Cartel grows

This story is more about my capacity for self-delusion.

DEA agents investigating Cartels  growing marijuana on California forestland turned up beer kegs, propane stoves, poachers and fieldworkers living in tents. Many of them weren’t even sure where the hell they were ( “Texas ..?” ). Turns out it wasn’t the Cartels after all. Mostly itinerant farmers all the way from Michoacan who were trying to avoid the Cartels and move closer to market. When I heard this I went “I could have told them that ..it’s well-known that Cartels are more into smuggling than farming” and “Michoacan farmers are the ones with the know-how and perseverance to set up camp and live in the woods like that.” Fact is ..I could have told them nothing of the sort. I’d been following this story and I too believed that Mexican Cartels were infiltrating California. I could of only told them otherwise after they’d already told me. Armed with this new information ..I quickly went back and revised my memory for things I knew before. Kind of like revisionist history ..giving me a false sense that ‘I knew it all along’ ..arrogant asshole that I am.

Going native

Economists tell me I make optimal decisions based on the best information available. They call this the ‘rational’ model of man. Neuroscience tells me my perception is selective, memory is faulty and decisions are mostly visceral. They call this the ‘somatic’ model of man. I think I’ll go with that. Without instinct, I’d never finish deciding what to eat or what to wear. I buy clothes that’ll make me look cool and acceptable to the people I hang with. I look for approval from my mother/dietician/checkout-girl whenever I buy groceries. I blow them off when I’m feeling rebellious. I make financial decisions fearing I’ll disappoint my father. I only bookmark pages I feel comfortable putting on facebook. I practice a ‘disarming smile’ out of fear of looking unapproachable. I chose my words very carefully out of fear of looking foolish. Damn straight my decisions are visceral. Appetite and approval guide my decisions just as much as any contributions from the rational side.

Hopi prophecy

“A sign of the end of time is when people mistake the work of man for the work of nature”

When I first heard this, it made me think of things like processed foods, formica counter-tops and modern highways. Today it struck me how this prophecy also covers what I believe is going on inside my head. I often mistake artificial rules of logic for native brain waves. However, my thoughts don’t follow rules of logic. Left to their own device, they act more like heuristics .. and a heuristic is more like a convenient rule-of-thumb. The arrogance of believing that mental processes are logical processes puts me in a position of feeling overconfident and defensive about my ideas. I mean, after all .. I arrived there by commonly accepted principles. Disagree with me and you must not be clear on the fundamentals of rational thought. Needless to say, I don’t often get it right.

Presence of mind

“A sign of the end of time is when people can no longer tell the difference between the work of man and the work of nature ..” Hopi prophecy

I’ve never met anyone with a healthy mental outlook who didn’t also have great presence of mind. They can be totally immersed in virtual space then quickly disconnect and be completely present for you. They skillfully navigate technical networks as well as the ‘here and now’. Don’t get me wrong, I am also enamored with technology. Social networks enable people to expand their outlook, collaborate and see things from totally different perspectives. That’s what the designers of the Internet originally had in mind. There’s a recent example I like to share. Scientists at the University of Washington were trying to figure out the way enzymes act to allow AIDS to reproduce ..and they couldn’t solve it. So, they put it on the Internet and made it into a game and these gamers from all over the world solved it in three weeks. The brainpower of the world is at our disposal. That’s a good thing. However, with any technology ..I can tell you some really good things about it as well as some not-so-good things about it. People get so engaged in the technological world that they often don’t seem to be present in the real one. I’m not sure mental health is possible without being able to refresh the mind periodically and be completely present with people. I recently spent two weeks at Esalen in Big Sur where I was totally immersed with people in the moment. It was a technology break for me. I’m not so sure about my mental health, but I did return feeling a renewed appreciation for technology as well as a greater sense of what is going on here in the present.

Resolutions

1.    Eat more
2.    Listen then yell
3.    Find a cure for laziness
5.    Stop compounding false impressions
6.    Lower stress by breaking resolutions faster
7.    Unblock the slow moving stream of debris in my head
8.    Develop an app that replaces texting with seeing someone
9.    Reduce conflict by arguing less with people who aren’t there
10.  Regularly ask myself what I can do now to avoid getting pissed off at         myself later (hey, a cure for laziness ..scratch no. 3 off the list)

Scatter brain

I’m chopping tomatoes for scrambled eggs when memories of doing this in the past pop into my head ..followed by thoughts about my partner’s progress on the road to Austin. A whistling sound brings my attention back to water for tea when I suddenly see flashbacks of my sister laughing at me about my breakfast routine ..followed by the sound of my college roommates yelling at me about how long it takes ..which morphs into a rehearsal for what I’m supposed to say at a meeting this afternoon. Suddenly scalding tea is spraying out of my mouth and I douse it with orange juice and realize I’m already sitting at the table eating breakfast.

Prānayāma

I’m attending Prānayāma practice tonight. Prāna means ‘breath’ or ‘life force’ and āyāma means ‘abode’. So it’s the practice of restoring the place where your life force resides. I admit, it does oxygenate the system. I can feel a warm tingling sensation in my hands and feet ..and the feeling that all’s well spreading through my brain ..making me all smiles. Afterward, I hang around talking to the session leader Jeff ..a friend who I haven’t seen for a long time. He tells me that Brian moved back to Pennsylvania but Dave can still be seen walking around town. Jeff is busy preparing for a workshop on Ayurvedic healing this weekend. One of tonight’s participants is an elderly woman who receives Ayurvedic treatment. She’s planning a 50-day excursion through India this fall. I think that’s remarkable. Now Jeff is telling me about an ancient language he read about in the Upanishads where the sound carries the meaning by itself, without the need for an intermediate concept. He goes “ ..consider the expression ‘shhh’ in English. It conveys a soothing sensation all by itself.” Makes me think about the sound the ocean makes as it rolls over the sand on the beach ..and about all the times I’ve sat there listening to it ..then I think about how it sounds like a simple breath ..then I realize that breathing is not really simple, only thinking makes it so ..it’s really a complex process that’s been around since the beginning ..then I remind myself not to overthink it ..now I’m wondering how much I missed while Jeff was talking and I was listening to myself think.

Rhapsody

Laura is yelling at Andy in proper English, but it’s lost on him. Andy is a dog whose English is limited to a few basic commands, usually associated with specific actions he picked up from me or obedience school. Laura’s displeasure is clear however. That’s carried by the intonation pattern or ‘vibration intervals’ of speech ..kind of like the difference between hearing a song by Metallica and a song by Faith Hill. Out on the streets, my usual California monotone is often lost on people. No one cares about carefully formed sentences. Too neutral. Like Andy, what they want to hear is the intonation pattern. Intonation, like music, is universal and carries feelings better than whatever it is I’m trying to say. And feelings are the first thing you want to find out. Who wants to listen to a monologue ..or an angry shrill. Even the usual “Good morning, how are you ..?” sounds more engaging when spoken with a lilting southern accent. It sounds like they really care ..even when they don’t.

Online mirror

I’m sitting watching a flickering candle and wondering if I’m following the process. What process ..? The process I learned in a writing workshop I once took. Actually, I already know that I’m not. I say this because I’m not starting from the present moment, but from a place I remember yesterday, and the day before. Anyway, I want to say that I’m moving forward with a topic in mind ..but no clear idea of where it will lead. I have found that putting my journal online has been revealing. It’s put a mirror to my face and shown me what a pompous ass I am. Perhaps I’m not always so, but my writing often sounds pretentious and boastful. What do I mean boastful ..? Like I’ve got something to prove. What am I trying to prove ..? That I haven’t been slack ..I learned my lesson ..I can write from a so-called west coast literary tradition with the best of them ..whatever that means. Sort of stream of consciousness, I suppose. But that’s not how it sounds. It sounds crafted and arrogant. I want to say it sounds like I write from my head too much, but that’s not quite right. I write from the heart as well, but mostly with feelings of concern over how it’s going to sound to other people. Will it be entertaining enough, or engaging enough. But more importantly, does it fit the image I want others to have of myself. What image ..? That I’m smart and lead a fulfilling and eventful life. How embarrassing is that ..and downright vain. I may not be fully conscious of these feelings while I’m writing, but I get a sense of them now, while I’m reading. It sounds like I’m trying awfully hard to impress someone. I have no pretensions of being a good writer ..but at least an honest one, but these don’t even sound honest to me. Instead, I feel like my writing-practice becomes an exercise in impression-formation once I start thinking about putting it online.

Lab rat

It’s been awhile since I worked in a laboratory setting. Although I can’t say I miss it much ..I still have insatiable curiosity and powerful exploratory instincts. So now I’m using myself as a lab specimen ..and performing a periodic ‘content analysis’ of the commentary inside my head ..the one that interprets events in my life and tells me how badly I’ve screwed them up. Preliminary results show an accelerating trend toward critical self-loathing ..fear-mongering ..and reckless catastrophe theories ..in other words, it doesn't sound pretty. It uses a lot of profanity ..constantly mis-labels things ..and delivers mostly bad news ..multiplying the smallest matter ..for example, I miss a couple of payments ..and all I hear is how badly I screwed my credit ..how I’m never going to get a loan again ..so I’m personally screwed for the rest of my life ..forget about ever attracting babes ..because they’re going to foreclose on me ..and I can kiss the California dream good bye ..not to mention what a fucking dumbass I am ..and that I’d probably be better off drowning myself in the bathtub. I open the envelope and discover that my crime was forgetting to pay the grocery bill. Tentative conclusion: (we always had to make up one of these) Interpretation and commentary happen so fast .. I don’t stand a chance of catching a glimpse of the way things really are ..which makes worrying about them a big waste of my imagination..

Streaming imagery

I read an article about Einstein in the newspaper this morning ..and it made me think about the way I warp space.. kind of like a planet ..only in my case, it’s psychological space. My brain actively processes the surroundings ..sampling information from some areas more than others ..depending on what interests me at the moment. This creates a bubble that changes the way life appears. Matters of greater interest come to the foreground, and appear in high definition ..while matters of lesser interest fade into the background. Distortion and dispersion are the result. I rarely catch a glimpse of things the way they really are. Sensory phenomena arise and dissolve each instant ..my senses are refreshed ..and a new cycle of information rises and dissolves. It's a natural flow ..anything different would be like trying to drink from a fire hose ..there’s just too much information ..I beleive my brain spends most of it’s waking hours screening calls.

Split level head

I’m so happy I live in a split-level head ..there are so many rooms ..I don’t have to go anywhere ..I can do all my traveling from home. I run up the stairs ..where the police are ready to beat me because of my ongoing problems with authority. I run up the stairs and there’s an attorney waiting to brief me ..but I resist because I don’t trust anyone who’s trying to convince me. I run up the stairs where there’s a room full of women ..and a table full of daggers. I run up the stairs where my business partner shoots me. I run up the stairs and find an empty room ..feels kinda’ lonely in here. I run up the stairs into a room full of books ..I browse the shelves until I find one that says I’m better off living by myself. I curse the fact that I can’t talk to my father ..until I find the page that says that he has trouble talking to me too ..which makes me feel like an oddball ..until further down I read that maybe he’s an oddball too ..I feel grateful for the realization that there are two sides to that story ..and hope it’s not because I’m a paranoid schizo. I worry about the up-coming apocalypse ..then realize I have no religious basis to think one might ever happen. I curse the wind and rain ..but even the sunshine brings me pain. I worry about my cholesterol ..and drive 95 mph down the hall. I am a man of constant contradiction ..wait long enough and I’ll tell you the opposite. I’m so happy I live in a split-level head

Day seven

Tea and gruel for breakfast again ..I’ve used up all the usual food ..looks like I’ll be raiding the survival kits up on the top shelf pretty soon. I haven’t seen another person in days ..not since Laura dropped by and left me some homemade soup. A discarded newspaper reports that Baghdad is sliding into chaos ..while we send men with shovels to try and contain the flow of events. I take another sip of tea ..and feel trace amounts of citrus and spice trigger a chain reaction at my taste receptor sites. OK, what do I say next ..what would Buddha say ..what do other people want me to say ..now that’s the million dollar question ..I’ll answer it by saying that I’d like to be called the doktor of space ..known for discovering the forces that explain how the mind keeps the world from blowing apart ..I’ll go up to the microphone and start each speech by saying that the first step was discovering the forces that made me feel as though the world was making my head blow apart ..that’ll satisfy anyone who’s in a riddle-solving frame of mind. A little flame flickers next to me ..they turned off the electricity weeks ago ..but that’s all right ..I like writing by candlelight ..makes me feel like mahatma gandhi ..and the wolves have stopped howling at the door ..they’re in the living room now ..I serve them rodents and tea.

Shifty ideas

Everything is falling apart ..or so I tell myself ..but when I stop and look around ..the validity of the message falls apart ..only a few things I own are in need of repair ..my stereo ..my microwave ..my laptop ..everything else is working fine ..my desktop ..my furnace ..my car ..my neuro pathways ..OK, I may have to check those ..it seems to be the nature of my mind to multiply small matters ..and catastrophize minor setbacks ..it’s like I have a panel of judges inside my head that keep me awake at night worrying about some silly little thing going down over nothing ..like what someone said or did not say that day ..revealing their ‘true’ intentions ..threatening intentions ..like malice and betrayal ..when, by the light of day ..I see there is no such conspiracy ..that's when I experience what I call a simple ‘shift in perspective’ ..makes me feel lighter ..less overwhelmed by the misperception that the world is falling apart (at least until I pick up the newspaper) ..or someone is out to get me ..it allows me to go about the day feeling free and unencumbered .. less defensive and more receptive to what other people have to say (although my ex-wife would probably disagree) ..I can always rely on a slight ‘shift in perspective’ to pull me out of a downward spiral ..for some reason, resilience works for me ..I think I was born with it ..and my father nurtured it ..showing me how to focus on the obstacles in front of me instead of the demons of self-defeat inside my head ..I was reading a case study about homelessness earlier today .. when I thought about some of the others that I’ve read ..and some of the people that I’ve met ..I came to the conclusion ..or oversimplification ..that they seem to be the result of two forces ..a less-than-resilient mental disposition encountering a major-life misfortune ..something along the lines of losing a spouse ..a job ..a house ..followed by a lifetime spent ruminating ..blaming ..and self-loathing .. persistent feelings of failure ..not very adaptive ways of responding to temporary setbacks ..I realize how presumptuous this must sound ..especially coming from someone who usually writes such frivolous journal entries ..but I don’t dwell on it much ..and I continue to write all the same ..because someone once told me that the mind is a ‘story-making device’ ..and I believe it.

Never never land

I walk aimlessly through the streets of Santa Cruz .. a sleepy little northern town nestled between giant redwood trees and the deep blue sea ..I enter Lorenzo woods and hear a mountain side of pine trees hum and sing ..the pine needles bend sun rays that burst into colored light at my visual receptor sites ..I can see the lights of a fairy camp coming from the river banks ..reminds me what a mystical space I’m in ..back on Pacific Avenue there are lots of bicycles, Birkenstocks, paisley covered halter tops and surf board shops ..even this ordinary motel room looks like the Taj Mahal to me ..and I think I see ..in the waves behind my eye lids ..where never-never land might be..

Branching streams

A breeze cools my face ..a candle flickers ..a bell rings to keep my mind from wandering .. like a stream that branches in different directions ..there's a thousand and one things rattling around up there ..not one of them worth writing about. Why don’t I feel like there’s anything worth writing about ? Nothing seems entertaining enough ..or clever enough. It all seems like a bunch of boring crap you find in a junk drawer ..images of someone I haven’t seen since 2001 ..remnants of a failed relationship I’m still trying to fix. Even now, I’m trying to improve a conversation that I had the night before. What sense does that make? I wonder what’s in me that makes me do that ? Maybe if I rummage around long enough I’ll find something interesting ..a key that unlocks a door ..a door that leads to a more enlightened place. You know, maybe it’s OK being a junk drawer ..or a branching stream ..because it’s becoming a real strain trying to keep what I am moving down a straight path all the time. I’m always afraid of miscalculating ..taking the wrong step ..and looking like the fool that I am. In fact, I think I’m more afraid of that than I am falling off a cliff.

Off road travel

Sometimes I don’t have to leave the area to travel .. my deck is as far as I get ..the road in my head is weird enough ..I’m traveling through thoughts every millisecond of the day ..I admit, most of it is flying by so fast it’s just a blur ..but sometimes, out of the corner of my eye ..something will catch my attention and shift the direction of travel down an avenue worth exploring. I’ve learned that one road is just as interesting as another ..so, if I’m in a receptive state of mind ..I won’t discriminate. I lay back and see images of myself as a kid ..roaming through the neighborhood on a bicycle with a group of other kids ..one of them comes up to me and says “don’t you think it’s more fun to ride in a group ..there’s more people to add to the experience” ~ flash ~ I’m sitting around a hookah with several other people and we're playing a game where one person starts a story ..and the next person has to continue ~ flash ~ the person next to me says: “..and he drops the bag of dope inside a parked car before the cops pull him over” ~ flash ~ it’s my turn ..I remember saying something like ..a couple on their first date come back to the car, and she says “Philip, you said you didn’t do drugs” ~ flash ~ a train full of block letter graffiti streaks by non stop with no gaps in between ..I wonder if I’m becoming illiterate ~ flash ~ a dog barks ..a child cries ..and there’s a sound check coming from the county bowl ..I wake up startled ..thinking there’s a half human beast howling down the canyon toward me ..my heart is racing ~ flash ~ I remember Anne saying that she “dabbles in Wikki” ..but I don’t know what that means ..it’s not in the dictionary .. so I guess I’ll go look it up on the Internet ..there's people adding to the story out there all the time

Another night

There’s a desert sky overhead ..which combines with the ocean air and makes me feel like I’m living in the tropics. Don’t get me wrong ..it doesn’t bother me, I actually enjoy tropical weather ..but lately I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Sometimes I wait until four in the morning, when it cools off, before trying ..but weather is not the only reason. I’m afraid of being attacked by the demons that bombard me in the night when I go to bed. These aren’t ghosts from the nether world ..they are my own personal fears and anxieties ..things that I haven’t learned to cope with yet ..which just bolsters my fear that I probably never will. It seems that the best I can do is anesthetize them and cover them up. So now they’re buried somewhere in my psyche waiting to come out and haunt me at night They run from petty annoyances to major stress. I’m afraid of not getting back on my feet and working at something meaningful again (!) ..and I’m afraid that I’ll never get around to decorating the house ..or finishing the laundry (?) I’m afraid I won’t even be able to keep up with the repairs ..which really tweaks my sense of self-sufficiency. Then there are the phantoms that tell me I’ll never kick my bad habits ..or make it to the gym ..or recover my interest in reading .. but you know, books contain disturbing ideas ..ones’ that I’m trying to forget ..tales of trauma and tragedy ..my thoughts become intolerable ..making me get out of bed and pace the floor at night ..I can’t seem to stop thinking about them ..or put them to rest.

Lunatic beat

I have my own theory about treating mental illness ..if you want to contain the deranged ..put them in a bigger container ..just as many people recover on a large stretch of sandy beach as they do in a mental institution. Now, I can use a padded cell just as much as the next person ..but I prefer a sandy beach. Which is more or less the reason I live where I do. It’s therapeutic. I don’t remember the last time I drove on anything wider than a two lane road. A town farther north like Santa Cruz would be nice ..but I don’t want to push a good thing ..besides, life follows me where ever I go and I wind up just as intolerable in the next place ..ask anyone. Maybe a psychotic breakdown is healthy every once in a while ..it’s like a new perspective ..I think Eastern mystics would call it visionary. I grew up to the sounds of women screaming (five sisters ..go figure). I still hear them when there’s no one around. I scream back occasionally. Hey, no matter how many times a coyote hears a siren ..it howls back. The spirits of Nopal Canyon are getting angry ..everybody here acts like they own the place ..when in reality .. we’re all just passing through .. living in temporary shelter made out of bones. We’re the nomads of skeleton land. I hate crows ..and they know it. That’s why they gather outside my bedroom window and screech all day. What really worries me though is when tree limbs crash through my skylight. I hate to think of what that means. It’s all connected though. The spirits know. The traffic grows silent ..a siren wails ..police chase me for sport ..I pull over and traffic roars by like a freight train. I drive on the shoulder until I come to an off ramp ..and disappear down the side streets. I don’t need to run away to another northern town ..it’s me that I need to find sanctuary from.

Cosmic Charlie

Sometimes while I’m working in Photoshop ..I’ll accidentally lose a layer ..and everything I’ve done since then will be floating around disconnected from anything I’d done before. It's like what happens when layers of my memory get peeled away and I become disconnected from anything that went on before ..like Robinson Caruso ..even my present surroundings look unfamiliar. I walk down State Street for the millionth time ..and it’s like the first time. I have no clue what’s coming next. Without memories, I have no way of putting together an image of what lies ahead. The pavement dissolves ..and I advance unhinged ..without a script. Someone materializes and says hi ..looks at me for a moment and passes by. Anyone who looks that sweet is always passing by. But, hey ..no memories ..no expectations ..if border guards stop me out here ..I have no baggage ..nothing to claim or deny. That’s what I like about Photoshop ..it helps me see things unhindered by my usual way of looking at them. And if any of this makes sense ..you need to take a break from Photoshop too.