Two Tribes

    The OLN show Departures is one of my favourites. 

http://www.departuresentertainment.com/about.html

Two ordinary twenty-and-thirtysomething guys from Ontario, Justin and Scott, along with their videographer buddy Andre, set out to travel the world for a year, to finally do what so many people say they want to do, but never do.  The first season was supposed to have been the only one, I think, but the show was such a success, the network picked it up, and now the trio makes a living from wandering the Earth.

    A recent episode featured a stop in Ethiopia, where their local guide took them to a part of the country, in the south, that remained largely untouched by development.  There, a traditional tribe was having a bull-jumping ceremony, as part of a celebration of an arranged marriage for one of the tribesmen.  It's not glamourous - the ritual involves flagellation and some animal sacrifice - but what always gets me about rituals like this is how insular and together everyone is.  The tribe moves as one, even though they all scatter separately in the day to day living.  The sheer harmony of the scene even brings Scott to tears at one point, and this is a guy who's charted more of the world and its plethora of experiences than most of us will ever see in a single lifetime. 

   A recollection from a broadcast of The Moth that I heard two years ago comes to mind.  The American storyteller recounted his work in Rwanda, and how he had a time when he was simply not feeling well. When one of the locals found out, he gathered the entire village together for a ceremony.  The storyteller, in mock humourous fashion, tells the tale of the ceremony.  Highlights: a goat was sacrificed, and he was made to strip naked and have the blood smeared on him. He was brought out into the sun at noon where everyone in the village engaged in a dance ritual that made him feel delerious and disoriented, and by the end of it, he felt elated and much better than how he was. 

   Later on, in another part of Africa, he recounted the experience to another tribesman, who said that his had something very similar to what he had experienced.  He told the American that it was far better than having the Western psychiatrists there.  When asked why, the tribesman responded that the ceremony had several holistic elements that would heal most disease: going out in the sun for the light and heat; moving around rhythmically to get exercise; but most importantly, getting the whole village out to show that whatever you were going through, you were not alone.

  By contrast, said the tribesman, Western psychiatrists brought people into a closed dark room indoors, sat them down at a cold table alone, and made remember all bad things that had happened to them.  "That's when we knew we had to get these people out of the country as soon as possible," said the tribesman.

  That day-to-day living here in the West lacks this harmony is old news, but the trend is changing. Aside from the Boomerang Generation of kids who move back in with their parents in their late twenties and thirties, friends cluster together in the same neighbourhoods, if not the same houses.  Blended families are practically the norm in most urban and suburban centres.  City planners now design neighbourhoods that facilitate closer social interactions, and hotspots like the Second Cup where I'm writing this in downtown Burlington are becoming more commonplace in new suburban housing developments: locales where you can gather and connect with human beings.

   People you meet and connect with eventually become part of your social networks, but really, what I feel we want is not a network, but a tribe.  That's what I want, anyway.  And it's what I have.

   I have two tribes: my family and my friends. Unfortunately, as I make the move home for a few months, I will lose proximity to one tribe in favour of the other.  I need them both, much more than I really appreciated until recent days.  Obviously, thanks to the advent of the internal combustion engine, the phone, and the Internet, we're always connected.  An hour's drive away, an instant by phone or email or Facebook. 

   And yet, that doesn't satisfy completely.  Having my two tribes separated by distance sucks, and neither of them will likely relocate anytime soon to one location or the other. 

  I have a dream archetype that I wrote about a year ago, in which everyone I know and love in the world lives in houses on the same street in the same city.  In that dream, there's nowhere I can walk- the market, the mall, the park, the cafe - where I don't run into someone I know or am related to.  I'd love to have that in real life.

Grandpa and me at  Mom's old house in Trinidad,
 Guessing something like 1982.

   Maybe this is genetic. Mom and Dad's families both lived within the same square kilometre in Trinidad, at a place called the Junction just outside of Princes Town.  Everyone knew everyone else around there, cradle to grave.  Unless soemone there was actually crazy or violent or deliberately anti-social, no one ever experienced the isolation I've felt in recent months.  I'd love to have that kind of community coupled with the diversity of life in Canada and the prosperity of the city in which I'm still residing for the next month.

   The common occupancy of the same shared physical space matters: for the time that we're together in the same place, that's home.  Here the West, we're so used to treating "home" as just the place where your stuff is, but I feel at home at Michael's house, at this 2Cup, at my soon-to-be-former apartment, at Mom and Dad's, out with my friends. Even that transitory space between each person when we're all walking to the bar or a movie or some other gathering place together is, for that time, our space, and feels like home while we're in it.

    Because as much as I may require an intervention for my Facebook habit, for all of my own lone wolf time, I never want to lose the daily real world contact with my tribe.  Never again.  I think next time, I'd much rather share a place with my own bedroom and a common area than an entire place to myself.  Some people are built like that or they're just plain used to it.  After a year of this, such a solitary lifestyle is no longer what I want or need.

 When I move back out, it'll either be with a bunch of buddies sharing a house or something, or my own place that I'll share with my next girlfriend in a city near enough to everyone I care about.  I needed this year to centre myself after my ex and I split, and it's done that, but everyone in transition reaches a point where you no longer want or need to be alone in order to discover yourself.

   Surround yourself with the people you love. Home is wherever you can all be together, the same shared space, even if the space itself changes. And when you're feeling dis-ease, your tribe will bring you out into the sun, they will lift you up, and they will restore your well-being, just by being there for you.

 Only there'll be no need for goat sacrifices. We'll just get pizza.  Pizza's good.

Randoms - November 17 2010

  It's been a while since I've done one of these.  Here goes:

Migration

  This is a shout out to all my mainstream, naturally-born, predominantly Anglo-Canadian homies, as well as my multicultural, foreign-born, predominantly non-white new Canadian and landed immigrant peeps. 

  Fellow citizens and residents, please be advised: some of us are far from being fresh off the airplane.

  Since Lester Pearson's time, Canada has enjoyed moderate to large scale immigration from many countries. For those who are historically challenged, that's the 1960s, people.  That's when PM Pearson removed the last racial prohibitions on immigration, essentially making Canada the world's first nation not to give a crap what colour your skin was if you wanted to find a better life here. 

  A half century has passed, so you'd think you'd be running into more visible minorities like....well, me.  No accent, no "multicultural" clothing - I don't even know what constitutes "Trinidadian" wear for dudes, anyway.  Maybe a pair of swim trunks, thong sandals, and a big red shirt with a picture of a Coke bottle?  I know if I were living there, I'd be dressed like that 24/7 - and no discernable body odor (this is a biggie: I myself do not partake of the "curry BO" that seems so popular with many of my complexion.)

   Trinidadians in particular have a rather unique place in Canada's migration story, given that they themselves come from a former colony that's barely 50 years old.  Indo-Trinidadian Canadians - and that's as far as the string of hyphens will extend - are often indistinguishable from Indo and Pakistani-Canadians at a glance, and in places like Brampton where the latter two populations are large, are frequently taken to be part of them.   Of course, Trinidadians are themselves quite visible when they're flying the colours - the flag, the roti shops, the calypso, Caribana, etc. - but even those displays are positively dwarfed by the sheer number of émigrés from the ancestral lands. 

   These are some of the reasons why the public perception of people with my pallour as being "fresh off the plane" or "boat" never quite goes away.  Caucasian strangers will still sometimes speak slowly to me as though I'm ESL, and other Trinidadian and South Asian arrivals will assume I'm one of them still getting to know this "cold" place.  All based on what I look like.  Then I open my mouth and remove all doubt.

   So my question: after half a century of immigration - from the Caribbean, from South Asia, and other "visible minority" nations - where are all the so-called "whitewashes"? 

   Where are the kids - now approaching their 30s - who grew up with Hull and Gretzky and Gilmour on the CBC during winter nights? Who listened to rock and techno and grunge as teenagers? Who prefer mates outside their own race? Who show up to Remembrance Day ceremonies with absolutely no sense of historical irony?  The ones who were Arts and Social Science majors at university? 

   Where are the others like me?  There are so few of them that after 50 years of migration, it seems quite the anomaly.

   I frequently get mistaken for being South Asian, or a new Trinidadian.  I don't mind it anymore, but it really used to bug me.  And now that I've grown up some, now that this aspect of my identity is more concrete, this question of finding others like me is no longer as personal as it would have been even five years ago. Instead, I truly wonder, from a preodminantly intellectual standpoint, why it is that I've "integrated" so much while so many others, even when they're born here, have found it so difficult?

   There's a book in this somewhere, so close I can taste it.  Not gonna lie, it kinda tastes like curry...

 Mind Wanderers Do It Melancholy

  Science finally catches up to what spirituality has known for centuries.

  A Harvard study recently concluded that the majority of people's attention in any given day is elsewhere.  That lack of focus on the present moment creates a sense of unhappiness, generating a feeling in the brain that makes the subject feel as though "they're not where they're supposed to be".

    I won't bother re-quoting much of the article, except that it notes that places where people's mind wander the most - and where they are, thus, most unhappy - tend to be at work, resting, or using a home computer.  Eeeep....

   By contrast, the activities and places where people are most focused on the now are sex, exercising, and conversation.....Meat Loaf summed up my position relative to these activities best: "two out of three ain't bad".

   Speaking of melancholy....


SAD Season is Here

  From now until the first day after the Winter Solstice, the nights are longest.  For this blogger, it means the onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Though I've never been officially diagnosed, winter's been a crap ass season for me pretty much since I was 12 years old. My family, my ex, and some of my friends can attest to its impact on me. 

   For the past two years, it hasn't been as bad, but only because I've had major crises to keep my mind occupied (in 2009, revising my first book and layoffs at work due to the recession kept me on my toes; in 2010, it was my marriage ending, moving apartments, settling into the new job and life). 

 This year, with most things more or less stable, I've noticed the energy drain almost immediately.  Much of this has to be because I'm at the gym three to four times weekly now, so I'm physically tired, but it's definitely there, in the lack of sunlight. 

  I'm not as bad as some sufferers, but the SAD creates a climate where I'm far more susceptible to being bummed out by little things.  Hopefully, an impending pay raise at my current job, the start to my talent work - as early as next week if I'm really lucky - as well as the Christmas season where I can get away from the routine will all help. 

   In addition, I'm pre-empting the Blahs by registering for ballroom dance classes in January that will run for six weeks - i.e., through most of the crappiest months - and introduce me to new friends and the like. 

  Then again, there's a benefit to hitting rock bottom. In Debbie Ford's The Secret of the Shadow, Ford writes of one of her clients who always held onto false hope, burying the reality of her life's negatives in seminar after seminar, self-help slogan after self-help slogan. Years later, she's still just as frenetic as ever, not realizing that all she had to do was let go, wallow in the crapulence that was the reality of her situation, and then rebuild. 

  The advantage to not caring is if it all falls apart, I hit my credit limit, my car stops working, and so on is that I have the chance to start over.  You get another hand after you fold, right?  That's what the "Airplanes" song says, anyhow.

  For now though, I'm just tired and blah and meh, not necessarily in that order, and should be until the days start pushing back the night again, on December 22nd.

 The Plight of the Shy Guy

  I read Owl City singer Adam Young's blog almost religiously.  He's closer to my true personality type than most other entertainers I see, preferring to explore imagination, romance, and love than indulging in the pimpin' and the drinkin' and the "what what" of the more stereotypical male crowd. 

  Young posted an entry a few weeks back that I recently caught that describes exactly the feeling of angst, frustration, and hope that guys like me have when we see a beautiful woman, but can't approach them for our own crippling shyness.  I couldn't have said it any better myself. 

  Why is this notable for me?  Because Young is the only other straight male in the creative industry I've encountered who still believes in soul mates, and won't settle for anything less.  And he's not afraid to tell people about it. That makes Adam Young, in my mind, a way ballsier motherf***er than I could ever be.

  ***

  All things said, it's a crazy transitional time for me at present. I expect the next two weeks to see major changes to my life.  More thoughts on that as they develop.

Shadowy Seasonal Spin Cycles

Underlying the commercial side of Halloween is its origin. Samhain is the reason for this particular season, and I won't re-explain the significance of this (neo)pagan observance here. Its origins, however, remind us of the cycle of life and death. The harvest is as much a symbol for death as it is a literal reaping of the crops, where we reflect on what we've done and what's happened. 

Halloween was low key for me this year, with one party and a Sunday spent at home on a ghost walk through the beautiful Church St. Cemetery in Brampton with Mom and Dad.  During that visit, my mother and I watched a DVD from motivational speaker Debbie Ford called The Shadow Effect. Shadow work is a conscious acknowledgement and introspective study of all the qualities of your being that you hide from others. The parts of yourself that you're ashamed of - your fears, your past transgressions against others, your guilt, your regrets, etc..

According to Ford and other experts, whenever you react unusually strongly to a slight provocation; whenever you indulge in something that you rail against publicly (see NY Gov. Spitzer, or Rush Limbaugh, or the Catholic Church), or sabotage yourself, that's your Shadow getting tired of being suppressed and ignored.  Those are dramatic examples.  The rest of the time, the Shadow acts in millions of small ways that compromise you, leading to boredom, routine, the inability to escape from vicious cycles of behaviour, finances, health. 

That which we bury in the earth will grow back. Always. Don't believe me? Watch Dawn of the Dead.

I'm familiar with shadow work. Much of my twenties has been about looking at myself critically and as objectively as possible. This work is never done. It's not intended to "cure" all your ills or eliminate the darkness: those who war against their own darkness really war against themselves, and will never feel whole. Rather, it's to embrace the totality of your being, light and dark. It means understanding that for you to live in a nice house, every now and then you've got to take out the trash and sweep the floor. It's the way of things.

Monday being the start of a new month, I figured that some shadow work on myself was a great way to mark a new beginning. Everyone could use some honest-to-Zeus introspection.

Among the other creatures hiding in the dark, I discovered Stuckness. I was stuck. Existentially bored. And the goal wasn't to slay Stuckness, for he's a part of me, but to cure him.

Arriving at the Goodlife Fitness after work that Monday, I sauntered into the mall, up the stairs past the usual regulars, and into the locker room. I changed in the same spot near the same locker, and headed out to the floor to do the same cardio-resistance routine I've been doing for months.  All I could see was drab routine: my work, my exercise, my weekly calendar.  Blah, blah.....blah.  Was this really life? 

Then I saw that the spin class was starting in ten minutes.

I see it every time that I'm in there - seemingly crazy people, dripping with sweat, killing themselves on the bikes to pretty catchy techno music and rock and roll - and I'd always promised I'd try it once.  Still, the tricky part about a routine is that you're at once sick of the normal, and very comfortable with it.  I'd fought the impulse to go for weeks, despite having reached plateaued in my weight loss around 215 pounds. 

But Monday night, the thought of another boring 45 minute elliptical session kicked me in the ass, and I took the leap.  I walked in, met the instructor, set myself up, and joined in.

As I said on Facebook, Megadeth would be happy to know that I've found a 100th way to die....

And yet, it was worth it, not so much for the exercise - which was amazing, and which wore me out enough that I went to bed at 9:30pm - but for the sake of the New.  Suddenly, even though I'd changed absolutely nothing else in my routine, my life felt more interesting, and that's what ultimately counts: how you feel about your life.

I've talked about the Power of Now, but sometimes the solution to existential angst is simply to try something new, even if it's something small.  Spin classes, of course, are somewhat dramatic if you're not into exercise that much, but I realized that I am thoroughly missing new stimuli.  Time to embrace the Power of New.

A slide from the creepy DHARMA Initiative brainwashing film from LOST quotes the Buddha:

"Plant a good seed and you will joyfully gather fruit". 

As Samhain ends, according to the Pagan calendar, those in the Northern Hemisphere lie directly opposite of Ostara, the spring holiday when we plant next year's harvest, when we sow new seeds, and start the cycle over again.

Naturally, we don't have to wait to re-create ourselves. Everyone has a stuckness monster living in their shadow.

And for people like me who, more than most, have to do regular inner work to prevent the monster from manifesting in yet another life crisis, sometimes all it takes is to do one new thing - plant one good seed no matter how small - to cure the hapless creature, shine a light for him to see, and set him free.

What this Blog Is Really About

   Recent events in my personal life that peripherally involve my writings have inspired this entry.

   I've had online journals before, all of which I let lapse.  As I had finished my first book and approached the middle of my second manuscript back in late 2009, restarting a blog was definitely on my mind, but I procrastinated. 

  Then, this past January, my marriage ended in a very dramatic way, and suddenly I had a lot I wanted to share with people I knew, even people I didn't.

   Looking back over the archives, it's been a long journey.  I've covered far more mileage than most people in my situation would have.  I'm a very different person than when I started, a better one, if maybe more frenetic, at once more and less certain of himself and the new identity I am still crafting for myself. 

  And though I've hesitated at times, both off and online, I've ultimately had no qualms sharing it all with the entire wired world in this forum.

   But make no mistake: my openness about my doubts and weaknesses, moments of frustration, does not give you the right to treat me like a weakling.  In many ways, because I can open up, I'm stronger than the manliest alpha, because I've got the balls to walk with an open heart.

   So what is this blog?

Odd Place is My Web Presence. You'll notice the tabs I keep for my new talent work, my bio, my books, and my freelance work. This is the professional portion of my home page. Everything else is for fun.

Odd Place is My Story:  My life's far more interesting than it might seem at the outset. Off the top of my head, at least fifty or so good souls out there consider me a good soul, a close friend, and someone they care about.  My story thus matters to several people, and I don't mind sharing it. 

  (Hell, if I never wrote this blog, I never would have met Alice, and my BlackBerry would be tragically vacant)

Odd Place is My Therapist.  Yes, I've taken therapy in the past.  It's helped. 

  I hear rumours some of you consider it unmanly or gay to take psychological therapy, to openly talk about dreams, emotions, ideas, and the dreaded "f" word for most straight guys, "feelings".

  You know what, how's this for an "f" word? Fuck that! 

  Half the benefit of all therapy is simply knowing that another human being out there knows your insides, can clue in to what's happening to you. Writing here about major problems, frustrations, and anxieties helps me feel better.

  And if you guys think this misrepresents me to be more fucked up than I am, consider this: I have to be in a clear, calm, and content frame of mind to be able to write about anything, let alone a major personal problem. 

  By the time you read about something like my nervous breakdown or my frustrations with working and dating, or whatever, it means that the negativity is already out of my system.  It's gone, out of my mind, body, and spirit and onto the page, presented in such a way that it can benefit someone else experiencing something similar. 

  This is how I vent, and when you meet me in real life after I've posted something dramatic here, I'm more than okay.  I'm Tony the fucking Tiger.  I'm GREAAAT! 

Odd Place is My Canvas.  Finally, I'm an artist.  Always have been, always will be. There are days that I crave heading out to the bars with the boys or out to play baseball or hockey, and there are days where I'm content to lose myself in my own daydreams. Lately, the introvert days outnumber the extrovert ones.

  I've grown into a social animal, but in many ways, I am still the kid who'd vanish to a grassy hill in the spring, lay back, and spend his lunch hour staring at the clouds.  I've had many events happen in my life that could have potentially killed that kid, but he's still around, seeing sailboats where the rest of us see cumuli. 

  Some people were born to throw a football around; others to run a city; maintain the law, or advance science and technology.  I was born to be a writer and an artist.  Whether the medium's electronic or acrylic, paper page or plasticine, I will use it to express myself. 

  This is a place where I can create whatever the hell it is I want to create, in a medium where I am proficient to the government-tested tune of 134 WPM.  A place where I can manifest as quickly as I can think.  People talk about "playing God"; how many of them put the emphasis on the "playing"?  Not many.

  So that's it.  If you're curious about the events in question, they're still ongoing, and if I do decide to comment, it'll be after they've passed.  Until then, have a pleasant evening!

Smile Power

  In The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot noted that back sometime in the latter half of the last century - scary that we get to say that now - physicists tried to calculated the energy potential of a simple cubic centimetre of empty space. The math ended up revealing that there was more energy than something like 10,000 hydrogen bombs contained in every cubic centimetre of the universe.  Talbot noted that many other physicists felt the calculation was somehow in error, and there is still some controversy today over the implications of what that calculation would mean if it's correct.

  Talbot didn't note, however, whether the physicists in question had considered the power of a simple smile into the equation.

   In the colder months, Tuesday nights are Hockey Night in Hamilton for Jody.  Michael and Julius have been going to pick-up floor hockey on the East Side of town for a few years now.  In previous years, I was a spectator, but when I found myself suddenly unmarried this past winter, I started joining in.  With baseball season over, it's now time to lace up the runners and go balls out crazy on the gym floor of the elementary school where we play.

   With a couple of hours to kill before hockey, and with the sun shining, but setting earlier than ever, I decide to get in my hoodie sweater and head out to the park, tea in hand, to potentially finish Eckart Tolle's The Power of Now.  The trick about that book is there are intermittent pauses throughout where you not only reflect on what Tolle says, but to let go of thinking altogether and just be....which is the point of the book. 

   To experience the Now means to go out of  your mind.  It's like that state of being when you wake up, alert, experiencing pure sensory input without sorting it out.  Much like what I went through with the sex couple next door, who have been remarkably quiet these past few nights.  I almost miss it....almost.  But I digress.

   I walk to the first bench facing Lake Ontario past the War Memorial and have a seat.  Across from me, wind is rippling out over the water under a blue sky with swirls of wispy cloud.  The air is cold and humid, containing early traces of winter chill.  The sun is setting, the day's last rays amplified by the thin curtain of stratus on the horizon, turning the trees lining Lakeshore into comfortable autumn silhouettes...

  .....and before I get too smitten with my own powers of description, I'll say this much: it was real purdy out, y'all....

   Very few pedestrians walk the walkway as I put on my headphones from my BlackBerry Brain (she's my very favourite phone...her name is Vera) and listen to tunes while I read the book.  The only people you typically see in weather like this are dog walkers. There are a few out here now.

   Tolle has an exercise in which you just fill your body with awareness, head to toe.  It's an old practice, very related to ones I've read from Wayne Dyer and Whitley Strieber, but it's so basic that it's hard to assign credit, and if you try, you're missing the point of the exercise.  You just become aware, usually first of your toes or fingers, and move inward until you are sensing your whole body. 

   Feel whatever each part of your body feels like, acknowledge it, focus on it.  Then, when you're experiencing pure sensation, stop thinking about it and just become that sensation.  It's trickier than it looks to describe it in words, given that words themselves are a form of thought, but Tolle does a good job.

   I close my eyes and perform the exercise.  I am not shutting out the world around me, but acknowledging awareness of self, inside and out.  After a few minutes, I feel...presence.  I am simply here. 

  I open my eyes.  The Unfinished Pier is directly in front of me.  The gibbous moon has emerged from behind a cloud, and a tanker bound for Hamilton Harbour is now steaming towards the Lift Bridge.  All three objects form a triangle that is perfect for a few moments, and I experience a small, non Jon Stewart-related Moment of Zen.

   Just then, a dog walker passes in my line of sight.  She is late thirties, no ring, walking a grey curly haired thing on a leash I can barely identify as a dog.  She looks my way, and sees that I have my headphones on, so conversation is a moot point.

  
   But she smiles at me. 

   And it's the brightest, most energizing smile I've seen in a long time from a stranger.

   Her face seemes to glow with an inner energy, a recognition of another spirit on a human adventure, just sitting on that bench. 
 
   And I smile back.  In fact, I don't stop smiling for five straight minutes.

   I don't know if it's a result of the exercise, but I had just been refocused on sensation.  And it makes me wonder: what is the power of a smile when you can just immerse yourself in it?  When you can just drop the social conditioning that has us treating each other as potential threats, obstacles along the daily grind towards nothing. 

  About ten minutes later, the sun now below the horizon, but the light of the smile remaining on my face, I get up and headed for home.  As I walk, I smile at three other people.  Each of them return it.  And with each one, the same warm energy flows out.  Powerful stuff.

  I get home into my apartment and head upstairs. I see no one else, but I take a quick glance at the resident directory.  I marvel at the isolation that many people in these buildings feel.  This is where people like me come to start over, where we lock away our senior parents and retirees, where young immigrant families live without knowing the language.  We're all isolated to some degree.  Often, we do it to ourselves.

  But as I close the door and get myself ready for hockey, I truly wonder if the main message of a smile, when truly experienced, is a reminder that we're never completely alone, anywhere, at anytime. 

   10,000 nuclear bombs in each cubic centimetre of space.  I'll put my money on those physicists any day.

Twentysomething

   So, typically my pre-birthday blogs tend towards the longer side.  One is in the works, make no mistake, but I'm going to save that for now, since it's unlikely to be done before midnight tonight.

   I'm turning 30 in three hours. Technically, I guess, I turn 30 at 12:45pm tomorrow, but I've usually marked my birthday at midnight. 

   I wrote in my first book, QLO: The Quarter Life Opportunity, that our twenties are our testing ground for adulthood, for the rest of our lives, in a way that later years are not.  Later years are supposed to be for the fulfillment of dreams, for "success", however you define it, and for truly "growing up". 

   Certainly, Twentysomething has been a proving ground for me, and I've learned much.

   Here are the highlights.  Young Padawans, take heed.

  What I Learned During My Twenties

  All plans fail.  No plans fail.  However you think your life is going to unfold, it's simply not going to go that way.  Period.  There will always be something unexpected that pops up and derails you.  Do not become addicted to your lifeplan.  Set a destination, yes.  Set goals, yes.  But never lose your spontaneity, your ability to adapt to change, because change will happen.  If you could predict it, it wouldn't be change. And would you really want to, anyway?

   And if something you pinned your hopes on doesn't work out, look for the benefit in what happened.   That's why no plan truly "fails": it's simply leads you to unexpected conclusions. Sometimes the victory isn't obvious until later.

   You can re-create yourself as many times as you want.  My identity has lived, died, and been reborn several times during my twenties, and it will continue to do so.  Never get too wrapped up in who you think you are, or attach too much importance to what others think of you.  You can re-invent yourself; in fact, whether you're aware of it or not, you're always reinventing itself, every minute.  Being conscious of this lets you do it with greater power and intention.  It keeps you feeling young while giving you the wisdom of age and experience.

   Authenticity matters, unless you're authentically an asshole.  "Be yourself" can be the worst advice to give to some people.  It enables stubbornness and close-mindedness in the worst of us, because you start to feel that you're entitled to be an asshat.  Wayne Dyer writes that "the only common factor in all of your past failed relationships to date is you.".  If you're not willing to compromise even a little, you get to keep what you defend, and so you won't grow.  I've learned this the hard way, trust me.

   Then again, if you're aspiring to better yourself, authenticity is key.  By that, I mean being aware of what you truly feel, what you really can and can't do, what you need to learn, and to be ready and willing to learn it.  "Fake it 'til you make it" can work, but it's far easier and smoother to authentically become the person you want to be.  How you do that, and the circumstances in which you do that, vary from person to person.  Just be aware of yourself.

   Why is this a twentysomething lesson?  Because it's preferable to internalize this and put it into practice before you become an old fart before your time.  Seriously, guys, I marvel at the bravado and sheer certainty of some of my younger friends, many of whom think they've got it all figured out at 22. Most of the time, they're just bullshitting, or puffing themselves up to impress.  Fuck that.  You're always most impressive when you're authentically walking your talk, not just talking about it.  Start now, guys and gals.  You'll be happy you did.

   Now is all that matters.  Readers will have noticed a theme in the last few entries. And it's so true.  You only get one chance at this moment.  Will you gloss it over?  Spend it agonizing that you're not where you're "supposed" to be in life?  Waste it by "thinking" about it?  No, being in the "now" means experiencing the moment.  It means feeling the moment, outside of thought.  Life then becomes a form of walking meditation.

   This has been one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn, but it's been persistent.  Everytime I've thought I'd shaken it, I turn a corner and there it is again, staring me in the face.  Make plans, yes.  Have ambitions, yes.  But while those plans are simmering, when it's just you and whatever it is you're doing, be present.  Two great books to help you: Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now", and Whitley Strieber's "The Path". 

   Why?  My twenties are not a collection of ten years, but of thousands of moments. Moments add up to a lifetime in our experience, because that's the biggest sample we can take in.  That's life, no matter how old you are, but learning it while young enhances the rest of your days. Better to be present in each moment than suddenly having awareness every few weeks and wondering where all the time has gone.  "Wow, September just flew by...."

   Allow, and let go.  My ex recently returned me to this awareness.  "Everything that's happened to me since I started over have happened when I just stopped stressing, let go, and moved on," she said.  Reconnecting recently, I discovered that, like me, she's had a stroke of good fortune that's helped her grow since our split. And it's true: sometimes you have to just let things happen.  Set your intention, do the work, and let 'er go.  Bill Murray sums this up brilliantly in What About Bob.  Despite never having been on a boat, he found sailing to be easy: "I just let the boat do the work, that was my secret." 

   Speaking of my ex....

   What's good is never lost.  I lost my grandfather, my childhood pet Benton, and split from my first and only love to date, in my twenties. Of those, my split from my ex was the most devastating.  And yet, I regret nothing.  She and I have built a new friendship, one based on distance, one far more grown up and mature than before, and one which is rare.  It's helped me avoid bitterness about "wasted time", and helped me realize that none of it was wasted at all.  My twenties, and hers, will always be the time of us, and I'm grateful for this. I know she is, too.  

   Experiences lived to their fullest remain with you, no matter the outcome. Grandpa's wisdom and love remain with me.  I'm two minds on whether Benny's actually reincarnated into my sister's new cat or if he's still hanging around - I still get visitations - but either way, a childhood pet stays with you for the rest of your life in some form.  And my ex and I have grown together, even if we've split apart romantically, and I feel safe in saying that we're both grateful for what we've had together as a couple, and what we'll yet experience as friends reborn.  All remains with me and more.  Gain this awareness in your twenties, and your thirties will be richer for it, for you'll have internalized the wisdom of elders while still young. 

   Which leads me to my last point of this shorter entry.

  Everything you do is worth it.  I mean everything.  Simple as that.

  30 is just a number.  30 is the new 20.  I've heard it all.  All ages are just a number.  It's how you feel on the inside that counts.  And yeah, I admit, every now and then, I still feel the desperation of Tolstoy's Pahom, rushing up that hill to catch the last rays of sunlight.  On occasion, I still feel lonely, nostalgic for the old days, regretful of past actions, guilty for not having made as much of material success as I could have had I been more "conventional".  The secret to conscious living isn't to always be happy 24/7, but to go with the ups and downs of all normal human emotions in full awareness of them. 

  But as these last few hours of 29 tick away, I realize that they're just hours. Tomorrow is another day for the rest of the world, so why not for me as well?  It's taken ten years of life experience, traumas, joys, pleasures, fears, suffering, and assertion, to realize that at every moment, at every place, I was exactly where I needed to be. 

  Each moment has the potential for surprise. And as I begin my thirties, I am ever open to the moments. 

  Because, in the end, all age is is just a number.

  Because, in the end, I am who I am and I am grateful for that. 

  Because, no matter what, I am where I need to be, right now.

  And because tomorrow is just another day.

  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Luckiest Sumbitch You Know

I've determined that the people in my life who count the most flat out don't take me seriously.

How you present yourself to prospective and current employers, government officials, the people serving your food, baristas, tax collectors: these all matter.  But in the company of friends and close family, you should, in theory, be able to relax and not give a shit. 

This is where I get into trouble.

When I turned 24 years old and started really looking at "growing up" and what it meant, I started reading a lot of self-help and spiritual books.  One of them was Wayne Dyer's Real Magic, and in it, he said something that still amazes me:

"Be a student. Stay open and willing to learn from everyone and anyone. Being a student means you have room for new input. When you are green you grow, when you are ripe you rot. By staying green you will avoid the curse of being an expert. When you know in your heart that every single person you encounter in your lifetime has something to teach you, you are able to utilize their offerings in a profound way."

I had also read, around the same time, several other books that talked about deliberate innocence, about beings who have the wisdom of centuries and lifetimes, but who look at the world with the same wonder as an infant. 

From the time I was five, I'd been accustomed to being the smartest kid in the classroom.  Much of that, upon reflection, was delusion, implanted into me by TV and a very enthusiastic Mom. I learned quickly that people tend not to like the Hermione Grangers and Martin Princes of the schoolyard, but I stuck with it, likely costing me friendships and meaningful connections throughout most of my life.  Even my big ex, during our best times together, would grow weary of my superiority complex from time to time and call me on it.

So, I made the choice: if I had to lead, I would be a servant-leader, a general who would fight in the trenches with his men.  If I had to teach, I had to be just as willing to learn from my students as they were to learn from me.  And if I had to work in a group, embrace modesty in all I did. After all, someone else could be right.  And above all else, return to innocence, and start seeing the wonderful things around me right now. Stop and enjoy the sunset, even if it's between the 9th and 10th holes on the second twilight course at Chedoke (which did happen in 2005).

The result among my social group is that I am perceived as a grown-up kid, and not in a good way.

Innocence has a bad rap.  Our popular society equates it with "ignorance", with the inability to function in day-to-day life, with artsy-fartsy New Age flakes who are so about "positive thinking" that someone could set their hair on fire and they would suppress the urge to scream for the sake of maintaining their karma. 

An innocent, goes the view, is someone who is utterly unprepared to deal with "real life", the victim of swindlers and unscrupulous landlords, the prey of greasy used car salesmen and telemarketers.  Hell, I've even had one instance where a buddy of mine said to me, in a condescending way, "Now, Jody, don't forget to look both ways before crossing the street.".  Like, what the frak, man?.....

(Actually, it was 2:00am and I was pretty hammered by that point.  He probably saved my life). 

Just because I'm not an alpha who gets into scraps and throws shit when he's pissed; because I didn't become a suit or a uniform; because I wasn't captain of the football team; because I don't like telling people what they can and can't do; because I marvel at music, at sunsets, at cute animals, at the amazing moments that most people ignore and express it....does not give you licence to take me less seriously.

That's too bad, because the innocent retains some major qualities that most supposedly "functional" and "realistic" people don't have: trust in life and people, optimism, hope, faith.  And to be deliberately innocent, as I do, unites functionality with an inner awareness that leaves me largely free of the cynicism and jadedness that's infected so many people at the core.

Life's supposed to be fun!  All of it!   That's not to say people who are cynical don't have fun, but many of them find ways to complain even in the midst of times when they should be pretty god-damned happy.  Frequently, they like being right, pride themselves on being the smartest kid in the classroom, have their entire identities wrapped up in their brains. Well....shit! Life must really suck when you're smart, huh?

Lay bare the reality behind people's stated beliefs about life, and you'll find a lot of panhandlers sitting atop unopened treasure chests.  Renters complaining about leaky pipes when they don't have to shovel snow or fix anything themselves. Homeowners bitching about mortgages when they've got attics (I'm sorry, attics are pretty awesome!).  Quarter-lifers living with Mom and Dad claiming brokeness when they've got thousands socked away in the bank from not having to pay rent and hydro.  Couples complaining about their partners' late nights out when, no matter what time they come home, they are coming home to crawl into bed with them and hold them tight. You get the idea.

Thing is, you guys would do well to just not take things so seriously ALL the time.  Frankly, I'm probably the luckiest sumbitch you know, not because of what I have or what I've done, but because despite a tumultous year - maybe because of it - I'm now capable of looking at the world like I am five years old again, while still being able to hold a job, feed and clothe myself, and, yes, cross the street without being run over by a U-Haul truck.  Don't mistake my innocence for ignorance.

Will I have shitty spells?  Sure.  But fundamentally, life is good if you want it to be.  As K'Naan says, "Nothing is perfect man, that's just the way the world is.  All I know is, I'm enjoying today."

Freedom in the Falling Leaves

    This summer has taught me momentary living.

    What does it mean, anyway, that standard New Agey cliche: "live in the moment"?  Depends on who's doing the living.
 
     My hunch to take a break for the past month was a good one, because writing about these things as they were happening would have deprived me of proper marination time. 

     August transformed me in ways I could never have expected in my wildest daydreams of quantum leaps.  I feel liberated, energized, and renewed.  What makes this time different from all of those temporary moments of good vibrations that come and go with the day is that something is solid here, something permanent.  I've passed a point of no return, as if a wall magically appeared behind me to keep me from falling back into some fundamental old patterns of behaviour and thought.

     Before this month, I did a lot of talking about momentary living, and not enough living momentarily.  My whole life, I've planned.  I've calculated.  I've weighed costs and benefits.  Most of all, I've hesitated to choose.  August taught me decisiveness.

    What were these events?  At least one of them isn't something I'm comfortable blogging about in public due to employment issues: I'm almost certainly aware my boss is aware of this blog, and though I doubt she reads it much, I am very much interested in staying employed until writing can sustain me.  It's self-censorship, to be sure, but at this point, financial survival is paramount.

   Nor can I just open up a new anonymous blog for my writing, for two very big reasons.

    First, I was shortlisted for this year's Arts Hamilton 2010 Creative Keyboards Short Story Contest.  As such, I am starting to gain some publicity, and need this to remain public and in my name as a homepage. 

    Next, I am nearing completion on my novel, which I've tentatively titled Convergence. Again, this will require open and public awareness that Jody Aberdeen has a web presence. 

    I will say this much: I have had 31 days of high highs, one very low low, and ever since, a synthesis, a reconciliation that I feel has been penultimate.  There is no going back now to what and who I was before.
 
   So what is momentary living?  It's the simple division of your overall plan into smaller segments.  Each day has 1,440 minutes of 60 seconds each.  Too often, we get stressed out by the overall plan when it's measured in bigger chunks: weeks, months, years, decades.  We think that we have "wasted years", we should have been "further along" than we are now; we procrastinate on larger goals with long-count timelines because we think "lots of time between now and then" and thus create our self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.  By getting addicted to a long-count plan, we often compromise ourselves and doom ourselves to failure, because everyone knows that the big plans almost never turn out the way you thought. 

   But 1,440 minutes, of which you spend an average of 420 asleep, that's more manageable, because they are easy to fill, far easier than a decade.  Unlike those longer term goals, you don't have to wait with the moments to feel how you want to feel: you can feel it now, within 60 seconds of your decision to feel it. 

   How did I come to this conclusion?  A simple, beautiful experience, one that I have no qualms talking about.

    I met someone online, nearly a month ago.  We chatted online, dated for a time, and on the third date, headed out to the Burlington Beach on the last night of the month.  At sunset, wading in the warm clear water under a cloudless blue sky, she and I kissed.  That was a beautiful moment for me, one that seemed to last far longer than the sixty or so seconds of the actual duration of the embrace. Whitley Strieber summed it up best: "all kisses are forever".

    Two days later, we stopped seeing each other, and though I was initially sad, I felt, and still feel, energized and electrified from that kiss, which was a moment truly lived. I am ready for more.

    And many of those I spoke to initially viewed the experience as one part of a larger "failure", despite their best efforts to hide it with placations.  After all, the lovely young lady in question and I are no longer dating; it didn't work out in the long run, which is the stated goal of all romantic dating.

    None of that matters, because I was able to create a moment, and that moment lasts forever.  Living the moment means not living for specific results: it means experiencing what is at the time it's happening. And though it didn't work out, the experience gifted me with something else:  I now truly *get*, from experience, that old Eastern adage that every piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit only leads you closer to the piece that does.  I am grateful for what I've learned, and will put it to practice with the next romantic experience I have. 

    August was full of such experiential moments, not just romantic, and really, all of life is like that, if you choose to see it that way.  The choice is essential.  This doesn't negate the need to have a goal: as I said, you're just using a smaller measure of time.  And I have a goal and a plan, a new one that's really helped to move me forward, like a fresh breeze pushing canvas sails.  I'll talk about that later.

    I won't comment on September as a whole, not until it's passed.  I'll say this much: I look forward to enjoying this new sense of freedom in the falling leaves and chilly breezes and the earlier sunsets.  Fall has always been special for those types of moments for me anyway.  Lonely or satisfied, joyful or anxious, I look forward to them all.

   This is the start of something new.  I can't want to see where it leads.

August Hiatus

   The past few weeks have been pretty busy for me - as the lack of postings will attest - and August is shaping up to be much the same.  As such, I'm taking the month away from regular contributions to this blog.  I haven't had the motivation to work on my interactive story, and I've set a deadline to finish the draft of my manuscript by Labour Day weekend.  I can't justify spending more time indoors at the computer than necessary while it's still nice out This will come as a shock to those of you who think I need a Facebook intervention, but if you pay attention, you'll notice that those updates are usually from my BlackBerry while I'm in the park napping or reading in the sun and breeze.

There's a poignance about this month, as the first harvests start to come in, local corn begins to appear in the produce section.  A primal memory exists within all of us of an old agrarian lifestyle, the natural state of humanity for so many thousands of years since our ancestors first learned about the magic of this life cycle.  My family in Trinidad, especially on my father's side, were expert planters, a talent I've inherited, and I feel this connection in my blood when I go out to the Greenbelt, or out beyond the reach of express lanes and big box plazas, or even in my father's garden at home. It's no coincidence that in many Neopagan and Wiccan circles, the first Sabbat holiday in August is called "The First Harvest". August is when you start reaping the benefits of the good seeds sown in colder days.

  The last month of summer has always been a special time of the year for me, if only because there is a level of strangeness that happens around now. I've had to bury my grandfather and my childhood pet in August. I got to see the stars over a candle-lit suburb during the 2003 Blackout in August. I've taken memorable trips and had one of my perfect days with my ex in August. The Perseid meteor shower takes place in August, and that's always been special, as the Perseids had once inspired me to write a poem to my ex back in high school, after I'd been in love with her for two years, but one year before she knew about it.

   I don't know if it was Paulo Coelho or some other author who had written that men are either hunters or farmers in life. These past seven months, I have become a farmer who's learning to be a hunter, and I have faith in my ability to adapt, but make no mistake, I feel most at home in the fields, my face warm from the sun and my fingers dirty from the soil, feeling a part of something greater than just me.  In my romantic life, as well as in my career, as well as in my social life, I would love to feel that way again, even if it's just in increments of fifteen minutes at a time every day.

   More than anything, I notice the sun setting earlier in August, and the realization that this lovely season, this warmth, isn't going to last much longer, and I've got to use the days as best as I can.  That brings this entry full circle.

   If I anything interesting happens, or if the moment calls for it, I will write.  Until then, I have a full plate of events, ranging from baseball and a beach cottage to a wedding to a farewell party, the usual routine of work, study, exercise, friends, writing, and keeping an eye out for a beautiful woman who might just make a great candidate for a girlfriend.

   Oh, and Rib Fest.  Can't forget Rib Fest.

   Have a great remainder of the summer, people!

Unnameable Randoms - July 7th, 2010

I have three alarm Writer's Block.

No movement on the novel.  No movement on "From the Battery to the Heights".  Not even on this blog.  Must be the humidity...

Gah!

Time for Declaration Salad. 

Declaration Salad

This is a new game that is precisely twenty seconds old as of the original draft of this sentence.  In it, I make single paragraph declarations about anything that comes to mind, accompanied by pictures.  Game on!

G20:  This is one of those things I've been trying to blog about, but can't, only because there's too much to write about.  So, here's my main beef: police who knowingly mislead the public.  My conservative buddies, naturally, side with the cops, saying that misleading or omitting the fact that the so-called "five metre arrest rule" around the perimeter of the fence didn't actually exist was a means to an end.  To what end? Giving the police greater perimeter control over the violent protesters.  Protecting property.  Protecting "the people". 

Sadly, the police, indeed all democratic institutions in the First World, cannot be a "means to an end" type of entity. The "means" portion very much matters, because the "means", in this case, is a little thing we call "due process".  This ain't Mexico, and it's very much a valid slippery slope argument to ask, once you start skirting the law to enforce the law, finding loopholes or just flat out ignoring existing statutes, what's to stop you from doing so in other situations? And if it came as a directive from Queen's Park, then I see no logical difference between this and the investigation of former Premier Mike Harris and his connection to the OPP killing of protestor Dudley George at Ipperwash.  You'd think any conservative worth the blue in his blood would get behind investigating a Liberal premier on this matter, instead of automatically retreating, sheep-like, to the default ideological position of police worship.

Ironically, for conservatives to reflexively side with the police force and the government in this matter is to compromise another fundamental tenet of their own ideology, a basic belief goes beyond this ideology, that has gone out the window in the Harper era, and that hasn't been a practiced part of the lunatic Republican scene States-side for two decades: government accountability.  I look forward to seeing the independent civilian inquest of Toronto Police Services in this matter. 

(And because this is such a dicey topic, prone to distraction and sleight of hand by the Limbaughs and Becks and Parentes of the blogosphere - yes, Julius, I'm calling you out, buddy - I will repeat: I am not criticizing individual police officers or government officials.  When I say "police", I am referring to the institution, not those who serve them, and by extension, us.  I'll leave it to the inquiries to find out which individual officers conducted themselves illegally during this event.)

(And yes, I realize I just broke the single rule of Declaration Salad: one paragraph only.  Call me hypocrite if you wish, but at least I'm not in command of people with guns and batons and jails.  I trust my point is clear.  Moving on.)

Personal Boundaries and Rules:  They suck.  They serve you at times when you're not comfortable, but when you're looking to grow as a person, they just hold you back. They become habits that prevent us from growing, and when we do try to look for new experiences in life, we run up against them and we have no idea why we're feeling unhappy, or not having those new experiences  Paulo Coelho writes in The Valkyries that many people are like trained circus elephants: we're given shackles when we're younger, then chained to a massive tree that we can't escape with all of our strength.  Eventually, we give up, and we grow up chained, except when our trainers say it's okay to wander, or when they need us to perform. And even when we're clearly strong enough to get away, our trainers can shackle us to a twig and we'll still sit there, just because we got used to it. This is what's been happening to me lately.  I've got boundaries and rules for everything: love, sex, jobs, exercise, diets, politics, attraction...and they're no longer serving me.  Almost none of them.  Revelation the other day: the only reason I keep them around is because I worry about what someone would think of me if I broke them. 2nd Revelation: these rules and boundaries in question come from a time when I was a different person looking for different things.  Like the GST, they no longer apply, so I've junked them.  I can't write about the changes happening inside Jody's life - I've tried - because they're ongoing, and they're new.  I don't know what to make of them yet, but I'm watching the flow.  Stay tuned.

(And yes, I realize that I just adhered to the single rule of Declaration Salad. Call me a hypocrite if you'd like, but at least I'm breaking a rule that I made up. It just didn't serve me anymore. I trust my point is clear. Moving on.)

Planning: My former mother-in-law who reads this blog - hey, Pat - used to say that "people don't plan to fail, they fail to plan."  Tellingly, though, I think some people do plan to fail - a few health and safety officials at BP can testify have testified to that - but really, success or failure is entirely contextual.  In plain English, if all intended to do was run a marathon, then as long as I kept running from start to finish, I succeeded.  If I intended to win said marathon, though, anything less than coming in first would be a failure.  Would the latter force me to do more, be more, push myself more?  Sure, but that's the point: it's not all about what you want to accomplish, but who you want to become in the process of accomplishment.  That means, on occasion, abandoning the plans you had if you're not happy with who you are in relation to them.  That's not to say you can't have goals: they're two different things.  One is the thing you're after, the other is the way you accomplish it.  And really, the goal is to feel joy and happy, no matter what specific thing we feel we have to do to get it.  I'd love to be a bestselling author in my thirties, that's plain to read, and that plan is simple: write the damned book, start networking and speculating for an agent. Beyond that, I have no clue.  According to the original life plan, I'm failing.  No house, no more spouse, no six figure income, no kids. Like the boundaries, though, the plan doesn't apply.  It's getting junked, too, along with, interestingly enough, my romantic plan.  Yes, indeed, it's a Jodyist Revolution around these parts....

Momentary Living: Because I've been having a lot of different conversations about living in the moment.  It's such a platitude, it's beyond a cliche.  What the hell does it really mean?  Logically, it seems to set up a dichotomy with planning, conjuring up images of idle loafers who never figure themselves out, but who indulge every second in something deeply pleasurable versus noble denizens of Squaresville who never have much fun, but who brush their teeth precisely thirty-three times per session and run their lives with the efficiency of a Pratt and Whitney turbojet.  It's clearly a false dichotomy: no one is a precise "type" of person.  The solution is to just have a single goal and then release it to the universe, and then....live your life, day to day, moment by moment. Quit overthinking things and just do epic shit if it feels right in the moment and it won't hurt anyone else or yourself.  Kiss that girl - or just ask her out - even if she isn't your stated type: don't give a shit what you said or what your friends will say.  Take wrong directions on purpose, play hooky for no reason except for a day off to do whatever. Apply for that Hail Mary job, take up karate even though you're 300 pounds overweight.

Do a flyby on the tower, even if the pattern is full.

Whatever.  And just know that every action, legitimately savoured as it's happening, will lead you there.  Don't abandon a dream and a goal: just get rid of the addiction to the plan.  Abandon the model.

Buckminster Fuller said it best:  "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."  Be a little stoopid.  Nuff said.

XKCD: You ma-ma-ma-make m-me h-haaaaaa-py......

Aaaaand....blockage is still there.  Shit.  Must be the humidity after all....

***

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Part II

(LS Ratio: 4:6.  Mood: "I feel the earth...move...under mah feet.  I feel the sky tumba-lin down, tumba-lin down....")

Monday morning was the Summer Solstice. I flirted with Wicca and Neopaganism back in my early twenties for about half a year, and while it didn't work out - Jodyism being a far more compelling path - I still like to observe the points in the solar cycle, if only to make myself believe that Planet Earth turns slowly....(say, that's catchy!).

Living at the Burlington waterfront, I also have the major advantage of the Beachway, which lets me watch the sun rise from right on the horizon line of Lake Ontario. 

So Monday morning, I got up really early and got myself out there for 5:30am, around sunrise.  I walked out to a spot on the beach, sat down, meditated until the sun peeked over the horizon - it was real purty - and then got up, dusted myself off, and started back.

And that's when I was attacked by one of these little fuckers.......

I felt the air over my head suddenly whoosh and I heard a sharp chirp.  Given it was still pretty dark out and there was no one else around the path back to Spencer Smith Park, it caught me off guard.  I looked up again, disoriented, only see the red-yellow-black blur coming at me again.  I ducked, but the talons still brushed past my scalp.

I looked up as it flew back into the tree, muttered something like "Dude, okay, I'm going, all right?" before hastening my exit from the scene.  He did not follow me, so I'm assuming he was just defending his nest and I happened to be the only threat in sight at the time. Either that or I woke his red and yellow-tailed ass and he wanted to express his displeasure at not having his full 4.75 hours or whatever the hell birds need for uninterrupted sleep.

I thought, I got attacked by a bird.  This is going to be an interesting week.

Lo and behold, I showed up to work later that morning and barely made it into the lobby when we had to evacuate and wait for the fire department, because someone pulled the alarm.

And, of course, the earth moved yesterday...

Really, this week has, indeed, been anything but routine. 

I never finished the omen entry that I started, but this week's definitely given me some more source material.  There's just this odd atmosphere present, an elevated level of strangeness just about everywhere I go.  Even hanging out with friends last night until about one in the morning seemed...off somehow.  Lots of big picture discussions about life directions, career paths, finding one's calling.... surprisingly unusual for our typical get-togethers.  

I wrote earlier that omens indicating your alignment with your path, and that the point of the analysis isn't primarily what the event or occurrence is, but rather, your relationship to it.  I'll go back to Carlos Castaneda's retelling in A Separate Reality of the headlights following he and Don Juan Matus along that lonely road in Mexico.  What makes the omen, in this case, isn't the empirical reality that they're car headlights, but what the appearance of those headlights in your reality means for what you're dealing with right now.

So what does getting attacked by a bird, two building evacuations, a surreal conversation with old friends on a Wednesday night, and an earthquake mean to me? 

In a very literal sense, I feel it means that the world is changing. 

It's telling me my routine is going to be upended, not in a dramatic way, but enough that things will stop feeling so mediocre. 

It means I may need to move away from fault lines and steer clear of wild animals.

There are other ones, though.  My omens mostly involve crows.  I don't see them every day, even though there's a nest somewhere close to where I live.  When I do see they, they tend to be swooping right in front of my car as I'm on the highway, or perched nearby as I'm walking.  On the surface, their appearances are random, but what you don't see is that they tend to show when I'm feeling energized and in line with what it is I'm looking to get done.  In other words, when I'm on the path.  Dismiss is it as coincidence all you want: to me, the crows are a sign of growth, change, and progress.

Then there's also the Music Oracle.  Songs have meaning, not always in the lyrics, either, but it's an exercise my friend Stephanie told me about.  If you're in the car or elsewhere, and you have something you're working to figure out in your head, you'll start noticing that the very next song that comes on has a message relevant to your situation.  If a song's following you - and not necessarily a Top 40 song that you can hear everywhere - then stop and listen for the lyrics, or even just the feeling it generates inside your mind, and see what it says about your biggest challenge to date.

The spooky feeling's still in the air as I finish this, though.  All I can do is keep writing, keep patching up this gash on my leg from baseball, keep everything chugging along, and see where it takes me.

Strange thing is, I think I have an inkling of what I'd like to do, but I'll chill for a bit.  The work week still has 24 hours to go.  God knows what's going to happen next....   

Unnameable Randoms - June 9 2010

(Ooh! They've changed the appearance of my posting screen. Good times!)

I previously had a post entitled "RGB Inkblots" for my user-friendly, bullet-point entries. Naturally, I tried to come up with a far better name, but after much deliberation, five cups of java, and many-a hair pulled from my scalp, I decided that my randoms were just...un-nameable.

So I went with that.

Blog Promotion: Girl and Guitar

 This was featured in Blogspot's "Blogs of Note" on my dashboard.  I love personal reflection blogs with that edge of chautauqua to them, designed to tell real stories that are relevant and educational.  The Girl has got a wonderful writing style, tells an excellent story, and I'm quite confident she's going to get what she wants out of life because she's already happy and proud of what she does, even if the rest of us sit in judgement. She's a Bachelor of Science grad awaiting her law school application results, with big dreams of becoming a country star, and is currently employed at a Hooters out west (haven't quite figured out which city yet, but I'm guessing it's in the Midwest somewhere).  She's intelligent, eloquent, and some of the shit that happens there is not all what you'd expect from Hooters.  Check it out today!

A Note on Quarter-Life Guys and Relationships

   In the interests of fairness after my last big entry, here's a few notes about how men in quarter-life are similarly damaged when it comes to relationships.  As my good buddy Michael pointed out after reading that entry, it's unfair to say that many twentysomething women are "relationship-retarded" when I'd say most twentysomething guys are just plain retarded.  

   Perhaps it comes from my lack of having too too many close male friends in high school, but I did notice that the ones I did befriend tended to be more functional - including one who's married with a cute little daughter now living the dream in his own house about two hours away from here: if you're reading, Matt, hollah - and I stayed away from the dudes who, well, tended to spend their time engaging in pan fights (see the picture above and tell me that isn't happening somewhere right now). 

   And when I went to Mac, I tended to befriend, well, men of exceptional character, class, and quality who put the "fun" in "functional" and who, for the most part, will be my buddies for life.  As such, at the risk of sounding elitist, most of the men I've gotten to know in my age group have tended to be a cut above, and thus, not representative of 83% of the quarter life male population.

    I haven't mentioned it in the blog yet, but the reason I list myself as an "author" is because I have, indeed, written a book, called QLO: The Quarter Life Opportunity, that discusses the so-called "quarter-life crisis".  Mind you, I'm not promoting it actively because I have to input a third (and final) edition at some point in the future, because my current fiction manuscript is my main project, and because, well, the book interviews several people in my life, one of whom is my ex, and there's some editing to be done. 

   But another big reason is that I've learned much more about quarter-life - the time between graduation and one's mid-thirties - in the past six months than I think I have since I first wrote the book in 2008, and I'm still learning.

   And a big lesson is that guys really are almost a full decade behind in maturity than girls in so many respects, outside of relationship concerns.  Like, we really are the dudes in that Simpsons episode.  And having been a single guy spending most of my time with guy friends, I can say.....it's pretty damned awesome!   Can't really describe it: you'd have to be a guy doing dumb guy stuff to understand.  There's just so many opportunities for random crazy guy stuff that you sometimes wonder why you need women at all.

  Yet we do, and the thing I've found with most guys is that we fail at the fundamentals of expressing ourselves, especially if you're a typical "boys and their toys" type of dude who's all into his cars, his choppers, his computers and home theatre system, his Wii, his gym membership, his football game, etc..  Women kinda become an accessory to all that, and even when you fall in love and have those feelings for a girl, it's tough for many guys to just acknowledge that this person in front of them isn't, in fact, just another one of their appliances.

 (Hence, why I think many guys tend to ignore you when we're watching TV.  That, and because you tend to pick the bottom of the ninth inning in a tied game to talk about the relationship.  C'mon ladies, we don't interrupt your reruns of Sex and the City to discuss last night's Jays game...although that would presume we gave you the remote control in the first place....muhahaha!!!)

  And of course, there's that whole "machismo" thing.  I think that makes more guys turn into douchebags in the eyes of perfectly good quarter-life women than anything.  And it ruins potentially life-long relationships.

  I've said it before, but I feel I've got far more guts than the most heavily-built alpha male douchebag bouncer type of guy, because I can express my feelings, be vulnerable, and compromise from time to time.  I think women are still naturally attracted to those alpha qualities - money (provider), physical prowess (sex appeal, protection), and charm - but that's just the initial stage.  When the lovey-dovey infatuation of the relationship ends, what they're looking for - or should be - is character: that is, qualities such as ambition, ethics, consistency, compassion, fun, and the like.  Note that these are all qualities that you have to demonstrate, that guys in particular bad at expressing, and yet don't feel they have to express because, well, it's not "manly". 

  Dudes, being an unsentimental meathead is fine when it's just us in a room watching hockey with a couple of bottles of Keiths, but if you're with your wives and girlfriends, that shit ain't gonna fly, son.  If you adore her, if you're thrilled just to be around her, if you wake up every morning and go about your own life feeling happy and grateful that she's in it, well, fucking tell her.  Or, better yet, show her.

   Be authentic to yourself and don't give a rats' ass if being snuggly or cute makes you look like a wimp in front of the guys.  (At the very least, you know you're getting some later, and that it's special, because it's with her and not some random chick the other guys are gonna try to pick up at the bar for a one-nighter). 

  So yeah, twentysomething ladies, quarter-life guys have their issues, too, just like you do.  It ain't just you.  And I'm really curious, what other dumbass things do you think we do that turns you off? 

  This took longer than I wanted it to, so that's it for now.  Coming up in the next entry: the girl of my dreams.....

  Until then, heed these words of Tumblr wisdom: