I woke this morning with fear, for no other apparent reason then I was in fear. Odd the way that works, some may say its anxiety, others may say a lack of a spiritual connection – one in the same in my book. Explain it as you will, I woke not wanting to wake, not wanting to open my eyes to the day. I laid there in my bed, wrapping myself deep in the covers cuz of the fan blowing in the cold morning air.
My apartment gets so hot in the summer. I laid there listening to the street below me, a car driving by every so often. I was listening for the trash truck, that normally gages what time it is, lets me know I can keep the world outside for a just a little bit longer. I heard no trash truck, just periodically a vehicle driving by, the tires whistling along the street like as if it rained. But there was no rain, there was no trash truck – two positives to my mornings. The trash truck says it’s closer to 5:30, I think that’s what wakes me most mornings, either that or my internal alarm clock. As for the rain, well if the streets are wet I will most likely not be going into work that day. When the tires sound like they are being peeled off the street there’s a good chance it has rained and we don’t paint in the rain. Neither of these things were happening this morning.
No, this morning when I stirred it was dry out and the time was 4:40am, oh joy. Most mornings this is standard issue, well, 3:45am is a little more standard but none the less it’s getting up earlier than I wish to. I reached over to the nightstand, tapped my phone to wake it and seen the time, hoping by opening my eyes the fear would go away. Like you’re up, eyes are open, the fear was all in your sleep and going forth into the day will be fine. This didn’t happen.
The glow of the phone attacked my eyes as I rose to the side of the bed. Remove the foot brace that is supposed to help the plantar fasciitis and hobble over to the chair for shoes to walk in. The fear is still there and I question it. Why is it here, today is another day like any other day. Wake to work to ride to sleep with some other random things occurring in between all that. I use the facilities, the fear still there. It’s so weird the way it sits there with nothing attached to it. I think of the job I am starting today, just a regular repaint. I think of my actions yesterday, I did nothing suspect. I think of my past, I’m holding on to nothing. I think of my future…
I can’t say the fear is from my future, but I am quite perplexed as to it. There has been so much change in my life and the lives of everyone for that matter, it’s hard to emotionally wrap my head around it. That being said we all know our heads cannot emotionally wrap around anything, heads are left brained, hearts are right brained. None the less, each minute that comes is unknown. This is normal I tell myself, yet the feeling inside is not. The uncertainty of it all. Maybe that is where the fear is coming from, maybe it’s my lack of connection to the moment.
It just seems everyone has their lives figured out and here I am still struggling on how to open a bottle of aspirin. I’m supposed to be this way at 16 at 20 at 25 – not at 45. I should be evolved, on track, wise – I should know what I am doing and where I am going. But yet life seems to be a child proof container and I fumble with it.
The fear is an indicator that something is amiss in me, that I have gone astray from my life’s purpose, that I am living in my head more than my heart. All I truly want is freedom from self, all I truly want is too not live in fear, all I truly want is to completely surrender. There’s that question in the step working guide, “what would your life be like if you completely surrendered”. I think of that question often, to often - would I have fear, would I wonder what the next step is in my life, would I try and live or just live?
I sit here at my desk, sun coming in the window behind me, it’s beading up droplets of sweat on my back. My fingers poke away at the keys, needing to cut my nails cuz I do not care for the way they slip on the keys. This desk I bought when I got home from my trip 4 years back. I bought it cuz I was going to write more, I had found the passion again. And I wrote, some. But as the months went on life got full again and writing fell by the wayside. Business became important, money became important, sex became important, finding “someone” became important. Everything that only brought me momentary happiness became important and I stopped writing. My life was no longer being lived out of passion but out of survival, the need to be trumped everything. I could literally write my days away, never be published, never be read and be as content as the moon spinning around the earth.
Maybe writing is my escape from life, maybe it’s how I process living, maybe it’s a curse that needs to extruded from me and I’ve no choice but to do it. Some find that in acting, painting, volunteering and so on – maybe, just maybe I shouldn’t let a little virus stop me, I shouldn’t let fear pause my eyes each morning from opening, maybe I should throw caution to the wind.
Be alone in the middle of the forest, roasting in the afternoon sun of the desert, wandering the streets of Chicago or DC, jumping a plane to India with a rucksack and google translator. Not worry of money or retirement or sickness, maybe I was meant for something more than what I think I’m capable of, maybe we are all meant for something more, something grand, something meaningless, pointless to everyone that sees it, but golden to us.
It’s now time to leave, to head to work, to paint a house, laugh and smile and let go of this, let go of what was. Maybe one day you will wake and I will be gone, on a road somewhere, in the arms of a woman, dead in a morg. Maybe one day I will wake.
~
I woke this morning at 4:50am, I knew it was 4:50am before I looked at the phone. Grabbed it, flipped it over, tapped the face and looked, 4:49am. I laid there, actually quite content, not too cold, not too hot – I was Goldilocks in the bed that was just right and all I needed was her hair, my skin is obviously silky smooth already. I heard the trash truck; it was now 10 after 5.
I thought “I could sleep till 6, not read the news and still be ready on time”. Although it’s not really sleep at that point, it’s more of a dimensional space in between asleep and awake. Where daydreams collide with my subconscious dreams, they feel like night dreams, yet I can control them like daydreams. I am quite fond of these dreams, these moments in the wee hours of the morning where I can live in a space that cannot touch me. Not like reality, not like the day and all the dealings I endure and sometimes live. Not like the night, where I am woke by almost every dream, woke in fear, fighting someone, someone dying. These two plains I live in, like plateaus in purgatory as I wait for eternal rest.
The Catholics always taught me purgatory was like an empty desert, the kind you would see in the Sunday comics where Snoopy’s cousin lived, although there was nothing comical about it. Maybe they didn’t teach me it was a comical desert but that was what I envisioned at 7 years old, an empty desolate plain. I mean who tries to learn 7 year old about a place to go to do penance till all your sins are washed away. “You need a clean soul to make it into heaven” they would say – I knew I was fucked from then on.
I would sit in church and stair up at that huge cross with Jesus hanging on it, the stab wound, the crown of thorns, the nails in his hands and feet. They made it so life like, expertly detailed, the blood a deep red, the sadness in his eyes, stained loin cloth. I would sit there in awe, trying my best to wrap my tiny little head around it all. Was this whole god/church thing good or bad? A similar conundrum seems to still plagues me at times, this whole life/living thing, is it good or bad? I’ve found answers to neither one, I just exist in them/with them. I don’t make it to church anymore but the all mighty and I commune on occasion. I can’t say I am always living but I am always existing in life.
Both these ideas? Theories? Beliefs? What word can describe either of these. Both these entities have haunted me since I was given the ability to think for myself. Love running a close second to them both. I mean it’s 6:22 on a Wednesday morning and I’m writing about god and life and how both cause me to rattle and question everything. Can one exist without the other, does one control the other, does the other dictate how we see the other? It’s enough to make you want to drink, make you want to call in sick and spend the day at the beach with your toes in the sand watching the waves crash on the shore, make you want to pack it all up and search for answers where you wouldn’t expect them to be.
I woke this morning with doubt, doubt that I could be anything more than a painter. I think of people that never doubted themselves, that walked right through adversity and became what they had envisioned themselves to be. I think how, how did they do it, walk through the fear, let go of the what if’s, grinded against the stone of trials and tribulation with once soft skin and fragile life. I think, could I be one those people, could I be that great within me, do I have the grit, the fortitude, the drive, or will I forever be that scared 7 year old kid sitting in the pew at St. Joan of Arc trying to wrap my head around it all.
It’s like I fear ending up in purgatory, yet I am already there, here – I am in this wasteland of fear, waiting for life to change, waiting to be cleansed and freed. I struggle to make it through the afternoons, sitting in my apartment, knowing there is a world out there that calls to me, a life that is begging to be lived. I shut the windows, close the blinds, turn on the TV to drown out the thoughts. I wonder how anyone is ever content, as much as I strive for it, I am not.
I’ve one last job too finish starting next week, should take me a month or so. I can leave after that, I could, like seriously I really could. In the dead of summer I could go. Oregon, Canada, Wyoming, Montana – stay north cuz it will be a bit cooler than the southwest. Make my way to the east coast come September, up into Maine and along the eastern seaboard. Visit Danny in Brooklyn, ride epic trails in North Carolina, spend my winter down in Florida, I’ve an aunt that has a vacation home in the keys I could stay at. Try and channel Bukowski, Kerouac, Hemmingway, Poe – all my favorite writers drunks and derelicts! Of course they are, those are my people, the relatable ones to me. The broken, the discarded, the mad one’s. I could start drinking again, I would be amazing if I drank, an amazing writer, an amazing human being. I would be pretty and smart and desired and and and!! And we are not going down that road again, that one ends in cocaine and feeble attempts at suicide… but I bet you I would amazing if I drank.
~
I don’t know if I’ll be good enough, I would like to think I will be but I’m not sure this morning. That feeling of impending doom seems to be about, how that comes on is fascinating to me. Is it the pint of ice cream that I ate last night that is lingering in my self-esteem, is it the fact that I have yet to set a date too leave, is it that I am channeling Shleprock from the Flintstones into my life. I don’t know what it is, this feeling of sadness mixed with fear and a hint of anxiety. Is it the chemicals in my brain that are running about all willy nilly, what is it that brings on these feelings. Where did that feeling go, the one that attacked the day with vigor and strength, with optimism and happiness.
The sun is out, money in my pocket, relatively happy, good health, friends, family – all the pretty things that tell me life is good. Yet here I sit this morning, waking to a bleakness, a sadness. Dragging myself off the couch, making the coffee, reading the news, reminds me of how every episode of Happy Days started.
The credits, the music, Tom Bosley saying, “This was filmed before a live studio audience” as the camera pans in on the house. That repetitiveness, that robotic feature that does the same thing, does what it was programed to do, I’m doing what I’ve been programed to do. My existence is like the Hunger Games and I’m boxed inside some quadrant called San Luis Obispo. I’m repressed by the money and the healthcare system. I’m Tiny Tim with a bum leg just hoping to get some table scrapes at Christmas. I’m the creator of my own destiny, isn’t that a saying? I’m the creator of my own luck, think that one’s a tattoo. I am all powerful in my own life, I control the outcomes, the choices.
I’ve no understanding of why I cannot be content, in acceptance of this simple boxd up life with bright wrapping paper and pretty bow. Maybe I’m not supposed to be, maybe I’m meant to be more, do more. Maybe I’m meant to be nothing and go nowhere all the while touching every part of this world I have dreamed about. Maybe the fear of failure is to over-whelming and settling for a vanilla life is much easier to swallow. Maybe at 45 it’s too late. Maybe I’ll get hit by a truck tomorrow and die. Maybe is a word that should not exist in my vocabulary, maybe is a copout, it’s a backdoor, it’s just another way to stay stagnate, repressed.
At 45 your supposed to be settled and working towards retirement. Your body is going in the opposite direction of living, your teeth are starting to fail, you nap more – at 45 you’re not supposed to uproot your life to live on the road like a 20-year-old. Your supposed to be a good adult, make money, eat healthy, stay home, take small vacations, be safe. This need to leave has plagued me my entire life, has gnawed at my soul for as long as I can remember, has called me. After years of waiting for my time, building a house on wheels, saving the money, completely set to make this a successful endeavor (whatever successful looks like, actually I really don’t think successful has any look) and not some halfcocked crazy run fueled by my disease, here I am, on the cusp of greatness and a pandemic hits. Another reason, another hurdle, another “thing” to stop me, to overcome, to adapt to. Another reason to question, to contemplate, another reason to maybe.
~
Each morning incents fills the air of my apartment, there’s something calming about it for me. Maybe it’s all those years of meditation, of lighting incense, lighting candles, sitting quietly, sitting still. So much has been taught to me through meditation, patients, oneness, attention to the moment, perseverance, unity with the world around me. When I am still and focused on what is present in my life at this exact moment, I am connected too everything in it, nothing is apart from me.
The fragrances, the air I breath, the cushion I am sitting on, my body, every thought is thought and not passed over or obsessed on. Then the longer I sit, the stiller I get, the less I feel of my physical presence on this earth and deeper I go into a state of nothingness. I’ve forever wanted to disappear, to be void of all that sours me, but I am so emotionally attached to everything around me, it’s hard to be free of it all. Through meditation I find that freedom, I am able to see things as they are and let them go, find that they are not a part of me, they are not mine, but I can be with them as they are, observe them and see their true beauty. Whether it’s a feeling or an object or a thought, I can watch it and appreciate it is, unjudged, unattached. It’s quite remarkable the way meditation has evolved me in ways I never thought possible.
Now with all that being said I have not meditated in like 3 months? The act of sitting is hard to do, just to sit still. My mind wants to stay busy at all cost, it drives my hands to touch stuff, my eyes to wander, to distract me from me, from this moment. My mind likes to stay busy and the moment is not always exciting or exhilarating, most times it is simple and slow and quite, my mind does not care for those times – even if those times are the ones I truly crave. I want the peace, the simplicity, the calmness, but my monkey mind wants more than that, always. It wants to feel good all the time.
Serenity is sometimes mistaken as boredom, I learned this many years back. My mind does not like to be bored. I guess being an addict might play into it all some, the disease forever driving me to constantly change the way I feel, seeking instant gratification. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a human condition. I think to my mother who has a buying problem, always needing more stuff, her house is that of a museum thrift store. Tiny little chachkeys and pictures and blankets and books and oh lord are her walls packed. At least for me they seem to be. She is an addict, like me, we are similar in a fashion that is creepy on some levels, we are too alike at times. My sister on the other hand has no need for more of anything, her life is rich and full but has never seemed over-indulged in any way. I always look too my sister for what normal looks like and I look to my mother to see what normal does not look like. Then I shoot for something in the middle.
Now all this being said, one is an addict, one is not. Is it human condition to always want to change the way we feel or is it an addict trait. Maybe it is something in between, like a learned behavior? I’m sure there is a grad student or doctor somewhere that could give me a medical answer to this, the brain works like this and studies have shown that X is equal to Y and when you factor in Z the answer is plain to see, traw la law la law la law, a crazy life for me.
All this clutter’s my mind and distracts me, like social media, like right and wrong. That part of me that craves simplicity, that craves meditation, whether it’s walking or riding or sitting meditation, that is what I am truly after. Quieting my mind, putting the voices to a long overdue slumber. Meditation has given me that over the years, kept me present in the moment so as not to be distracted by my obsessive-compulsive disorder that wants constant change and only good feelings. And if I stop and think about it, there are no bad feelings, just feelings. They are here then they are gone, with the moment. It’s in the avoidance of them, that’s when suffering occurs. When I fall fool to attachment and desire all sanity and happiness is lost.
~
And on the 5th morning I was late to rise. I took my time with the news, with the coffee, I took my time with not feeling it, being ok with not feeling it. It was/is just a feeling, not the end all be all of my day, my life or my existence. I went to breakfast, first time in 2 ½ months, saw my favorite waitress. She had lost the child within her I was told a little bit back, I didn’t make mention of this, neither did she. It was sad, I was sad for her, there was now something different about her, a sadness in her eyes, a quietness to her. There was an awkwardness to our conversation, an elephant in the room.
On the 5th morning I ate pancakes and eggs and bacon, I drank coffee and texted with an old friend who’s in town for a visit. I thought of how I like being alone and how strange I feel hanging out with people. There’s reason why I want to live in my van, in the middle of the desert, high in the mountains, on empty beaches. There’s always more to it if I really want to look, to explore, to understand. The restaurant was empty, copper tabletops and empty chairs, no silverware, no saltshakers, no cups nor saucers at the ready for endless coffee. It was vacant in there, like something out of a movie in a sleepy roadside dinner. It felt as I feel most days.
Moring number 5. I am ok with being alone today, with nothing to do, yet I have plans. I wish to ride my bike, up and down rocky trails, with dirt and bushes and branches and bees and clouds and the sun shining down on me. I’ve no desires out there, no right or wrong, no good or bad. I have what I understand out there, nothingness, simplicity, quiet spaces. Maybe it’s the problems I have living life and single-track trails is all I can handle, maybe that is why I seek the buddhist path earnestly and why I am so gravely affected when I veer off that path. When I’m alone I cannot be hurt, I cannot be neglected, my ego subsides, my attachments and desires decrease. I am at my best when I am alone, no influences, no distractions.
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