what to do with myself now

i'm at something of a loss this morning. last night i emailed my second chapter to the rest of my thesis committee, and i've decided not to jump back into the third chapter until after this morning's half-Canadian meeting.

Maybe I'll start using capital letters, but this is beside the point.

The point is that I thought about regurgitating the entirety of the 12 days of Christmas as a single post, but decided it was too much cutting and pasting. Instead, here are the highlights, although I'm not certain if i got the meter right.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me: twelve hours working, eleven prime numbers, ten icy minutes, nein! dancing ladies, eight line of verse, seven hours waiting, six senseless sayings,

five broken things

four boding starts, three cups of coffee, two films of Welles, and a dead pig by the roadside.

(Now that that's out of my system...)

Unsurprisingly, there's a preoccupation with units of time in the above lyrics. Somehow I managed to work in some minutes and two sets of hours, and although this wasn't intentional, I consider it a happy accident nonetheless – especially given the song's penchant for repetition.

These same concerns, along with memory, are the foci of my thesis; and yesterday I spent an hour talking with one of my committee members. He told me our conversations made him feel like he was in the Lacanian Real, which I took as a compliment.

Lacan's borromean knot - am I the symptom in the middle?

The interesting thing about the above image – these interlocking circles – is that it has a curious similarity to the mandala and yantra designs prevalent in parts of Asia:

stone sculpture from India

carving from a mausoleum in Central Asia

Hmmm...

on the 12th day of Christmas

on the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

twelve hours working

yesterday i saw myself immersed once more in my thesis, whose progress had become strained and sporadic over the holidays. i managed to pull away long enough to eat lunch and dinner, but probably only because my yin reminded me to. this got me thinking:

it's a funny thing how the mind words.

if it doesn't want to do something, then there are a million obstacles, diversions and complications. if it does want to do something, there are a million reasons, excuses and obligations. i've experienced both of these in the past weeks, and it seems absurd that something so banal could result in such extreme reactions.

Patanjali classifies these phenomena as two of the five kleshas, which are afflictions of the mind that result from separation from the divine:

the genealogy of the mind

the first klesha is avidya, ignorance as to the divinity of all things. this ignorance is not to be confused with doubt or questioning, which are just as likely to arise from curiosity or misperception, but rather indicates a far more fundamental problem – the experience of not knowing at all, of truly forgetting that everything is perfect (i.e. obeying karma) just the way it is:

dominoes, mother f**ker!

the second klesha is asmita, (mis)identification with assorted sordid entities, which results from our ignorance of the truth. the most common of these entities is the mind itself, causing so many people to walk around believing their thoughts. by doing this we limit ourselves, tying our soul to a specific thoughtform (vritti) that reinforces our sense of I, me and mine (ahamkara) .

for example, if i truly identify with being a "student," then what happens five months from now when that term no longer applies? i have to run out and grab another thoughtform, like "graduate" or "unemployed bum."

one of my favorite bums, unemployed since 1994

the third klesha is raga, our tendency to run towards the things that give us pleasure. these are the behaviors and objects that reinforce whatever thoughform we've latched onto: capitalists accumulate capital, consumers consume, and drug addicts use drugs. it turns into a vicious cycle, with each activity feeding the (mis)identification, and the (mis)identification directing one the sources of his or her desire.

the tricky thing, of course, is differentiating between raga and fulfilling one's dharma, the path to which we must abide to realize our proper place in the universe. my thesis, for instance, is part of my dharmic responsibility, but if i use it merely to reinforce my (mis)identification then i've missed the whole point.

this is never beside the point.

the fourth klesha is dvesha, avoidance of the things that bring us pain. raga inevitably leads to dvesha, just ask any capitalist turned philanthropist or alcoholic turned anonymous. these are still (mis)identifications, though, and rarely do our aversions coincide socially responsible behavior. it's far more common for to run away from the things we need to face, the feelings we need to experience – why else would one hoard all that money in the first place?

Warren Buffet, capitalist turned philanthropist

the fifth and final klesha is abhinivesha, the fear that keeps us clinging onto the impermanent world we typically call "life." no matter how many things we run away from, no matter how many things we run towards – we will never be able to soothe the disquietude that comes from not knowing who we truly are.

it's a slippery slope from ignorance to (mis)identification, and as far as i can tell it's unavoidable on this plane of existence. but the point of a spiritual practice (or at least mine) isn't to transcend these things, and i suspect i have at least as many lifetimes ahead of me as an oak tree has acorns.

i'm okay with this.

i'm okay with this because three years ago had a vision at Lake Worth's Annual Street Painting Festival. it was of the same festival, of the same park, but eighty years into the future. i was overcome by the realization that everyone i saw in the park, all the families and parents and running children, would be gone in eighty years. immediately i understood that i would be dead, too. i thought to myself:

yes, this is true.

there was no fear, no dread, only the calm acceptance of something so obvious. accompanying this, however, was the quiet certainty that it made no difference: the body i inhabit is temporary, the mind i call my own is ever-changing, but the me "I am" is neither.

there is no need to fear death, no need to seek liberation;

the last desire to fall away
before enlightenment
is the desire for Enlightenment

the belief in a 'destination,' the yearning for 'transcendence,' the search for the 'divine' – these are symptoms, not solutions. they are born in ignorance, and i remind myself everyday that every thoughtform to which i attach myself – even those that are 'spiritual' – will someday find themselves in that Lake Worth graveyard.

front cover of my 2010-2011 day planner

on the 11th day of Christmas

on the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

eleven prime numbers

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17,19, 23, 29, 31 – this is how many prime numbers i've lived so far. i'm not sure why this was on my mind yesterday, but it probably had something to do with my midday intuition that 2011 was itself a prime number.

it is, but this is beside the point.

the point is that my next one won't come until i'm 37, and it seems that monumental, life-changing events fall with disconcerting regularity at these ages. at 13 my parents divorced, for example, and at 23 i met Nancy.

this isn't to say that all prime numbers are calamitous, though. six years later the next prime arrived, and i left Nancy in what remains my most powerful flash of revelation to date. furthermore, when i was 17 i lost my virginity – actually, it would be more accurate to say i was lucky enough to have it taken from me, but this is also beside the point.

how many prime numbers do you have left?

the point is that, at most, i have 18 more prime numbers left in me. this figure is based on the assumption that i will live to be a 122, which is derived by my yin's prediction that i would live to be 132, which was subsequently knocked down 10 years by an unintentional arithmetic error on my part. either scenario is unlikely, of course, and whenever i'm doing something that annoys her i reminded her my scariest ghostlike voice:

"79 more years!"

if i can defy the wisdom of the oracle and manage to make it 80 more years, though, then i will live to the ripe old age of 113, which is not only a prime number but also ends in my favorite number, 13, which i had tattooed on my wrist when i was 23, also a prime number.

(note: all these 'meaningful' prime numbers may be little more than my penchant for number theory masquerading as numerology and superstition.)

since i turned 29, i've come to recognize prime numbers as a metaphor for the relationship between human individuality and what lies beyond. since primes can be divided only by one and themselves, this makes them both exceedingly rare and infinitely plentiful, and i see this as a beautiful allegory for the human condition:

each of us is unique,
each of is like countless others,
each of us find identity in the divine.

thus concluded the eleventh day of Christmas.

on the 10th day of Christmas

on the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

ten icy minutes

yesterday marked the thankful return to semi-normalcy. after a month of an utter lack of schedule, i've found myself drifting into habits that really aren't habits at all: waking at erratic times, falling asleep to movies, and sporadic vegetable consumption.

it's funny, because in yogic philosophy there's a lot of talk about observing patterns, combating samskara, and dissolving the habit centers in the mind. paradoxically, this is done primarily through the establishment of new routines and behaviors that counteract the effects of the previous ones.

a structuralist would be severely dissatisfied, but this is beside the point.

the point is that some routines are good for you, some habits are the very things that keep us sane and healthy. my half-Canadian friend, for example, prides himself as much as anyone i know on his ability to steer clear of patterns, to spot them as soon as they arise and respond effortlessly to the dangers they pose. and yet, just try to interrupt his penchant for minimalism with a porcelain dog:

this is not the dog in question

the dog is beside the point.

the point is that habits, like everything else, are neither intrinsically good nor bad. it's our relationship to them that matters, whether we're using them to provide a sense of security (bad yogi!) or balance (Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog).

also not the dog in question

i suppose all this is on my mind because over the past months i've managed to inflame the muscles and tendons in my forearms through countless hours at this keyboard. while my thesis progresses admirably, my physical being has paid the price. the concentration required to stay focused on the project becomes like a Mobius strip, turning back in on itself and resulting in motionless expanses of time that mirror, ironically, one of the films upon which i'm writing:

La jetée

sometimes when i'm working the thought pops into my head: human beings were not designed to do this. we were not meant to spend hours on end staring at abstraction and pontificating about two-dimensional images.

and yet we do.
you're doing it now.

harm-reduction becomes the order of the day, and for the modern intellectual worker, a good massage therapist is the equivalent of a needle exchange program. so yesterday i went to see my yin's colleague, who specializes in myofascial release:

Fascia Man

he proceeded mush and rub and torture my right forearm for twenty minutes, using everything from bamboo sticks to a rolling pin. all of it was uncomfortable, and some portions were actually downright painful. at the end he pulled out ice packs, telling me that after inflaming the tissue, we needed to ice it down. 'how long?' i asked.

"ten minutes."

thus concluded the tenth day of Christmas.

on the 9th day of Christmas

on the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

nein! dancing ladies

yesterday my yin and i went to visit her father for the first time since she returned from India. he only lives an hour away, but schedules and inclinations are a funny thing. it never ceases to amaze me what a big difference a little distance can make –

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my future father-in-law, in the words of Paramahansa Yogananda, is "one of those long-winded fellows whose conversational powers ignore time and embrace eternity." his capacity as a storyteller is without compare, and yesterday he told a tale that clocked in at 32 uninterrupted minutes. i'm sure it was actually longer than this, but i didn't even think to look at the clock until he really got going.

the whole episode dealt with his recent go-round with the Miami-Dade Police Department, starting with his wife's auto accident and then spiraling outwards to include a police report, the insurance companies, a second police report, one duty sergeant, a non-responsive lieutenant, one community relations officer, petty corruption, Channel 5 News, and an investigative journalist that he refers to as "the Weasel."

my future father-in-law has a long history with the Weasel, dating back to his exposés on shady dining establishments in South Florida. apparently the Weasel used the state food inspection board to get his "tips," and my future father-in-law believed (correctly, in my opinion) that this was a poor excuse for investigative journalism. so, he wrote to this guy some years back and told him that he oughta write about a real restaurant – someplace he would actually expect to be clean – rather than the strip mall delicatessens and Chinese take-out joints that he featured each week. apparently, not long after this exchange, the Weasel brought down a fancy place somewhere on Key Biscayne.

the Weasel is beside the point.

the point is that my future father-in-law actually tells stories in this way, bobbing and weaving from one topic to the next without ever losing sight of where he's heading. he is the Cassius Clay of kitchen table conversation:

"Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer."

these side stories aren't really tangents because they always add a little bit of flavor, a little bit of texture to the matter at hand. what emerges from these conversations is not a portrait, but a mural, and i never leave without learning something new. like, for example, that the "bad beat" is up over a half million dollars right now at the Seminole Casino. this, of course, requires an explanation of what a bad beat is, along with the casino's formula for upping the ante ($1/hand dealt). devoted gamblers will send their friends and girlfriends (and presumably boyfriends) to the limit tables with a hundred dollars because everybody gets paid if you're sitting at a bad beat table.

the bad beat is beside the point.

the point is that my future father-in-law worked his way up the chain of command rather than going to the State's Attorney's office (which his wife suggested). eventually he found a captain that was willing to stand up, take responsibility, and admit to the doctored police report. after all this rigmarole and headache, my future father-in-law received some wise counsel from his best friend, a retired member of the very police department he had spent the past six weeks harassing:

"don't ever get pulled in Miami-Dade County."

this wasn't the end of the story, though.

after all this, the server finally arrived with our check, and my future father-in-law said the most poetic thing i've heard in ages; possibly the most unpretentiously poetic thing i've ever heard in my life.

this is the point:

every Christmas Eve, my future father-in-law watches the original 1935 Scrooge, a film which i have never seen:

this tradition traces back to his childhood in Brooklyn, when he used to see the film each year with his father, who died long ago. my future father-in-law still carries on, though, and told us that every year he feels like his father is with him as he watches this black and white, silent film on his giant flat screen television.

i took pause.

stunned

by the image:

this
gruff Brooklynite
cum Florida transplant,
whose heart was so big that it broke,
sits in his living room at 2 a.m. with his father's ghost;
the ghost of the Father holds court
with the ghost of Christmas past,
the technological medium that
allows us to span time
but not death.

thus concluded the ninth day of Christmas.

on the 8th day of Christmas

son the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

eight lines of verse

yesterday, in my (sometimes) humble opinion, was a poor excuse for a holiday and did little to honor Janus, the Greek god of gates and doorways for whom the month is named:

this bust of a pagan God lives, inexplicably, in the Vatican

one head looking forward, one head looking back – the wisdom of Janus is the wisdom of warrior pose: "feel the pull of the past, stretch towards the future, stay centered in the present."

unfortunately, this wisdom, initially imparted upon me by a woman who impersonates a musical instrument for a living, was beside the point:

Andrea Brook, one half of Mass Ensemble

the point is that i spent much of the eight day of Christmas caught between mirrors, projecting expectations and misjudging reflections. the specifics are boring, even to me, but suffice to say that each activity seemed to draw me further into psychic quicksand. it didn't help that i had a wicked headache for much of the day, and i still don't know if it was a contributing factor or a symptom.

i suppose it doesn't matter.

what did matter is that my yin and i listened to This American Life, easily my favorite show on public radio and a surefire way to raise one's spirits – except yesterday:

Episode #234: "Say Anything"

this episode dealt with the myth that talking about things always makes them better, and focused on specific instances when (perhaps) it would have been better to say nothing. the one that grabbed my attention was an amateur interview between two friends, one of whom had recently tried to commit suicide. the two men were close in college, but had drifted apart in the intervening years. this struck a chord because it so closely resembled my own experience: the sadness of silently growing apart, the impotence of of fighting it, the feeling of being cast adrift in the ocean of time.

the friend being interviewed espoused one self-pitying, deceptively selfish remark after another. his entire worldview had been warped by his internal suffering, and the interviewer hoped, by recording these skewed ramblings, that his friend might someday come to see how he was living inside a world of funhouse mirrors.

i identified with both men, and my journal with the tape cassette:

a journal from 1997

the segment was beautiful, but it did little to help my state of mind.

i wondered if i had listened to: 1) the prologue to a suicide; or 2) a stranger that could have been me. the interview came to a conclusion, and a post-scriptum revealed that both hypotheses were true. i asked myself:

without the presents of the past,
how can we appreciate
the Presence of the present?

in an attempt to address this question, i found myself writing the following eight lines of verse:

The trembling agitation of low
blood sugar on New Year's Day.
Angry with the one you love,
frustrated with myself; how much
of this is hunger? Answer: the great
melancholic river of the past grows
longer every day. A source I cannot
remember; a destination I cannot see.

thus began, and concluded, the eighth day of Christmas.

on the 7th day of Christmas

on the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

seven hours waiting

just to say, "rabbit rabbit," which is good luck to say the first thing of every month. i don't know when or where this tradition originated, or even if it's actually a tradition at all. i first heard about it on a live Jawbreaker album, which i purchased in Kansas City (Kansas, not Missouri) in November of 2000:

obviously, they didn't break the bank paying a layout designer

the band had been disbanded (see what i did there?) for years by the time the album was released, but i had managed to see them once in Chapel Hill during college. two years earlier, i had missed them at a tiny venue in Durham; and two years later, their seminal album:

clock, matches and cannon

took on an importance to me that bordered on the obscene. the details are beyond my present time constraints and attention span, but these lyrics from "In Sadding Around" give some idea as to my state of mind:

Sleeping off the last five years takes another five years.
Recovery in lieu of being here right now.
When I throw myself at your feet, you know it's to be walked on.

We're breaking up every single night.

If I had a choice don't you think I'd make it?
I lost my voice. I hope I didn't break it.
Little demons by my bed whisper secrets.
The kind you never hear.

I dip my toe in this cold, cold life.
I want to dive, but I can't find the faith.

You with a view so unlike my own; I'm trying on your eyes.
So I let go, fall to the ground – It's a long way down again.

Petty cons keep peeling back my ears. We make plans.
Collaborate and give to you my better half.
Until now just dead weight, a prisoner of doubt.
In a cell we kiss and tell all our keepsakes.

Sore, hit the floor. Got my first glimpse of the sky.
The stars were on your side.
Who would've thunk the thirteenth fell on Friday?

I say hello and it's goodbye again.

the back cover of my journal:
November 7, 1999 - January 18, 2000

not long after that i met Nancy, and the song transformed from requiem to prophecy. but, for the time being, this is beside the point.

the point is that the album still serves as something of a sublime object for me, embodying all the potential, sadness and loss that spun like an invisible mobile around my twenty-two year old head:

an artwork by Marcel Duchamp

thus concluded the seventh day of Christmas.