schism.ca

I read or heard a legend some time ago that involved the changing of the seasons from Winter to Spring. It had to be either an Inuit or Native American legend. I don’t recall exactly who the players were, but they were animal spirits. One of the seasons was represented by a Great Bear. The other I don’t recall. The Oracle came up with nothing I could use. Anyway, it’s sort of a violent legend, with the main point being that whichever animal represents spring “breaks the back” of the other animal in a battle. This happens sometime in late February or early March. In spite of the savage imagery, I always thought this little legend was particularly apt. That’s what that time of year feels like. It feels like Winter is a mighty beast. Strong, worthy, hard to beat. But it is irrevocable–Spring will come along and battle it, and it will beat the strong Winter. It does so though in an interesting way. It doesn’t kill it outright–it breaks its back. Winter is left wounded, crawling away slowly. It’s defeated, but it isn’t gone. It will take a while to retreat to its cave to heal its wounds and become strong again. The weather around that time still looks very much like Winter, but there’s something different in the air. Icicles start to drip, and the wind loses its teeth. There seems to be a relaxing that carries some nearly subliminal joy–like a promise that you know will be fulfilled because you can feel it more than anything else. I love it when every year, I get that feeling–like the back of Winter has been broken.

I never really before thought that there must be some sort of complementary summertime battle. I don’t know if there’s any legend that is a counterpart; some time when another mighty beast comes to defeat the hold of Summer. But I realized for the first time in my life on any conscious level that whatever this complementary battle is, it has taken place. I have the same feeling now as I do in February. I feel it somehow. It’s still utterly gorgeous outside–there’s no real hint of anything like Winter anywhere. Heck, even Autumn is feeling a few weeks away yet. But this morning, there was something else going on, and I think the Pagan in me for whatever reason picked up on it.

This morning, the apartment was cooler than I recall. I have been sleeping with the windows open for months now (except on the rare occasions where the A/C was on), and my body sorta felt a temperature difference when I got out of bed that wasn’t the norm. Seems like the last couple weeks have just been a cooker, and sometime early this week, the fever broke, and Summer let out a tremendous exhale. On the way to work on my bike today, I noticed things that might be analogous to the icicles and the teeth of the wind.

There is a work crew tarring the roof of the public school I bike past on Keats Way. I didn’t consciously realize it until today, but that mostly unpleasant smell is a marker. I recall that smell as a precursor to going back to school. I recall being on my bike and going to the school yards during summer vacation and smelling that. It’s the scent of a time.

And apples. The smell of apples. Seems the crab apple trees on the U of W campus are quite fragrant, and it’s this smell that isn’t like the one you get from cutting open an apple–it’s way more intense. Apples on the ground, some rotting. When I was a kid, my dad used to rent a cottage from a colleague of his in the summer time up in Midland, and we’d go there for a week or so, hang out at the beach, eat at Dock Lunch and just sorta chill. There was a huge apple tree that grew on the side of the driveway opposite the house and it would routinely be laden with apples that no one ate when we were up at the cottage. It would frequently drop the apples, or a bird or squirrel would pick one off and the apple would either land with a damp thud on the dirt or with a mighty resounding WHAM! on the roof of the cottage, followed by a roll off. And that smell I smelled this morning, that was the very same one that was all around the cottage. I forgot about it until today. But that smell is another marker. Whatever beast that rules the Summer has been defeated, and it is slowly retreating.

It won’t be long until we start to really see the change. Kids with new backpacks, evenings in nice long sleeved hoodies, leaves changing colour, and pumpkins ripening on the vine. It’s like they’re all just sorta on the other side of a window, waving and beckoning me out to play.

Sigh. Resting in this sort of awareness can be sublime.

Been a while. I’ve been very lax in my documentation, both here and at work. For one who bills himself primarily as a writer, I’ve been doing very little of it. I really don’t know why. I seem to feel tired lately. The theory is that this summer’s been more hot than any in recent years, and the ever changing switch from freezer at work to cooker at home is taxing me to a lesser degree. I don’t sleep as well when it’s hot out, and we don’t have the best air conditioning, when indeed we have it at all.

All of that is to say that I’ve been feeling sorta lethargic, and I haven’t been doing much of anything requiring thought and time together lately. So, here’s my first tentative crawl into the land of the writing.

It’s been an eventful sort of time since last I wrote anything. Lots has happened, probably the biggest of which was taking in the Hillside Festival again. I just love that place, and we had a great time of it this year, in spite of the fact that most performers were relative unknowns to me. I’m going to go back again next year, not only because I love the music and the feel of the whole event, but because it’s a photographer’s wet dream to be there surrounded by all these acts and cool people in the great outdoors. The only bad thing about it was that my camera died a couple weeks before the event, so I had to fall back on my old one.

This last little while seems to be about failing electronics and machinery. It’s a little weird. I took a photoroam with Chris to Goderich last month and on the way home his car sorta blew up. That is to say, there wasn’t any flying shrapnel or craters in the earth, but it did smoke and heat up and pretty much die. He had to replace the car, as the engine was a write off. This happened shortly after his long lens bit the dust and had to be sent in for repair. My brother’s iPhone bricked itself doing an upgrade. He had to send it off and it still isn’t back from repair. I think at this point, he’s just looking to replace it with the iPhone 4. Then his car got into an accident, and the engine is acting up and it’s looking more and more like he’ll need to replace it too. Aside from those things, we’ve had blenders blowing up, toaster ovens not working, air conditioners and sinks leaking where they shouldn’t, cellular phones being returned due to dropped calls, and one minor earthquake. Yeesh.

Personally, as I said, my camera, not yet one year old, decided to up and die without any discernible cause. I took it out of the bag to find “Err 40″ on the display one morning, and that was all she wrote. This is apparently a rare problem as evidenced by the dearth of people complaining about it when I asked the oracle. I’m still not sure what it was that was wrong, but they fixed it up and sent it back to me working, so I hope it continues to be happy. Lord knows, I missed it. That camera is still the cat’s ass as far as I’m concerned. While I’m very thankful I had the trusty Rebel to fall back on for Hillside and various other photoroams I’d have missed out on otherwise, it doesn’t even approach the 7D in terms of focus and usability. And then, to top everything else, I was just about to read an email when *pouf*, my MacBook Pro decided to offer up its GPU to the computer gods, and that basically left me with no computer because lo and behold the GPU is soldered to the logic board and “would not be worth replacing”. I tell you, it wasn’t even four years old, and the computer up and died. Sigh. Well, it was the excuse I was looking for to buy a new machine, which I did, and I’m not rocking a shiny new iMac. I am certainly not at all unhappy about that.

To gain the cash for this little luxury item I did have to take a step I’ve been thinking of all year and sell my motorcycle. Yes folks, the dream is over. I got into riding three years back when I thought it’d be a great way to supplement our transportation needs. I did it with glacially growing success levels the whole time, but even though I had my times where I really enjoyed it, at the end of the day, I don’t think it was right for me. I always felt uneasy on it, and riding it wasn’t something I truly loved. In the grand scheme, I think it didn’t merit the cost I put in annually to run it, and I wasn’t getting the joy I should have been out of it. I had to ask myself, if it wasn’t for my brother wanting me to keep it so we could ride together, would I still have it? The answer was no. So, I put it up for sale at what I thought was a fair price, and it sold for that fair price. Sadly, I didn’t anticipate that the repairs to the bike would be nearly as much as they wound up being, so factoring in all that rot, I got several hundred dollars less than I’d hoped. Sigh. But, it was enough to cover the iMac, so I’m happy about that at least. Now I turn my attention to the bicycle again, which I’m not doing bad at at all this season. I have biked way more than I imagined I would already, and I’ve till got a good three to four months left before I won’t be biking anymore for the year. Seem when you take the motor away, I really do feel better on a bike, and it really does become a thing of joy rather than one of anxiety. And yeah, you can’t beat the costs or the health benefits, but I’m not going to pontificate about those this time around.

I just hope all the bad mechanical karma has moved on at this point and things stop breaking down already. I don’t have cash to replace everything anymore. Le sigh. I hope my bike, my car, my camera and lenses and my computer all stay just as they are for quite a few years, as I intend to use them without the need for replacement. I hope my phone keeps working. I hope that the appliances are stable and stick with me.

Failing that, I will hope to always have paper, pen, and ink. If the world totally goes to hell, I can still write like that. But you won’t know it.

So, as has been stated, I’m trying to bike more this season, mostly as a solution to the daily commute. It’s something that I should have been doing for a long time, but gave up years ago, much thanks to having access to a car. There seems to be very few downsides so far, and I have even discovered a small glimmer of my love for cycling re-emerging. Last week, when I had to take my car to work on a good biking day because I’d need it after, I was actually feeling a little disappointed. That surprized me. But, I crossed the 200km mark today! Woot! While I never wanted to set a solid goal for this, the fact of riding at all being good enough, I would truly love to cross the 1000km threshold this season if I can. All pointers suggest this will be no problem.

I have, however, found a couple of crappy things about riding. These are the sorts of things that I’d normally hold out as reasons why I would not bike. Instead of quitting though, I’m trying to find solutions. The biggest one by far is that my body hates me. I won’t go into details about my ass… even I don’t care about my ass if I can help it, so I imagine the world at large could not care any less, but yeah… it’s not happy. And my shoulders have been giving me grief for about a month now. I don’t know how much of that grief is caused by biking, but I imagine at least some small portion is.

So, I started by giving up the messenger bag to haul my stuff in favour of a backpack. It seemed to be a little better, but certainly didn’t fix the issue. Last night, after a bunch of researching, I decided I’d try some pannier bags. It went against my current push to eliminate stuff from my life, and it also was a little more expensive than I’d hoped, but I figured it was not a frivolous buy. I installed the rack and used the bag for this morning’s commute. Huge difference. Night and day getting the weight off of me and onto the bike. I completely forgot I was carrying all my stuff on the way, and I arrived at work far less sweaty thanks to nothing on my back. If it continues to go as well as it did today, these bags will be one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

You know what? I never would have bought these things a few years ago, and you know why? Because I thought they weren’t cool. I thought they looked stupid, and took away from the streamlined look of the bike. In a lot of ways, I have been a idiot forever. I recently read an article that pointed out that in Europe, a bicycle is commonly seen as a utilitarian vehicle–something that is practical and serves a purpose to help humans out, whereas here in North America, we see our bicycles as strictly a sports and leisure tool. Like almost everything else, they need to have a ‘cool’ factor to appeal to people so they can stand as consumer items. Even from my extremely limited interaction with cycle shops in the area these last few weeks, I know there’s a contingent of zealots and fanatics in this town with plenty of super expensive gear for them to spend their cash on.

Seems it’s the same everywhere. There’s the equivalent of a Mac Fanboi for every area–cars, bikes, gadgets, role playing, photography, sports, food, you name it. And man, the idea of something totally rules, nevermind the reality. It’s way more important that something should look good than work right. I know this is true for me. I am in no way saying I’m high and mighty here. I am currently sopping up the drool each time I look at the new mac mini released just today, even though I know in my heart of hearts that it’s obscenely overpriced and will not, in all practical terms, make me any happier than any other system that can do what I need it to do. I still refuse to give that one up.

But for bikes, I can see it. And my body can tell me that it appreciates it. And so does the overall experience. At the risk of becoming some sort of bicycle evangelist, I like that I’m finally doing something that moves my ass, even if my ass is unhappy about it at the moment. I like that it’s good for the environment, and I like that it gets me outside and gives me space to think about something other than the LCD in front of my eyes. Seems like all I really want is for the experience to be as pleasant as it can be. It needs to accomplish what it must (get me places) in the best way (without pain). ‘Cool’ doesn’t enter into it anymore. If the bags help, bring ‘em on. If I get fenders to keep off the rain, awesome. If I get a whole new bike someday (although not this season, that’s for damned sure) that’s a hybrid and looks like something a Mennonite would ride to church on a Sunday then hook me up if it accomplishes what it must. Heck, I’ve been totally smoked my older guys on those things… it’s sort of embarrassing.

I think the lesson here is something I should have learned ages ago, that will take some time yet to adopt completely. It branches from many studies on happiness I’ve read lately that state that material wealth is not a good predictor for happiness in general, over and above those who live in poverty. The guy with the cooler bike is no happier than the guy with the geeky bike, essentially. Happy for me is probably better accomplished through having only what I need, and by keeping a very close eye on what I want. Wants should be royal and absolute and contain power. They should not be the basis of the day to day though. The focus is what I need. The rest can go, or at least be open to pretty extreme scrutiny.

I’m loving my geeky-assed bike more and more.

In an effort to better my health and myself, I decided when I saw the weather forecast last weekend, that I’d bike to work this week. I used to be an avid biker, and I remember I enjoyed it. Mind you, the season I put nearly 2500 km on my bike I was riding more out of necessity than a desire for self-betterment. I have no such lofty goals for this season. In a way, I’m kinda glad because I’ve already done more distance on my bike this year than I have the last two years combined (we won’t dwell on the fact that I pretty much never dusted the bike off the past two years).

I also made a choice not to join my fellow bike commuters in the habit of adding a pair of white ear buds to my commute. Seems pretty much everyone has ear buds in when they’re walking or biking, and for some reason, while I can see why, it doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing I ought to do. For one, I think it’d be less safe. But more, I think the Zen part of me says that if I want to bike, I should bike. Part of the joy of biking for me has always been to be ‘out there’. I like to hear the birds, and whatever else. I like to be present to what’s around me in the moment. Biking can be meditative, but only if my mind is on it, and not whatever I’m listening to.

That said, Zen biking is like any other Zen meditative practice–things enter my head and I need to acknowledge them before I can let go and continue biking. Here then, for your entertainment, is a list of some things that have gone through my head while biking to and from work:

• My Roots leather messenger bag, much as I love it, does not lend itself to bicycle commuting.
• There is no way to avoid hills either on the way there, or on the way back.
• This hill in particular is truly a bitch when there is a north wind:

• Like me, an inordinate amount of University students wear Converse Chucks. This has me wondering if I’m hip or a poseur.
• There’s a large amount of geese in the city that have taken to perching on large buildings in the middle of completely urbanized areas. I’m wondering if they’ve lost their minds, or if there’s some sort of wetland goose gang that’s driving lesser geese out.
• I feel less depressed when I get to work than when I leave the house. This is followed in short order by depression brought about by being happier at work–something I never actually thought would happen.
• The sound of crows clicking their beaks is one of the coolest sounds ever.
• The subtle beauty of sparrows is something that I never before realized.
• The words of George Carlin are words I can agree with: “I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the sidewalk. It’s so fuckin’ heroic.”
• My allergies, weirdly, are not as bad this year.
• I have a strange feeling of superiority over people in cars.
• I completely hate it when people toss cigarette butts out of car windows. I think there ought to be a fine.
• All the week, gas prices have been seven cents a litre more expensive in the morning than in the late afternoon. I cannot fathom why.
• Drinking 2 litres of water per day is stupidly easy when I ride my bike to work. This same feat is damned nigh impossible when I drive.
• A small, yellow spider lives on my bike. I have seen it three times this week. I have no idea where it goes when I’m not looking, but it seems to like the bike enough to hang on. It is likely among the most well-traveled spiders in town.
• People on bikes and on foot seem to be far friendlier than those in cars. I wonder if it’s a feeling of autonomy or something. I dunno. That said, there have been a handful of people in cars who smile at me and give me proper right of way.
• I love the smell of the flowering trees out right now. I also love the newborn maple leaves popping out. They are my absolute favoutire colour of green.
• I am going to bike all summer long.

I think that getting out of the cage is a good thing.

Been a while since I’ve graced your eyeballs with anything new here. I thought I’d tell you about some thoughts that I had following an event in my little white bread town earlier this month.

Back story: A couple of lesbians were asked to leave an establishment for kissing. They left, but a bru-ha-ha ensued that ultimately culminated in a gathering of people who wanted to raise awareness about this kind of discrimination in the city. Full story details if you want them can be read here and here.

Because I tend to be a joiner, and scored in the 40’s on multiple tests to determine if I’m gay, I decided I’d show up, with Suz (just in case you wanted to know the true lay of the land), to show some support and hear what they all had to say. Overall, it was a pretty low key event, but did offer some food for thought. There were two things that got dislodged in my head and rolled around for a little while after. I’ll tell you what they are, and then you can tell me what you think, if you want.

First was a woman who spoke in part about how acceptance is not enough. That got me thinking. As I’ve already intimated, I have no problem with the gay community, nor do I have much trouble understanding why people are homosexual. I’m down with that. What I’m wondering is if I honestly do have some sort of a different internal reaction that translates into less than full acceptance in my dealings with gay people.

One of my friends once told me after 9-11 happened that the event had unwittingly and annoyingly made him a racist. Not that he’s out there spewing hate or anything, far from it. It’s just that after the event, he found himself looking with concern at anyone obviously Muslim. I think that was pretty common at the time. I like to think it’s gone away a little since then. Thing is, it was a knee-jerk reaction that translated into subtle put downs of individuals for absolutely no legitimate reason. We who were not dark skinned or Muslim looked at those who were as ‘others’ in a way that wasn’t positive. Rather than celebrating the difference among human beings and how they engage the world, we sorta had an attitude of guilty until proven innocent. It was pretty bad.

The point here is if I do witness a couple guys kissing, I’ll look at them differently. These guys cease to be just another human being, but rather take on the caveat of ‘gay human being’ and I wonder if that translates poorly somehow in my psyche. I didn’t even realize consciously that I did such things until I thought about it. I guess it’s sorta human nature to compartmentalize people. What I’m trying to say though is that I was worried that I wasn’t going beyond my “I’m down with that” attitude. I was stopping at acceptance, and I guess I need to go father somehow. I still don’t know how though.

The other thing was that I discovered that I do have a problem, at least on an intellectual level, with the transgendered community. One of the final speakers of the event was a guy who spoke about wanting to be accepted as a woman. He spoke of “pronoun problems”, which I assume indicate people were referring to him as “he” rather than “she”. He expected people to use “she”, regardless of whether he was presenting himself in women’s clothing. As far as he was concerned, he was not male. He was a she, and expected people to treat him that way.

Okay. Here’s my problem with that. I don’t think that you can legitimately get away from what you are. I have no issue with gay or lesbian people because that’s what they are. They are attracted sexually to their own sex. No problem. I have no issues with transvestites who like to wear women’s clothing. That’s who they are–they like that. No problem with bisexuals–they like both sexes. Sure, why not? If that’s what does it for you. But these people who want to be the other sex concern me. They aren’t the other sex. I mean, they aren’t. There’s no getting around that. That would be like me getting up in front of a group of people and saying. “Okay, everyone, I’ve decided I’m going to be a black man now. Please treat me exactly like you would treat a black man. Don’t go telling me I’m white–I’m not. I’ve decided I’m black. I’m going to go now and appropriate all of the black heritage because it’s mine.” That would not work. Clearly, I’m not black. Nor do I have any idea experientially what it’s like to be a black man. Nor will I ever have that experience. I can’t be what I’m not.

I’m sure that some transgendered folks would argue, oh, but it’s a self-identification thing. I was simply born in the wrong body. In my soul and mind, I am not, in fact male, I’m female. I know it. The body isn’t relevant here, the real me, the one inside this fleshy mistake, is female. That’s why I want to be treated that way.

Well, respectfully, nuh-uh. I’ve studied religion long enough to know the perils of gendering a deity. If you’re going to talk about your soul, I’m going to think you mean the transcendent part of you. That little bit of god that’s inside every human. In my book, that part of you is without gender. It better be, or you’ll wind up with the same mess that created the intolerance of your situation in the first place. Do not put something as base as animal reproductive qualities as the identifier for your soul. At that level, I damned well hope that you’re neither male nor female. And from an intellectual standpoint, I’d say you’ve got some sort of mental disorder if you can honestly look at something and then convince yourself that’s not what it is. Tell you what, convince yourself that a door isn’t a solid object and then go slam your hand in it. Reality has a way of making itself known. We’re all sorta stuck here, and the rules are pretty fixed. I just can’t think of a way that anything with penis between its legs can stand there and say “I’m a woman! Treat me like a woman!” You’re a dude… sorry, that’s what we’ve got for you this time around.

Anyway, those are things that gave me food for thought earlier this month in my little town. What do you think? Is there something I’m missing here?

I wonder if there is anyone out there. Every now and again, I want to write, and then I hit this block about if I should write here, or write in my ‘real’ journal.

I wonder if I’m offering anything.

Hm.

I figured I’d add my $0.02 to the throng and write a few words about the new Apple toy, coming soon to a store near you. As a recently (four years or so) converted Mac fanboi, I thought maybe I could offer something a little different than what’s being said.

Among my fanboi brethren, there is much unrest. Everyone was expecting the next best greatest thing, and a lot of people are upset because instead of the second coming, they got a “giant iPod Touch”. Heh. Someone should make up an “I went to Apple’s January 2010 event, and all I got was this lousy iPad” shirt.

In a lot of ways, I commiserate. I was let down initially too. Not so much because the tablet is a letdown, but because the hype had my expectations at an entirely unreasonable level. I guess that unless the thing did anything less than read my mind and act as an extension of my own arm I’d have been disappointed.

But even accounting for that, I was decidedly disappointed because it really isn’t anything revolutionary, save for the size. People don’t know where it’d fit. But given the time, I think I have found a place. And, just maybe, it is a little revolutionary, particularly if you see it as a device that specifically doesn’t cater to the geek squad.

At the risk of becoming the stereotypical fanboi who first derides a new Apple offering, swearing I’d never even look at that hunk of garbage and then a year later be singing its praises and owning two, here’s what I think.

This thing is exactly what’s needed when you aren’t sitting at your computer, but want to do simple things. Apple started the whole event talking about mobility, and that’s what this thing is. It’s a mobile device that picks up on the essentials of computing. Even the die-hard programmer geeks do the things that the device does every day. Email. Web. Address book. Calendar. Listen to your tunes. The rest of the custom things that someone does in a day is readily handled by whatever app you want. Recipe book? Health tracker? Shopping list? Whatever you want.

I spent this past weekend away from the computer, but in the house, because I was tending to sick people and fearing my own impending illness that never came. During that time, my iPod Touch got a LOT of use. I could check email and facebook in bed, get info I needed and then put the thing down. It was always close by, unobtrusive, always on, and moved with ease to wherever I was. The only thing that would have made it easier is if it was *ding!* larger.

Why do you think Steve and company chose the ‘chair’ setup at the event over the usual desk? The idea is that this thing is highly mobile and can be wherever you are and doesn’t need a plug, peripherals or much of anything. You just sorta use it.

Speaking of use, it occurred to me yesterday as I was talking to my mom (who incredibly mentioned wanting to learn to use the computer–this is a woman who doesn’t know how to correctly use a mouse) that the idea of a touch-and-use device is exactly what she could use. One slab, and you just see what you want and touch it to use. If the UI is intelligently designed and clear, anyone with two hands can use this thing. The geeks who know everything about everything can scoff at how basic it is, but this thing could very well open up a market that, due to complexity (perceived or actual), was ignored by folks who haven’t as yet hopped online.

We won’t talk about the discomfort I feel at my mother browsing my facebook page someday

Finally, I want to touch on the point of basic, just to bring this around to the self-improvement topics that are currently so near and dear to me. One of the biggest complaints out there is that iPad cannot multitask. Dear god! A computer device that can’t do the most basic of things! Christ, the Commodore Amiga back in the early 80s made a big deal about multitasking! It’s a simple no brainer that anything with a chip on it released today should be able to do 25 year old tech like multitask!

Consider this: There’s a distinct movement toward monotasking as a better way to work because human brains aren’t actually good at multitasking, even if your computer is. Bearing in mind that this device is designed to tackle the basics of computing in a highly mobile way, I ask you why do you want it to multitask? Do what you’re doing and then do something else. This thing pretty much takes that at its core. It’s a Zen device. It’s basic Zen – “when you shit, shit”. Stay in your moment and give it your all.

I am reading and sending an email.

I am surfing the net.

I am looking up a recipe.

You know, you should only do one thing at a time. You’ll enjoy it more, and your mind won’t fragment as badly. I think it falls perfectly in line with what this device aims at. Sometimes I wonder if Apple knows more about how people should work than even they do. It’s sorta scary.

All that having been said, I still doubt I’ll get one. Not because I don’t think it’s a good device. I do. For me, it’s more that it’d be redundant because I can use my iPod Touch if I need that and its size doesn’t annoy me. But then, I guess once I actually use one, all bets are off. Maybe I’ll borrow my mom’s.

So, the new year has started, and with it, a little bit of a resolution. It’s been a while in coming. What I wanted to do was to start meditating. This I did, and then to make things even more interesting and new-agey, I started a beginner’s yoga course, too.

So, that makes me the master of the mats right now. I have one for meditation, and one for yoga.

The meditation one, I suppose, is not strictly necessary. It’s sort of a throwback from the last time I tried to meditate. I’ve been trying to remember when that was, and why I decided to try it, but I completely forget. What I do recall is why I got the mat.

It was as a result of seeing some show somewhere about Muslims and their prayer rugs. As I was watching the show, the thing that intrigued me was the fact that the rug was a sacred item. It’s not used for anything else, and is treated reverently because of what it is. When someone puts the mat down, it’s a way to create instant sacred space, regardless of where one happens to be. I found that really appealing. I’ve long had a problem with ’sacred space’. Most of the time, it doesn’t work for me, because I never feel it’s mine. I do, however, feel it’s really important to have a particular space to do work like this; but it needs to be a personal space, too. Churches feel like sacred space, but they don’t feel personalized enough for me. A labyrinth is good, but only if you can find one, and the outdoor ones are no good for half the year. I felt best when I was in a circle that I cast for ritual during the time where I was a better pagan. The thing about circles though is that for me, they take a lot of time and energy and planning to make them feel right, and the fact that they are necessarily maintained in the mind always made it hard for me to do the work therein. For me, it’s easier to have physical space in addition to metaphysical space. The rug was such a simple, awesome idea. Thank you, Islam.

Not to say there’s no metaphysical component. I love the humble gesture of intent. When I lay down my meditation mat, it’s a sign to my mind that I’m now doing something important and worthwhile that I have chosen to do. It’s also a welcome mat… sort of a way to invite my best self to come on in and reach for me, because I’m reaching for it. And, I love that the more I use it, the more sacred it becomes.

I got the mat at the Farmer’s Market, believe it or not. There’s a pleasant Mennonite woman there who makes the rugs out of worn denim clothing. I can only speculate, but it seems to me that the odds are pretty decent that my mat has material that was worn by Mennonites as they went about their work. Something about that appeals to me. I have a certain respect for these people, and the ways in which they live their lives. I love that the mat is made of things that have been repurposed, and created with human hands rather than by machine. It feels right that its new use is meditation. The religious scholar in me just loves the theological hooks, too: clothing worn by Mennonites, attained by a post-pagan through Islamic inspiration to achieve a work with Buddhist roots. Gotta love me.

I’ve been at it for over a month now, each day 10 minutes was my goal, and I’ve hit it without too much trouble. It really is getting to the point where I even look forward to it a little. The reason I started this time was probably better than the last reason. I have been doing loads of reading lately about mindfulness and meditation and its actual quantifiable benefits. It’s worth it, and for some reason, I feel ready. So far, I haven’t seen any of these benefits that I’m aware of, but I have noticed that I’m much more apt to be in the moment than I once was, and that in itself is a win. I hope I can keep this up from here on out, and maybe even bump the time I devote to more like 30 minutes a day. That’s apparently where one starts to see some pretty impressive benefits, if the studies are right.

The Yoga thing was more because I needed to get some sort of exercise, and I wanted to help out my stiff, tensed, awful little muscles a bit. Oddly, this is the second time I’ve tried Yoga, too. The first time I went by myself and it scared the pants off of me because the positions that required my head to be lower than my heart made me extremely lightheaded when I came out of them. At the end of the class, I very nearly passed out, and I figured that was my body telling me something. This time around though, I’m taking my time about it, and Suz is there to help me out if need be.

So far, so good. I haven’t even really had any trouble with dizziness. Seems that I might be improving without knowing it. I don’t think though that I’ll continue past the beginner’s course. This seems to be another in a line of things (the last one was running) that while good for me, I can’t find my passion about.

There’s got to be something out there that I can both like to do that is also good for me to do from a physical standpoint. I just haven’t found it yet. Ah well, no one can say I’m not trying at this point, anyway.

Maybe if the Yoga mat were as special as the meditation one. Nah, it’s just rubberized machine made sticky stuff.

I’m going to write this down even though it’s pretty personal and thus won’t matter to anyone, and pretty hard to tack down and so likely won’t make any sense. It just feels like this particular emotional space is a little like the polkaroo, and you better engage it while it’s there, or damn, you’ll miss it again.

I started down this negative slope yesterday. I guess the reasons are known, but not really important. Let’s just say that I was in a very familiar place–the place where I’m just negative. The silly stressed, angry, confused, self-deprecating, vindictive, hopeless cocktail that I drink as though it were the sweetest nectar, because its taste seems to validate the ideas that I have about myself. I get that part. While I’ve never really understood how it came to be that my current resting state is so negative, that’s the thing that is most familiar to me. It feels like it’s the way to be, like it’s safe. As has been stated today in an article over at Dumb Little Man,  “if we ever feel that we have to choose between safe and happy, we’ll usually move towards what’s safe”. To that end, I suppose that I also want to feed and validate what is safe, so that I don’t move away from it. That’s likely why the cocktail tastes so sweet, even though it’s comprised of nothing but shit, and ultimately serves to make me quite unhappy.

That said, apparently I’m pretty self-aware about this sort of stuff. I have it on good faith that most people who are depressed do not see this little dance play out and cannot identify the reasons for it. They drink the cocktail without ever turning it into the semiotic analysis that I do. If that’s true, then I have a leg up. Indeed, I think I do have that leg up–I have the ability to counter all that stuff with thoughts that go more toward the outcome I want as opposed to the outcome that makes me feel safe. I can make the leap to self mastery in this regard. I can know, intellectually, exactly the way out of the woods. There’s lots of allegories to help out with this, the most recent of which, to lean on Dumb Little Man again, is the whole Cherokee wolf story. God only knows if it’s originally a Cherokee story or just some appropriated myth from somewhere, but the idea is sound regardless of the poetic imagery: the thing you focus on is the thing that’s important, and ergo gets the most energy and time, and ergo will ‘win’. It is the “one you feed”. If I focus on the negative, then that’s exactly how I’ll feel–exactly how I do feel. If I wanted to, I could be the Adytum builder and wrap this god I am in good stuff as opposed to the stuff I do wrap it in. I have absolutely no shortage of materials, quite the opposite. If I took the time to count my blessings and then to count all the great things in the world that I live, I’d have enough material to build an entire city of god in my little existence. So whay don’t I do it already?

And here comes the polkaroo.

I realized this polkaroo this morning as I walked out to the garage to get on my motorcycle to come to work. Today was a lovely, beautiful, wonderful late summer day. I mean, this is the weather that you pray for on every day where the weather is anything but perfect. Sun, dew on green, crisp morning air. Birds singing, geese overhead. A veritable paradise. I saw all this. I was immersed in it. I completely love all of it. The pagan in me rejoices at everything this morning was caressing me, its special son, with. But I pushed it away… somehow.

I want this to make sense, because the key here is that it has nothing to do with my logical thinking self–the part of me that knows I should just focus on this stuff because it will turn around my mood. It’s something else–something that feels decidedly out of my control, and out of the realm of my logical thinking self. It feels like some primal superpower in me repelled all that blessing as though both it and I were north poles of two magnets. It was like I couldn’t choose to take it in, even if I wanted to. It was as though I was incompatible.

Aha.

I didn’t think that until just now when I wrote it. Maybe it goes to the notion that you can’t fill a full cup. If I’m already full of negative, no positive can enter. If I am a conduit only for negative, then only negative can enter… positives are incompatible. In that case, what I’d need to work on is becoming a sort of semiconductor that can accept good and bad.

Arg. But dammit, how do I do that? Again, it comes down to being unable to concentrate on the good if you’re fixated on the bad. Maybe this is the hard part of brain plasticity. Neurochemically, I know I’m wired for this negative thing, and so when I’m just engaged in the day to day, that’s the default conduit, and so it repels the good stuff, allowing me to remain the comfortable miserable bastard that I currently am. If I take out the time to meditate, however, that might aid in the rewiring. Damn, that’s hard though.

It is Herculian hard.

I guess perhaps it’s about taking it a step at a time, like any huge, difficult undertaking. All right then. I’m going to take this as the first step: I’m going to go outside, feel the sun and acknowledge it, breathe the air and acknowledge it, touch the grass and acknowledge it. I am going to go out there and know I’m blessed. That is the want, and furthermore it is the truth… it’s simply not the case that I am doomed to be forgotten, or that people don’t care, or that my life is any less special today than it was the last time I actually was compatible with the good that surrounds me.

May the cocktail taste repugnant, and fuck you, polkaroo.

How’s that for a catch phrase?