Escape Into Chris - Father's Day Special

June 20, 1993 – Father’s Day

Loving, living, and giving are three gifts which you continue to give me each day. A blanket, you are, which holds me at night and frees me in the day, and this is important because a holder is not a keeper. You will hold until I grow up, the greatest gift I could ask for. And this seems odd, because I ask for too much. You are my sun, you are my star, you are my everlasting thoughtful leader. My wishes are to give you more, for I have given you so little, you have given me so much. My words mean nothing on page but in life they mean everything. Thank you father on this father’s day I could not attend.

Chris

Escape Into Chris - Entry 22

Wink

Winter 2006 – Normal, IL
Last night at Borders I picked up a book by Osho about aloneness and after reading the last four chapters of the book, my perceptive on my current state changed dramatically. Aloneness according to Osho is a gift, not something I should run from. Ever since I started reading the Art of Seduction, I got it in my head that I was going to meet a girl or many girls. The desire for a mate was controlling me. Not until a couple days ago did I realize how much I was suffering. I created the idea that unless I found someone, I could not be happy. Osho says that the ego’s need is never satisfied. After one woman, I will need another because I will never feel as though the other needs me, which is what this whole thing is about. It is not about love and it’s not even about sex. I need to know I am needed. When I feel needed by others, I feel secure. But this is a fantasy. Aloneness is not something to be afraid of and it is not something to want to change. This is the human condition and now it is my opportunity to accept it.
My mind did change after reading Osho. I was no longer having thoughts about women, it was that easy. All I had to tell myself was to give it up, the desire, the fantasy. I was only unhappy when I had the desire. I am not fixated anymore, I feel more relaxed. I’m not on a mission nor is my happiness dependent on an external focus. I do not look outside myself for affirmation of love. I must show and give love to myself – not wanting more than I have right now.
I see how desire and attachment cause suffering. I am not natural and I am not being myself when I am trying to manipulate people. The whole seduction thing was necessary to get to where I am. There is no point to try to alter myself or my life. Osho says practice choiceless awareness and follow the rhythm – I will be aware once I put down the egotistical needs and let the events of my live follow their natural course.

“If you run after things, nothing will come to you. Let things run after you. The sea never sends an invitation to the rivers. That’s why they run to the sea. The sea is content. It doesn’t want anything. That’s the secret in life. Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness”.
-Chuang-Tzu

In Memory of Rosalind D. Al-Aswad

The Swan, Rosalind Al-Aswad

Christopher Al-Aswad’s Journal Entry – March 14, 2003

My mother died on March 13, 2003. She died so peacefully, is what I told my friends. I said she died without resistance. And that’s how I want to live my life, without resistance. Easing up into the ceiling, without resistance. Sliding into the sky, without resistance. Her body; simple a case that imprisoned her soul. Now that soul journeys through the sky. My mother is liberated. She moves and speaks. Mother, you have unlocked a part of my soul and allowed me to see beyond what I could see before. I let go, there’s no point in carrying all that weight. Mother, I’m beginning to think that you’re in every room that I pass through. I can feel that spirit that passed out of your body and dissolved into the bedroom spread through the apartment. I thought of how it would move through the city and out to Indiana by the morning. All along rising as you spread. I’m imagining you here with me now. There’s nothing to perform mother, this is just the beginning of a very long conversation, we’ll speak more often now.

Speak Up

Alter of Revolution

Spirit Mother, Christopher Al-Aswad, 2005

The spirit that dwells in my
mother, trickster and artist
alike, prods and pokes its way
into all of our lives. She likes
to cause problems, to upset
balances, to displace realities.
The conventional is her foe.

Her presence almost makes
you nervous with the sheer
abundance of energy dancing on
her force-field. At any moment,
this abundance of life can rise
to an unheard-of pitch, and
suddenly, mysteriously, break
into a marvelous crescendo
of hysterical and contagious
laughter. Laughing in the
company of my mother is an
experience of ecstasy, complete
unconscious immersion
whirling in the absurdity of life:
crackling, squealing, shrieking
laughter. She feels her emotions
from the center of her being;
total emotion, not inchoate
half-feeling. Complete pain,
complete joy, complete anger.

My mother cries in a movie
theater like no Jewish mother
has ever cried in public before.

She lives at the maximum
threshold and her life is
overflowing. She lives, not apart
from the world, but within the
tumultuous movement and
ever-changing flow of it. She
lives without regrets, without
even the longing of unfulfilled
desires. Anything she wants
to do in this life, she does.

Lovers

Good Morning America

Portraits of an Examined Life

In 2005, Lisa Wainwright, Dean of Graduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, curated Rosalind Al-Aswad’s Portraits of an Examined Life, an exhibit featured by the Art Institute shortly after her death in 2003. The exhibit depicted the three phases of Rosalind’s artistry, clearly portraying the progression of a career regrettably shortened by illness. In a review that reveals the strength and spirit of feminism that was evident in her art, Wainwright gives the artist a voice that conveys not only the meaning of her work, but the soul memorialized within each piece.

The legacy of Rosalind Al-Aswad resides in the dozens of paintings and drawings she made of herself and others from 1985 to 1999. Like many before her, Al-Aswad became an artist later in life, bringing to her canvases the complexity of myriad roles as business woman, mother, wife, daughter, citizen, friend, and artist. Her life’s journey informed the paintings and gave them their poignancy and critical edge. Al-Aswad gazed deep into the world of human relations and chronicled the dynamics she found there. Using models and props within her reach—family, friends, and the trappings of suburban life—she probed the mundane as a code for unlocking a deeper moral message. The work could not be made fast enough to accommodate all that the artist wished to say.

Meet the Collins

Left Behind

Rosalind Al-Aswad was an expressionist of sorts. She faced her demons whether in the workplace, on the domestic front, or in the face of death. And all of this made its way into her painting for us to behold with wonder. We should all have the strength of purpose that Al-Aswad demonstrated in so many ways. Her children do. And along with the painting, her legacy is alive in them. I never knew Rosalind Al-Aswad, but I know she was an extraordinary woman. She once claimed, “I guess I have always seen life as a series of parts you play,” and now these parts, and all that they entail, will linger in my imagination for some time to come.

In memory of my mother, Rosalind Al-Aswad (1942 - 2003)

During her studies at The School of the Art Institute, Rosalind Al-Aswad was concerned for her fellow classmates who were working hard to make ends meet. Many times, Rosalind would purchase art supplies for students who were experiencing financial difficulty. In memory of Rosalind, the family has created a fund for student assistance, and in building upon her legacy, it is the hope that one day this fund will also provide scholarships for students residing in the Middle East. If you are interested in making a gift in memory of Rosalind and benefiting art students for many years to come, philanthropic contributions may be made to The Rosalind D. Al-Aswad and Christopher Al-Aswad Memorial Fund at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and mailed to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Office of Development, 37 South Wabash, Suite 814, Chicago, IL 60603. For information about the memorial fund, please contact the Office of Development at (312)899-5158.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 17

Jeff Luker

February 2006 – Normal, IL

A letter to my father on his 60th birthday

It is hard for me to believe that my father is 60 years old. Memories from when you used to take me to my soccer games, or sit with me in front of the computer helping me write my papers, or when we took the road trip to visit colleges – all of these memories have the quality of immediacy. They say that our capacity for memories is infinite, that once you begin digging into your past, there is no end to it. You are embedded in my past lives, through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. There was a golden age for our family and that was perhaps before my 10th birthday. I have fond memories of riding with you and mother in the back of the car. I don’t know exactly where we were driving to – perhaps out to dinner or to a movie. And as we were driving through the Midwest Club, I remember telling jokes to you and mom and making both of you laugh. I don’t know what I said that was so funny but mother would laugh hysterically. Our family was gay, cheerful, and young.

In my childhood and early adolescence, you instilled in me a rare gift which I am grateful for. I imagine that most parents, as they are raising their children, do not analyze the effect such and such a behavior will have on their children. Whatever you taught me at an early age, you taught to me by instinct. What you have given, that I cherish and employ to this day, is a freely-chosen self discipline. Without self-discipline, I doubt whether I could have stayed clean from drugs this long. Without self-discipline, I doubt I could pursue my literary ambitions. Without self-discipline, even staying in shape and quitting smoking would have been impossible. Now I have received many gifts from both you and mother but this is the gift that stands out to me as being directly from you.

The other gift, which is a close second, is a love and appreciation of literature. About a month ago we were reading Shakespeare together – how joyful was I to be in your company reading again. And what a stark contrast from my childhood years when I used to throw tantrums to escape the “reading hour.” But time and patience transform everything. Here I am today thanking you for what I felt you had imposed upon me as a child. The irony implicit in this life – the story speaks for itself.

Though for a good many years mostly when you made me read out loud to you – I imagined you as an overbearing tyrant which of course you were not. But a child sometimes sees his parents through a distorted lens. And as an adolescent, especially during my addition and during the divorce, I imagined you as a personification of evil. I might have made you into a voodoo doll if I had access to one. This of course is an exaggeration but I had a lot of resentment to you and many others during this period. What still baffles me to this day is not only the spiritual strength you must have had stored in you to protect yourself from me, but also the warmth you kept burning in your heart. Never did you grow cold, never did you reject me – but always loved me – and therefore this is the best model of unconditional love I have ever been shown. And it is this model of unconditional love that I emulate toward myself and others.

After the fog of my addiction cleared, after I began to mature into early adulthood and started taking care of my body and my health, you can imagine how my view of you began to change. In a way, I immortalized you – lifted you up from the ranks of man to the tier of godhood. You became a living hero to me and I sought to model my life after you. Indeed, I had transformed my life. I was living from what many would call a second birth and after years of abusing you, I must have wanted to pour a special salve on the relationship that would heal the wounds between us. But just as during my adolescence when I made you a voodoo doll, after my recovery, I was making you into my Buddha, my idol and I was near worshiping you. But neither of these images of you matched your true relation to me.

So today, on your 60th birthday, I ask the questions – What is your true relation to me? If you are not the man I blame or the man I praise, then who are you to me? And without being too philosophical, too entangled in speculation, I feel I can make the judgment that only now am I coming to see you as you are, and to love you for the man you are. For the first time, I am not inflating or deflating you – but really starting to get to know you. When I came over a couple weekends ago and we hung up pictures and organized your books, I saw a glimpse of who that man is who I call my father. No adjective will describe him. Not because he has no qualities – but because he is of a spirit that transcends qualities. He is an individual but not an ego. He reminds me of myself but overflows beyond myself.

Dad, I love you. A gratitude is present in me right now as I pen these final words. The mystery is so inconceivable – so infinite – it surrounds me like a dream. All I am thinking – this life is too short, too short, too short…

Escape Into Chris - Entry 16

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

July 30, 2006 – Normal, IL

I have a backyard
my neighbors have a garden
the air reverberates with
children’s voices.
Crickets chirping
the autumn stands one month ahead
looking back at the most placid day
in August – her feathered frock
gently ruffles.
My forehead is bathed in sunlight
my eyes are handsomely covered.
I sit on my patio like a spectator
wearing a disguise.
The twittering of the birds overlays
the chorus of children’s voices
from far and near.
Chortles and sing song laughter.
You must see the birds flying
over the rooftops
they glide and glide.
All the winged creatures slipping
through the transparent air.
My grass smiles to butterflies
central Illinois - one giant plain
summer’s last hurray – the heat
trickles down in beads of sweat
and the clipping, and twittering, cheeping
the fresh and innocent vision
Miranda calls it a “brave new world.”
There’s the butterfly
hear her flapping around
right over your head,
Splendid wings, gold shimmering
things like a flashing jewel
We practice our reunion
in our backyards-
we paint through our anxieties.
This is a new landscape. A new setting -
the frightfulness will disappear
the nervousness will go away
fill the cup and you will take care of your
thirst.
All the gifts were given to him
All at once from his dead mother -
mother, I am grateful
mother I am great.
the zigzag path of the butterfly
brings me out of my shade
says to me hello.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble saying.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble phrasing.
I am new here
new to a backyard.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 15

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

September 27, 2007 – Normal, IL

The personality comes and goes. My task is to stay aware – aware of my discomfort, my anxiety, my suffering. An insight – as I mature, I find that my path is not so much one of seeking perfection or discovering an ideal state or creating an ideal object of art, but surrendering to my limitations, my deepest imperfections. I don’t become a genius as I’ve always assumed but instead I let go of the ignorance, the fetters that delude me. This means accepting my greatest imperfections and loving the person I am now. Becoming does not resolve the human predicament. Being aware, however, can take me out of my personal drama and awaken me to my full capacity of love.

Pleurisy

Frank Ciaco

On a Friday night, not unlike any of my other Friday nights, I came home with a pepperoni pizza and turned on the oven while emptying the dishes from the machine.

This was my second pepperoni pizza since last week, and so I anticipated it would not give me the same rewarding pleasure that the original one gave me several nights before. But I was turning to food more lately, as a consolation for my boredom and loneliness.

As far as I knew, I would eat my pepperoni pizza, enjoy a cigarette in the garage (another consolation), and retire to my upstairs office. There I would work on the arts website, perhaps read some submissions, and if the inspiration came to me late at night, I would compose some verses or add another essay or meditation to this chronicle of innocence.

It occurs to me that a writer who is consciously or subconsciously perusing the material of her life will inevitably come to the conclusion that the material is wanting, lacking somehow. Very few things stand out on the vast topography of our mundane existence.

For this reason, I'm curious about how we change in the span of a single day--how our course is suddenly pushed onto another track of possibility, which gives rise to a new self-conception. Brought on by the force of an event, we see our lives, as it were, in color, with new wishes, dreams, desires, and motives.

These are the experiences I wish to capture in my writing, if only because they convey the interesting passage from the finite to the infinite.

I'm not feigning obscurity here. You'll understand everything by the end of this essay, and if you don't, then at least you will have spent some time with me, and perhaps made a friend.

There is a tragic story to all our lives; I am convinced of it no matter how happy you tell me you are. Lucky for us, the tragedy is raised to the arch-background and we prefer not to dwell on it. I won't talk too much about tragedy here, other than through the story of what happened to me after I finished eating my pepperoni pizza.

Like I mentioned, it was a Friday night, which always seems to conjure up feelings of isolation. I won't get into that too much either. But I was sitting at my computer, if you recall, and there are a number of things I do at my computer which make me feel occupied, important, or otherwise pro-active. That's why it doesn't really matter what day of the week it is (I work from home), I can always distract myself from whatever subtle anguish or boredom is nagging at me just beneath the surface.

The pepperoni pizza was having a hard time digesting in my stomach, and I knew this would be the case from the last time I ate one, and from eating unhealthy food in general. It looked like an average Friday night so far. I smiled at my reflection in the computer screen, I typed, I sent messages to friends over Twitter, I replied to emails, I surveyed the traffic patterns on Escape into Life.

This is precisely what I was referring to when I mentioned the vast topography of our mundane existence. These little sorts of activities that cushion our lives. Think of them as taking place within a grey continuum, with blips of surprise, discomfort, headache, joy, nausea, fatigue, rest.

There are also countless forms of anguish that can be added to that category of the mundane, depending on your physical condition, and how well you maintain your body. As for myself, I've been having a rough time of it. Since last week, these extraordinary pains in my chest led me to seek out a doctor for the first time in five years.

I went to one of those Prompt Care facilities, in which no appointments are necessary. The doctor they matched me up with looked Greek. He had a tan bald head and a reserved manner, but you could tell he thought highly of himself. The Greek doctor determined that there was nothing wrong with my lungs or my heart, but that I had severe allergy symptoms, and he prescribed a nasal spray and some antibiotics.

I left the Prompt Care facility feeling as though something had not been addressed. Although I was happy to breathe again thanks to my new prescription of nasal spray, I remembered repeatedly telling the old man, "I feel like I'm dying."

I was feeling a pain under my left chest plate. Each time, it was like someone had dug their fist into my chest and squeezed out all of the air in my lungs, applying the most excruciating pressure to the heart and everything else inside. I couldn't breath while this was going on and the muscles in my back tightened into a vice.

Several hours later, while I was at my computer, the chest pains returned and I curled in my chair, unable to breathe. I observed that my Friday night wouldn't be wasted if I drove myself to the Emergency Room at St. Joseph's Hospital, rather than endure the agony of severe chest pain.

I parked my car in the wrong section of the parking lot, and hobbled toward the lights at the circular entrance doors. My decision to admit myself to the Emergency Room was not yet certain. I didn't want to get charged an exorbitant price for not having health insurance, and perhaps worse, I didn't want to be told that my chest pains were normal.

My physical state was pathetic, I felt like an invalid, unwashed, and I got the abrupt sensation that with all the gas from the pepperoni pizza, I may have shit my pants.

So I opened one of the hospital doors and briskly entered the nearest bathroom. I checked the inside of my underwear, which thankfully, showed no signs of run off. I briskly washed my hands and wended my way through the labyrinthine basement of the hospital, reading the signs that pointed to the ER. A tech worker caught me in my state of confusion, and guided me to the Emergency Room doors.

With the odd hours of the night, and my general feeling of confusion, I began to see myself as an outsider here. But I also felt a twinge of belonging, like perhaps this is where an outsider is meant to be.

I stood at the registration window, and glimpsed a technician speaking to an older lady in a wheelchair. The old lady had a blood pressure wrap on her arm and was telling the technician that she didn't have any pain.

It was approximately 12:30 pm. As I filled out the registration papers, a large black security officer made small-talk with a smaller lady sitting at a desk in front of five computer monitors. Their topic of conversation was "Facebook and Security."

I was called into the tech's office, where I removed my jacket and waited for several minutes, going over in my mind all the questions I had about not having insurance and how much it would cost, and whether they could really help me with my condition.

The woman who had been talking to the older lady for so long finally came into the check up room to do my blood pressure. I still hadn't made up my mind about whether I should be admitted into the hospital. But with a clandestine swoop across my wrist, I found a loose, beige hospital band with my name on it.

I believe there are three rooms, if you count the waiting room, before you reach the doctor.

Well, on this night, each of these three stations led me deeper into an experience. I didn't know what I was doing here to be perfectly honest. I mean I had some severe chest pains, but other than that, I think I was just bored and wanted to go to the hospital. Or maybe there was something I wanted . . .

When a surrogate nurse brought me into the second station, I removed my jacket and placed it on a chair, along with my cell phone and wallet. I immediately laid down on the flat cushion, which appeared to me at this moment more comfortable than a king size bed. Then the real nurse came inside the room and asked me to put on a gown. She seemed very genial, and also hip for her age, with short dyed blond hair. Her hair reminded me of my mother's because it was cropped short.

I was in pain but I didn't want to make a performance out of it. So I held my arms close to my chest and leaned back into my pillow.

"Do you want me to raise that?" She asked.

"Yes, please," I said, taking a second glance at her face. "You seem like a nice lady."

You know there is something about being in the Emergency Room late at night, where there are only two people in a single room, a nurse and a patient. It can be a very tender intimacy without any sexual implications, just the presence of two strangers put in the same room, one taking care of the other. These thoughts were comforting to me even though I had a bit of apprehension about when the doctor would arrive, what he would say, and what he would give me.

The plain truth is that I'm a self-destructive person. There is no easy way to talk about this. I've tried to understand it my whole life. Part of my sensitivity comes from this destructive nature of mine.

After the nurse dimmed the lights and left the room, I sunk into the cushion and closed my eyes. Without exaggerating, this Friday night was turning out to be one of the best Friday nights I think I've ever had in my entire life. I'm pretty sure I fell into a dream where my father's nose was cut off, as if he'd had plastic surgery and it didn't work out. Well, the vision was terrifying and the image still burns strong in my imagination.

Luckily, I was startled awake by a young woman, I want to say "girl," dressed in a casual striped men's shirt. She had short raven hair, and held a clipboard.

"I'm here to collect your insurance policy information." She spoke in a sweet tone of voice.

At first I didn't answer, I only looked at her pale freckled face and dark hair, and the way her men's collar rose slightly over her narrow shoulder-line.

"You look familiar," she said. "You look like one of my older brother's friends."

And those were the kindest words that have ever been spoken to me. I must have looked like utter crap.

"Oh, I don't have insurance," I said.

"Well, we could get you one of those Charity forms, where you fill in your financial information."

"No, no, that won't work. I've tried that before. I have a trust fund."

"It's always better to be safe than sorry," she said.

I nodded in agreement.

She left the room and I gloated that she had even entered it in the first place. For the next twenty minutes, I fantasized about asking her if she had a boyfriend, and if she said "Yes," I would reply something like, "That doesn't surprise me."

But if she answered "No," then I would ask her out to dinner. Maybe she would think of my trust fund and how I could probably take her out to a pretty fancy restaurant. Or maybe she despised people who never had to work, and wouldn't want anything to do with me.

The nurse returned to my room to ask how I was doing, and I explained to her that my pains were getting worse. I could feel spasms in my chest but I didn't want to sound like a martyr. She said the doctor was on his way.

When the doctor finally arrived I was reeling in pain, and all I could catch a glimpse of was his silver toned face and sharp eyelashes. He had a wide expression like he was going to eat me. But he asked a lot of questions, and I had rehearsed my symptoms for days now, so in a sense, we were perfectly in tune.

I was hoping he would have an answer for me, a diagnosis of some kind. I kept describing the pain under the chest plate, deep, sharp, in my breathing, suffocating me, pulling at my muscles . . .

He smiled and said it would all be better soon. And then he left.

The nurse returned with three tall needles on a steel plate. I turned on my side and pulled down my underwear and jeans.

The nurses and doctors on the other side of the curtain were chatting lightly. They couldn't see me, but I was glowing inside. Especially when the first needle went into my butt, I wanted to meet them all.

A Chronicle of Essays and Meditations

Le Corbus

The story I write always begins with having the experience first.

After living in Madrid for a year, I grew obsessed thinking that every new experience would then become a short story or novel.

Ten years later, I found myself still toiling on the the same scenes from the past.

Now I've given up The Novel of Life. One, because it was toil.

And two, because my experiences in Madrid are too far removed from where I am now. I pored over the Spain material until I could no longer see the important connections.

It was a romantic fiction based on my life in Spain, which I painstakingly tried to evoke the mood, characters, and conflicts. But time has flown beyond these adolescent insecurities, and delivered me into a place with greater contradiction, more openness, and less answers.

There are few rules here, but the rules I go by are based on the sheer daily practice of examining my thoughts through writing. I know them by instinct.

What's painfully clear to me is that I stopped believing in the Spain stories, and that's why I stopped writing them.

But I knew I could write. And so I dedicated myself to writing other kinds of stories (whether they were essays, articles, reviews, or meditations, I don't think it matters).

But I could believe in these stories. They reflected my innocence about the world, and provided me with an enormous amount of energy and interest in what I was doing.

So I scrapped my novel with few reservations. A great freedom came out of this decision, and I feel I am embarking on new territory.

I've mentioned before in On Blogging and Technology for Writers that a conventional blog can be a profoundly creative outlet for a writer. Anyone who has been blogging long enough will attest to the discipline built into the practice. This discipline builds on the dynamic between readers and writers on the web. And soon, you'll find the motivation to create a community around your words.

I call this blog a chronicle because it chronicles my life in written form. The way I write, the things I believe, my passions, my failures, inevitably seep through the text of these digital pages. But none of it will hold a set pattern, a formula, if you will.

The only pattern of this blog is Time and what Time does to me. My language, the topics I choose, and how I present myself to the reader, will arise out of Time.

The best way to tell a story is to find a comfortable place, like a sofa, with lots of light in the room. It's always nice to have a friend next to you, and that's how I imagine my reader.

Fathers and Sons

Mark Steinmetz

In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on. --Robert Frost

I planned a vacation for myself, but that vacation was cut short.

I was only going to Chicago, where my father lives. I had two meetings in Chicago on Thursday, and so it wasn't a real vacation, only a chance for me to get away for a couple days.

On the first night (Wednesday), my younger sister met me at my father's apartment a couple hours before he arrived home from work. We sat on my father's couch . . . at first she was distracted, playing with her i-Phone, she'd look up at me while we were talking and then look back down at her phone to text message or check her email.

When my father arrived, he came into his study where Mandy and I were sitting in front of the computer. He quietly left the room.

They made dinner for me as I sat on the couch reading the newspaper. Secretly, I marveled at how well they got along together, cooperating on making the dinner with the fun of a happily married couple.

There was a time when I could have been a part of the Chicago picture; I could have lived there, and maybe developed a closer relationship to the family.

People often tell me that my problem is I don't live closer to people I care about. I don't have a robust social network in real life (online I do), mainly because I choose to live in Central Illinois. But I've tried to tether myself to people before, and it doesn't work for me. I prefer the simple rituals I have which don't rely on an abundance of friends.

That night my father and sister watched home movies while I sat on the couch, continuing to read the newspaper. My father's latest project has been to transfer all of the home movies he made between 1979 and 1998 onto DVD. It's an enormous archive, and when I come to visit now, I'm tacitly expected to watch a video from the archive. But Thursday night, I had no interest. He filmed nearly every major event, and a great number of non-events, everything from Christmases to birthdays, recitals, vacations, parties, sporting events.

Last time I was at his apartment I watched an hour or so of the videos, and the repetitive version of my family history bored me, even though I got to see my mother, who passed away. The family, through my father's eyes, and perhaps my sister's, reflects something of the "good old days," but I see a different picture in the slew of tapes . . .

It seems my father has changed dramatically in his attitude toward me. My impression is that all of my issues over the years has led him to think of me as a burden. He saw me through many bad times, and he used to be committed to me, despite what happened.

Today he shows little commitment toward me as a son. He's swung to the opposite extreme, presenting a cool exterior, which I interpret as unloving. If my actions in adolescence, and some continuing into adulthood, caused my father to detach himself from me, then I can only respond with a detachment of my own.

On Friday morning, we broke into an argument. Certain things I say irritate him. He doesn't like me talking about my job, or my financial situation. I understand why he wouldn't want me to complain, but it's hard to hide my resentment.

I returned home that day. I stayed in his apartment for only one night. This is the usual duration before either one of us becomes so angry we can't be around each other.

I never thought that my relationship to my father would go through so many reversals.

Changing My Mind

Nick Lepard

Life isn't about saying the right thing; life is about failing. It's about letting the tape play. --Jonathan Goldstein

Fiction is a burden. When I think about it, I feel a heaviness. Like I have to keep something going, a facade of characters, and a story where something must happen.

Too many things happened to me. If I just recall certain events and told you about them as I was writing, that would be easier.

What surprises me is how often I change my mind in a week or even a day. And then, I try to imagine what my life will look like five years from now . . . and how many times I will have changed my mind by then.

The mind changes itself ad infinitum and the individual gets caught somewhere between what was said and what was done, each time. Identity is fluid, which makes it OK for me to say one thing and then contradict myself the very next day.

This is all done in good faith. I wouldn't be lying to you, because I really did believe what I was saying at the time.

I detest lying; although I'm a compulsive exaggerator. For example, with numbers, I like to increase them.

How closely have I come to understanding my passions? Maybe I've fooled myself into believing that fiction is something I ought to do in my life or I won't be a valued individual.

I've written compulsively for the last ten years, but a large amount of it hasn't been fiction. This is how I write fiction. I write a page, and then I painstakingly try to improve it. The time I spend trying to improve my fiction vastly exceeds the time I spend writing new fiction. Which leads to a sort of editorial paralysis, you cannot write until you make what you wrote perfect, but that never happens, and your perception changes nearly every time you look at what you've written, so you get sucked in to trying to improve it again.

Life isn't about saying the right thing.

There are two kinds of attention: voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary attention is when you're sitting in class and your teacher says, "Pay attention." You have to work for this kind of attention.

Involuntary attention is open-focused. Involuntary attention occurs when children are playing.

Children easily become engrossed in playing with their toys. They are absorbed in their imaginary worlds. Their attention is at its peak. But if you ask a child to sit down at the kitchen table and figure out a math problem, this requires voluntary attention, fixing the mind on an object that is not inherently interesting to them.

However, some children may be able to lose themselves in math problems. For others, reading is a gateway to involuntary attention.

It would be wonderful to always be in tune with the natural promptings of one's involuntary attention. Rather than pushing against the grain, allowing oneself to magically slip into a state of interested awareness. I think what it comes down to is forgetting, another great difficulty I have, to just forget myself and do whatever it is I happen to be doing.

Beyond that, I would like to structure my life so that it reflects more closely my instincts, my natural pathways to intelligence. What if the only person who obstructs me from a life that I really want is me? I'm usually the last person I think of when it comes to my dilemmas. There has to be somebody or something that is holding me back. It can't be me, after all, I'm doing everything I can.

I'm going to dismantle some fictions I have about myself.

One: That I'm a novelist. I'm not a novelist. I'm not even a fiction writer. I don't write enough, I don't practice enough to call myself a fiction writer.

Two: That I'm an artist. I can't really say that either. While I write some poetry from time to time and doodle in my art books, it would be self-aggrandizement to call myself an artist.

Three: That I desperately need your praise. I don't really need anyone to praise me. I think I do, because it is gratifying. But praise is not necessary.

Four: That I will achieve greatness in my lifetime. This is the fiction of my own greatness, re: potential greatness, not yet realized. But it feels real!

Five: I can do whatever I want. In three years, I could be broke. That would be the first time I'd have to face the consequences of having no income.

Blogging is the perfect channel for my writing and experimentation. I'm not looking to gain success by writing some epic of my life. I'm just letting the tape play and seeing what happens.

More Essays . . .

Taking off the Mask

Prehispanic Mask

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. ~William Shakespeare

It seems I haven't written a personal essay in a very long time. My life has changed in subtle ways since my year-long essay-writing binge on this blog. I am consumed more than ever by my activities on the internet, with less time to let my mind "go blank" or empty itself.

Mostly, I am preoccupied with Escape into Life, the online arts journal I founded about a year ago. Working with programmers and designers, attracting writers and readers, and editing submissions on an almost daily basis wears me down. Some days I would just like to disappear from the online world.

Being connected to a vast network of people online is both a blessing and a curse. One day you realize there are hundreds, maybe thousands, expecting something from you. And this is what I've always wanted, I've always wanted an audience. Because it is my nature to write for an audience, and nothing appeals to me more than having those readers.

My participation in the online world has given rise to a persona, a mask I wear. I am constantly promoting Escape into Life on Twitter, and always hoping to gain more readers and more followers. At the same time, I feel my energy is being drained as a writer. The most important thing for me is to have a certain amount of silence, or emptiness inside. Too often in the last several months that emptiness has been crowded with fears and concerns.

When I first read the novel, The Obscene Bird of Night, I became fascinated with Jose Donoso's philosophy of masks and disguises. At the time, I was using drugs and my parents were getting a divorce. If you want to know the truth, I was actually in a psychiatric ward when revelations about the novel were becoming a kind of fixation for me. You have to understand that I had a very cynical view of things, I was being "locked up" in some hospital, and my family life was broken. But I seemed to find a lot of empowerment in the idea that we all wear masks, and beneath each of those masks is yet another mask.

This frightening premise ignited my adolescent imagination. Jose Donoso was influenced by the works of Carl Jung, specifically his alchemical studies in psychology. The meaning that Donoso ultimately came to, which his novel puts into dramatic form, is that beneath all of those masks is nothing. The human identity is made up of layers of masks, and underneath those layers is a vast emptiness.

The artist, the writer, deals intimately with both masks and emptiness. We feel constrained as writers when we bind ourselves to what we feel we ought to write, rather than responding to what arises naturally in our changing interests. The result of writing what you feel like you should write is simply putting on another mask, and the consequences can be disastrous, like pretending to be someone you aren't . . .

I admire writers, and all artists, for the courage they have to continually take off the mask. You are not truly creating anything until you are revealing a layer of yourself you didn't know was there. While the ideal of shedding the mask remains important, along the unexpected course of life, I find myself strongly gravitating to its opposite. I want to be someone. When I look at my small accomplishments thus far, and see I've not earned myself a single title in anything, I despair. I am still unknown. I am still without an identity.

This may be my greatest advantage, however. Because if the work of a writer is to take off the mask, again and again, not being anyone is actually a better starting point for creating art. Listen to this passage in The Obscene Bird of Night:

There are so many of us who go around collecting, here and there, whatever castoff enables us to disguise ourselves and feel we're somebody, be somebody--a well-known person, a picture in the papers with your name underneath; we all know one another here, in fact we're almost all blood relations . . . to be someone, Humberto, that's the important thing, and the lamplight flickers and the table wobbles under my sister's elbows as she holds her face in her hands like in Las Bertini's latest postcard photograph . . . my sister's too is a mask, La Bertini's mask, because her own face wasn't enough; as one goes along he learn the advantages of the disguises being improvised, their mobility, how the last one covered the one before it.

I am a character in my Novel of Life, and I am also a character playing many roles in this life. How is it then that I feel I am not aligned, and at other times, more aligned with my true self?

I strive so hard to cement my reputation in everything I do; but ultimately, this leads me to betray myself. I've lost touch with the current of my natural instinct. I become fixated on a social role, playing up to the expectations of the audience. I've been reduced to a puppet.

It seems we are driven by these social masks. First we seek to attain them, striving for a distinguished role, a podium on which we can stand out; and then, somewhere in the process, we begin to question who we really are, if this is really me, this role, this persona, this mask.

The sociologist Erving Goffman studied human behavior from the "dramaturgical" perspective. He saw each human's action as a performance, as a theatrical effect, in order to preserve social survival. Goffman wrote that the self

is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited (qtd. Glenn Ward).

Glenn Ward further explains that Goffman

writes of the self as a series of facades erected before different audiences. These facades only appear to emanate from some intrinsic self inside the social performer. In fact, the self is an effect, not a cause, of the facade. It is also not something you individually own. It arises from interaction with other actors on the social stage.

There seems to be a lot of truth to Goffman's discoveries. I can see how I would be writing for my social survival. Perhaps long ago I deceived myself into thinking that I was a writer by destiny, and instead I conditioned myself to become a writer because it was a social role I knew I could act out. It was someone I knew I could be.

Our histrionic natures have long been documented in literature and art. Read Shakespeare who says, "All the world's a stage/ And all the men and women merely players." We know we wear social masks, we know we play roles. In contemporary times, an index of reality TV shows will give you the full evidence of our histrionic natures.

Yet as writers and artists we are compelled to uncover the truth, not obscure it. Life is confusing enough as it is. At least in art, we can effect some level of control, create some kind of meaning in the world. And so, we learn to write by repeatedly taking off the mask, by giving it up, and finding something deeper and more powerful beneath the surface. It is by reaching into our innermost selves that we are able to constantly transform and improvise.

I know I am performing when I write, but I also know that I am honestly searching. And the search, the mystery, cannot be faked. I love what I do because it has an unknown factor. Any project I take up in my writing is with a destination unknown. This gives me faith that I am not only pretending to be someone, but also deeply trying to find myself.

More Essays . . .

Juanita

Spanish Bread

Around two o’clock Lethe and Donte came home from school and the Senora served lunch. Her sister, Juanita, lived on the floor above them. It was a mystery exactly where on the upper floor she lived; Lethe had never visited her apartment.

Juanita came for lunch nearly every day. Donte said that Lethe liked to hide in his room, but to Lethe it was simply the most comfortable place in the apartment. He smoked in his bedroom, he had his own ashtray, and he sat at a small writing desk with the balcony doors left open. It felt as though he were working on something.

The notebook he bought at the little store on the street outside the Senora's building, took up lots of his attention. He wrote a couple pages in this notebook, a description of the suburb where he grew up, and the story filled him great pride. Soon he was thinking of himself as a writer, and all sorts of connotations began to arise. Also, an idea was slowly forming in his mind, a sketchy outline about himself and who he intended to be.

Usually there was a book next to him on the desk, and today it was the book by Cervantes the Senora had recommended the night before. He turned through the pages, which were written in Spanish, and when Juanita arrived for lunch he was copying an illustration from the novel into his notebook.

The two sisters were nothing alike, and this contrast irritated Lethe. He wanted Juanita to be more like her sister, who Lethe was beginning to admire. It would have even been nice if she were more outgoing and more lovely than Maria Angeles. Some levity from a third person, or fourth, counting Donte, could have brightened up the apartment.

Juanita was about ten years older than her sister, maybe more, and she carried herself with a rigid formality. As far as her appearance, she had a small, elderly person’s body and a large, egg-shaped head with puffy gray hair. Her right eye had some sort of problem; it no longer opened. For this reason, the old woman squinted a lot and was constantly twitching. At times, she seemed to leer at Lethe in the most obnoxious manner possible.

From the moment that Lethe met Juanita, he could tell that she didn’t care much for him. At first he thought that maybe she was like this to everyone, that it was her natural self. But then he noticed how Juanita acted towards Donte. She was especially cordial with him, her rigid formality melted away and it was replaced by a sudden lively interest, as if she were speaking to a very worthy person.

Lethe tried to be friendly, many times he started conversations with Juanita, but she never seemed to take him seriously. After all, he couldn't speak Spanish all that well, and to an unsympathetic Spaniard he probably sounded like an excitedly barking dog.

Despite the fact that every sign Juanita gave Lethe insinuated to him that she didn't like him, she insisted on sitting next to him at the table. This proved to be confusing for Lethe in the first couple weeks of living in the Senora's apartment. But eventually he realized that Juanita wanted to sit next to him because of the bread basket.

She guarded the bread basket with all her life. Bread was an essential part of every meal in Spain, and it was always fresh, crusty, and delicious. The old woman, however, had lived through the dictatorship of Francisco Franco when bread was scarce, and her odd habit of watching the bread basket verged on the clinically obsessive. She constantly watched over it with her one, functional eye.

In secret, the Senora thought her sister’s frugality was amusing, but during meals she was silent on the matter and allowed her sister to act out this incredibly ridiculous preoccupation. Juanita's behavior irritated Lethe so much that he wanted the Senora to tell her sister to leave him alone and let him have two pieces of bread, or three, God forbid, even one right after the other (he pictured himself stuffing the bread into his face in front of Juanita). But it was the Senora's second nature to restrain herself. She looked at everything with a detached self-possession, which also gave her an aura of hidden power.

And so, eating lunch with Juanita regularly felt to Lethe like the four of them were prisoners sharing a meal. Of course, he exaggerated everything in his mind, which was another one of the reasons that made him think he was a writer. His imagination frightened him at times, such as when he walked to the International Institute every morning and felt he was lost in an abyss. Right now, just thinking of the four of them as prisoners sharing a meal could make it seem real.

“Nino, have some more food.” The Senora said.

Lethe then glanced at Juanita, who sat extremely close to him at the table, like she was always right there, looking over his shoulder, seeing how much he had eaten and whether he could have another piece of bread.

“No, really, I’m fine. I’m not that hungry today.” Lethe shook his head with casual indifference.

“Is that why you rummage through my refrigerator late at night? You don’t think I can hear you. I hear your stomach growling too!” The Senora said, half-jokingly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Juanita squinting and twitching.

“I don’t rummage through the refrigerator at night." Lethe protested.

The Senora bowed her head, as if the words were only meant to promote his good health. Moreover, she never argued with anyone, other than in a detached manner, with an air of humorous fun.

Donte wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. He had been sitting there the entire meal but Lethe barely noticed. It was because Lethe had been thinking of so many things that the presence of Donte completely evaporated.

“I’ll have another helping of the rice. Muchas gracias, por favor.” Donte said.

In all her years of housing students, the Senora never had a boarder who refused to eat her meals. It was practically a criminal offense in the Spanish culture for a guest not to eat the food offered to them. But Lethe seemed to contradict these rules, and many other rules as well. His entire way of being was a kind of insistence on him being different, and not needing to tuck away his bad behaviors.

So today he wasn't finishing his food. The issue completely dropped from the Senora's mind, her expression revealed that she was onto the next thing, the next topic of discussion. Donte considered Lethe's unusualness for a brief moment. And last was Juanita, the Senora's sister, who responded to the eccentric behaviors of a foreign exchange student with the utmost caution and wariness.

--Scenes from The Novel of Life

How does pot affect your mind exactly?

Matthew Woodson via CGUnit

Jamie Nadalin, a reader of the Blog of Innocence, recently posted this comment:

"During the day, I'm ceaselessly striving. I'm striving for a picture in my mind. Every morning I wake up and try to attain this ideal.

You can imagine I'm regularly disappointed. But I brush off the disappointment--I've learned to."

Your blog is a pleasure to visit, I'm very glad to have stumbled upon it. I identify with the above quote very strongly. Not only am I regularly disappointed but also disheartened by not achieving that mysterious goal. Most often I do brush it off, but sometimes I can't help but feel like I've failed. What's worse is the goal or picture in mind is so vague, I can't rightly decide how it is I should improve myself or my approach.

I also want to ask you why you stopped smoking pot? You say your mind is important to you, how does pot affect your mind exactly? you see, I smoke on a regular basis, mostly because I think it's the only way to feel any real motivation, there are other reasons of course but that's the main one. Sometimes I want to quit though, I'm afraid it will turn me into some kind of a blob, a slug. Is that what you felt as well?

My response:

So you too have had this experience . . .

From time to time, I feel as though I've failed in achieving my mysterious goal. Especially when I consider my accomplishments from the point of view of my father; in other words, how he sees me.

My whole life I've been striving for my father's validation. On the one hand, I've done what I've wanted to do in life. I followed my dreams, my desires, my instincts. But on the other, I look back over my shoulder, always thinking of him, and anticipating his reaction.

I never feel recognized in my achievements by my father. Perhaps if I was leading a more conventional life, with a high-paying career, a family and such, he would recognize my success. As of now, I have done little to impress him. The last time I impressed my father was when I graduated from college.

It's a petty thing to need my father's approval, but this sort of thing dominates many people's lives. For some it's the mother's approval. For me, it's my father. I'm living the life my mother would have wanted for me. I run an arts and culture publication. I'm creative; a writer. My life is in accord with her dreams as an artist.

So, when you say "failure", I think of myself through my father's eyes. Of course, he would not say that I am a failure. Perhaps it's the reassurance that I'm not a failure which I need from him. I know I'm not. But certain things that are important to him--my ability to support myself, financial independence, etc.--demonstrate that I have fallen short in his eyes.

Sure, he's pleased with my literary and creative accomplishments, but they mean very little to him without a paycheck.

I love what you say here:

What's worse is the goal or picture in mind is so vague, I can't rightly decide how it is I should improve myself or my approach.

The mysterious goal we set for ourselves is meant to be vague. This is so that we can never actually attain it! So that we must continue striving, and achieving all sorts of things, but never anything that truly satisfies us.

The logic goes that if we were satisfied, then we would stop living. There would be no reason to continue doing anything in life.

We make the goal of our lives, our "destiny" per say--elusive. It must remain elusive for us, or we won't have a desire to keep going.

If your goal is to retire and move to Puerto Rico, like one of my uncles, then you attain it eventually and you move to Puerto Rico. This is not a mysterious goal. This is a concrete goal. And when you are there, you may do like my uncle did. He bought a house that overlooks the ocean and he sits on his roof and admires the view, or he drinks whiskey and watches the stock market ticker.

He has no elusive goal before him. He is done with life. Ask him, and he'll say there is nothing more.

You say, "I can't rightly decide how it is I should improve myself or my approach."

If you have a desire to live, you will improve yourself. We live in a culture of self-improvement and half the time this seems like the disease and not the cure. You are always improving your approach toward achieving your mysterious goal in that you are re-defining your goal and goals constantly.

As long as you are actively re-imagining your goals in life, you are coming closer to what you really want to do.

You ask me why I stopped smoking pot. This is a big question. First of all, I'm a recovering drug addict and I shouldn't have been smoking pot in the first place. I had what you call a relapse.

So when I was smoking pot recently, I was not leisurely smoking it. I was compulsively smoking it. I went out and bought a $150 glass bong. I took bong hits nightly.

And I didn't really enjoy the experience. You can read my essay "How many of us are self-medicating" to get an idea of the situation.

Yes, the mind is important to me. What I mean by this is I depend on my mind. I depend on my mind as a creative person, as a writer and intellectual.

I've done the experiment. Meaning, I've tested it out whether I'm more or less creative, more or less effective, while stoned.

Usually, while high, I have lots of interesting thoughts in my head. And I tend to end up on Twitter. Smitten by my own thoughts, I want to share them. I'll tweet something profound and wait for people to respond.

When I write high, however, only 1 in every 10 times does something articulate and meaningful get manifested. A lot of time it is just manic thought patterns and I don't have the wherewithal to compose a single coherent article, essay, or poem.

But I'm not going to lie, sometimes I tap into a profound stream of thoughts and I'm able to get them down on paper. For example, the Preface to the Blog of Innocence was written while I was stoned.

Every individual is different. You say you're more motivated while high. For me, I'm not more motivated, I'm more manic. And just because I'm manic, having racing thoughts, doesn't necessarily translate into motivation to produce a solid result.

I didn't worry that smoking would turn me into a lazy, unmotivated slob. My personality is Type A, so there's little fear of that. I do too much in life, which is why I gravitate toward drugs. I seem to need them to help me relax, to unwind, and to stop working.

So when I was smoking pot on a regular basis I would get all of my work done first. Pot was my reward at the end of the day.

But this didn't work out for me because I would stay up all night when I smoked. Smoking interfered with my cycle. I wouldn't wake up until the afternoon. And during the day, I noticed a bit of cloudiness.

I wasn't lazy. I didn't stop working. I just began to feel as though my brain wasn't at its peak performance. That's all.

And my brain is important to me. In fact, my life depends on the performance of my brain. I'm a writer, a thinker and an intellectual. I want my mind in the best possible condition for writing these essays, and running my website and business Escape into Life.

Laurence Sterne

Writing, when properly managed . . . is but a different name for conversation.

Laurence Sterne, Tristam Shandy (Book II, Ch.11)

Preface to the Blog of Innocence

I like to think of myself as someone who is drafting and re-drafting his life until it makes sense. Life, being irrational, never fully makes sense and so I am continually making up new stories about myself in a creative and naive way.

But this is how children think. Nothing is absolute. Everything is provisional for a child. Tell the child one story, she will believe it, because any story to a child has the possibility of being true.

Adults on the other hand conform to a rigid set of beliefs, true or untrue only according to their own reality.

I write because it is a door I once opened and I continue to go back and forth through that door. I explore the byways and the tunnels of myself.

Whatever I write always has the possibility of being true--at least to me--and to write down my reality is satisfying.

The question of whether what I do is art or not. Sometimes I am intentionally creating art and sometimes I am just writing. The best writing comes out when I am not intentionally doing anything--in fact the best writing comes out when I don't know what I'm doing or saying. But I think I like to write because it feels like someone is listening. It feels like what I am saying is not only true to me but true to others as well.

In a way, I am a compulsive writer. I will write because it's a drive.

Maybe I should stop.

Sometimes I do. But when I stop writing, I read a lot and reading activates my imagination and soon I am writing again.

Whatever I've been saying in the last few paragraphs, I'm not aiming at anything. I'm circling around the mood and the moment of my experience, gladly touching the borders and playing with the edges.

Everyone has their own secret life. We all have minds which are islands--between those islands flow the rivers of our hearts, but the mind itself is lonely. Which is strange, because we retreat into our minds so often. We retreat into our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, and we find solace in them even though they are ridiculous.

But there is safety in one's private mind, the thoughts of which no one can read. Because they are private entertainments of the self.

If you have pets, then you know the comforts of having non-human company. The human-animal connection is unique, and for obvious reasons, animals are incredibly loved by humans.

Ultimately, I think what we are stuck with is habit. Whatever habits you cultivate within your lifetime, those are the heavens and hells of your existence. Many habits fall between these two extremes and that's why our lives are pretty mundane.

Most of our habits are mundane in the everyday sense. We go to work, we eat meals, we tend to our homes and our families, we do chores. Perhaps that's why novelty is so interesting and stimulating.

I seek novelty. If I am not seeking novelty in dramatic and bizarre ways, I am seeking novelty in the miniature sense.

I do appreciate a well-ordered life, everything manageable and in its right place. This stems from the pure gratification of a sense of control. But as far as I can tell, control is something that most people try to exert over themselves and their environments.

My habits are deeply fulfilling mundane rituals that I carry out, such as going to Borders every morning to have my coffee and read the New York Times. To me, the Times is my mainstay to a normal, functioning adulthood. I am not saying the specific paper has the same magical effect on everyone. But for me reading the paper is very soothing and it reaffirms my sense of self.

I admire the quality of the writing in the Times and I believe it improves my own writing. But there is something else about the ritual which stabilizes me.

And yet, I seek novelty.

Women provide men with an immediate burst of novelty and distraction. If you are ever bored, start a romantic relationship and you will find how interesting your life gets.

But I believe that I ultimately retreat back into my own private mind, and that shared space between me and another person gradually lessens or dries up and dies.

I believe in long-term relationships, I am cynical towards permanent ones.

Right now I don't know where I am in terms of the opposite sex. Do I want to get married? Do I want to have children? Would I prefer to stay single?

The opposite sex is delightful. Loving can also be a doorway to a higher potential for one's being, but in most cases, we are not mature in love for long enough. We stop loving and I cannot explain or understand that.

Love gets degraded over time, diminished, and terribly distorted until it is not even love but something representing its opposite: hate.

Now my cats are quiet. The heater has stopped humming and the only sound in the room is of my keys clicking.

I think about my past life, my life in Spain and Las Vegas. I think of the adventures I once had and now being here in this moment of early, untainted adulthood.

I'm making the right choices now. Thank God. I am rational about things. I am aware of habit and how it has the power to lull me into a state of unconsciousness.

We grow ourselves. We grow our personalities and our behaviors. Like a garden, we grow ourselves--and once we were sick gardens but now we are growing healthier. Once we were patches of weeds over a dusty mound of dirt, but now we are seeking wholeness and fruit.

We want to bear fruit. For ourselves, for others.

We learn in time to survive, and even better, we learn to thrive.

It is the unfortunate fact of being human that we are constantly working against ourselves. We like to be our own enemies. And I think it is better that we just accept this as a matter of fact, that we accept the demons inside of us which want to destroy us, even if that destruction is a slow-going poison.

Because, ultimately, we must die and we know we must die. So the destructive force inside each one of us is familiar and close. We know the destructive side as much as we know the creative side. We know when we do good to ourselves and our bodies, and we know when we do bad.

Good and bad are only relative to our own individual experiences. Doing wrong to others is doing wrong to oneself.

But it is almost impossible to escape the cloud of unconsciousness that hovers over each one of us. And in an ironic display, we can see everyone else's flaws but not our own.

It is like the inability to smell one's own scent. The smell is palpable to others, but not to yourself.

I don't repress the mystery about myself; I form it.

I also celebrate it.

I have been called naive before, and after all, this blog is called The Blog of Innocence.

We are all innocent in life. We are innocent to the radical mystery of it.

No matter what we do, what errors we make, what horrors befall us, we are all human, we are all innocent.

Read a recent essay, "Loving Her" . . .

Descent: Part Two

Despair comes when I feel like my work has no purpose. Despair comes from feelings of naught, I am naught, my work is naught, the world is naught . . .

But what is despair?

Despair is the conviction of the futility of life.

Despair is all efforts signifying nothing.

Despair is the abortion of possibility.

Despair is a yoke that reads “Carry Me or Die.”

My despair feels like the abrupt end to a good movie. I wish I could return to those beginning parts and relive the experience, feel those powerful emotions. I regret having felt joy; it seems like a cruel reality, something that was given and taken away.

Despair is my grandfather’s overcoat hung on the door when he comes back from drinking and gambling. The house is silent. My grandmother is crying up in her bedroom.

My despair is a pit of solitude the town bullies throw me into so they can piss on me and shout jibes.

My despair is the convincing reality that I am stuck forever.

My despair is the inability to stay in one place, physical or otherwise.

My despair is the absence of wanting to do anything. Nothing interests me anymore.

My despair is a shopkeeper who scowls at me when I enter his store.

I used to be a drug addict. I am still seeking respite.

The Internet promises fulfillment. The type of person you are depends on what that fulfillment might be.

One moment, I feel like a king surveying his realms on a map of the world.

The next, I feel like the king’s fool, making jokes about the king’s empty possessions.

For three days, I am gliding through existence—every sensation a lubricant to positive emotion, every thought an expansive, intelligent connection.

For two more days, I am shedding my charisma and beginning to walk in a growing fog of self-delusion.

By the end of the week, lethargy and despair pour in through the levees.

Cycles are part of nature right? The seasons are cycles, the day is a cycle, life is a cycle . . .

I yearn for a place outside my constant seeking. I yearn for repose at the end of the wheel’s turning.

For the first time, I am conscious of my despair.

I am conscious of the cycle that drives me to act, or not to act. For the first time, I am interrogating my sadness.

I restrain myself from becoming too indulgent in my feelings of intoxication. This is the beginning of learning detachment.

My tendency is to grasp positive emotion. Like a cunning alchemist, I will try to make joy into a fountain of ecstasy or happiness into glowing euphoria.

Now I can see the problem with that. After euphoria, there is emptiness and only emptiness; after ecstasy there is pain.

Flights of grandeur. Flights of poetic inspiration. Flights of high emotion.

Nothing lasts. The water returns to the sea. The flight I expect to go on forever will at once make its sharp descent.

Whatever is holding me, will let go.

Flight: Part Two

I have had this dream ever since I was a child. The dream has become a sort of refrain in my life, endlessly repeating and replenishing my interest in it.

I am trying to pry into my subconscious; I am trying to decipher one of the many mysteries I hold inside me.

Waking from my flying dream is one of the most pleasant sensations I know. Upon waking I am reminded of my secret powers, and I go about the rest of my day with a foolish grin on my face.

The interpretation of dreams may be a provocative and stimulating pursuit, but one never arrives at a final solution—or the key—to his or her dream.

I suppose I can look up the symbol of “flying” in a dream-encyclopedia and find a generic, albeit satisfactory, explanation to my night-visions. It might even shed some light on the variegated herds of animals that haunt my African savannah . . .

But, on second thought, I don’t care to know the true meaning of this dream. I simply want to carry the sensation of flying. I want to carry it until I die, never knowing what the dream means or why I had it so often . . .

There is no doubt that our dreams are trying to tell us something. If you believe in the subconscious, then you’ll admit to the importance of this crystal bridge between worlds--

The vaguest memory of our dreams suggests we have access to them; a doorway, a brief crack of light. In rare occasions, a person might awake within her dream, which is called lucid dreaming.

Once I had a lucid dream. The world (of the dream) was totally fantastical, and yet I had some control within it, to move around and uncover things. I moved inside the dream as if I were playing a game, like a video game, but there were also some aspects I couldn’t control.

Don’t tell me the meaning of my flying dream. You’ll reduce it to psychological mumbo jumbo. For life is greater than psychology and its theories. And interpretations, like judgments, reduce individuals to abstract concepts. If I were to accept any interpretation of this flying dream, the mystery would be gone instantly, and the dream would lose its power of enchantment.

Sages continually remind us to “enlighten” ourselves. But the language of dreams is darkness and half-light.

What if I prefer my dreams to so-called real-life? What if I’m enjoying this ongoing hallucination, this overflowing stew of desires, dreams, and drives?

Besides, I prefer flying to walking long distances.

I will always vote in favor of dreams and darkness. I feel comfortable in the shade. I’m more likely to wander at night than during the daytime, and to follow my true desires in the wildwood. There are no pretenses at night. In your dreams you are never pretending to be someone; you just are.

During the daytime I feel the burden to be someone. I’m playing a highly-skilled part with expectations to fulfill, and there is always something that must get done. At night, in contrast, time loses its grip on me and my sense of inferiority melts away.

What is commonly called “real-life” is usually a mere trifle. I get worked up about the smallest things. Items I label with greatest importance and greatest consequence turn out to have minor importance and minor consequence.

All of my fears can be summed up: my real-life will fall apart.

What’s beautiful about dreams is that there’s nothing to fall apart because nothing has ever been static or fixed together (as we pretend to make life during the day). In a dream, the pieces are scattered to begin with. Dreams are wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. Time does not exist, at least not in any ordinary conception of the word. And because of the emptiness and formlessness of this world, we tend to have more freedom.

But really there is no difference between real-life and dreams. Real-life is also wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. One can even argue that time doesn’t exist here . . .