Erect in Defiance of God's Will

Current time: 3:17 AM. Estimated time until iRooster crows: 5 hours, 43 minutes. Wake-up Track for iRooster: Theme from "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan." Number of hours scheduled for work tomorrow: 5.

Planning to party all night with friends getting while getting crunked off your ass?

Priceless.

/cliche

How've you been? Good, good. How's that thing that you were stressing over? See, I told you it would all work out.

Life is bigger than a lot of this little crap we get stuck in. I know that. In my mind I know that. I know it like I know an equation, like I know a date. I don't, however, know it like I know a piano. Like I know an image. I can talk about it but I can't feel it, explain it but can't explore it. The phrase "forest for the trees" is so beautiful and I wish I had made it up because I would use it all the time. It's as though, because we only have eyes on one side of our head, we are both spiritually and biologically incapable of seeing all sides of reality, all sides of a situation.

How is it that in the span of five minutes you can go from exalted to excrement? I seriously have been all over the place the past, well, okay fine the past two months but I'm mostly thinking about the past two weeks. On the one hand I haven't felt this creatively virile since 2003. On the other hand I feel like an absolute shmuck who can't even wake up early enough to shave his face before work. Both are true, and yet they seem contradictory. How can you be productive at some things and a total lame-o (wow I wish I had a thesaurus) at other things? "Sure I'll write that beautiful independent short film about two 20-somethings at a crossroads in their relationship, storyboard it and shoot it in black and white and submit it to a film festival," versus, "Jesus, fuck, what time is it ohgodi'mlateagain." It is like some neurotic Odd Couple occupies the same studio apartment that is my brain and fight over the toilet seat being left up. Sure they love each other, but you can't possibly sustain such anarchy, such utter dichotomy in one individual.

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of a non-dual transcendent, a place beyond up and down, right and left, i.e. zooming out the camera far enough to see that east is in fact west and vice versa. If it exists, it is where God is. I wonder why the human brain creates the illusion of separation, of division from oneself, if created by He that is both hard and soft. Why the game? Why can't we see this place for what it is?

I wonder precisely because I feel a division inside myself, a distance from myself. Mark came home for the past couple of days, in from NY to attend a number of business meetings, and he invited me to come hear a motivational speaker. The speaker was an ex-NFL player whose nickname had been "Meat," and the fact that I remember most of what the guy said is a testament to the simple, straightforward wisdom this clod mustered for an hour and a half. He said, "Everyone has a little devil on his shoulder, a doubting Mini-Me who sits there and, cranky as hell, constantly tells you bad news about yourself. To fight 'im, you have got feed your inner giant, feed your inner dreamer. You have got to find that part of yourself that knows you deserve better."

Now, I mean, this is great advice. I love it. Simple, straightforward, correct (the original concept of "the satan" was as adversary. Satan, in Judaic texts, used to work for God, testing the resolve of his followers, and was only later associated with a force apart from God). But the part about "inner dreamer" was what really hit me the hardest, because I am a dreamer. "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams," to quote Willy Wonka. That is me. To a fault. Or was me before I came up against my limitations, my handicaps, my vulnerabilities, all of the which the real world is elucidating faster than I can make excuses. My inner Slugworth is delighted watch the gumdrops crash, watch as I flail and flutter and try to make sense out of the jumble, watch and snicker as I wake up late, accomplish little, and then think about how much I am not doing and how fast my life is going.

It is a pity party, people. Hope you brought sad streamers and wet firecrackers.

Anyways, it's between that voice, the one that kicks the oompa-loompa in the gnads when it gets angry, and the dreamer, the music maker, the guy with the boat and the creepy chicken beheadings playing behind him, that I dwell. And Wonka destroys as much as he creates, corrupts as much as he consoles. He's a whirlwind, a force of nature, loved and feared, loving and fearful. Man I love words. And that is how I feel. Disappointing. Anointing. Disillusioning. Envisioning.

Okay, point being is that I'm struggling to feel like a consistent person and it's driving me nuts. Moving on.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I think it's pretty cool that being "Irish" can belong to everyone, at least a little bit. Drink some green beer! I'll talk to you.

Your
Martin