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.