" Between that and Luthor's last unhinged rant at the end it's pretty clear the Justice League movie is going to be about Darkseid. On some level, Darkseid and his anti-life equation is probably the most appropriate villain for Snyder to handle, given that he seems to apply said equation to every one of his films. "Good, good, one last piece of editing motherbox, to suck all joy and vitality out of every second of it! Muahahaha!"
• Cyborg! Flash! Aquaman! 
• I wish movies would stop interrupting themselves to set up the next movie. A movie should naturally flow into the sequels, not launch the sequel halfway through and finish the movie still playing as an afterthought. It's like reading a novel where every chapter the narrative stops abruptly to throw in heavy-handed previews of the next chapter. Before, going, "where was I again, oh yes, all this business needs to be wrapped up I guess." Maybe in the era of widespread ADD this is the new normal?
• It would be interesting to see the ideas explored here, which are genuinely interesting to me, explored by someone who doesn't seem entirely cynical about the source material.
• You know what happens when you take the idealism out of DC comics?  NOTHING GOOD. Idealism is the only thing saving comics from macho violence porn.

This modern era of superhero films is everything I wanted as a kid. The tragedy is that I got it.

Saturday at the Museum

I managed to drag myself out to the farmer's market and museum again today, which is a small victory. Not particularly early, but still, I'll take it. There were 3 whole floors I missed at the museum's main building, so I took some time to wander through, before finishing on the gorgeous cat picture again. Portland Art Museum has a truly great collection of native american art, both contemporary and historical.

Of particular note this visit was the "Next Level Fucked Up" exhibit on the 4th floor by Vanessa Renwick. I'm not always too into A/V installations, but this one I liked. In it, there's a short video of an artist on one monitor talking about the gorgeous mural he painted in Portland decades ago, which is in danger of being destroyed by the building's new owners. He has been assured that the new owners are reasonable people. But he kind of wrestles with that, and how that didn't entirely reassure him, and he struggles to articulate why, because reasonable and art aren't necessarily good friends. "Do you know what I mean?" he keeps saying. Which is the part that sticks with me. Because what's great about art is not it's reasonableness. What's great about art is the way it tries to puncture holes in the reasonable and comfortable world you've built for yourself.

The joy of the artistic experience is probably not best summed up by, "well, this seems perfectly reasonable."

"Wow, this is kind of fucked up!" is where it starts to get good, right? Whether it's too real or too surreal, it should move you a little.  Jostle your good sense uncomfortably. Good art is a broadside across the bow of your sensibilities, a reminder to your conscious mind that "reasonable" is the mask your animal wears, and there are uncomfortably unreasonable layers always squirming around just underneath.

The museum is not where you go to be reasonable. It's where you go to bludgeon your reason within an inch of its life.

Bullets

• So that last post is an example of writing I want to get away from. I believe those things, but I'm still struggling to find a way to express it in a way that isn't preachy and off-putting. People are hypocrites and I don't think we've ever really tried adhering to our highest values out of a fear they won't really work when things get scary is the short version.

• I'm thinking of starting an email newsletter. Almost entirely because of the quality of the newsletters I currently follow (especially Warren Ellis and Ghostcop).  

• Still working on that "So you've hit 40" post. It's either going to be really long or really short and possibly really bad.

• In a recent newsletter, an author I follow described her depression as a thing in her head that wanted her dead. It was a really frank and thoughtful letter about living with depression. I think it's fair to say I struggle with depression, and it feels like a thing in my head that is not quite me as well, but I wouldn't say it wants me dead. It just wants me inert. Curiously inert. Never-changing, never succeeding, never happy. Coasting along short of happiness, but just clear of misery (although I hate to tempt fate). A fuzzy, lukewarm, unremarkable, grey goo comatose state that doesn't end until the inevitable heart attack. So, yeah. Depression sucks.

• I still want to retool the site. Maybe as wordpress. Blogspot is serviceable but I want more control over format. My failure to reinvent my blog really echoes my failure to reinvent myself though. I figure when one happens the other falls into place a little more.

• I took a break from stubbornly refusing to change by heading the the farmer's market and the Portland Art Museum today. I'm going to make a weekly thing of it, because they're both RIGHT THERE. I had the egregiously wrong assumption that the annual pass was $65 a month, but it's $65 a YEAR which is well worth it in my opinion, so I finally picked up one of those.
  I like going with friends, but it's really quite lovely to go on my own as well. No pressure to appear more artistically knowledgeable than I am, no social pressure to move to the next thing because the other person is bored. Just nice to look at whatever and linger at whatever speaks to me. And lingering on what speaks to me is a big need in my life right now. I can see this being a good habit.
  Of particular note right now are the 80s New York art scene installations, the giant and glorious painting of cats in the lower level connecting the main building and the modern art wing, the contemporary native american exhibit (indian taking pictures of tourist taking pictures of indians was kind of awesome), and the teeny, tiny animal sculptures, the name of which escapes me. Get your art on y'all!

Being is believing

I know I adopt the position of liberal scold far too often, but I'm really not on board with the righteous crusade to disrupt Trump's rallies. Not only is a terrible idea strategically, he actually has the high ground on this one issue currently because he is, to the best of my knowledge, NOT sending his supporters to disrupt democratic rallies.

I don't really weep too many tears for a disrupted Trump rally, although the optics are truly terrible, but I do worry about the hypocritical self-righteous streak on the left sometimes. It's becoming clearer to me that this poisonous idea that these are unusual times and it's important to put our usual moral values aside is not a phenomenon limited to republicans or conservatives. This was the justification for torture and how many other immoral acts ("there's a ticking time bomb, maybe, so we just have to kill innocent people with drones!"), and for me the issue was not that the conservatives had just chosen a poor reason to put aside their morals, it's that putting aside your morals for any reason betrays a fundamental disbelief that higher morals are actually better and more effective in achieving a better world. On the liberal side, this seems to thrive as well, with the conceit that only a liberal can truly decide who is and is not a monster, and therefore are the only people able to fairly decide when to abandon their moral principles. Which is the same madness, just maybe in lesser degree. I agree Donald Trump is frightening, I don't agree that unusual times means it's okay to skip straight from name-calling ("how did calling him names not work??"), to provoking physical confrontations at rallies.  Clearly not every incident at a trump rally was intentionally provoked, but you'd have to be blind not to see how many clearly are.

I truly believe you can win people over, it just takes time. It takes genuine empathy. It takes full acknowledgement of their humanity. I think even people like Trump himself can be talked down, but starting off with "you and your followers are monsters" negates that possibility entirely. Liberals claim to understand how counter-productive demonizing the other is, but do it at the drop of a hat themselves. I think the most important test of liberal values is when it's REALLY difficult to adhere to those values. Because I believe those values are not just nice fairytales, i believe they are truly the best guidelines to the best possible resolution for all involved, even when things get scary and it's easier to and more emotionally satisfying to resort to demonization and aggressive conflict. I believe it's possible to effectively resist hateful rhetoric and dangerous movements without compromising any of these morals "because these are unusual times," and without demonizing opponents and that it is, in fact, the better option for all involved.

We've just watched anyone afraid of terrorists throw their morals out the window for the last 15 years because "terrorists are uniquely dangerous," even though it's completely obvious that this state of affairs will not be changing in the near future.  So they've effectively thrown away their higher morals for more a expedient, incredibly violent moral structure purely out of fear more or less permanently. Why the left is so eager to do the same exact thing with Trump and his supporters, I don't know. No, no one's talking about bombing them, but they're starting to adopt the same, "you just can reason with these people" and "we have to stop them, by force if necessary" memes which are counter-productive. If you can see how demonizing the entire muslim world based on the actions of terrorists is counter-productive, you can see how demonizing Trump's supporters based on the actions of a few is counter-productive too.

This may not be everyone's take, but we didn't win the gay rights battle by telling everyone who didn't like gay people they were haters, we won it by millions of brave LGBT people coming out of the closet and standing up for their rights, but, and this is very important, remaining in relationship with people who needed and maybe still need time to get used to the idea. People started to realize gays were okay when they got the chance to hang around them a bit and the world didn't end. Changing hearts and minds doesn't happen overnight, you can't just burn the ladder behind you once you've decided you have enough of a critical social mass to just tell the stragglers who haven't come around yet to go fuck themselves with no social repercussions. That shit's not only counter-productive, it's immoral.

It is your job, as an idealistic person who clearly has better morals than your opponent (as we all believe we do), to keep the high ground. This means you must do what your opponents seem unable or unwilling to do: respect their humanity, firmly reject bad ideas while not demonizing them for holding them, embrace a little humility about your own views, and listen to theirs while attempting to empathize as much as possible. 

As tempting as it is to believe the self-righteous mic-drop speak is the  most effective tool at effecting real change, it's just not. Quick, imagine a conservative giving you a mic-drop speech about gay marriage or something.  Imagine their condescending tone, their lack of interest in your viewpoint, their indignant lecture filled with confident self-righteousness. Imagine how much you will recoil from their body language and tone and presumptive attitude. Whether the argument is better or not is irrelevant when you deliver it like a complete asshole.

People don't believe peace works because few are every really brave to truly try it. When we get scared we reach for the gun or righteous violence in some form. And we lionize the armed warrior who deals the violence so righteously. But the bravest motherfucker in the room is always the one reaching out with an open hand, even though they might get shot or hurt for their trouble, because they believe if enough of us do that, the threat of violence goes away and the underlying humanity of our opponents begins to shine through. I strongly believe they are not wrong. We can't expect people to behave like kind human beings unless we give them the space to behave like kind human beings.

Making peace is always a risk. Always. If you believe you're better than they are, then prove it. Be the bravest motherfucker in the room.

Lordy, Lordy

I'm mulling over some thoughts on reaching 40. As it has coincided with some life events that have not been pleasant, so far they are not too positive. The current status report is I'm just sitting with some stuff and mulling it over and staying away from people in the meantime. People frustrate me immensely right now so I've been avoiding them, although that's more a stalling tactic than a solution.

I'm frustrated at myself. I'm frustrated at people. Currently in hiding. 40 is looking good so far!

endless construction

There is some kind of format/name change coming to this blog. I like this minimalist theme well enough for now, but I'm definitely changing the title. Something like Curiously Inert or Pointless Exile.

Or maybe not. Much like the rest of my life, this blog has never been quite what I want it to be. Getting the urge to change it up again. I may actually go the whole domain/heavily modified wordpress route. I could make one myself but it seems like the effort/reward ratio is not high.

Open and Closed

Today I want to talk about open relationships. I've been sitting on this post for a while, giving myself some time to cool down, and I think it's about time. It is not my intent to disparage anyone in open relationships, or even open relationships in general, but I was in one for a couple years and it didn't work out so well for me and I want to talk about it a bit.

Honestly, I think open relationships are a reasonable choice, and if you and your partner are doing well and you both find the idea exciting, then more power to you. I don't remotely think that people who practice polyamory or open relationships are some higher and more enlightened form of human being, but as preferences go it's fine. Consenting adults can make any old romantic arrangement that they wish as far as I'm concerned. It's just obnoxious  when people think their preferences are superior by virtue of the fact that they have them. In your life, you will be tempted many, many times to assume your personal preferences make you some kind of magic. It is vital you do not succumb.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I'd choose to do it again. It turned out to be a profoundly painful experience, and the fact that it was a situation I agreed to didn't ameliorate that too much. To be fair, I think me and the ex failed open relationships more than open relationships failed us. I mean we made two crucial errors right from the start. We were using open relationships to try and fix a flagging sex life, and we chose it even though only one of us was really excited by the idea (that person was not me). But I wanted to see if it was something I could do out of simple curiosity and I wanted him to be happy so we tried it. The main issues were he kept to the letter of the arrangement but not the spirit of it (he stuck to the rules but didn't make any particular effort to take care of me or put our relationship first.).  Once he started sleeping with other people he stopped initiating it with me almost entirely. The other was we both chose over and over to continue even though hearing about his exploits felt like being stabbed in the gut every time and we both knew that. So that wasn't optimal either.

So here's some lessons learned from bitter experience, in no particular order.

• If your relationship is in trouble, an open relationship won't fix it. It will just aggravate underlying problems as jealousy and other issues crop up. If you think you feel resentful now, just wait until your partner is out sleeping with someone else for the first time.
• If the thought of your partner sleeping with someone else isn't some kind of turn-on or at least genuinely neutral to you, it's not going to help your love life. Jealousy and low self-esteem will not do wonders for your libido.
• The partner with more success outside the relationship needs to take some effort to take care of the primary partner, not expect the opposite.
• If the issue is that you just don't want to sleep with you partner anymore, don't try an open relationship, just break-up. Insisting you still find them really attractive but just have a headache for two years will fuck them up more than a simple break-up would.
• If one of you really wants to open it up and the other is extremely reticent, just break-up. There's nothing intrinsic in the open relationship that makes it feel good for the reticent partner to stay at home while the other is out on dates. If you think that situation would make you feel bad, trust your instincts.
• If one of you is not really having a good time, either from lack of success or jealousy issues from what the other is getting up to, close up the relationship and see if you both want monogamy again, or just break-up. There's no reason to stay in an arrangement that is actively making you miserable unless you're indulging in your masochistic side for reasons even months later you don't understand. And you wonder if maybe growing up fundamentalist and coming out of the closet means you've been finding ways to punish yourself both in and out of relationships. And why do you do that? Why do you have to carry the judgement of other people for them? Why punish yourself for being human?
• If you've been cheated on (a lot) and didn't enjoy it, consciously allowing someone to sleep with someone else will still feel just as shitty as when past partners cheated on you. Especially if they don't show much interest in sleeping with you anymore. Especially if they insist you keep their feelings before yours even so, just like your cheating exes did.
• It's a little awkward to date in an open relationship. If you value honesty and like to be up front about being in an open relationship, you will have much fewer takers in the dating world. If you don't think "hi I'm in an open relationship would you like to go out with me?" is going to be a power position for you, don't bother. You have to have a certain amount of game to make it work and if you feel like you already struggle on the dating scene when you're single, it will make it that much harder.
• If he's not into you now, sleeping with other people will probably not make him more into you. Work on your relationship first, or just break up.
• If the situation is causing you lots of pain and you're getting nothing in particular in return for it from your partner, for the love of god, just break up.  What are you, some kind of masochist? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?
• If you've known in the back of your mind for sometime that marriage is not in the cards, and there's an expiration date on the relationship, don't open it up, just break up.

So would I recommend open relationships? Probably not, but maybe that's just because mine was ill-advised bullshit that caused me lots of pain for which not only did I not get anything back from my partner, even acknowledgement or appreciation of how big a sacrifice it was for me. Really, I would only ever recommend it if your relationship is in a good place, and you both think it would be lots of fun to take it to another level (not necessarily a higher level, just different). Even then, if it's causing one of you pain, close it down and work it out or consider breaking up.

Whatever you do, do not limp along for a couple years, in an open relationship that is not working for you, hoping these knives to the gut will magically turn into unicorns and candy. That way lies madness. Close it or just break up. You don't have to stay in a relationship that is no longer working for you and is probably never going to.