The Song is You

In spite of an overall very positive series of events lately, I sometimes still feel like a guy who's had a bad fall. I wander around for a few minutes getting my bearings back. At some point, tunnel vision opens and I notice that my shirt's ripped and my arm is a bit scraped up. These things happen. Change the shirt, swab the arm. In disaster movies, you've seen the placid faces of the injured: there's no pain, no injuries. Often you can see or hear the fugue playing in their head, those phrases or gestures grow poignant as they're done again and again. Later comes the panic of realization that some parts were bruised and torn and might be in peril.

I've spent my life smacking myself about when I've fallen short of my expectations or tried to exceed them. The process isn't as severe as it used to be thanks to a lot of work over the years. But it was in essence my fugue state. It's ironic that there's something so loud and constant that is difficult to hear. Luck put me onto my own background noise and assumptions. Meditation helped me hear and clarity these harsh voices and strident themes. Since I'm basically as tough as a donut, I thought I needed a less destructive atmosphere, a healthier backdrop. For the past years, I've worked on softening the monster shouting in my ear. Among the various tricks in therapy, it's possible to replace destructive voices with ones that love you. You might find it amusing that one voice (and face) who helped out initially was that of my midget league basketball coach, no kidding. (I do think that's what the league was called back then.) The voice inside has been altered and there's a healthier burble about doing better, doing my highest work That's good to have rumbling around inside. My coach's thick face sometimes pops up and nudges me toward what I know is the right thing when I don't deliver on a promise to myself. Of course I want to please that nice, disappointed man.

Trying to communicate what I see and feel has always been important to me. I'd like to let others see what I see but I've locked myself down. It's a waste of time to do anything other than unlock myself as tempting as Understanding might be. No one else sees why I'm so in love with so many things in the world. What that has meant is that there are have been too many people who could only guess at what I felt, too many who hoped I loved them rather than know it from me. Some do know I suspect but have still waited patiently for more of me to emerge. Patiently.

That's ultimately what I've been trying to fix, that paralyzing inner fugue and anything that sustained it. At some point, the responsibilities of health seems more attractive to me than the responsibilities of injury and limitation. It's a hell of a thing being injured. It's worse when you sustain and accommodate the injuries in your life because you have some twisted sense they'll serve you better than wholeness. That rancid tune repeats and becomes your song, your background music, the only music you hear.

I am working on rooting out what's not me, what I've taken on out of fear, confusion, weariness or habit. I like to think that I'm not torn or shattered. That I'm aware enough to assess what I experience and not be subsumed. Everything that life has to offer does not lead to injury. You've seen this elsewhere as I've tried to work this through here. The dusty themes that had been protecting me, blocking me from my life have gotten so quiet, that often I hear something simple and unbidden, building and rising, a loopy birdsong of surprise and delight- my new music.

whispers

I despise cutesy titles like this but that's exactly what I'm going to talk about so I have to suffer through it.

You three loyal readers know that I've been working on what the aisle in the bookstore calls "self-improvement." Or more accurately, that wishing space where the habits and deficiencies of mind that afflict me might not be defects. For those of us who spend a lot of time conflicted about most things (Instant Oats! Steel-Cut Oats! Why Lord why?), the dingy fear is that it's us. It's not our training, not our biology, not some trauma. We are inadequate, broken or missing the original parts. Not a happy picture.

While I'm not going to ask you to invert your frown, I would like to take a moment to tell you, Billy Mays-style (no, not really) about a couple whispers that I've overheard. In a previous blog, I prattled on about how meditation had helped me understand the crazy device in my head known as my brain. That led to some half-baked ideas about changing my relationship to writing: Less force, more listening. Which lead to some half-baked ideas about changing my relationship to everything: Less force, more listening. The part of me who's watching my life's clock has been wondering whether the large investment that I'm made in selfish pursuits has been worthwhile or even makes sense. Nothing like reaching perfection then keeling over alone.

So I'm saying that it's worthwhile. I am not perfect and on some days I simply hang on. On most days, I am different than I was. In part because I have a new respect for what I used to ignore or browbeat into quiescence: whispers. Subtle little words, voices, pictures, acts where I seem to be telling myself something. It's a bit weird but I think ultimately sound.

For example, I've had this nagging suspicion that I've been missing something in my cognitive toolkit. It's not just a simple lacking feeling brought on by people thinking that I'm smart while I don't feel smart. As much as I am a self-deprecating fool, I do understand that I have some considerable skills, some abilities, some intelligences. It's the ease with which many folks understand and talk about complex processes. Recently I have had this little voice telling me that I was missing an ability that I thought was more hard-coded than learned. The voice has been saying, you just don't know how to do it. At some point, you'll identify it and figure out how to do it.

Thanks Voice! You da man! What nonsense.

That's been going on for about a year now. The kicker is that I now think that the voice is on the right track. I could spend A LOT of time describing the kind of thinking that I'm talking about and the cool evidence that backs me up. It's tied to the ability to comprehend complex information and process it verbally, logically. That's been nearly impossible for me. I see a path to that way of thinking now because I've been listening to that voice, that whisper and following it step by step. While the path might be revealed, I don't think that this will be an easy fix, but that's okay. I don't mind.

Little things like my decision to discontinue drawing or painting have their own internalized cartoon battle. This morning I was looking for a pen in my briefcase and found five art pencils and pens. How in the fuck did that happen? I had no memory of doing that. Maybe that's more a gesture than a whisper but you get my point. There's something for me to understand here that's deep and true. There's often something to understand from a quiet source. I always want to make a joke like "Yeah, understand that you are a twit and need the right things for work" but I know it's not like that.

You know when it's not like that.