The Grieving Process

You have to feel it to heal it.

I never really mourned the time when my Electro Harmonix Micro Synth was stolen.

I am sad.  Helios Creed put a wanted ad out for one of these things in a Sub-pop newsletter.  I was intrigued.  I saw one for sale locally, I only intended to check it out, see what it was about. When I played it I knew that it was made for me.  It made noises so offensive that the devil him self would blush to describe it out loud.  I had to own it.

Also, my Univox Super Fuzz was stolen in the same incident.

This video does not do it justice.  

When you think about the face-melting lead sounds on tracks like American Woman... 

that is what it did.  

I only got to play it once... 

it was like getting hit by a truck going 200 mph carrying velvet cups of butter.

But for some reason the dirty thief did not take my Digitech Whammy Pedal, 

Electro Harmonix Big Muff & 

Electric Mistress & Small Stone, 

Boss CE-3 & DM-2, 

Mutron Multi-Phase, 

MXR Phase 100 & Blue Box,

E-bow, or my Echo-plex.

Or my absolute most favorite pedal in the world, 

the amazing ACE TONE FUZZ MASTER 2.

So, I guess it could have been worse.

It feels bad to have someone take something from you.

Like a helpless victim... no one to grant me justice... never mind justice I just want my stuff back.

Presence Process week 3

bluh... week three is hard.

I'm totally depressed.

Depression is like a splinter.  

If it's deep you might not see it but you will probably feel it.

Whether you feel it or not, if it is festering, it is going to cause you some problems.

So, in week three I'm having a bunch of unresolved feelings that were buried deep in my mid-brain that are starting to rise to the surface.

Here's the thing...

There are many different kinds of love, the greeks had five different words for love that meant different things.  Then there are love languages, are people loving the right way and blah blah blah.  THe saddest thing is that there are a great number of people out there that are so out of touch with love that they don't even understand what the word means, they say that 'you can't define it', that 'no one can really know what love is.'  There is a real reason why some people don't know anything about love, they have been loved in some sense of the word but never been genuinely loved, truly and unconditionally.

Most of us probably did not get the love that we needed from our parents because people cannot give what they don't have.  Our parents probably did not receive the kind of love that they needed as children, and so on.

I wouldn't say that I had a crappy childhood, but do know that I didn't get what I needed.

I'm not going to judge my folks about it, they just didn't have it to give.  They did the best they could.  But, I think that for my whole life I've been depressed.  Most people from the old neighborhood would probably have described me as a hyper-spaz clown, but those behaviors were just my way of sedating and controlling... boredom... the empty, meaningless monotony of life.  Now, when I was a kid I would have never been able to articulate that.  I wasn't aware of it because I didn't know that there was any other way to be, I couldn't see inside people's heads to know how other people experience emotional health.  

One of the things that I look forward to each day is coming home to see my daughter.  I like just watching her play and walk around and spout irrational statements.  I don't think that I got that from my dad.  My mom told me that he never changed my diaper.  That makes me sad.  

It is hard for me to think about a father not having that kind of expressed affection for their own child.  Ravi Zacharias said that for some people despair is a moment and that for other people despair is a way of life with moments of emotional peace.  I wonder if my father was depressed.  

This morning I had a really hard time.  I was trying to get my girl ready for school and I was just empty.  I had no love to give.  I tagged out with my wife and went out on my deck and drank coffee.  I know that there is depression on my mother's side of the family, but my dad is from west Texas, they don't need shrinks.  

Well, that's about it so far.  I'm grieving unresolved emotions from my childhood.  I'm getting the splinter out and it gets uglier before it gets better.  

Presence Process - Week 2

This week was about acknowledging my reflections in the world.

Apparently the brain is like a computer.  You can store memories that are time stamped and have all kinds of useful context information assigned to each memory.

But in addition to this metaphorical RAM, there is also a battery that stores energy.  This metaphorical energy is emotion memory.  There is no time context or any useful point of reference assigned to stored emotional memories.

That's a bad thing.

If you have ever seen someone overreact it is probably because they experienced a situation

where there were similarities to past experience, and emotional experience.  The current situation involved something that 'triggered' the emotional memory which released the intense feelings into the current situation.  The result is a 'reaction' that is greater than the situation warranted.

It is always better to choose your 'response' to an emotionally charged situation than automatically 'react'

Here's the solution.

Train your mind to exist in the present, stop thinking in terms of the future or the past.  

(In my last blog I talked about how my thoughts tend to dwell on what is coming up or analyzing what has already past, consequently my whole life I have conditioned my thoughts to never be in the present moment).

This gives your mind a point of reference in the present moment.

When something reminds you of a past experience you may take note of it and move on.

If you let the past experience dictate how you feel about the current experience then that is called 'projection'.

That's a bad thing.

Here's an example.

- your dad was a dick, you have strong negative feelings about him in your emotional memory

- your dad is a symbol of authority 

- God is a symbol of authority,  you place your strong negative feelings on any symbol of authority

- You conclude that God is a dick

Here's an interesting projection.

What does it mean?

What if every time I look at my grandpa I feel like I did the first time I saw Planet of the Apes?

Now whether that is true or not is not the point.  You want to arrive at your conclusions based on reality not a defense mechanism such as projection.

This past week I was successfully able to identify several times where someone reminded me of something from my past that was emotional, I recognized my impulse to project those feelings onto the person in front of me, and then I was able to acknowledge (not dismiss) the emotional memory and continue with my interaction.

Yae Me!!!

Being sick is lame

I used to like sick-days when I was a kid.

I got to stay home from school, stay in my pajamas, watch TV, and my mom would wait on me and give me soup and hot cocoa.  

Now it sucks. 

Now it's like... none of that.

My pajamas feel like a gross second skin... since I feel like crap everything on TV seems to mock me... my mom is in a different state... I really liked being a student on campus, so being at home sucks... I generally have no appetite but when I do I feel to weak/lazy to fix anything.

Right now I don't know what hurts worse, wiping my nose or my butt.  It's a toss up, I've been stealing my daughter's wet wipes for both... nothing helps.  At this point I'm not totally opposed to putting A&D ointment on both ends.

This all started on Thursday, my daughter had gross snot oozing down her face and she felt bad so she kept trying to nuzzle on me and then kept rubbing her snot all over me.

It's cool though, I still love her.  The ear-aches were pretty problematic for both of us.

The two things that are helping me 

cope are the cheesy Halloween theme 

commercials on TV

(it makes me smile to see M&Ms dressed as classic Hollywood monsters), watching the leaves swirl in the street in front of my house and the fact that I got invited to test the Beta of Resistance 2 on the PS3.

I can't tell you how cool it is to play 8 player online mission co'ops.  

I'm still a little to nervous to play the 80 player online tournaments.  It's so exciting that I'm afraid to play it.  I want to do well and at the same time I don't want to get sucked into a new addiction that is going to ruin my already unstable life.

wish me luck

Coldplay:The Politics of 'Double-Dipping'

Coldplay was on SNL this weekend, they were awesome.

The singer was a little weird. 

Amy Poller had her baby.

It was weird watching Weekend Update without her. 

I used to hate reporters.  I don't like how hateful some of them are.

Then I started to like some that made me laugh.

So I started to pay a little more attention to the presidential campaigns.

Before I get into this let me just say that I don't consider myself republican or democrat.  I like some of the things that each candidate is pitching (whether or not it is in line with their party) but it just comes down to if I believe the nice things they are saying are really TRUE about the kind of administration they would make. So in this race I have been paying very close attention to character.

I like clearly stated policies.

I like campaign ads that educate me on a candidates own position on relevant issues.

Here's what I don't like.

*Omissions (if there is something potentially scandalous then just get it out and explain it, don't let the media discover it [unless you are guilty, in which case I hope the media nails you to the wall in front of the whole nation, and you end up serving as a warning to other corrupt leaders])

*making inappropriate faces and unfairly associated fear based labels

*blatantly avoiding direct questions with talking points

*not having a clear stance on the issues because you spend all your time criticizing your opponents issues

*distracting people from a lack of strong stance on issues by accusing the opposition of focusing on non-issues

*raising non-issues by saying that 'we're not going to raise non-issues'

*trying to win an election by appealing to the apathetic demographic with fear based accusations that the apathetic demographic will not fact-check or catch a retraction.  

*insisting on a caricature to represent the masses when the person that the caricature was based on misrepresented himself and would actually do better under your opponents plan

*combating a shocking and relevant endorsement with five irrelevant endorsements

*picking a running-mate based on election strategy versus having the readiness to lead the country in a time of historical crisis

Here's a funny one that deserved it's own paragraph.

Let's say that I'm running my campaign on the grounds of perfect social etiquette. 

Then I am caught double-dipping.  

I redirect away from the issue by saying that my opponent's party did it too and I have a right to double-dip, in fact double-dipping only proves that I'm a regular joe because hey let's face it, we've all double-dipped.

Then I further redirect the focus by saying that chips and dip are a great thing and when I am elected I will make sacrifices to ensure that there will always be dip with chips and I will defend everyone's right to have dip with their chips.

I guess the biggest thing that bothers me is the perception that the identity of the campaign is based off of polarizing against your opponent or a trial-and-error tactic.

I would hope that someone pursuing the presidency had one clear idea about each policy issue and reinforce it rather than making it up as you try to find what will help you win.

It's not about winning, it's about leading the country.

The Presence Process

Hey, I'm going through a book about present moment awareness.

I thought I would blog about it in a journal style.

enjoy.

It's written by Michael Brown, aka John Locke.

Week 1 of the Presence Process was about 'choosing to experience the present moment'

Through a series of introspective breathing exercises I have discovered that I am always thinking in either the past or the future.

I am either rehearsing something that is upcoming or replaying and analyzing what I have already done.

I don't know if that is product of the hyper-culture or if I'm just scatter brained.

I've found that when I read, my mind drifts off.  My eyes continue to scan sentences at the same rate but I am thinking about something totally unrelated.  If I want to read for comprehension then I have to go back and find where I lost my trail.

I remember when I was in 3rd grade.  I had to read the book 'A Light in the Forest' and do a book report.  It was a pretty cool book about a white 4 year-old who was abducted by native americans and raised as a tribal son.  In his teens he was 'reclaimed' and launched into western civilization.  The boy was rebellious to the western clothes and white walls that suffocated him.

When I wrote the book report the story bled into a telling of the Disney movie 'Watcher in the Woods' (staring the sex crazy girl from the James Bond movie 'For Your Eyes Only')which I'd just seen prior to reading the book.  There was also a part where the white indian boy had a crush on the girl I sat next to, Betsy Phaus.  Then it degraded into a part were alien monsters that fought robot dinosaurs.

I was definitely not experiencing the present moment when I read that book.

PSA: hit and miss

Sarah Silverman rules, others... kinda cheesey, 

but I guess this video is targeted at... people other than me.