INTERESTING day!! Was outside doing stuff nonstop for 10.5 hours basically. Woke up noon. immediately did 6 circuts, showerd, tie, jacket, etc. Then drove to Michael Zanuck Agency. cool as!! Met katherine she said a lot:
I shouldn't squint during interviews
my glasses looked good
I looked thinner around the cheekbones than my 2006 picture
that my 2006 headshot didn't look professiona (I said because of my shading/coloring lol)
that I should email them for representation (and I did) in commercials if offered and I did LOL
Realized all the movie posters up was like MY room (austin powers, music stuff, world mape etc. cool as!! Funny wild! lol!!).
Michael zanuck also looked REALLY cool. He looked a LOT like Alan Arkin haha!! Hawaiian shirt, the office was the size of my dad's office which was interesting, so...pretty interesting stuff. cool!
Then I drove to 1514 gower off hollywood freeway. Where I got the 2006 headhots was near the "Roscoes Chicken n' Waffle House" haha!! Seriously the most peculiar combo of food, but hey I think it's some kind of one of those weird landmark diner places haha! Anyways, I knew the headshot place was near the waffle-chicken house. I found the restaurant, checked it out and then walked up gower (and it was cool seeing the hollywood sign from there again. Last time I saw it, it was from the Graumann's mall when I was locked out of the car after (never again) doing valet before meeting up with the acting friends at saddle ranch and walking around for 24 hours until could get car back haha) ) and saw that where the hollywood headshots place was, it was replaced and the building was up for lease LOL!! So that kind of disorientated me, so I walked around the blocks a few times, Called aunt sally, told her about life update -- lifecoaching, acting on the backburner, etc. she was doing a kind of class tutoring thing -- and I said I'd likely go out of the country if I didn't have some work set up in 6 months, which is good! I haven't had work in like 4-5 years!!! And I've been trying like crazy! Soo....yeah then I called matt and we talked about him coming out to cali and he said (this was astonishing) that he'd NEVER been out here! crazy!! The guy WORKS for an airline too! haha! We discussed seeing a dodgers game, going to new york, seeing the hollywood sign...everything I had just done basically haha. Anyways, strongly considering driving somewhere, but where (new york?). Then I drove a bit and called headshot places and felt a bit disorientated after not finding that one after it had gone. I think I found the hiking park area where you can climb to the top of the hollywood sign and by that time I was on the phone wiht Ron Finley who said he'd directed a lot of tv. I just looked him up and imdb shows him as "writer" for tales of the crypt (which he mentione,d and also mentioned sesame street haha!) so I don't know if hte imdb credit is innacurate or if he really did/didn't direct those shows, but whatever the guy sounded awesome, highly intelligent and was an awesome convo! He talked about using blue screens as backdrops for photography now!! I hadn't realize they're so high-tech for photos, for film I was aware of the massive technology, but that's wild! He mentioend how he went to italy and wrote some books and was doing massive high-tech photography with different backdrops (like an actor backdrop of a rugged new york street) or some kind of white screen for lifecoaching and the various images I wanted to portray. Definitely professional ones lifecoaching and acting ( and maybe a comedy one). But he asked if i was doing one for eharmony LOL! Apparently people get professional photo touchups for eharmony haha!! Hysterical! Anyways we talked about the "steve jobs" turtleneck book which was DEFINITELY not me and I joked how he was kind of the preacherrole more than the computer guy and he said he was the wheeler dealer and I agreed saying wozniak was the computer guy and jobs the business hound. Anyways it was a COOL convo. So like older retired, NON-JERK (I meet a LOT of jerk director-people in the film/media business that had the mentality of "get out of my face, dont' have time for you" or something. and I laugh now, that's such a ridiculous attitidue!) So basically yeah, it was pretty refershing and awesome to talk with a cool director dude and hear all about these backdrops for photos and cool to talk to someone in a relaxed mode who had experience in the media/film world.
Phone calls:
Aunt Sal
Matt parsons
Jeff smith (voice message)
Dean Smith (voice message)
Mom (about needing "play place" after hard work, lifescribing, older women thing)
Three headshot places
Ron Finley photographer-former director dude
A ton of self-recordings too (especially after the vacuum thing lol!) glad I didnt' pay for that repair, can totally repair it myself! and I don't even want ot use that vacuum! lol. I got a way better version more efficient, much more industrial sized sturdy one cool as.
Errands
1245 --MZA AGency
1514 Gower chicken and waffle place near old headshot (now gone)
Base of hollywood sign hike place
440pm -- Vacuum store on topanga (picked up vacuum)
545pm -- Costco -- got a bromeliad plant, berries, cibatta, juice, peanut butter, capers, paprika haha!
Citibank deposited check
Church (across from citibank -random for like 2 minutes exploring)
Got back immediately did trails with henry 2.87 miles at like 745pm
Then gym and talked with steve about how he knew brett michaels and actually played with him haha! wild! And about meeting women and talked about how I was into math and music now and we caught the tail ind of the Dodgers San fran (CA v CA! lol) game and I lifted did some pulls and did too sub-6 mile half miles on treadmill and then .5 miles at like 20 elip. cool! Intense good awesome workout! Cool beans!
anyways then I drove to the vacuum place then to costco talked wiht mom a ton. then to citibank to deposit a check on topanga heading south and stopped ina place that I thought was a school, but it turned out to be church with a spanish service. i'm not too big on christianity, but I had a HUGE realization: any form or religion is JUST an application of NLP. It's applying all these clarity, faith, hope, belief etc anchors to an idol! So that then when people see a cross of jesus, or of buddha, or mention allah, they connect all these positive emotions of belief, faith, hope, clarity into the service! Now THAT type of anchoring I can respect. So while I, personally, do not believe in religion, I seriously respect any type of positive anchoring, and if someone does that in a religion, I can respect that. I of course recognize that for what it is, just a manifestation of anchoring -- which was a shocking very cool realization! -- so I respect a bunch of people congregating in a place setting (unconsciously most likely) uplifting anchors for themselves sure! And if they want to slap those anchors to a buddha statue or shiva figurine or christ symbol or koran book, hey, I don't care. I've been critical of religion in the past because it discourages doing your own 50,000 foot thinking and identifying what's valuable to you individually spiritually and your core beliefs (because people will just typically get force fed biblical or buddhist orwhatever the religion is, those tenets when they're fully capable of extracting and deciphering what is valuable to them!). So yeah. Interesting stuff. In many ways, things that make people feel good and "okay" be them bad things (addictions, overwatching television, self-destructive behavior) or "okay things" are all just utilized because of their anchor effect!
So it was a shocking realization to see NLP at work in religion. Here nlp, there nlp, everywhere nlp, nlp!!! haha!
Then at 8 did like night run with henry, he was wild, then hit up gym for an hour.
Showing posts with label Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journal. Show all posts
4.15.2009
4.13.2009
5 Lessons Learned from Shipping and Selling an item on eBay.
Hello! I just feel angry, financially exploited, and a little upset because I spent $19 sending a 40z ipod through the UPS store and checked the same price and it would have been $4.00 with just general post office. It sold for $21.00 and I recieved $29.99 from the buyer for the entire exchange (including s&h). So despite my reaction to the shipping part, I definitely felt stoked to earn ANY kind of profit ($10 profit is great. > than nothing!) So I AM surprisingly rewarded about that, but have learned some lessons from this happenstance. So, I'm going to present the 5 lessons learned and would appreciate if someone could educate me on how to send things (packages etc) via post office. UPS/fedex etc are all SCAMS omg!! Huge ripoff!!
I have sold a few other things in ebay before, but this time proved to be a valuable learning experience.
1. Always Do it yourself. It's always less expensive and in many ways more rewarding. If If would've printed off the tracking labels myself it would've cost much less.
2. Make sure the profit that you make is worth/commensurate/proportional to the value of amount of time put into earning that profit. I spend 5-6 hours and a good bit of energy selling the ipod item on ebay, communicating with the buyer, posting photos, creating a sell item, sending it, preparing the item for sale. Make sure the profit you will earn is with the effort and time put into making that profit! From a purely economic point of view. The value of the time put into (effort, time, energy, other things you could be doing with your time + the value of the item or service sold) should = (profit!).
3. I will be never using the UPS store again; Post Office shipping is MUCH less expensive!
4. The U.S. is too brash for me, I prefer the European sophisticated experience and ambiance (I've even heard americans remark are French are "nicer" and I asked if that met more kind and they said yes).
5. The different between the post office and UPS is that the post office is MUCH less expensive (I didn't know that)!
4.02.2009
Suits
Here's my view on suits. It's different. the whole double-breasted thing seems cheesy. Really REALLY expensive suits seem extremely cheesy. I don't mind wearing them. If people would look at me and see me as professional-looking in athletic clothes as suits, I wouldn't wear suits! I really like my cheapo $120 suit. However, these really expensive ones, look fantastic on me, and people may look at me more professionally. So I totally don't care they're that expensive and almost makes me a bit nervous taht they're that expensive (I can still "have fun" in them and forget how expensive they are!! cool!!) I love the light ones -- beige (by the way, was that other one you mentioned a lighter beige one?). But i'm grateful I have them to experiment with to see if I need them or not; if I ever get a job where wearing a suit could increase the quality of the job, then YES YES YES these are great!! But if I don't have such a job, they sorta seem silly hehe. see what I'm saying? I'm not impressed by suits. But if other people are and if it will boost a potential career somehow..then so be it, great I won't mind wearing them if it boosts career!!. So thanks again!!
3.29.2009
maslow_compilation_haroldwashingtonNotes
In "Maslow on Management", Maslow talks about the necessity and importance of self-actualization, but realizes that frequently, "flakes and gurus" as he calls them, learn of a new trend and bank on that to earn capital. True, true, but we must also respect the passion of such "flakes and gurus". After all, while they may try to swindle money, they do connect with honest, healthy visions that people have to have a pre-existing, intrinsic interest towards in the first place. So they can exploit, but they exploit, in a way, something good and worthwhile and if it weren't for the money charge, it wouldn't be exploitation, but identification with intrinsic values!
Take vocabulary for example, Maslow wrote, "if one increased his vocabulary, he would also dramatically increase his learning by 10 to 100 percent" (Maslow 119). That's ginormous! He also pointed out that the increased vocabulary leads to an increased awareness of the world, and, in contrast, a lower vocabulary, sincerely increases paranoid behavior. Lowered vocabularies lower your awareness making you effectively somewhat "blind"! Now those socalled "New Age flakes and gurus" could surely bank a buck on this and have overly-expensive "vocabulary learning classes" . One could argue that such an exploitation inhibits a person's growth and steals their money, but the end result is the positive heightened awareness. Conclusively, it feels like the New Age exploiters utilize a manipulative process, but with a correspondingly energizing end result.
In the conclusive denouement of the correspondence between Andrew Kay, Maslow, and the editor of the book, the reached a correlation on the nature of "gypping" ideas. Maslow described that he would, for period, feel enraged at people stealing his ideas for papers or other various constructs, but now just finds it humorous and funny. He writes, "copying or stealing is a little like stealing the egg, instead of the hen that lays the eggs. In a word, money must be used; the mind must be used; creativeness must be used and one must spend it and be prodigal with it rather than to hoard it and be stingy with it and think that it can be used up or spent in decreased in quantity...The very process of talking about ideas helps the creativeness, and thereby makes it more likely taht there will be hundreds of ideas where there were only dozens before" (Maslow 120). In other words, unless you tackle it on your own, with your own process, your own voice, and apply your own creativeness, the outcome will have limitations. However, if you do apply your own creativity, the result becomes infinite.
And the infinte, unlike the finite, players have limitless outcomes. Take sexuality, for example. The finite seducer "proceeds largely by deception. Sexual desires are usually not directly announced but concealed under a series of feints, gestures , styles of dress, and showy behavior. Seductions are staged, scripted, costumed. Seductions are designed to come to an end" (Carse 82). See, in the finite game all the sexual interaction becomes imprisoning: "Moments once reached cannot be reached again...lovers often sustain vivid reminders of extraordinary moments, but they are reminded at the same time of their impotence in recreating them" (Carse 83). In infinite play, there lies no interest in "restricting the freedom of another to one's own boundaries of play. Infinite players recognize choice in all aspects of of sexuality," so because they always have choice, they never experience the confinements of a relationship. Infinite relationships always expand. Regarding sexual orientation, "sexuality is not a bounded phenomenon but a horizontal phenomenon for infinite players. One can never say, therefore, that an infinite player is homosexual, or heterosexual, or celibate, or adulterous, or faithful -- because each of these definitions has to do with boundaries" (Carse 83). In short, whenever you break into that seductive, staged, concealed feints , and pre-defined orientational style of play, you imprions yourself within an inhibiting inhibiting relationship arena that confines your soul and locks down your opportunities for spontaneity and creativity.
Even with an expanded vocabulary of which Maslow discussed and learning awareness heightened 10-100%, if you played your life finitely, your access to that profound awareness would function from a limitation, as though you could envision the most limitless expanse (with the vocabulary) but could only purview it through a miniscule viewing hole.
Money works for you Dad's Friend and Intellectual-Mind Works for Einstein Teaching
In Todd Temple's "Money: How to make it, spend it, nd keep lots of it", old Toddie gives some pretty hackneyed, pretty generic advice for getting work. All the material covered in the book is so easy and obvious, such as writing a resume, and channeling your money into savings, giving, and spending. A boatload of "duh!" if you ask me. However, when Temple says, again another cliche, "It's not what you know, but who you know", we can divide the professional world up, cleaving into to two distinct compartments. When you're out to make money, connections and people do, truly, make all the difference. However, what if you're trying to get job as physics professor at a prestigious university. Assuredly, you can have all the connections in the world, but if you don't know , for example, Einstein's major contributions: the special theory of relativity (that time and length could actuall change at speeds close to that of the speed of light), the photo-electric effect (Einstein proved that light is composed of quanta particles (quantum) withi na wave, proving light is both particle and wave, winning him the Nobel Piece Prize. The photoelectric effect lead to the existence of cd players, remotes, and other laser-guided technology), brownian motion (primarily dealing with proving that Brownian motion (the subatomic particle dance of molecules suspended in fluids) is caused by those subatomic particles, which proved the existence of those particles) , and e=mc2 (describing the algorithm of energy derived from mass and a cosntant), you won't make the cut.
Now Edison organized the construction of the first generating station in 1882 (Schwarz and Mcguinness 20). And then in 1916, only 34 years later, Einstein published his paper on general relativity. If anything, that functions as a telescoping presence of technology! We first build the generating station and then only 34 years later we're understanding the nature of the speed of light! What will happen in the next 34 years! That's like learning about cooking and then becoming Charlie trotter or Wolfgang puck in a few months with that pace of technological growth!
Maybe with technology we allow ourselves "error" so we get it right without pressure. "It's interesting to note that Wayne Gretsky, probably the greatest hockey player of all time, had a routine of purposely missing his first practice shot at the goal" (Secunda 79). He did this so he could experience taking the shot without pressure. If you don't aim to make the goal, pressure is removed and you can feel that performance and then apply it to have the same ease and grace, when other people might have pressure!
Buckminster Fuller talks about Tensigrity -- tension integrity, which is based on teh support structure for trees. Fuller says that "but only god can make a tree", commenting on its complex design. However, the tension integrity combines these supposedly contradiction flavors like wayne gretsky (the player who makes the most shots) missing a shot and like the expedited technological growth. We find tension integrity in nature and it truly works!
In regards to the telescoping of technology. Take the concept of the "gyro compass" versus the magnetic compass. You could find the magnetic compass on a variety of ships all throughout the world, but it had an offset and a navigator must make out a correction to make for its variation from true north. The gyro, on the other hand, automatically calculates for true north, so that calculation isn't even necessary. Technology changes the old practices, often eliminating them, but often the old practices serve a great purpose; like a navigator certainly would want to know how to do a variation check
Now, I really get a kick out of Ron Fry's great tips for interviews, they're right on! They will cause the telescoping nature of your job search to appear! In short, they are: "Think of the interview as an adventure; be polite; be enthusiastic; keep on smiling; make eye contact; be honest; be positive (always find the good reason why you did something, not what you didn't like about something)" and the best, most useful one is "don't let an unskilled interviewer torpedo your chances". I've had some terrible interviewers and you need to be able to convey your strengths, describe what you will be able to contribue to the company and float your own boat, so to speak (Fry 104). In short, as a skilled interviewee, you should know the typical interviwer questions, so if the interviewer doesn't ask them, then you can still share those responses and convey your strengths, confidence, and skills!
Now with those skills you can create image, but what about your own Journey? Johnson points out, "sometime it's important to let the dream be a mystery and jsut let it guide you, let it take you where it wants to go. Liek taking a trip--starting to drive somewhere without a planned destination -- just to see what happens" (Johnson 177). That, friends, creates a perfect resume scenario -- the road-trip adventure with no pre-defined destination other than the journey -- but you can still stay tethered to you core by trusting in yourself. We must understand our dreams as much as the adventure; the jewish talmud says "A dream which is not understood is like a letter which is not opened". We have to open those letters of our life!
Dave Pelzer, describes the most grotesque survival scenario imagineable in his childhood where, he "was banished downstairs to the garage. [His] was now an old army cot...[he] ran extra fast [to school] so [he] would have more time to hunt for food" (Pelzer 68-69). In addition to starvation, he also had soiled diapers wiped over his face, forced to drink clorox and ammonia, and was actually stabbed by his deranged mother. That, of course, is a journey we do not want to encounter, so when we trust ourselves we end up with a greater chance of avoiding horrendously frightening and crippling scenarios.
In Ignazio Siloneís ìBread and Wineî, thereís a moving scene between the main character, Don Paulo, and a girl where they stare at each other for some moments and then, ìDon Paulo was filled with great pity. ìWhy donít you believe me?î he said. Yes, now I believe you,î said the girl. ëIíve never believed anything so much. You have extraordinary eyes that donít lie. Iíve never seen eyes like yoursî (Silone 56). Was it the sensation of pity that made Don Pauloís eyes so believable? Many times when we show emotion in our eyes, others realize that we donít conceal anything. This does not suggest to go around wearing emotion in your eyes, but we must take the time to ìfeelî our emotions and live them, in addition to merely process and scrutinizing them. Living our emotions allows greater understanding, personal awareness, and, as shown from this excerpt, creates trust in others towards you.
Although the target age group is much younger with Robert Hawksí The Richest Kid in the World, he paints a scene of ìoverwhelmî quite well: ìFlashbulbs were popping and video cameras were whirring all around me. I felt as if I had just been tossed off the back of a boat without a life jacket: sink or swim, just donít say anythingî (Hawks 59). Here, the overwhelming amount of attention and hype caused the protagonist to feel panic and from that overwhelmed panic to fear communicating. Indeed, whenever we feel pressed into a new daunting situation with a lot of attention, the first instinct is to clam up. But, meanwhile, hundreds of people go about their lives competently talking to press in front of loads of cameras. We must focus on creating a positive intention with our life so we trust our words and have faith in our communicative abilities. From that faith combined with intelligence and practice and learning from our experiences, weíll always say the successful thing, never sink, and always swim!
In ìThe Strange Case of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,î when people refer to Hyde they say, ìHe is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing; something downright detestableî (Stevenson 11). And yet, they cannot put their finger on what precisely is so displeasing. Because of the duality between respectable Jekyll and abominable Hyde, people couldnít feel the ìright vibeî. However, ìHyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuitî (Stevenson 77). In short, Hyde ìinhabitedî Jekyllís personality. People pick that up. We must wholistically know our entire personality to ensure stability in our life and certainty in our future.
We need to have stability -- wholistic stability. Buckminster Fuller talks about how most houses have a clunky design. His geodesic, dome on the otherhand has this all-around stability, creating, as he calls it, "insideness and outsideness" (Snyder 38). So pressure and geometry and physics aligns a certain way to distribute the design and stability throughout the structure. That pervasive stability can arise by following our dreams and maintaing that good "interview posture".
This type of "tension integrity" tensigrity and "insideness-outsideness" wholisticism can occur with our identity and personal presence ,too. Frederick Persl talks about getting into our centeredness: "Of course, the optimum withdrawal is the withdrawal into your body. Get in touch with yourself. Turn your attention to your physical existence. Mobilize your inner resources. Even if you get in touch with a fantasy of being on an island or in a warm bathtub, or to any unfinished situation, this will give you a lot of support when you return to reality" (Perls 68). That type of groundedness in knowing our desires, knowing who we are, has tremendous importance in avoiding those horrendous circumstances and staying tethered, connected to our insideness and outsideness and wholistic center. Persl also writes about the elan vital, "the life force, energizes by seeing, by listening, by scouting, by describing the world -- how is the world there. Now this life force apparently mobilizes the center -- if you have a center." Acquire that center by tapping into who you are to get that tensigrity of personality and attuning to your physical existence and your desires to start the journey of success.
Ignazio Silone. Bread and Wine. New York: Signet Classic, 1986.
Robert Lousis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Barnes and Noble Classic, 1886.
Robert Hawks. The Richest Kid in the World. New York: Avon Camelot, 1991.
Perls, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1969.
Pelzer, Dave. A Child called "It". FL: Health Communications Inc., 1995.
Johnson, Julie. The Thundering Years. Rodchester: Bindu Books, 2001.
Fry, Ron. Your First Interview. NJ: Career Press, 2002.
Snyder, Robert. Buckminster Fuller. New York: St. Martins Press, 1980.
Rosenkranz, Ze'ev. The Einstein Scrapbook. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Maslow, Abraham. Maslow on Management. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
Take vocabulary for example, Maslow wrote, "if one increased his vocabulary, he would also dramatically increase his learning by 10 to 100 percent" (Maslow 119). That's ginormous! He also pointed out that the increased vocabulary leads to an increased awareness of the world, and, in contrast, a lower vocabulary, sincerely increases paranoid behavior. Lowered vocabularies lower your awareness making you effectively somewhat "blind"! Now those socalled "New Age flakes and gurus" could surely bank a buck on this and have overly-expensive "vocabulary learning classes" . One could argue that such an exploitation inhibits a person's growth and steals their money, but the end result is the positive heightened awareness. Conclusively, it feels like the New Age exploiters utilize a manipulative process, but with a correspondingly energizing end result.
In the conclusive denouement of the correspondence between Andrew Kay, Maslow, and the editor of the book, the reached a correlation on the nature of "gypping" ideas. Maslow described that he would, for period, feel enraged at people stealing his ideas for papers or other various constructs, but now just finds it humorous and funny. He writes, "copying or stealing is a little like stealing the egg, instead of the hen that lays the eggs. In a word, money must be used; the mind must be used; creativeness must be used and one must spend it and be prodigal with it rather than to hoard it and be stingy with it and think that it can be used up or spent in decreased in quantity...The very process of talking about ideas helps the creativeness, and thereby makes it more likely taht there will be hundreds of ideas where there were only dozens before" (Maslow 120). In other words, unless you tackle it on your own, with your own process, your own voice, and apply your own creativeness, the outcome will have limitations. However, if you do apply your own creativity, the result becomes infinite.
And the infinte, unlike the finite, players have limitless outcomes. Take sexuality, for example. The finite seducer "proceeds largely by deception. Sexual desires are usually not directly announced but concealed under a series of feints, gestures , styles of dress, and showy behavior. Seductions are staged, scripted, costumed. Seductions are designed to come to an end" (Carse 82). See, in the finite game all the sexual interaction becomes imprisoning: "Moments once reached cannot be reached again...lovers often sustain vivid reminders of extraordinary moments, but they are reminded at the same time of their impotence in recreating them" (Carse 83). In infinite play, there lies no interest in "restricting the freedom of another to one's own boundaries of play. Infinite players recognize choice in all aspects of of sexuality," so because they always have choice, they never experience the confinements of a relationship. Infinite relationships always expand. Regarding sexual orientation, "sexuality is not a bounded phenomenon but a horizontal phenomenon for infinite players. One can never say, therefore, that an infinite player is homosexual, or heterosexual, or celibate, or adulterous, or faithful -- because each of these definitions has to do with boundaries" (Carse 83). In short, whenever you break into that seductive, staged, concealed feints , and pre-defined orientational style of play, you imprions yourself within an inhibiting inhibiting relationship arena that confines your soul and locks down your opportunities for spontaneity and creativity.
Even with an expanded vocabulary of which Maslow discussed and learning awareness heightened 10-100%, if you played your life finitely, your access to that profound awareness would function from a limitation, as though you could envision the most limitless expanse (with the vocabulary) but could only purview it through a miniscule viewing hole.
Money works for you Dad's Friend and Intellectual-Mind Works for Einstein Teaching
In Todd Temple's "Money: How to make it, spend it, nd keep lots of it", old Toddie gives some pretty hackneyed, pretty generic advice for getting work. All the material covered in the book is so easy and obvious, such as writing a resume, and channeling your money into savings, giving, and spending. A boatload of "duh!" if you ask me. However, when Temple says, again another cliche, "It's not what you know, but who you know", we can divide the professional world up, cleaving into to two distinct compartments. When you're out to make money, connections and people do, truly, make all the difference. However, what if you're trying to get job as physics professor at a prestigious university. Assuredly, you can have all the connections in the world, but if you don't know , for example, Einstein's major contributions: the special theory of relativity (that time and length could actuall change at speeds close to that of the speed of light), the photo-electric effect (Einstein proved that light is composed of quanta particles (quantum) withi na wave, proving light is both particle and wave, winning him the Nobel Piece Prize. The photoelectric effect lead to the existence of cd players, remotes, and other laser-guided technology), brownian motion (primarily dealing with proving that Brownian motion (the subatomic particle dance of molecules suspended in fluids) is caused by those subatomic particles, which proved the existence of those particles) , and e=mc2 (describing the algorithm of energy derived from mass and a cosntant), you won't make the cut.
Now Edison organized the construction of the first generating station in 1882 (Schwarz and Mcguinness 20). And then in 1916, only 34 years later, Einstein published his paper on general relativity. If anything, that functions as a telescoping presence of technology! We first build the generating station and then only 34 years later we're understanding the nature of the speed of light! What will happen in the next 34 years! That's like learning about cooking and then becoming Charlie trotter or Wolfgang puck in a few months with that pace of technological growth!
Maybe with technology we allow ourselves "error" so we get it right without pressure. "It's interesting to note that Wayne Gretsky, probably the greatest hockey player of all time, had a routine of purposely missing his first practice shot at the goal" (Secunda 79). He did this so he could experience taking the shot without pressure. If you don't aim to make the goal, pressure is removed and you can feel that performance and then apply it to have the same ease and grace, when other people might have pressure!
Buckminster Fuller talks about Tensigrity -- tension integrity, which is based on teh support structure for trees. Fuller says that "but only god can make a tree", commenting on its complex design. However, the tension integrity combines these supposedly contradiction flavors like wayne gretsky (the player who makes the most shots) missing a shot and like the expedited technological growth. We find tension integrity in nature and it truly works!
In regards to the telescoping of technology. Take the concept of the "gyro compass" versus the magnetic compass. You could find the magnetic compass on a variety of ships all throughout the world, but it had an offset and a navigator must make out a correction to make for its variation from true north. The gyro, on the other hand, automatically calculates for true north, so that calculation isn't even necessary. Technology changes the old practices, often eliminating them, but often the old practices serve a great purpose; like a navigator certainly would want to know how to do a variation check
Now, I really get a kick out of Ron Fry's great tips for interviews, they're right on! They will cause the telescoping nature of your job search to appear! In short, they are: "Think of the interview as an adventure; be polite; be enthusiastic; keep on smiling; make eye contact; be honest; be positive (always find the good reason why you did something, not what you didn't like about something)" and the best, most useful one is "don't let an unskilled interviewer torpedo your chances". I've had some terrible interviewers and you need to be able to convey your strengths, describe what you will be able to contribue to the company and float your own boat, so to speak (Fry 104). In short, as a skilled interviewee, you should know the typical interviwer questions, so if the interviewer doesn't ask them, then you can still share those responses and convey your strengths, confidence, and skills!
Now with those skills you can create image, but what about your own Journey? Johnson points out, "sometime it's important to let the dream be a mystery and jsut let it guide you, let it take you where it wants to go. Liek taking a trip--starting to drive somewhere without a planned destination -- just to see what happens" (Johnson 177). That, friends, creates a perfect resume scenario -- the road-trip adventure with no pre-defined destination other than the journey -- but you can still stay tethered to you core by trusting in yourself. We must understand our dreams as much as the adventure; the jewish talmud says "A dream which is not understood is like a letter which is not opened". We have to open those letters of our life!
Dave Pelzer, describes the most grotesque survival scenario imagineable in his childhood where, he "was banished downstairs to the garage. [His] was now an old army cot...[he] ran extra fast [to school] so [he] would have more time to hunt for food" (Pelzer 68-69). In addition to starvation, he also had soiled diapers wiped over his face, forced to drink clorox and ammonia, and was actually stabbed by his deranged mother. That, of course, is a journey we do not want to encounter, so when we trust ourselves we end up with a greater chance of avoiding horrendously frightening and crippling scenarios.
In Ignazio Siloneís ìBread and Wineî, thereís a moving scene between the main character, Don Paulo, and a girl where they stare at each other for some moments and then, ìDon Paulo was filled with great pity. ìWhy donít you believe me?î he said. Yes, now I believe you,î said the girl. ëIíve never believed anything so much. You have extraordinary eyes that donít lie. Iíve never seen eyes like yoursî (Silone 56). Was it the sensation of pity that made Don Pauloís eyes so believable? Many times when we show emotion in our eyes, others realize that we donít conceal anything. This does not suggest to go around wearing emotion in your eyes, but we must take the time to ìfeelî our emotions and live them, in addition to merely process and scrutinizing them. Living our emotions allows greater understanding, personal awareness, and, as shown from this excerpt, creates trust in others towards you.
Although the target age group is much younger with Robert Hawksí The Richest Kid in the World, he paints a scene of ìoverwhelmî quite well: ìFlashbulbs were popping and video cameras were whirring all around me. I felt as if I had just been tossed off the back of a boat without a life jacket: sink or swim, just donít say anythingî (Hawks 59). Here, the overwhelming amount of attention and hype caused the protagonist to feel panic and from that overwhelmed panic to fear communicating. Indeed, whenever we feel pressed into a new daunting situation with a lot of attention, the first instinct is to clam up. But, meanwhile, hundreds of people go about their lives competently talking to press in front of loads of cameras. We must focus on creating a positive intention with our life so we trust our words and have faith in our communicative abilities. From that faith combined with intelligence and practice and learning from our experiences, weíll always say the successful thing, never sink, and always swim!
In ìThe Strange Case of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,î when people refer to Hyde they say, ìHe is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing; something downright detestableî (Stevenson 11). And yet, they cannot put their finger on what precisely is so displeasing. Because of the duality between respectable Jekyll and abominable Hyde, people couldnít feel the ìright vibeî. However, ìHyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuitî (Stevenson 77). In short, Hyde ìinhabitedî Jekyllís personality. People pick that up. We must wholistically know our entire personality to ensure stability in our life and certainty in our future.
We need to have stability -- wholistic stability. Buckminster Fuller talks about how most houses have a clunky design. His geodesic, dome on the otherhand has this all-around stability, creating, as he calls it, "insideness and outsideness" (Snyder 38). So pressure and geometry and physics aligns a certain way to distribute the design and stability throughout the structure. That pervasive stability can arise by following our dreams and maintaing that good "interview posture".
This type of "tension integrity" tensigrity and "insideness-outsideness" wholisticism can occur with our identity and personal presence ,too. Frederick Persl talks about getting into our centeredness: "Of course, the optimum withdrawal is the withdrawal into your body. Get in touch with yourself. Turn your attention to your physical existence. Mobilize your inner resources. Even if you get in touch with a fantasy of being on an island or in a warm bathtub, or to any unfinished situation, this will give you a lot of support when you return to reality" (Perls 68). That type of groundedness in knowing our desires, knowing who we are, has tremendous importance in avoiding those horrendous circumstances and staying tethered, connected to our insideness and outsideness and wholistic center. Persl also writes about the elan vital, "the life force, energizes by seeing, by listening, by scouting, by describing the world -- how is the world there. Now this life force apparently mobilizes the center -- if you have a center." Acquire that center by tapping into who you are to get that tensigrity of personality and attuning to your physical existence and your desires to start the journey of success.
Ignazio Silone. Bread and Wine. New York: Signet Classic, 1986.
Robert Lousis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Barnes and Noble Classic, 1886.
Robert Hawks. The Richest Kid in the World. New York: Avon Camelot, 1991.
Perls, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1969.
Pelzer, Dave. A Child called "It". FL: Health Communications Inc., 1995.
Johnson, Julie. The Thundering Years. Rodchester: Bindu Books, 2001.
Fry, Ron. Your First Interview. NJ: Career Press, 2002.
Snyder, Robert. Buckminster Fuller. New York: St. Martins Press, 1980.
Rosenkranz, Ze'ev. The Einstein Scrapbook. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Maslow, Abraham. Maslow on Management. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
12.30.2008
Journal1! December 27-28, 2008. Taboo and Avalon Clubs.
Wrote Taboo and Avolon in 5,200 words on 12/30
Taboo
I watched the bartender serve this green drink in a glass tumbler and asked the nearby bar-waitress what that was.
"A tokya iced tea." She mentioned a barrage of ingredients in it. I went outside in the back area and met an accountant named Amonn and his cousin, Doll. They were warm, cheerful, african american, people in probably late 20s early 30s. Later that night I learned Doll was probably 34. She was showing a lot of cleevage but you could tell she had a mind on her. She was good, almost maternal and looked out to make sure people didn't drink too much and had real ambitions. Needless to say, while I could have focused on her breasts the whole time, I didn't because her mind was unusally more interesting. Amonn and I seemed to hit it off with a good friendship. "This is a nice place, it's sophisticated" he said.
"Yeah! totally. Definitely sophisticated."
The song "Tipsy" came on and a short kind of round-faced hispanic kid came out and started rapping to use three. It was pretty awful and embarassing but Amonn and I laughed in a kind of cheering him on kind of way.
"I just did a show here earlier," he said.
"Wow. That was good man. Can't imagine what you're like when you're tipsy!" We all laughed.
Amonn and Doll were solid people.
I went inside the bar and made my third attempt at trying to penetrade the bar to get an order in. I don't really like drinking especially in bars. Unless it's a raging party and everyone's getting hammered, but that hasn't happened in years. Red wine has been my fancy recently. I usually end up drinking just as "false confidence juice" which doesn't really work. So not being able to get a drink in didn't bother me. Water is always my favorite anyways.
I glanced up at the television and thought I saw Kobe in a Chicago jersey. I turned to the shaved headed, kind of husky dude with an earring to my right. He looked slightly white-trashy, a little rough around the edges, but likely a good heart. I asked him,"Who's Kobe play for these days?"
"Lakers," he said giving me kind of an odd "duh!" look, still focusing on the bar.
"Oh right. Okay cool. Good. that's what I thought. I just thought I saw him in a Chicago jersey and was like what?!" He nodded in approval. I continued, "Yeah I was in Chicago and followed the Bulls during the late 90s when Jackson was there --"
"Michael Jordan," he interjected almost questioningly.
"Yeah, yeah. Andddd Pippin and Armstrong and Kerr and Kukoc!" I said smiling, going on. "So now that Jackson is with the Lakers it's awesome being in LA, Lakers fan now, with Jackson here too!"
He smiled approvlingly again and we both seperately focused on the bar. I think I've cultivated this gift of talking with people. I follow so many things -- sports, soccer, biology, math, academia, news, celebrity stuff, etc. etc. to get in conversations with people. That could be really potential for sales. Befriend, and then recommend a product or service.
Finally on the left hand side of the bar I found a spot and stood there.
This blonde, short, women with great about C-D breasts in a gold shoulderless fancy tank top thing under a gold dress coat looked at me out of the corner of her eye and then back at the bartender and said, "He'll pay for my drink." The bartender looked at me and back at her and then said, "Okay, I've never seen anyone do that. So you owe him [gesturing to me] 6 dollars." I looked back and forth between them and muttered something about paying for the drink. This bartender I liked. That's how it was supposed to work! Emphasize how unoriginal it is for someone to pay for another's drink! Exacty! I stared their at her untouched "dirty martini" with 3 olives in it as I tried to make eye contact with the nice cheery little bartender to try to order a glass of red wine. I wasn't sure I wanted to drink anythingShe laughed and joked with her asian friend. They were easily in their late 30s to early 40s. Okay maybe early 30s if they hadn't aged well. I asked, "What's your name?"
She said, "Iris."
"Oh cool, like the eye!" pointing to a portion of my eye.
"Oh no! I hate it when people say that! Like the flower."
"Ohh, okay! So what's your favorite kind of flower? Hmm I can't think of that many flower types. Something exotic?"
She thought about and said, "Orchid".
"Hhmmm yeah wow. Orchid." I had no idea where this was going. "Haha! Don't think I've ever talked about botany in a bar before!"
"Botany" was a new word for her. "What?"
"Botany. Plants. You know?" She muttered something garbled "close to botany" but, amused at the cuteness, I decided to move on. I touched her shoulder as I said a few other things which she seemed warm to.
I mentioned something about a martini and she gave me sip. "Wow that's good! I don't think I've ever had a martini before!"
"A dirty martini".
We talked a bit more. She was Irish, apparently "leaving tomorrow". Her asian friend with a weathered face was jumpy and wanted to dance. I asked, "Want to dance?!" She held my hand and we said a few more things. Wow. I'm going to have sex with this total hotty tonight I thought to myself! We mosied over to this corner table and she took off her over jacket. Wow she had perfectly shaped breasts. She was tiny. About 5'4 maybe. She never really looked at you, her eyes were always flitting about. So we hit up the dance floor after setting our drinks at the table. She pulled me towards the floor holding my hand. Wow! This was moving fast. Already holding hands and dancing after meeting about 10 minutes ago! It was a close quarters floor so we started a little bit far away but then were close-up grinding after about a minute.
"Do you like ballroom dancing?" I said in my attempt to be audible, after a few more minutes of laughing and joking and smiling at things we couldn't hear each other say!
"I Love ballroom dancing!" We then did a few spins and I accidentally bumped elbows with this woman who looked like a girl I knew from high school acting class, Meg Grunewald. I later learned this elbow-bump woman was named Vanya Gale (Dr. Vanya Gale).
So I continued doing this kind of clunky half-ballroom dancing with Iris. Then "Take a look at my girlfriend" song came on. and we started doing grinding her ass pressed up against me. The way she was holding my hand and acting all giddy she "did" feel like a girlfriend at the time! Sweet! She's attractive and small, but her movements were so clunky and clumsy like she had just gotten out of a wheelchair and decided to celebrate with 10 shots of vodka. haha!! :D But she wasn't drunk as she talked with sobriety and did everything with sobriety, maybe a little tipsy, you could just tell she wasn't the most elegant dancer. She was trying though and she was very hot. She almost wobbled over and said, "You better hold on to me. You'll regret if you let me go." Hmmm a kind of loaded demand. So I picked her up in a big hug and spun her around. That type of "playfulness" probably made her feel uncomfortable. She kept brushing her boobs up against my hand for fractions of a second and as we grinded I started to get a partial boner. I didn't know if I should focus on concealing it or the opposite, get sexual right there on the the dance floor. I'd danced with some women before and the latter had definitely been the most mutually fun and exciting thing to do. But I realized with hindsight this ambiguity of asking "hhmm what's appropriate or inappropriate behavior" for this relationship at this moment -- the very asking and uncertainty of that question -- revealed the fragility and poor communication on her part in the relationship. I didn't really know what she wanted! So we continued to grind, joked, and laughed more at things we couldn't hear because of the noise. I was really hot and feeling kind of sweaty, but kept my black sport coat on. We went back to the corner table in the bar potion of Taboo. And she sat down on the booth not making any room for me to sit next to her so I kind of half-leaned up against the wall. She engaged in conversation with these other people at the table whom I hadn't met so I glanced around the bar. For a split second I made eye contact with a slender and attractive women waiting in line for the bathroom. She flinched a smile at me and I instinctively smiled back. Iris then practically verbally slapped me with the comment, "I saw you looking around! Don't look at other women!" I must have apologized or said I was just looking around because that other woman was waiting in line for the bathroom. Wow, a controlling and insecure side to Iris. I moved in close to try to peck her on the check with a kiss, but she craned her face away!! What a brat!
"Kiss and make-up?!" I said playfully.
"He's really controlling and a vulture" she said pointing to this guy who could have been a lazy-eyed manican sitting in the corner with another woman who hadn't moved a muscle. "I'm a vulture too," she said.
I rolled my eyes. There was no way this clumsy-dancing, very attractive, but little woman was going to intimidate me thinking I was being "preyed on" by her. Was that really the message she was trying to send out now? So unconvincing!! I think she wanted me to feel intimidated by her. I certainly didn't feel that. Maybe apalled, not even confused, but just like wow, this woman really doesn't know how to communicate.
"Can we make room on the booth so I can sit?" I asked.
"I need space!" She said and kind of annoyed voice and made this gesture like she was shooing away a fly. She mentioned something about needing space but I got the picture. Dropped the table and her and hit up the dance floor. I think Iris wanted to make me feel used, but it didn't work. She just created the impression of being an attractive women with great breasts, but with really weird mannerisms. Maybe she was wanting to be some predator, manipulative person, or maybe she was but I had just seen through so many people like that and just saw insecurity written all over her, that I the only way to see her was ridiculous, but in any case, I realized that 90% of my interest in her was her boobs (and they were fantastic boobs), so I kind of apathetically left.
I instantly found myself dancing with the elbow-bump woman. I guess she had been watching me ballroom dance with Iris and wanted to do some spins.
"Move your hips from side-to-side." she instructed. "I'm a doctor" She said.
I played along and danced some. "Oh cool! Do you have a stephoscope?!" I asked.
"I do. At home."
"Do you know all 206 bones of the body?"
"I do!" She rsponded somewhat surprised that I knew that too.
"I think I broke my carpal bone" I commented but that wasn't heard. I think I asked those questions because they were unique and expressed and interest in her profession, but I also new that I'd get a "yes" response (yes a doctor has a stephoscope, yes they know all 206 bones of the body).
I learned her name was Vanya and later from her asian friend, Kimberly, that her last name was Gale.
Then she pulls me in and makes out with me. It wasn't my usual lusting, intense passionate making out session. It was a 5 second, tongue, quick lip kiss.
She was an aggressive woman. Pretty strong too. Maybe B-C boobs. She wasn't wobbly like Iris, but kind of like she had just strong bones, strong mind, but all amidst being a bit tipsy. It was funny.
"Wow I didn't notice the wine cellar there!" I commented pointing to the wine cellar oddly placed next to the DJ-sound area.
She kept kind of drifting towards the door of the bar. Eventually we went outside and I asked "Sweet! So where's the after party!"
"My house!" she said. Hhmmm wow she really wanted to party. But I'd heard "conversations" about after parties. Conversations about and actually doing were very different things. I wasnt' that attracted to her. I recognized her as that old acting friend I knew but wasn't that turned on by. I said "I've got to go close the tab." and jumped back in the bar.
It took me awhile to swim towards the bartender and when I got there instantly started talking with Doll.
"You and Amonn seem like awesome people! You were the first people I talked to at Taboo here!"
I invited them over for an after party. "We should go dancing!" I said enthusiastically. There was a long saga of talking about an after party and more dancing. This a reoccurring and common theme of the night. At this point in the night it's the climax, the rising action has reached it's Zenith and it keeps going up (with after party and sex) or starts to close-out falling action. Usually at this time of night you know whether or not you're going to get laid. I hadn't had sex in almost a year. I had been dogged, insane, desperate, nonchalant, apathetic, hopeful, hopeless, furious, enraged, afraid, timid, accepting -- all those things. I have learned just to have fun with it. But it's almost like this last panicked breath for air as you suddenly realize that hope doesn't die. It's just your hopes suddenly converge all towards this baseline of reality and the reality was that Doll is driving Amonn home and hell-bent on being maternal to his cousin (likely out of some insecurity in being able to care for her own needs, she obsesses about the needs of another -- still a noble soul she is); Vanya is sicker than a dog and wants to sleep, Iris left and was focused in creating some predatorial image, and Kimberly is trapped in her engaged-to-be-married stifled role and can't allow herself to have fun. Sigh.....
I've experienced that sensation and dreaded it easily over a couple hundred times. Probably closer to half a thousand times. Where you've partied, laughed, talked, felt a good vibe, and danced with a lot of women and then suddenly you learn a bout all these things preventing them, distracting them, creating obstacles from having sex -- be it, too much drinking, a fiance, an insecurity, an obsession with caring for her cousin, etc. I normally let my enthusiasm carry the invitation for an after-pary as that's safest because if they're interested they'll only go if they want. Unfortunately, there won't be a next time, but if there was I'd invest a tiny scruple of energy into persuading them to go to an after party instead of whatever excuse they conjured up. I just don't like being persuaded to do things I don't want to do, so don't want to do that ot others, but if I know they'd have fun, then all the better for us all.
"Do you know what's going to happen if I go to your house?" Doll said. "I'm just going to get there and fall asleep on your bed!" We laughed. She was tired. The night was young for me though. Amonn mentioned a 7am place called Forbidden City in Hollywood.
We launched off into a conversation. She had acting experience with commericals but now was focusing on starting a health club or health process or some sorts. I told I was doing acting but had other interests and we hit it up. She sounded and acted a bit like my aunt JoAnn! Caring, nice, playful, but business and kind of "getting things done" before play. When I ordered one last shot before closing the tab she said something like "John, be careful. Are you driving?" Clarity. She seemed like family in a way. Amonn and I started to say goodbye as Doll was acting like his mom chasing after him trying to get him to go. Amonn and I shook hands and we instantly did this 3-move handshake! Doll gave us a look of suprise like "What was that?!"
"Pure improvisation! That was awesome! The last time I did a cool handshake like that was in gradeschool! Best times!" I said. We laughed.
Doll and Amonn left out of the back way and I ran to say goodbye to them. I had gotten Doll's number earlier so asked for Amonns.
"There's a bunch of accountants and a party" he mentioned but I didn't catch all of it. He invited me to some party next weekend.
Vanya came back into the bar and looked really sickly drunk. She kept asking the bartender for her card for literally a half hour and the bartender said that she already closed her tab, reminding her a dozen times. She had totally shut down. I sat next to her friend Kimberly in this booth. She kept asking about my age, very adult-like haha. I learned she was 34. She put her scarf around me.
"Oh my good! What is that aroma?! This smells Soo good!" I exclaimed.
"It smells like cigarettes" she laughed.
"No it's like some exotic essence. Oh man! That's awesome! What is that smell! wow!" I was half elaborating half being genuine. You could tell this woman was trapped in a marriage she didn't like. She flitted her ring like it was some kind of manacle. She mentioned her fiance numerous times, too. I guess I wanted to make her feel that she still had pheromones, that she had sexiness, and sexual aromas oozing out of her that her love life hadn't ended. Later that night I glanced at her from the other side of bar. There were about 4-5 bar employees, Vanya, me, Kimberly, and maybe 2 other people in Taboo at the time and she looked kind of wild and sexy, so I told her that. She laughed and liked the compliment, but denied it. haha.
Kimberly and Vanya drove me to my car. Why do chicks always do that? It's like a 1-minute walk away and I've had about dozen women drive me to my car. I can't think of any magic to work when I'm in the back seat and they're driving and sleepy and acting like a chauffeur. Anyways, kimberly was nice, exchagned contact info and talked about buying the bar taboo. She was in real estate.
I got in my car, drove off to a side road and looked up Forbidden City on my trusty iphone. Vine Street. Right off the Hollywood 101. Okay! Off I went!
I found the exit and parked after making a few loops around blocks and saw a place with tons people people pouring in. It was some old theatre warehouse place turned to a massive concert-like dance floor, called Avalon. It looked like some kind of awards event so many people outside. I asked where Forbidden City was and the team of 6-8 employees dressed in back kind of scoffed at me and one looked with superiority at me and said, "Across the street." I examined the other side of the street and saw nothing going on. I later learned it wa closed. They served egg rolls there but Avalon was the all night place. I wanted to burn off steam so I walked to this hotdog venor (yes this was about 3:30 am) and I asked, "Do you know what time it is?" Just to make it look like I had a conversation with about something. She probably saw my own watch but pulled up her sleeve and told me the time. "Okay thanks! that's what I have too!" I said. "Shoot!" and acted like I was late for something and I sprinted towards the next intersection and rounded the bend after fake looking at my watch like full ahead sprint. People could think that my parking meter was up or whatever. Was a great sprint. Wearing boots, white colllared shirt, black jeans, and black sport coat. I did probably about 400m before I stopped infront of the Knickerbocker to catch my breath and stretch. These approaching to young men looked at me like I was some kind of intriguing, odd, wild animal.
I talked with them and learned that Evan and his friend had grown up in Hollywood but new Calabasas and Taboo. They were film students.
"So like behind the camera stuff? Cinematography?"I asked. Yeah. We exchanged numbers and talked and I said I wasn't sure how it works but if they wanted to make a movie I'd definitely be on board. They seemed like cool people. A bit odd. The other one had a huge floppy mop of hair, but they seemed nice most certainly. I stretched while talking with them
A bus made a broad veering curve. "Woah! is that going to hit that car?!" Evan exclaimed watching this bus come swerving towards us.
"Oh man! that was crazy. It just like swooped. that's a wild turn!" I said and we laughed.
We talked a bit more and I said, "Well, gotta go. Awesome meeting you guys!"
Then evan said back "Awesome meeting You!" with a lot of enthusiasm and emphasis on the "you". Like saying that it was most awesome for them to have met me not the other way around. Not sure what he meant by that. I'm not famous or anything, maybe they were just appreciative of someone talking with them and being congenial and expressing interest in their cinemtagraphy stuff. So that was cool. Then I walked up to Avalon. Amazing how a good run clears things up. There were only about two black-coated employees out now and none of them smug. I waited in line and joked with the bouncer about fake ids.
"Hhmm so if they have a good backstory. Believe backstory. You'll let 'em go?!" I joked?
"Yeah, that's it." He said.
I approached the booth and paid an outrageous $35 entry fee to what was like a movie ticket booth and walked in.
Avalon (Utter Crap)
I daned around a ton. It was this massive stage, concert like area. The main dance floor was probably the size of a basketball court, but there was tiered balconies dimmed out in the back. It looked like an old theatre where the seats had been ripped out. One thing I couldnt' get over was how all these hundreds of people dancing looked drugged or monkey-like. Many could have possibly been drugged, but maybe it was just fatigue (after all it was 3am - 6am that I was there). I was astonished how "in their own little worlds" everyone seemed. You were brushing shoulders with a dozen people, in a room with hundres and hundreds, and some people were just sitting down half asleep. The extremeties of liveliness were huge. It went from some people sitting down half asleep, to other people dancing wildly. The shadowy darkness was sparked up by light blasts and the DJ's music frequently slowed and almost stopped and then ascended quickly after declining in pace. Somehow someone had a drum. How did they get a hand drum in there? It was kind of interesting to see just how few people cared. But at that time in the morning it definitely felt somewhat tribal. I'd say a little less than half all the people in the club were asian. I met an armenian, asian, iris was Irish, Kimberly was korean. Wow talk about a trip around the world via people. It felt like something out of the scene in the Matrix in Zion but this was like a darker Zion without the warmth without the inspiring speech and a lot of compartmentalization. CA is warm so I love it for that though. Finally approached this women with amazing probably D-D+ breasts woman and I said, "You look like my dad's secretary!". It was the first thing that popped in my mind. Because of my romantic courage I have the ability to say what's on my mind.
She asked kind of coyly, "and what does she look like?". You could tell she wasn't merely being facetious and actually valued the answer to her question. Out of insecurity with herself or more likely, actually, probably just a genuine interest in how I saw her -- a craving for another's perspective possibly -- she eagerly awaited in what light I saw her.
I simply said the first thing that came to mind, "A woman," and smiled boldly and sincerely. Her eyes widened and my message looked like it jolted her back a bit. Ding! I had hit a potential softspot with a bulls-eye compliment. Saying your a man or a woman to anyone in their around-middle 20s is a unique compliment I think. Anytime you're in an era of trying to define and become something (like an adult, or even a fully formed man or woman, or say a doctor, or anything you're trying to define for yourself) and someone defines you already at what you seek to achieve, it feels like your work to metamorphasize is complete. I followed that up saying, "She's polish. Eva...Sosnowska" I couldn't remember the secretary's last name, so said the last name of another eva I knew from gradeschool.
I asked, "So what's your name?"
"Tasha."
"Hey, Tasha, I'm John." We shook hands. "I'm going to go dance. So do you want to go dance, Tasha? Last chance!"
For a flash of an instant their was a glimmer in her eye as if she truly did want to jump out on the dance floor with me. I hadn't seen her dance the entire night. But then that gleam vanished and out of what seemed like comfortable routine of hers she gestured to some guy wearing shades, shirt unbuttoned almost down to a few inches below his sternum, and could probably bench close to 300 pounds, and said "This is my boyfriend." I don't mind guys who dress well, stay fit, and look "cool", but it's usually ridiculous when that's the "only" thing going for them. You could tell, like probably 87% of that guys "gifts" I was looking at...just seeing him stand their flex pecs. Unlike him, I had numerous internal -- intelligence, humor, grace, genuine confidence -- and external gifts -- conversational mastery, attractivness, warmth. I wasn't jealous nor pissed because I didn't set myself up for failure. I phrased the invitation to dance as if it was a "one-time offer" and I knew that there was going to be a 95% chance that she'd say just what she said. I'd recieved the "Boyfriend" line hundreds and hundreds of times. There's no point in someone saying that and getting so wound up by it that it ruins your night, so you learn to gauge the situation, stay hopeful and alive nad spirited with no expectations, but use your deductive intelligence to scrutinize people and frame what they will and will not say or do. This gives you more control and allows you to have more fun because you won't waste your time trying to convince someone to, for example, dance when you know they haven't danced with anyone but their boyfriend for a few months. There's also the other argument that those confined restricted people should be helped. "Get her to dance! Help her break free! Be her salvation!" But I've learned from a lot of pain that if people do not specifically approach you and and convince you that they seek active change towards something, trying to change them will bring you tremendous pain and futilety. No one can change unless they willingly tell you to do so. So you've got to protect yourself and them. If they don't express interest and active, conscious focus on changing, any opportunity you see to "change them or help them" is an illusion. So stick with reality. If someone wants to pay me and actively says they want to change something I'll help; otherwise I'm free to do what I want. Besides, why waste time with someone who's stuck and is focused on staying stuck, when there's cooler people and more fulfilling people out there. Anyways, I expressed my love out to Tasha in a kind of mindful way. She had a gorgeous kind of Valley Girl body. Probably D boobs. Dirty Blonde hair. Kind of voluptuous curves. But kind of the bubbliness about her as the Boy Meets World girl -- kind of a little bit of dirtier Topanga Lawrence. So she was surprisingly nice. Normally you get those women that give you scoff that says no way anything's happening here!
I revisited the dance floor and with my best efforts to dance with people and have fun, but also to not intrude if they didn't want to dance, I did what most all other people did: kind of dance with yourself, half-hover near some people you want to dance with as they did the same thing. This one kind of smaller framed woman kept dancing by shaking her head back and forth. I asked, "Are you Russian?" with a smile on my face. If she smiled, I couldn't tell, but kept on shaking her head dancing. Probably on some kind of ecstacy drug. I saw a really wild asian dancer in a read christmassy sweater dancing. She could have been a professional dancer with all kinds of nonstop looks and hand movements, or just really feeling the music. I said to myself if I danced with her I'd be successful. So I did that kind of hovering dancing thing that everyone does in front of her which definitey counted as dancing with her. I give myself these little pushes.
So then I wandered around to the other bars and rooms in the huge club and saw Tasha walking alone into one of them as I walked out. I wasn't even really expecting her to acknowledge me, but in any case I did a quick little wave which ended up looking like a "good bye" wave. She smiled pretty deeply at me. Maybe she did feel some good chemistry after all! But she presented to many obstacles: reluctance to dance, boyfriend, and now this chasing game. Sometimes you've got to just refocus elsewhere. I remember having seen her outside the club before we got in. She was easily one of the hottest women in the club. Probably the hottest, I thought. I had actually talked with her! Something I doubt many other guys could say. I bet she was enchanted by the "woman" compliment and since very few other men had approached her, and her boyfriend's best conversational talent was merely flexing his pecs, she probably found me intriguing. But I have no regrets, there was nothing I could have done. Going back to find her, try to break the ice again and again wasn't in my capacity at the time. It's highly unlikely and I'm more likely just projecting what I want to be going on onto the scene, but at that point, after having fully flirted with over five women that night, I had no way of knowing what was going on. She failed in that one by not dancing in the first place! A lot of chasing women seems like "heart endurance" where it's like you go out to these places work up tremendous confidence just to talk to a woman and then hang on as she takes you for a little roller coaster where you feel progress then failure then progress then failure ad infinitum and then it's over and then you don't want to do it again, but somehow find yourself doing it again. With the constant fear of some boyfriend beating me up, some woman getting pissed or embarassing me, or just the constant effort, it's not very fun at all. I guess it built a lot of character though. In any case, it's something I'm proud of having done -- building that kind of "heart in a blender" resilience -- but even more glad that I'm going to focus elsewhere. It's that "She's the one. All the others were getting me primed for this!" mentality that simultaneously keeps me going to shove my heart into these tornados time after time and also nearly drives me insane. I think looking at it as a love rollercoaster is a lot healthier of an outlook actually, so I'll do that. But for now THEY failed. I gave 1000% effort in meeting women and instead of for the millionth time saying to myself "Oh, if I would've said this, or tried that one more time or this" and mounting regret, I know and fully understand that it was their fault. It was their insecurity, their insensitivity, their poor conversation skills, or their lack of intelligence, or lack of romantic courage that caused failure not me!! It's important to recognize that!
So I revisited the dane floor and urgently had to pee. Out if boredom for a challenge, not wanting to revisit the restroom, or some bizarre warped irrational belief that if I hold my urine some woman relationship will magically manifest itself infront of me -- I held it from about 5:25 am to 6:00. I gave myself permission to leave at 6am. And at around 5:50am I was checking my watch more than every minute, just dying to get out of there because it disgusted me. The whole scene disgusted me. The thought "you're supposed to have this success-failure confidence-shattering experience with women; that's how you find the one you like!" plagued me but I knew I had already done that. I knew that I was the most romantically courageous and intelligent person in the entire club, hell maybe in Hollywood that night. You can recognize people with a lot of romantic courage because of all the skills they possess -- the skills I possess -- paitence, intelligence, charm, devotion to doing what's good, and incredibly attention to intuition, and boldness and initiative in meeting new women. So I could say I was my fault if I did this or that, but I know that's not true. It was their fault. They're too blame. But I forgive them, but I won't forget and I won't go back. Ever.
Knowing that is distressing because a part of me says "The type of woman I like is the voluptuous, ditzy, Topanga, clubby woman" how else will I meet one? Well if that's the case, you have to know that you'll never meet one AT a club because that's when they have all their defenses up and additionally that's a fallacious belief. You pitied Tasha because she was trapped. Sure she was attractive, but attractive with issues. The right woman -- gorgeous, hot, fun, sexy, etc. -- will come my way especially when I don't focus on it and that's what I'll do -- not focus on it. At all.
There was this women older than she looked no doubt in a white long-sleeved dressy sweatshirt type shirt. She looked like the girl obsessed with Kangaroos from Chocolat. I liked her kind of clear, peaceful, but not cheesy energy but she act liked there was some force field up. I couldn't even get close to her. It was interesting how I'd say like over 60% of all the people in the club acted like they were dancing with themselves looking at the huge DJ booth-throne on stage. Almost like some bizarrely warped chanting. I didn't like it at all. Will tell you that much. But the common theme was this incredibly strong drive to mate, to have sex. The pursuit of women was only slightly more potent that the outrageous failure I had in having sex with one of the over half a dozen women I sincerely connected with or pursued. I mean just look at them all.
√Iris
√Doll
Kimberly
Vanya
√Kangaroo Girl
√Tasha
Wild Dancer girl.
Two girls who went downstairs
Russian Head-shaker girl
With checkmarks next to the women I was most sexually attracted to.
That type of "no pain, no gain" logic with women has been a really destructive program playing through my brain. I've got to relinquish that crap and embrace the new improved logic "no pain, no insane waste of time":D But it's an incredible drain doing all that chasing. It makes you feel weak, deprived, wounded, evaporated, burdened, heavy; it's not fun. Anthony Robbins is right though, if you don't replace an old pattern with a new more fulfilling one, you slip back into the old. So I've GOT to find new more fulfilling fun pattern than all that bar-women-chasing hellishness. I've just got too. It's pretty clear though that my 60% goal of the evening is meeting to have sex with women, the other 40% is having fun and ensuring good people I like have fun too. But going to bars feels like work to me. What's the point if like 95% of all the nights you put all these tremendous amount of tiring work into meeting and dancing with women and then you're left alone thinking of all the things that "I could've tried or said or kissed this way or that" to be having sex instead. It makes you feel evaporated if that makes any sense. I actually believed that only after getting shot down, rejected, over and over again will I meet dream babe. Not true at all. I don't want to do that any more. That's not how I want to spend my time. The problem is, I know my sexual drive has a mind of it's own and sometimes convinces me to chase after women but I'm in control of my body and mind. I won't give way to the impulses that end up wasting my time; I'll follow the fulfilling urges from now on!
The Lesson of Knowing When to Actively Observe amidst Acting: A Sub-Lesson of "The Best Commitments Never Bind and Allow Advantageous Flexibility"
One thing I realized I NEVER do in life is watch the movie of life. I'm OBSESSED With acting in it; engaging, moving, being active in life. All very good things. After all many a great wise man can espouse the value of being active and interacting with life instead of being a passive observer. However, what I recently realized is that constact acting, nonstop Yang, all the time is out of balance. While activity engagement, and initiative and just "doing stuff" is fantastic and a valuable energetic quality (and no doubt a necessity for success), knowing when to remain just as alert and focused as you are in acting mode, but to sit back and observe on select occasions is of equal importance.. I was at this club the other day and there were a few people there that, amidst all this blaring techno music, gleaming lights, hundreds of people moving and dancing, they weren't moving an extra muscle even trying to dance. Now this wasn't laziness. These people were alert. Sure, there were people that were half-asleep slouched in a chair sitting or spacing out. But these 2 people I saw were always in the middle of this huge dance floor, smack dab in the center of all these dancing partying people, and they were alert and observant and not lazy. It wasn't as if they didn't make an effort to dance; it was as though the thought didn't even consider to them or it wasn't in their interest. They weren't acting haughty or "above" the party or group; none of that. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but later I realized they were "watching the movie" of the club. Watching the movie of that small slice of life. Most interestingly to me was that they appeared to fully have validated their simply standing there fully observing.
Those two people had validated their active observation -- the choice to merely watch amongst crowds that were moving and dancing. The funny thing is what made me realize that. When I entered the club the cover fee was at a booth at which you normally by movie tickets! Wow! haha. I think we've got to ensure that we realize that any commitment mustn't be a "bind". The taoist beliefs emphasize the necessity of the balance between activity and stillness. You grow the best out of utilizing both those. Our very essential bio-rhythms function at such pattern - wakefulness (active engagement) and then sleep (stillness). Committing to being active shouldn't bind you from ocassionally observing, when observing actively could be more valuable at a certain time. Committing to eat certain types of food, mustn't "bind you" to occasionally eating some different type of food that at the time could be more valuable. So in a way the lesson of "allowing yourself to actively observe in the instances where observing would be the most valuable thing to do -- more valuable than acting", is a sub-lesson of the grander idea of remembering to maintain flexibility in your commitments and knowing that the best commitments are those that never bind or lock you into something but enable the flexibility to do something slightly different if that adjustment has more present value. The best commitments allow advantageous flexibility. You have to give yourself permission to do the most valuable thing at a given time within the construct of a commitment -- that's advantageous flexibility. It doesn't mean abandoning your original commitment or goal; just allowing it to expand through a different medium on select occassions.
Knowing When to Actively Observe or Actively Engage.
See, I had felt guilty out of simply actively observing around people. But actively observing doesn't violate that commitment to stay active. So I'm going to focus on being active and constantly doing things but give myself the permission to engage "active observation" when that's best at a certain time or place. How do you identify in which places or events are best to actively engage or actively observe? Excellent question. The best way to know is to ask yourself "is this place or event set up so that I could be the apex center performer? Or is there ropes, boundaries, an inaccessible stage or some kind of hierarchy? If there's a stage you can't get up on and a main event that other people have paid to see then such a situation is best to actively observe because actively engaging will eventually cause problems in such a scenario. If there's already a main event and you excel through exceptionally talented active engagement at that event eventually you'll hit a the ceiling where you aren't permitted to go on stage or use the mic or lead the seminar or whatever the main event is. In this situations simply accept that the maximal utilization of such a scenario is to actively observe. Feel guilty about actively engaging in such a situation because trust me from many many experiences of getting kicked out of places, running into security, hitting that ceiling where someone else is the center, the star because actively engaging is the best use of your time. Then where there's more of an open field in a different scenario you can actively engage.
Taboo
I watched the bartender serve this green drink in a glass tumbler and asked the nearby bar-waitress what that was.
"A tokya iced tea." She mentioned a barrage of ingredients in it. I went outside in the back area and met an accountant named Amonn and his cousin, Doll. They were warm, cheerful, african american, people in probably late 20s early 30s. Later that night I learned Doll was probably 34. She was showing a lot of cleevage but you could tell she had a mind on her. She was good, almost maternal and looked out to make sure people didn't drink too much and had real ambitions. Needless to say, while I could have focused on her breasts the whole time, I didn't because her mind was unusally more interesting. Amonn and I seemed to hit it off with a good friendship. "This is a nice place, it's sophisticated" he said.
"Yeah! totally. Definitely sophisticated."
The song "Tipsy" came on and a short kind of round-faced hispanic kid came out and started rapping to use three. It was pretty awful and embarassing but Amonn and I laughed in a kind of cheering him on kind of way.
"I just did a show here earlier," he said.
"Wow. That was good man. Can't imagine what you're like when you're tipsy!" We all laughed.
Amonn and Doll were solid people.
I went inside the bar and made my third attempt at trying to penetrade the bar to get an order in. I don't really like drinking especially in bars. Unless it's a raging party and everyone's getting hammered, but that hasn't happened in years. Red wine has been my fancy recently. I usually end up drinking just as "false confidence juice" which doesn't really work. So not being able to get a drink in didn't bother me. Water is always my favorite anyways.
I glanced up at the television and thought I saw Kobe in a Chicago jersey. I turned to the shaved headed, kind of husky dude with an earring to my right. He looked slightly white-trashy, a little rough around the edges, but likely a good heart. I asked him,"Who's Kobe play for these days?"
"Lakers," he said giving me kind of an odd "duh!" look, still focusing on the bar.
"Oh right. Okay cool. Good. that's what I thought. I just thought I saw him in a Chicago jersey and was like what?!" He nodded in approval. I continued, "Yeah I was in Chicago and followed the Bulls during the late 90s when Jackson was there --"
"Michael Jordan," he interjected almost questioningly.
"Yeah, yeah. Andddd Pippin and Armstrong and Kerr and Kukoc!" I said smiling, going on. "So now that Jackson is with the Lakers it's awesome being in LA, Lakers fan now, with Jackson here too!"
He smiled approvlingly again and we both seperately focused on the bar. I think I've cultivated this gift of talking with people. I follow so many things -- sports, soccer, biology, math, academia, news, celebrity stuff, etc. etc. to get in conversations with people. That could be really potential for sales. Befriend, and then recommend a product or service.
Finally on the left hand side of the bar I found a spot and stood there.
This blonde, short, women with great about C-D breasts in a gold shoulderless fancy tank top thing under a gold dress coat looked at me out of the corner of her eye and then back at the bartender and said, "He'll pay for my drink." The bartender looked at me and back at her and then said, "Okay, I've never seen anyone do that. So you owe him [gesturing to me] 6 dollars." I looked back and forth between them and muttered something about paying for the drink. This bartender I liked. That's how it was supposed to work! Emphasize how unoriginal it is for someone to pay for another's drink! Exacty! I stared their at her untouched "dirty martini" with 3 olives in it as I tried to make eye contact with the nice cheery little bartender to try to order a glass of red wine. I wasn't sure I wanted to drink anythingShe laughed and joked with her asian friend. They were easily in their late 30s to early 40s. Okay maybe early 30s if they hadn't aged well. I asked, "What's your name?"
She said, "Iris."
"Oh cool, like the eye!" pointing to a portion of my eye.
"Oh no! I hate it when people say that! Like the flower."
"Ohh, okay! So what's your favorite kind of flower? Hmm I can't think of that many flower types. Something exotic?"
She thought about and said, "Orchid".
"Hhmmm yeah wow. Orchid." I had no idea where this was going. "Haha! Don't think I've ever talked about botany in a bar before!"
"Botany" was a new word for her. "What?"
"Botany. Plants. You know?" She muttered something garbled "close to botany" but, amused at the cuteness, I decided to move on. I touched her shoulder as I said a few other things which she seemed warm to.
I mentioned something about a martini and she gave me sip. "Wow that's good! I don't think I've ever had a martini before!"
"A dirty martini".
We talked a bit more. She was Irish, apparently "leaving tomorrow". Her asian friend with a weathered face was jumpy and wanted to dance. I asked, "Want to dance?!" She held my hand and we said a few more things. Wow. I'm going to have sex with this total hotty tonight I thought to myself! We mosied over to this corner table and she took off her over jacket. Wow she had perfectly shaped breasts. She was tiny. About 5'4 maybe. She never really looked at you, her eyes were always flitting about. So we hit up the dance floor after setting our drinks at the table. She pulled me towards the floor holding my hand. Wow! This was moving fast. Already holding hands and dancing after meeting about 10 minutes ago! It was a close quarters floor so we started a little bit far away but then were close-up grinding after about a minute.
"Do you like ballroom dancing?" I said in my attempt to be audible, after a few more minutes of laughing and joking and smiling at things we couldn't hear each other say!
"I Love ballroom dancing!" We then did a few spins and I accidentally bumped elbows with this woman who looked like a girl I knew from high school acting class, Meg Grunewald. I later learned this elbow-bump woman was named Vanya Gale (Dr. Vanya Gale).
So I continued doing this kind of clunky half-ballroom dancing with Iris. Then "Take a look at my girlfriend" song came on. and we started doing grinding her ass pressed up against me. The way she was holding my hand and acting all giddy she "did" feel like a girlfriend at the time! Sweet! She's attractive and small, but her movements were so clunky and clumsy like she had just gotten out of a wheelchair and decided to celebrate with 10 shots of vodka. haha!! :D But she wasn't drunk as she talked with sobriety and did everything with sobriety, maybe a little tipsy, you could just tell she wasn't the most elegant dancer. She was trying though and she was very hot. She almost wobbled over and said, "You better hold on to me. You'll regret if you let me go." Hmmm a kind of loaded demand. So I picked her up in a big hug and spun her around. That type of "playfulness" probably made her feel uncomfortable. She kept brushing her boobs up against my hand for fractions of a second and as we grinded I started to get a partial boner. I didn't know if I should focus on concealing it or the opposite, get sexual right there on the the dance floor. I'd danced with some women before and the latter had definitely been the most mutually fun and exciting thing to do. But I realized with hindsight this ambiguity of asking "hhmm what's appropriate or inappropriate behavior" for this relationship at this moment -- the very asking and uncertainty of that question -- revealed the fragility and poor communication on her part in the relationship. I didn't really know what she wanted! So we continued to grind, joked, and laughed more at things we couldn't hear because of the noise. I was really hot and feeling kind of sweaty, but kept my black sport coat on. We went back to the corner table in the bar potion of Taboo. And she sat down on the booth not making any room for me to sit next to her so I kind of half-leaned up against the wall. She engaged in conversation with these other people at the table whom I hadn't met so I glanced around the bar. For a split second I made eye contact with a slender and attractive women waiting in line for the bathroom. She flinched a smile at me and I instinctively smiled back. Iris then practically verbally slapped me with the comment, "I saw you looking around! Don't look at other women!" I must have apologized or said I was just looking around because that other woman was waiting in line for the bathroom. Wow, a controlling and insecure side to Iris. I moved in close to try to peck her on the check with a kiss, but she craned her face away!! What a brat!
"Kiss and make-up?!" I said playfully.
"He's really controlling and a vulture" she said pointing to this guy who could have been a lazy-eyed manican sitting in the corner with another woman who hadn't moved a muscle. "I'm a vulture too," she said.
I rolled my eyes. There was no way this clumsy-dancing, very attractive, but little woman was going to intimidate me thinking I was being "preyed on" by her. Was that really the message she was trying to send out now? So unconvincing!! I think she wanted me to feel intimidated by her. I certainly didn't feel that. Maybe apalled, not even confused, but just like wow, this woman really doesn't know how to communicate.
"Can we make room on the booth so I can sit?" I asked.
"I need space!" She said and kind of annoyed voice and made this gesture like she was shooing away a fly. She mentioned something about needing space but I got the picture. Dropped the table and her and hit up the dance floor. I think Iris wanted to make me feel used, but it didn't work. She just created the impression of being an attractive women with great breasts, but with really weird mannerisms. Maybe she was wanting to be some predator, manipulative person, or maybe she was but I had just seen through so many people like that and just saw insecurity written all over her, that I the only way to see her was ridiculous, but in any case, I realized that 90% of my interest in her was her boobs (and they were fantastic boobs), so I kind of apathetically left.
I instantly found myself dancing with the elbow-bump woman. I guess she had been watching me ballroom dance with Iris and wanted to do some spins.
"Move your hips from side-to-side." she instructed. "I'm a doctor" She said.
I played along and danced some. "Oh cool! Do you have a stephoscope?!" I asked.
"I do. At home."
"Do you know all 206 bones of the body?"
"I do!" She rsponded somewhat surprised that I knew that too.
"I think I broke my carpal bone" I commented but that wasn't heard. I think I asked those questions because they were unique and expressed and interest in her profession, but I also new that I'd get a "yes" response (yes a doctor has a stephoscope, yes they know all 206 bones of the body).
I learned her name was Vanya and later from her asian friend, Kimberly, that her last name was Gale.
Then she pulls me in and makes out with me. It wasn't my usual lusting, intense passionate making out session. It was a 5 second, tongue, quick lip kiss.
She was an aggressive woman. Pretty strong too. Maybe B-C boobs. She wasn't wobbly like Iris, but kind of like she had just strong bones, strong mind, but all amidst being a bit tipsy. It was funny.
"Wow I didn't notice the wine cellar there!" I commented pointing to the wine cellar oddly placed next to the DJ-sound area.
She kept kind of drifting towards the door of the bar. Eventually we went outside and I asked "Sweet! So where's the after party!"
"My house!" she said. Hhmmm wow she really wanted to party. But I'd heard "conversations" about after parties. Conversations about and actually doing were very different things. I wasnt' that attracted to her. I recognized her as that old acting friend I knew but wasn't that turned on by. I said "I've got to go close the tab." and jumped back in the bar.
It took me awhile to swim towards the bartender and when I got there instantly started talking with Doll.
"You and Amonn seem like awesome people! You were the first people I talked to at Taboo here!"
I invited them over for an after party. "We should go dancing!" I said enthusiastically. There was a long saga of talking about an after party and more dancing. This a reoccurring and common theme of the night. At this point in the night it's the climax, the rising action has reached it's Zenith and it keeps going up (with after party and sex) or starts to close-out falling action. Usually at this time of night you know whether or not you're going to get laid. I hadn't had sex in almost a year. I had been dogged, insane, desperate, nonchalant, apathetic, hopeful, hopeless, furious, enraged, afraid, timid, accepting -- all those things. I have learned just to have fun with it. But it's almost like this last panicked breath for air as you suddenly realize that hope doesn't die. It's just your hopes suddenly converge all towards this baseline of reality and the reality was that Doll is driving Amonn home and hell-bent on being maternal to his cousin (likely out of some insecurity in being able to care for her own needs, she obsesses about the needs of another -- still a noble soul she is); Vanya is sicker than a dog and wants to sleep, Iris left and was focused in creating some predatorial image, and Kimberly is trapped in her engaged-to-be-married stifled role and can't allow herself to have fun. Sigh.....
I've experienced that sensation and dreaded it easily over a couple hundred times. Probably closer to half a thousand times. Where you've partied, laughed, talked, felt a good vibe, and danced with a lot of women and then suddenly you learn a bout all these things preventing them, distracting them, creating obstacles from having sex -- be it, too much drinking, a fiance, an insecurity, an obsession with caring for her cousin, etc. I normally let my enthusiasm carry the invitation for an after-pary as that's safest because if they're interested they'll only go if they want. Unfortunately, there won't be a next time, but if there was I'd invest a tiny scruple of energy into persuading them to go to an after party instead of whatever excuse they conjured up. I just don't like being persuaded to do things I don't want to do, so don't want to do that ot others, but if I know they'd have fun, then all the better for us all.
"Do you know what's going to happen if I go to your house?" Doll said. "I'm just going to get there and fall asleep on your bed!" We laughed. She was tired. The night was young for me though. Amonn mentioned a 7am place called Forbidden City in Hollywood.
We launched off into a conversation. She had acting experience with commericals but now was focusing on starting a health club or health process or some sorts. I told I was doing acting but had other interests and we hit it up. She sounded and acted a bit like my aunt JoAnn! Caring, nice, playful, but business and kind of "getting things done" before play. When I ordered one last shot before closing the tab she said something like "John, be careful. Are you driving?" Clarity. She seemed like family in a way. Amonn and I started to say goodbye as Doll was acting like his mom chasing after him trying to get him to go. Amonn and I shook hands and we instantly did this 3-move handshake! Doll gave us a look of suprise like "What was that?!"
"Pure improvisation! That was awesome! The last time I did a cool handshake like that was in gradeschool! Best times!" I said. We laughed.
Doll and Amonn left out of the back way and I ran to say goodbye to them. I had gotten Doll's number earlier so asked for Amonns.
"There's a bunch of accountants and a party" he mentioned but I didn't catch all of it. He invited me to some party next weekend.
Vanya came back into the bar and looked really sickly drunk. She kept asking the bartender for her card for literally a half hour and the bartender said that she already closed her tab, reminding her a dozen times. She had totally shut down. I sat next to her friend Kimberly in this booth. She kept asking about my age, very adult-like haha. I learned she was 34. She put her scarf around me.
"Oh my good! What is that aroma?! This smells Soo good!" I exclaimed.
"It smells like cigarettes" she laughed.
"No it's like some exotic essence. Oh man! That's awesome! What is that smell! wow!" I was half elaborating half being genuine. You could tell this woman was trapped in a marriage she didn't like. She flitted her ring like it was some kind of manacle. She mentioned her fiance numerous times, too. I guess I wanted to make her feel that she still had pheromones, that she had sexiness, and sexual aromas oozing out of her that her love life hadn't ended. Later that night I glanced at her from the other side of bar. There were about 4-5 bar employees, Vanya, me, Kimberly, and maybe 2 other people in Taboo at the time and she looked kind of wild and sexy, so I told her that. She laughed and liked the compliment, but denied it. haha.
Kimberly and Vanya drove me to my car. Why do chicks always do that? It's like a 1-minute walk away and I've had about dozen women drive me to my car. I can't think of any magic to work when I'm in the back seat and they're driving and sleepy and acting like a chauffeur. Anyways, kimberly was nice, exchagned contact info and talked about buying the bar taboo. She was in real estate.
I got in my car, drove off to a side road and looked up Forbidden City on my trusty iphone. Vine Street. Right off the Hollywood 101. Okay! Off I went!
I found the exit and parked after making a few loops around blocks and saw a place with tons people people pouring in. It was some old theatre warehouse place turned to a massive concert-like dance floor, called Avalon. It looked like some kind of awards event so many people outside. I asked where Forbidden City was and the team of 6-8 employees dressed in back kind of scoffed at me and one looked with superiority at me and said, "Across the street." I examined the other side of the street and saw nothing going on. I later learned it wa closed. They served egg rolls there but Avalon was the all night place. I wanted to burn off steam so I walked to this hotdog venor (yes this was about 3:30 am) and I asked, "Do you know what time it is?" Just to make it look like I had a conversation with about something. She probably saw my own watch but pulled up her sleeve and told me the time. "Okay thanks! that's what I have too!" I said. "Shoot!" and acted like I was late for something and I sprinted towards the next intersection and rounded the bend after fake looking at my watch like full ahead sprint. People could think that my parking meter was up or whatever. Was a great sprint. Wearing boots, white colllared shirt, black jeans, and black sport coat. I did probably about 400m before I stopped infront of the Knickerbocker to catch my breath and stretch. These approaching to young men looked at me like I was some kind of intriguing, odd, wild animal.
I talked with them and learned that Evan and his friend had grown up in Hollywood but new Calabasas and Taboo. They were film students.
"So like behind the camera stuff? Cinematography?"I asked. Yeah. We exchanged numbers and talked and I said I wasn't sure how it works but if they wanted to make a movie I'd definitely be on board. They seemed like cool people. A bit odd. The other one had a huge floppy mop of hair, but they seemed nice most certainly. I stretched while talking with them
A bus made a broad veering curve. "Woah! is that going to hit that car?!" Evan exclaimed watching this bus come swerving towards us.
"Oh man! that was crazy. It just like swooped. that's a wild turn!" I said and we laughed.
We talked a bit more and I said, "Well, gotta go. Awesome meeting you guys!"
Then evan said back "Awesome meeting You!" with a lot of enthusiasm and emphasis on the "you". Like saying that it was most awesome for them to have met me not the other way around. Not sure what he meant by that. I'm not famous or anything, maybe they were just appreciative of someone talking with them and being congenial and expressing interest in their cinemtagraphy stuff. So that was cool. Then I walked up to Avalon. Amazing how a good run clears things up. There were only about two black-coated employees out now and none of them smug. I waited in line and joked with the bouncer about fake ids.
"Hhmm so if they have a good backstory. Believe backstory. You'll let 'em go?!" I joked?
"Yeah, that's it." He said.
I approached the booth and paid an outrageous $35 entry fee to what was like a movie ticket booth and walked in.
Avalon (Utter Crap)
I daned around a ton. It was this massive stage, concert like area. The main dance floor was probably the size of a basketball court, but there was tiered balconies dimmed out in the back. It looked like an old theatre where the seats had been ripped out. One thing I couldnt' get over was how all these hundreds of people dancing looked drugged or monkey-like. Many could have possibly been drugged, but maybe it was just fatigue (after all it was 3am - 6am that I was there). I was astonished how "in their own little worlds" everyone seemed. You were brushing shoulders with a dozen people, in a room with hundres and hundreds, and some people were just sitting down half asleep. The extremeties of liveliness were huge. It went from some people sitting down half asleep, to other people dancing wildly. The shadowy darkness was sparked up by light blasts and the DJ's music frequently slowed and almost stopped and then ascended quickly after declining in pace. Somehow someone had a drum. How did they get a hand drum in there? It was kind of interesting to see just how few people cared. But at that time in the morning it definitely felt somewhat tribal. I'd say a little less than half all the people in the club were asian. I met an armenian, asian, iris was Irish, Kimberly was korean. Wow talk about a trip around the world via people. It felt like something out of the scene in the Matrix in Zion but this was like a darker Zion without the warmth without the inspiring speech and a lot of compartmentalization. CA is warm so I love it for that though. Finally approached this women with amazing probably D-D+ breasts woman and I said, "You look like my dad's secretary!". It was the first thing that popped in my mind. Because of my romantic courage I have the ability to say what's on my mind.
She asked kind of coyly, "and what does she look like?". You could tell she wasn't merely being facetious and actually valued the answer to her question. Out of insecurity with herself or more likely, actually, probably just a genuine interest in how I saw her -- a craving for another's perspective possibly -- she eagerly awaited in what light I saw her.
I simply said the first thing that came to mind, "A woman," and smiled boldly and sincerely. Her eyes widened and my message looked like it jolted her back a bit. Ding! I had hit a potential softspot with a bulls-eye compliment. Saying your a man or a woman to anyone in their around-middle 20s is a unique compliment I think. Anytime you're in an era of trying to define and become something (like an adult, or even a fully formed man or woman, or say a doctor, or anything you're trying to define for yourself) and someone defines you already at what you seek to achieve, it feels like your work to metamorphasize is complete. I followed that up saying, "She's polish. Eva...Sosnowska" I couldn't remember the secretary's last name, so said the last name of another eva I knew from gradeschool.
I asked, "So what's your name?"
"Tasha."
"Hey, Tasha, I'm John." We shook hands. "I'm going to go dance. So do you want to go dance, Tasha? Last chance!"
For a flash of an instant their was a glimmer in her eye as if she truly did want to jump out on the dance floor with me. I hadn't seen her dance the entire night. But then that gleam vanished and out of what seemed like comfortable routine of hers she gestured to some guy wearing shades, shirt unbuttoned almost down to a few inches below his sternum, and could probably bench close to 300 pounds, and said "This is my boyfriend." I don't mind guys who dress well, stay fit, and look "cool", but it's usually ridiculous when that's the "only" thing going for them. You could tell, like probably 87% of that guys "gifts" I was looking at...just seeing him stand their flex pecs. Unlike him, I had numerous internal -- intelligence, humor, grace, genuine confidence -- and external gifts -- conversational mastery, attractivness, warmth. I wasn't jealous nor pissed because I didn't set myself up for failure. I phrased the invitation to dance as if it was a "one-time offer" and I knew that there was going to be a 95% chance that she'd say just what she said. I'd recieved the "Boyfriend" line hundreds and hundreds of times. There's no point in someone saying that and getting so wound up by it that it ruins your night, so you learn to gauge the situation, stay hopeful and alive nad spirited with no expectations, but use your deductive intelligence to scrutinize people and frame what they will and will not say or do. This gives you more control and allows you to have more fun because you won't waste your time trying to convince someone to, for example, dance when you know they haven't danced with anyone but their boyfriend for a few months. There's also the other argument that those confined restricted people should be helped. "Get her to dance! Help her break free! Be her salvation!" But I've learned from a lot of pain that if people do not specifically approach you and and convince you that they seek active change towards something, trying to change them will bring you tremendous pain and futilety. No one can change unless they willingly tell you to do so. So you've got to protect yourself and them. If they don't express interest and active, conscious focus on changing, any opportunity you see to "change them or help them" is an illusion. So stick with reality. If someone wants to pay me and actively says they want to change something I'll help; otherwise I'm free to do what I want. Besides, why waste time with someone who's stuck and is focused on staying stuck, when there's cooler people and more fulfilling people out there. Anyways, I expressed my love out to Tasha in a kind of mindful way. She had a gorgeous kind of Valley Girl body. Probably D boobs. Dirty Blonde hair. Kind of voluptuous curves. But kind of the bubbliness about her as the Boy Meets World girl -- kind of a little bit of dirtier Topanga Lawrence. So she was surprisingly nice. Normally you get those women that give you scoff that says no way anything's happening here!
I revisited the dance floor and with my best efforts to dance with people and have fun, but also to not intrude if they didn't want to dance, I did what most all other people did: kind of dance with yourself, half-hover near some people you want to dance with as they did the same thing. This one kind of smaller framed woman kept dancing by shaking her head back and forth. I asked, "Are you Russian?" with a smile on my face. If she smiled, I couldn't tell, but kept on shaking her head dancing. Probably on some kind of ecstacy drug. I saw a really wild asian dancer in a read christmassy sweater dancing. She could have been a professional dancer with all kinds of nonstop looks and hand movements, or just really feeling the music. I said to myself if I danced with her I'd be successful. So I did that kind of hovering dancing thing that everyone does in front of her which definitey counted as dancing with her. I give myself these little pushes.
So then I wandered around to the other bars and rooms in the huge club and saw Tasha walking alone into one of them as I walked out. I wasn't even really expecting her to acknowledge me, but in any case I did a quick little wave which ended up looking like a "good bye" wave. She smiled pretty deeply at me. Maybe she did feel some good chemistry after all! But she presented to many obstacles: reluctance to dance, boyfriend, and now this chasing game. Sometimes you've got to just refocus elsewhere. I remember having seen her outside the club before we got in. She was easily one of the hottest women in the club. Probably the hottest, I thought. I had actually talked with her! Something I doubt many other guys could say. I bet she was enchanted by the "woman" compliment and since very few other men had approached her, and her boyfriend's best conversational talent was merely flexing his pecs, she probably found me intriguing. But I have no regrets, there was nothing I could have done. Going back to find her, try to break the ice again and again wasn't in my capacity at the time. It's highly unlikely and I'm more likely just projecting what I want to be going on onto the scene, but at that point, after having fully flirted with over five women that night, I had no way of knowing what was going on. She failed in that one by not dancing in the first place! A lot of chasing women seems like "heart endurance" where it's like you go out to these places work up tremendous confidence just to talk to a woman and then hang on as she takes you for a little roller coaster where you feel progress then failure then progress then failure ad infinitum and then it's over and then you don't want to do it again, but somehow find yourself doing it again. With the constant fear of some boyfriend beating me up, some woman getting pissed or embarassing me, or just the constant effort, it's not very fun at all. I guess it built a lot of character though. In any case, it's something I'm proud of having done -- building that kind of "heart in a blender" resilience -- but even more glad that I'm going to focus elsewhere. It's that "She's the one. All the others were getting me primed for this!" mentality that simultaneously keeps me going to shove my heart into these tornados time after time and also nearly drives me insane. I think looking at it as a love rollercoaster is a lot healthier of an outlook actually, so I'll do that. But for now THEY failed. I gave 1000% effort in meeting women and instead of for the millionth time saying to myself "Oh, if I would've said this, or tried that one more time or this" and mounting regret, I know and fully understand that it was their fault. It was their insecurity, their insensitivity, their poor conversation skills, or their lack of intelligence, or lack of romantic courage that caused failure not me!! It's important to recognize that!
So I revisited the dane floor and urgently had to pee. Out if boredom for a challenge, not wanting to revisit the restroom, or some bizarre warped irrational belief that if I hold my urine some woman relationship will magically manifest itself infront of me -- I held it from about 5:25 am to 6:00. I gave myself permission to leave at 6am. And at around 5:50am I was checking my watch more than every minute, just dying to get out of there because it disgusted me. The whole scene disgusted me. The thought "you're supposed to have this success-failure confidence-shattering experience with women; that's how you find the one you like!" plagued me but I knew I had already done that. I knew that I was the most romantically courageous and intelligent person in the entire club, hell maybe in Hollywood that night. You can recognize people with a lot of romantic courage because of all the skills they possess -- the skills I possess -- paitence, intelligence, charm, devotion to doing what's good, and incredibly attention to intuition, and boldness and initiative in meeting new women. So I could say I was my fault if I did this or that, but I know that's not true. It was their fault. They're too blame. But I forgive them, but I won't forget and I won't go back. Ever.
Knowing that is distressing because a part of me says "The type of woman I like is the voluptuous, ditzy, Topanga, clubby woman" how else will I meet one? Well if that's the case, you have to know that you'll never meet one AT a club because that's when they have all their defenses up and additionally that's a fallacious belief. You pitied Tasha because she was trapped. Sure she was attractive, but attractive with issues. The right woman -- gorgeous, hot, fun, sexy, etc. -- will come my way especially when I don't focus on it and that's what I'll do -- not focus on it. At all.
There was this women older than she looked no doubt in a white long-sleeved dressy sweatshirt type shirt. She looked like the girl obsessed with Kangaroos from Chocolat. I liked her kind of clear, peaceful, but not cheesy energy but she act liked there was some force field up. I couldn't even get close to her. It was interesting how I'd say like over 60% of all the people in the club acted like they were dancing with themselves looking at the huge DJ booth-throne on stage. Almost like some bizarrely warped chanting. I didn't like it at all. Will tell you that much. But the common theme was this incredibly strong drive to mate, to have sex. The pursuit of women was only slightly more potent that the outrageous failure I had in having sex with one of the over half a dozen women I sincerely connected with or pursued. I mean just look at them all.
√Iris
√Doll
Kimberly
Vanya
√Kangaroo Girl
√Tasha
Wild Dancer girl.
Two girls who went downstairs
Russian Head-shaker girl
With checkmarks next to the women I was most sexually attracted to.
That type of "no pain, no gain" logic with women has been a really destructive program playing through my brain. I've got to relinquish that crap and embrace the new improved logic "no pain, no insane waste of time":D But it's an incredible drain doing all that chasing. It makes you feel weak, deprived, wounded, evaporated, burdened, heavy; it's not fun. Anthony Robbins is right though, if you don't replace an old pattern with a new more fulfilling one, you slip back into the old. So I've GOT to find new more fulfilling fun pattern than all that bar-women-chasing hellishness. I've just got too. It's pretty clear though that my 60% goal of the evening is meeting to have sex with women, the other 40% is having fun and ensuring good people I like have fun too. But going to bars feels like work to me. What's the point if like 95% of all the nights you put all these tremendous amount of tiring work into meeting and dancing with women and then you're left alone thinking of all the things that "I could've tried or said or kissed this way or that" to be having sex instead. It makes you feel evaporated if that makes any sense. I actually believed that only after getting shot down, rejected, over and over again will I meet dream babe. Not true at all. I don't want to do that any more. That's not how I want to spend my time. The problem is, I know my sexual drive has a mind of it's own and sometimes convinces me to chase after women but I'm in control of my body and mind. I won't give way to the impulses that end up wasting my time; I'll follow the fulfilling urges from now on!
The Lesson of Knowing When to Actively Observe amidst Acting: A Sub-Lesson of "The Best Commitments Never Bind and Allow Advantageous Flexibility"
One thing I realized I NEVER do in life is watch the movie of life. I'm OBSESSED With acting in it; engaging, moving, being active in life. All very good things. After all many a great wise man can espouse the value of being active and interacting with life instead of being a passive observer. However, what I recently realized is that constact acting, nonstop Yang, all the time is out of balance. While activity engagement, and initiative and just "doing stuff" is fantastic and a valuable energetic quality (and no doubt a necessity for success), knowing when to remain just as alert and focused as you are in acting mode, but to sit back and observe on select occasions is of equal importance.. I was at this club the other day and there were a few people there that, amidst all this blaring techno music, gleaming lights, hundreds of people moving and dancing, they weren't moving an extra muscle even trying to dance. Now this wasn't laziness. These people were alert. Sure, there were people that were half-asleep slouched in a chair sitting or spacing out. But these 2 people I saw were always in the middle of this huge dance floor, smack dab in the center of all these dancing partying people, and they were alert and observant and not lazy. It wasn't as if they didn't make an effort to dance; it was as though the thought didn't even consider to them or it wasn't in their interest. They weren't acting haughty or "above" the party or group; none of that. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but later I realized they were "watching the movie" of the club. Watching the movie of that small slice of life. Most interestingly to me was that they appeared to fully have validated their simply standing there fully observing.
Those two people had validated their active observation -- the choice to merely watch amongst crowds that were moving and dancing. The funny thing is what made me realize that. When I entered the club the cover fee was at a booth at which you normally by movie tickets! Wow! haha. I think we've got to ensure that we realize that any commitment mustn't be a "bind". The taoist beliefs emphasize the necessity of the balance between activity and stillness. You grow the best out of utilizing both those. Our very essential bio-rhythms function at such pattern - wakefulness (active engagement) and then sleep (stillness). Committing to being active shouldn't bind you from ocassionally observing, when observing actively could be more valuable at a certain time. Committing to eat certain types of food, mustn't "bind you" to occasionally eating some different type of food that at the time could be more valuable. So in a way the lesson of "allowing yourself to actively observe in the instances where observing would be the most valuable thing to do -- more valuable than acting", is a sub-lesson of the grander idea of remembering to maintain flexibility in your commitments and knowing that the best commitments are those that never bind or lock you into something but enable the flexibility to do something slightly different if that adjustment has more present value. The best commitments allow advantageous flexibility. You have to give yourself permission to do the most valuable thing at a given time within the construct of a commitment -- that's advantageous flexibility. It doesn't mean abandoning your original commitment or goal; just allowing it to expand through a different medium on select occassions.
Knowing When to Actively Observe or Actively Engage.
See, I had felt guilty out of simply actively observing around people. But actively observing doesn't violate that commitment to stay active. So I'm going to focus on being active and constantly doing things but give myself the permission to engage "active observation" when that's best at a certain time or place. How do you identify in which places or events are best to actively engage or actively observe? Excellent question. The best way to know is to ask yourself "is this place or event set up so that I could be the apex center performer? Or is there ropes, boundaries, an inaccessible stage or some kind of hierarchy? If there's a stage you can't get up on and a main event that other people have paid to see then such a situation is best to actively observe because actively engaging will eventually cause problems in such a scenario. If there's already a main event and you excel through exceptionally talented active engagement at that event eventually you'll hit a the ceiling where you aren't permitted to go on stage or use the mic or lead the seminar or whatever the main event is. In this situations simply accept that the maximal utilization of such a scenario is to actively observe. Feel guilty about actively engaging in such a situation because trust me from many many experiences of getting kicked out of places, running into security, hitting that ceiling where someone else is the center, the star because actively engaging is the best use of your time. Then where there's more of an open field in a different scenario you can actively engage.
7.06.2008
Essentials for Life health
- Exercise
- Math
- Finances -- quicken, numbers
- Reading my books
Why? Exercise creates body-mind mastery. Math is just fun and uplifts the quality of your thinking organizing all "muck". Finances is freedom and stuff you eNJOY focusing on because it gives you awareness of your expenses and reading my books is more mind-body master because that connects your own truisms and principles with your understanding.
And swimming is the best for exercise because you can "hammer" out in swimming and not injure your body.
What kind of math is best? Any kind that's fun and evocative and feels aligning. For me, for awhile it was factoring and geometry never hurts as well. Limits can also have an enlightening effect.
Finances. It just feels good to be ontop of your finances -- knowing what you owe, how much you liquidity your have, your worth, and most importantly where your money has been going.
Reading. Reading my own writing has just an all-around intrinsically uplifting and aligning effect. Of these readings the most important are your collection of
quotations
mind-aggreements
social-networking emails.
books.
previous vyl blog posts.
Gmail emails are just pain. They suck!
Update on The Dream of Acting and the Some-what Conflicting Necessity of Financial Independence
In regards to acting. Thanks to anyone for that encouragement. I sincerely appreciate anyone's feedback and fortification toward acting. I agree, when I was pursuing it during taking acting classes, I did feel extremely fulfilled. The biggest obstacle toward that pursuit, however has been money. MONEY, money, money. That's the only thing. I've diverted my attention toward web design and trying to make money via computers because I see that as the most direct way to accrue money. I can't foresee a way to make money via acting until LONG after many auditions and shows (of zero to low pay). It just seems like forever until I'll be financially independent (earning over $30k per year on my own). This desperation has left me in quite accurately a state of panic where any profession that earns, for the time being, feels viable.
Acting has always functioned as the "dream" profession, but if a dream job can't pay my bills, well, of what use is it other than fulfilling that dream? Dream fulfillment is huge, but it's a little higher up on the maslowian scale of self-actualization. I have these great parents who kind of bypass the lower stages of maslowian hierarchy of needs like having shelter, and getting food.
I fear that not living IN hollywood (22 miles from it and NO WHERE to park once I commute there) greatly impedes my pursuit in acting (finding an agent, namely). If I had a set parking place in hollywood things would operate MUCH more smoothly. I can't describe the hours you spend looking for a parking spot that only offers 2 hours of parking in Hollywood. This sounds trivial but actually presents a major obstacle because I don't have the freedom of being able to get to hollywood and explore. I've looked into solutions such as taking a train there, which could work, but the train station is roughly 5 miles away and then I have to factor in commute costs.
The past 2 months (after acting class) have been none other than panic-stricken attack on trying to earn money -- from investigating credit, to calling banks, to researching resume protocol and attempting to apply to various jobs.
My strong drive to have total financial independence is a barrier I did not foresee.
At times I looked back on the acting class and think what was I doing wasting time on those "energy" classes? That won't help me earn! But during the class I remember enjoying it greatly. My desperation to earn money has reached an unbearable extreme. I feel greatly "left behind" in comparison to many of my peers who now have full financial independence (not to mention my brother).
I think it goes without saying that my drive and desire and "Need" to earn money for myself presents somewhat of a schism with pursuing my passion of acting, of which it's difficult to foresee how/when I will make that $30k/year minimum.
Just a piece of my mind in regards to pursuing the dream of acting with currently conflicting necessity of financial independence.
Another thing is Jen from the acting corps said somethings that triggered pain and dislike, like : "You still need to focus". I can't begin to describe how infuriating it is when people say that because I put so much attention to trying to focus. My art history teach said those very same words and then accused me of having a learning disorder. telling someone "you need to focus" is
1. Insulting -- it implies they aren't focus. But I've run 2 marathons and written 4 books, have they? I consider that the epitome of focus.
2. Ambiguous -- focus on what? Focus for how long?
3. Useless -- the lack of specifying WHAT precisely to focus on makes their "suggestion" or "evaluation" of my attentiveness utterly pointless.
I think it's understandable why I have an aversion to an insulting, ambiguous, and useless "evaluation" by people.
Anger in receiving comments like that, presents a barrier in taking the classes. And the fact that the classes don't guarantee me earning money is another barrier.
There are just so many hoops to jump through to earn anything over $100 dollars, it's outrageous to the point of feeling abusive.
On one hand I've got "dream" on the other hand I've got the "boring" (but highly necessary) demands I put on myself to earn and financially provide for myself. Those don't have to be mutually exclusive, but for now, unfortunately, they appear to be that way. I hope I will find a way to make money via acting or a side source of income proividing the financial self-sufficiency I demand of myslef so that I can pursue acting whole-heartedly.
Conclusively, I don't want to be misinterpretted: I still value acting and the dream of that profession. I don't want that dream to be eclipsed by my other self-sufficiency need of providing for myself financially. I hadn't realized it, because it sounds so lame, but that latter (financial self-sufficiency) goal almost is dream-worthy as well. almost.
I think the most paramount emotion I currently feel in regards to career is fear. That sums up my state nicely. I find the overwhelming demand I place on myself to earn income so overwhelming that I find it difficult to focus.
I've begun to look at "acting-like" work as something I should and need to get paid for. Meaning all of "acting corps" was "for free".
I have no destructive relationships, I'm in good health, I'm incredibly organized. Everything in my life seems and should be aligned except for that one smidgen: earning money. Without that, my life feels like a mess, even though it really isn't. Letting not earning money blemish the good landscape of my life wouldn't be good, but there's two HUGE financial things marring the forward progression of my life: Past lack of earnings and Present lack of earnings.
Past: I feel that I "Should have" earned money by now. I feel like I should have gotten paid for a LOT of things that I did and considered work (programs, talks, life-coaching, acting-related events, etc.). So I have some rancor towards not earning in the past that must be resolved
Present: Not being able to currently earn money is one of the most harrowing and frightening experiences. So that must be remedied, just like my not earning of the past, must be resolved and relinquished, unless of course I could go back in time and earn for that work.
The profession Of "entertainment" is strange because where do you draw the line between" Was that entertaining? Great. Pay me" and just being like-able. This is a huge and confusing issue.
If I got a restaurant job. I'd have to work 40 hours a week (8 hours a day, 5 a week) something I have no interest in doing to earn $2000/per month, translating into $24,000 a year (assuming a 10/per hour pay).
This discourse will evolve to a more enlightening plateau soon enough, no doubt!
Acting has always functioned as the "dream" profession, but if a dream job can't pay my bills, well, of what use is it other than fulfilling that dream? Dream fulfillment is huge, but it's a little higher up on the maslowian scale of self-actualization. I have these great parents who kind of bypass the lower stages of maslowian hierarchy of needs like having shelter, and getting food.
I fear that not living IN hollywood (22 miles from it and NO WHERE to park once I commute there) greatly impedes my pursuit in acting (finding an agent, namely). If I had a set parking place in hollywood things would operate MUCH more smoothly. I can't describe the hours you spend looking for a parking spot that only offers 2 hours of parking in Hollywood. This sounds trivial but actually presents a major obstacle because I don't have the freedom of being able to get to hollywood and explore. I've looked into solutions such as taking a train there, which could work, but the train station is roughly 5 miles away and then I have to factor in commute costs.
The past 2 months (after acting class) have been none other than panic-stricken attack on trying to earn money -- from investigating credit, to calling banks, to researching resume protocol and attempting to apply to various jobs.
My strong drive to have total financial independence is a barrier I did not foresee.
At times I looked back on the acting class and think what was I doing wasting time on those "energy" classes? That won't help me earn! But during the class I remember enjoying it greatly. My desperation to earn money has reached an unbearable extreme. I feel greatly "left behind" in comparison to many of my peers who now have full financial independence (not to mention my brother).
I think it goes without saying that my drive and desire and "Need" to earn money for myself presents somewhat of a schism with pursuing my passion of acting, of which it's difficult to foresee how/when I will make that $30k/year minimum.
Just a piece of my mind in regards to pursuing the dream of acting with currently conflicting necessity of financial independence.
Another thing is Jen from the acting corps said somethings that triggered pain and dislike, like : "You still need to focus". I can't begin to describe how infuriating it is when people say that because I put so much attention to trying to focus. My art history teach said those very same words and then accused me of having a learning disorder. telling someone "you need to focus" is
1. Insulting -- it implies they aren't focus. But I've run 2 marathons and written 4 books, have they? I consider that the epitome of focus.
2. Ambiguous -- focus on what? Focus for how long?
3. Useless -- the lack of specifying WHAT precisely to focus on makes their "suggestion" or "evaluation" of my attentiveness utterly pointless.
I think it's understandable why I have an aversion to an insulting, ambiguous, and useless "evaluation" by people.
Anger in receiving comments like that, presents a barrier in taking the classes. And the fact that the classes don't guarantee me earning money is another barrier.
There are just so many hoops to jump through to earn anything over $100 dollars, it's outrageous to the point of feeling abusive.
On one hand I've got "dream" on the other hand I've got the "boring" (but highly necessary) demands I put on myself to earn and financially provide for myself. Those don't have to be mutually exclusive, but for now, unfortunately, they appear to be that way. I hope I will find a way to make money via acting or a side source of income proividing the financial self-sufficiency I demand of myslef so that I can pursue acting whole-heartedly.
Conclusively, I don't want to be misinterpretted: I still value acting and the dream of that profession. I don't want that dream to be eclipsed by my other self-sufficiency need of providing for myself financially. I hadn't realized it, because it sounds so lame, but that latter (financial self-sufficiency) goal almost is dream-worthy as well. almost.
I think the most paramount emotion I currently feel in regards to career is fear. That sums up my state nicely. I find the overwhelming demand I place on myself to earn income so overwhelming that I find it difficult to focus.
I've begun to look at "acting-like" work as something I should and need to get paid for. Meaning all of "acting corps" was "for free".
I have no destructive relationships, I'm in good health, I'm incredibly organized. Everything in my life seems and should be aligned except for that one smidgen: earning money. Without that, my life feels like a mess, even though it really isn't. Letting not earning money blemish the good landscape of my life wouldn't be good, but there's two HUGE financial things marring the forward progression of my life: Past lack of earnings and Present lack of earnings.
Past: I feel that I "Should have" earned money by now. I feel like I should have gotten paid for a LOT of things that I did and considered work (programs, talks, life-coaching, acting-related events, etc.). So I have some rancor towards not earning in the past that must be resolved
Present: Not being able to currently earn money is one of the most harrowing and frightening experiences. So that must be remedied, just like my not earning of the past, must be resolved and relinquished, unless of course I could go back in time and earn for that work.
The profession Of "entertainment" is strange because where do you draw the line between" Was that entertaining? Great. Pay me" and just being like-able. This is a huge and confusing issue.
If I got a restaurant job. I'd have to work 40 hours a week (8 hours a day, 5 a week) something I have no interest in doing to earn $2000/per month, translating into $24,000 a year (assuming a 10/per hour pay).
This discourse will evolve to a more enlightening plateau soon enough, no doubt!
6.29.2008
Tying in The World of A Story with Modern Shipping
3:51 AM
June 29, 2008
I just recieved an RCA cable (a special tv part I needed) that sold for $6.47 on ebay (including shipping) and it was shipped from Hong Kong!
Why is that cool? Well, for one it's a hella long way to ship something so cheaply. Reflecting upon ancient roman roads which spanned an awe-inspiring 53,819 miles in 450 bc with the laws of Twelve Tables regulating road length and message telegrams, this is amazing. I remember tracking my sweet iPhone as it was shipped from Hong Kong (where it's manufactured) to Alaska and finally to California. Then I got another package from a neighbor on Van Nuys, roughly 20 miles away from me! The Hong Kong package traveled roughly 7,254 miles. The other package traveled about 20 miles. Both were less than $5 shipping fees. I mention this because 1)shipping is truly astonishing and 2)it has current relevance in literature.
The Hong Kong package even had a customs certificate!
Additionally, I'm in the midst of reading Jules Verne's epic "Around the World in 80 Days, and around Chapter 20 Fogg, Auoda (the Indian babe Fogg heroically rescued) and Passepartout, the wiry little frenchman arrive in the very same city of Hong Kong after voyaging from Calcutta, India on the "Rangoon", only to discover that they've missed the "Carnatic" ship and hire a small-time boater to make it to Yokohama in time. So this has some of that "world as a story" flavor to it. Reading about Hong Kong in a fictional classic and then coincidentally receiving a package from the same city (and the fact that cost less than $5 shipping) and the book is free just kind of sets the stage for a nice, little literary-relevance-making-the-world-smaller-but-more-magical ambiance to this serendipity. Just the fact the part was so cheap and the distance it traveled was so great has congruence with Phillias Fogg's character, and Verne's book is free on project Gutenberg, it's just kind of some everyday magic that arises for very cheap, without massive expenses, or with zero expenses.
Call me "easy to please" but these little serendipitous gems of reading a classic novel that travels the world and then receiving a package that has nearly traveled the same route as the characters in that novel?!! Well, that's just cool bizarro country 2000.
June 29, 2008
I just recieved an RCA cable (a special tv part I needed) that sold for $6.47 on ebay (including shipping) and it was shipped from Hong Kong!
Why is that cool? Well, for one it's a hella long way to ship something so cheaply. Reflecting upon ancient roman roads which spanned an awe-inspiring 53,819 miles in 450 bc with the laws of Twelve Tables regulating road length and message telegrams, this is amazing. I remember tracking my sweet iPhone as it was shipped from Hong Kong (where it's manufactured) to Alaska and finally to California. Then I got another package from a neighbor on Van Nuys, roughly 20 miles away from me! The Hong Kong package traveled roughly 7,254 miles. The other package traveled about 20 miles. Both were less than $5 shipping fees. I mention this because 1)shipping is truly astonishing and 2)it has current relevance in literature.
The Hong Kong package even had a customs certificate!
Additionally, I'm in the midst of reading Jules Verne's epic "Around the World in 80 Days, and around Chapter 20 Fogg, Auoda (the Indian babe Fogg heroically rescued) and Passepartout, the wiry little frenchman arrive in the very same city of Hong Kong after voyaging from Calcutta, India on the "Rangoon", only to discover that they've missed the "Carnatic" ship and hire a small-time boater to make it to Yokohama in time. So this has some of that "world as a story" flavor to it. Reading about Hong Kong in a fictional classic and then coincidentally receiving a package from the same city (and the fact that cost less than $5 shipping) and the book is free just kind of sets the stage for a nice, little literary-relevance-making-the-world-smaller-but-more-magical ambiance to this serendipity. Just the fact the part was so cheap and the distance it traveled was so great has congruence with Phillias Fogg's character, and Verne's book is free on project Gutenberg, it's just kind of some everyday magic that arises for very cheap, without massive expenses, or with zero expenses.
Call me "easy to please" but these little serendipitous gems of reading a classic novel that travels the world and then receiving a package that has nearly traveled the same route as the characters in that novel?!! Well, that's just cool bizarro country 2000.
4.29.2008
CA and Acting "Yes"!
Now in 2009, I realize so many reasons for neither! lol.
I reviewed this:
And realized how true even moreso ALL of those reasons for chicago no, CA YES ARE! All of my envisionments of success and happiness and solutions have totally emerged in ca! Moreso, my entire life has changed! What I do with my time has transformed. I'm convinced ALL of my writing -- the process of cognitively getting to know my brains' ins and outs -- and all my work and job career attempts of the past and even all my schooling all revolved around getting HERE, right here!! The travel and school made me see providied scope of what's out there (what's NOT out there) enabling me to respect acting corps even more and the writing created tremendous solid growth and certainty and "collecting of my experiences" a detailed eloquent and articulate inventory of my experiences. Everything can be challenging out here, but it's NEVER struggle. So many words like "problem, struggle, pain, annoying, etc." are completely nonexistent in my vocabulary out here! I only have words like "paradise, awesome, joy, heaven, nature, clean, hollywood, calabasas" now! Perfect, awesome!
But my days just seem so much more productive without having to "try" to be productive. In acting, we learned that a physical action on stage, among other things (like have it's test in the other person, be physically capable of being done, etc.) must "not be an errand". But out here, a simple "errand" feels like a great action! haha! (of course, true acting actions must not be "errands" in the typical sense of an activity that involves only oneself as a task). It's such an amazing feeling that whenever you go out and get some groceries or run some random little errand, you look forward to that mini-trip to being a journey because you want to get to know the place (LA, calabasas, hollywood, etc) better! You have no idea what it feels like moving from a place where I had ZERO interest in getting to know the environment (colorado and illionois) where everything is a task-burden to loving the mystery and excitement of getting to know and explore a place I love (california). It's made life really magical and alive and I feel more alert and focused than ever living here and taking acting classes!
Man, I DEFINITELY felt like I was part of something HUGE with BC 1 acting corps. someting big, fun, engaging, transformative, and awesome. Thanks again, you guys!
Reasons for "no" Chicago, "yes" CA v2.
1 Books – All of my Validate Your Life writing was done in CA. CA is the place for me, and I made some of the most meaningul life connections ever out there. I could not have done all of the awesome writing I've done without having a CA connection.
2 Energy – I've realized you MUST be incredibly firm and resolute about your time, otherwise, people cause you to drift back into things you don't like. I feel energized with LA energy; I feel depleted by chicago energy. I will never set foot in a chicago (hopefully, and most likely, any bar ever again).
3 Exercise – This one's easy. Biking 3-5 times/ week 20 miles at a time, then surfing for 2-3 hours.. Yeah, simple. I get exercise in CA. I do not get exercise in chicago and stay crumpled up, petrified in my little apartment bubble.
4 Career – The LA lifestyle has all the resources I need – film, ocean, mountains, entertainment, computers – that I want to connect with. Apple and Hollywood are in CA. CA is the place for me; chicago lacks all of those valuable and life career connections.
5 Environmental Connections --- Not unlike the lushious rural environment of Michigan, I actually have an interst in connecting with the ocean and landscaep of CA; the same is not true of chicago.
6 People – This is enormous. LA is full of GOOD relationships. Every problem you've ever had revolves around and stems from bad relationships. You put yourself around good relationships and good people and you experience success. In the past year in chicago, I've experienced probably more problems in 11 months than I've experience in 13-14 years of my life. Environment problems, technical, electrical problems, acceptance problems, social problems, psychologicaly problems, computer problems, girl problems -- all those problems stem from bad relationships in chicago. LA brings good relationship -- when I'm there, I don't have problems, I have fun experiences, healthy intercourse, out-door UV health and sunlight, nature interaction, computer situations that always function correctly, outdoor environments that are attractive and pleasurable, exciting social and accepting cultural space -- I get solutions in LA from those good relationship with good people. Does this mean chicago is all bad relationships and la all good relationships? No, I'm not that naive to think things are so polarized. However, their exist much more good relationships that I created in LA, than in chicago. I have the evidence to prove it -- tons of problems, overflowing problems, and tons of solutions in LA; it's empirally and ideally illustrated that LA creates more solutions with more good relationships. I can still find good relationships in chicago, but (for me, not necessarily for anyone else) in LA abundance, ease, and energy of good relationships and solutions goes unmatched and unrivaled by far. If I were to pick a place where I'm the least closed off, most open, most willing to email, connect with people via phone, and most especially in person, it's in LA. I like the people, the ideas, the very open culture out there. When I'm not around those like minds, I close myself off from the world. While I find connecting with the lifestyles of people in CA preferable to solitude, connecting with solitude feels more rewarding than connecting with people who I consider to have non-advanced destructive beliefs. In short, I vow to only live with two extremes in my life – total solitude, or connecting myself with people and energies I revere and actually like (chicago has neither of those: it does not have the solitude, nor the like minds).
7 8 Voice – I discover all kinds of intrapersonal awareness in CA that I cannot find elsewhere.
9 Living area – I lay crumpled up in a pathetic ball in Chicago, flustered by the neighbor's sounds and voices. It's not just unpleasant; chicago is remarkably unhealthy. In CA, I feel energized and can't help but be connected.
And realized how true even moreso ALL of those reasons for chicago no, CA YES ARE! All of my envisionments of success and happiness and solutions have totally emerged in ca! Moreso, my entire life has changed! What I do with my time has transformed. I'm convinced ALL of my writing -- the process of cognitively getting to know my brains' ins and outs -- and all my work and job career attempts of the past and even all my schooling all revolved around getting HERE, right here!! The travel and school made me see providied scope of what's out there (what's NOT out there) enabling me to respect acting corps even more and the writing created tremendous solid growth and certainty and "collecting of my experiences" a detailed eloquent and articulate inventory of my experiences. Everything can be challenging out here, but it's NEVER struggle. So many words like "problem, struggle, pain, annoying, etc." are completely nonexistent in my vocabulary out here! I only have words like "paradise, awesome, joy, heaven, nature, clean, hollywood, calabasas" now! Perfect, awesome!
But my days just seem so much more productive without having to "try" to be productive. In acting, we learned that a physical action on stage, among other things (like have it's test in the other person, be physically capable of being done, etc.) must "not be an errand". But out here, a simple "errand" feels like a great action! haha! (of course, true acting actions must not be "errands" in the typical sense of an activity that involves only oneself as a task). It's such an amazing feeling that whenever you go out and get some groceries or run some random little errand, you look forward to that mini-trip to being a journey because you want to get to know the place (LA, calabasas, hollywood, etc) better! You have no idea what it feels like moving from a place where I had ZERO interest in getting to know the environment (colorado and illionois) where everything is a task-burden to loving the mystery and excitement of getting to know and explore a place I love (california). It's made life really magical and alive and I feel more alert and focused than ever living here and taking acting classes!
Man, I DEFINITELY felt like I was part of something HUGE with BC 1 acting corps. someting big, fun, engaging, transformative, and awesome. Thanks again, you guys!
3.14.2008
Arigato Sushi after Surfing and Apartment Lease Arrangements
10 Emotions -- 10 Action Signals!
Uncomfortable-- Mildly Embarassed, Distressed, Uneasy, Boredom, Impatience,
Fear-- Concern, Worry, Apprehension, Anxiety, Terrified
Hurt-- Sense of Loss
Anger -- Mildly Irritated, Livid, Resentful, Angry, Enraged
Frustration -- Held Back or Hindered in Pursuit of Something
Disappointment -- Sad, Defeated as result of something that didn’t work out well
Guilt -- Regret
Inadequacy -- Feel “Less than” or “Unworthy”
Overloaded -- Overwhelmed, Hopeless, Depressed, More than you can possibly deal with
Lonely -- Alone, Apart from, or Separate From something
Quick Recap: I went surfing for 2 hours. MASSIVE fun. Was an hour late to dinner with my parents at Arigato Sushi. When I arrived they were incensed. I agreed it was humiliating for anyone to wait that long. But it was the two of them, not ONE person, so it wasn’t too problematic. (besides the next day I was 40 minutes late (but called) and they had no problem with it). My mom ended up getting extremely enraged, upset, and hurt. I meanwhile tried to figure out what had caused this? One VERY hypothetical and bizarre theory is that my surfing put me in a GREAT fun and aligned state, which brought out the residual emotions that have been dormant between my parents for so long. This goes back to difficulty in sharing some things with some parents. I’m convinced they’re having serious communication problems between each other and use me as the glue for their relationship. Here are the details.
I feel disturbed about the Arigato thing. Because I think I wanted to handle it differently. I wanted mom to recognize her emotions, clarify where HER anger was coming from. She had a LOT of it. I’m 87% sure that most of it was ALL directed towards Tom, but she projected her feelings of ill-communication toward me. That was very strange how she felt what I often feel. My mom said to dad and I “You guys are ganging up on me!”. Have the dinner conversation, my mom looked like a bulldog -- so utterly enraged, but quiet. When she spoke, I dont’ really know what she was trying to do...sound cutting or derisive? No Idea, I think she was interested in blaming me for the emotions she was feelling. Then she burst into tears, but pushed it back down. And then left to find the car. Things that irked me were I said to mom during dinner, “you look hurt”. Which was true, she kind of nodded to me that that was true, and the same when I observed that “you look aggravated”. Then I asked something like “how did you feel during the conversation”? and my dad turned to mom and said the exact same thing “how did you feel during the conversation?” Is there an echo in here? He did that a bout 2-3 times. That irked me because: 1)It conveyed a lack of authenticity on tom’s part. If he’s just repeating questions he thinks were good, said by me, how genuine can his intentions be in truly finding out how mom feels. 2)I kind of wanted to address how mom was feeling because she looked SERIOUSLY upset and she looked open to that, but my father, Tom (I’ve experienced this) has a way of asking questions that cause you to rationalize emotions instead of feel them. That’s okay for productivity and my dad is a MASTER of go-go-go and always getting thigns done, but sometimes for your healthy and emotional safety, you just MUST actually FEEL the emotion, so you can hear the signal it’s telling you (and then take appropriate actions). Emotions are like indicators of what needs to change for yoru soul, your life, your sense of peace, happiness, and joy. When you deny yourself from experiencing and heeding an emotion’s signal, you deprive yourself of such an invaluable beacon and bearing of ‘what to do”! Then after mom, in a heat of upset and rage and hurt, left the table, dad kind of laughed and joked that she wouldn’t be able to find the car. I love my dad for being able to joke and make a laugh out of almost any situation, but I was also a bit shocked. Dad said something about how “he just says things and gets them off his chest, while mom allows them to build up”. I affirmed that James (my bro) does teh “just saying thigns” method, while I occasionally do the “build up” method, but am trying to be more authentic and congruent. I asked, shouldn’t we go after her to see if she’s okay? He sai,d “she’ll be fine” and I said “It’s hard to know what to do when someone is hurt and upset. Do they need to walk and cool off, do they need a hug? Do they need someone to talk with?” So I end up running out of the restaurant, and immediately run into a runner who’s like “Wanna race?” I go “Sure!” and he says “You look fast. Anyone who comes out of Arigato running has a leg up on the comepitition!” I ran around the block, but couldn’t find mom and went back to dinner. Dad and I talked about how it was more complex than it looked. I remarked, “Oh good, I think I was making it even MORE complex. I was like What is going on? What made mom so upset? Was it just me being late? Do mom and dad have marital problems?” and my dad laughed at that one. What does that mean?!! That they do? children, of all people, pick up on these things, especially adult-children like me. There are just SOOOOO many eggshells (like fields and fields of eggshells) when talking to both parents about something highly emotional or volatile (when one is upset) because I think they have so many things to communicate about that they’ve suppressed, that they frequently get angry about something and then misdirect that onto me. Again, my solution to all this is to just convey and FEEL massive gratitude toward them both because they deserve that and much much more!
the reason why I am making such a big deal of this Arigato scene is that I feel like it was
A rupture of the can of worms between my mom and my dad themselves and I could have been more encouraging and therapeutically catalyzing catharsis.
Afterwards, I felt it was “bad” to surf. The next day, I woke up, felt AWFUL, hungover, hadn’t showered, hadn’t run, felt terribly disgusting, and then spent 5 hours with my parents doing hte lease final thigns on the apartment before going for a run and during the run this woman flagged me over to her car (Lucette) and said these 4 heinous accusations of an old geezer, I think of as a “step grandfather” (Jim Bogges), so immediately after teh run, I jumped in the car (after telling my parents that I’d be late) and visited jim to see if he was addicted to methadone, sleeping with the house cleaning women, attacking Lucette’s clients, and that he and I were lovers. Of course, all those 4 things lucette said were absolutely spurious and not true, but it was a “quite a drama”!!! The point is that Friday was day of service, doing things for other people nonstop and that night my parents were extremely giving and relenting about being late. Thursday was me surfing for 2.5 hours HAVING A BLAST, doing things for myself. I feel incredibly frustrated that when I seem to do things for myself and feel absolutely INCREDIBLY, people around me tend to get upset and act infuriated (atleast my parents do). I think a good rule of thumb is parents are great, I have TREMENDOUS gratitude for their financial and intellectual and leadership generositiy and they’re brilliant, adorable, great people, bu they aren’t friends. I have to pick a peer group that actually is enjoyable when I treat myself with nourishment (like surfing! this #2 Concept is BIG. Other people being upset scares me because I’m so focused on making sure other people are having fun and feeling happy, so when I feel REALLY happy (like after surfing that one time), I felt obliated to try to sort out my parents problems in this gordian knot impossible quagmire where they’re opposed to admitting they want anything sorted out in the first place! What do you think about that? Why do you think when I feel FANTASTIC (I had done the hollywood scene yesterday, I had surfed all of thursday, I was on top of the WORLD of FUN!) people sometimes (atleast parents do) get enraged. Do you think me being so full of life and happy causes them to identify with their true emotions? More importantly, how can I continue feeling HAPPY and FREE and GREAT about myself when other people seem to lash out at me? How can I NEVER feel guilty about feeling happy? Do you think my parents could intentionally try to subdue and smash down my happiness by creating confusing drama when they recognize me being happy? Something is VERY Fishy with that whole genuine happiness thing. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I trust that I’ll evolve to a state where i experience consistent truly galvanizing and guilt-free happiness on a regular basis!
Uncomfortable-- Mildly Embarassed, Distressed, Uneasy, Boredom, Impatience,
Fear-- Concern, Worry, Apprehension, Anxiety, Terrified
Hurt-- Sense of Loss
Anger -- Mildly Irritated, Livid, Resentful, Angry, Enraged
Frustration -- Held Back or Hindered in Pursuit of Something
Disappointment -- Sad, Defeated as result of something that didn’t work out well
Guilt -- Regret
Inadequacy -- Feel “Less than” or “Unworthy”
Overloaded -- Overwhelmed, Hopeless, Depressed, More than you can possibly deal with
Lonely -- Alone, Apart from, or Separate From something
Quick Recap: I went surfing for 2 hours. MASSIVE fun. Was an hour late to dinner with my parents at Arigato Sushi. When I arrived they were incensed. I agreed it was humiliating for anyone to wait that long. But it was the two of them, not ONE person, so it wasn’t too problematic. (besides the next day I was 40 minutes late (but called) and they had no problem with it). My mom ended up getting extremely enraged, upset, and hurt. I meanwhile tried to figure out what had caused this? One VERY hypothetical and bizarre theory is that my surfing put me in a GREAT fun and aligned state, which brought out the residual emotions that have been dormant between my parents for so long. This goes back to difficulty in sharing some things with some parents. I’m convinced they’re having serious communication problems between each other and use me as the glue for their relationship. Here are the details.
I feel disturbed about the Arigato thing. Because I think I wanted to handle it differently. I wanted mom to recognize her emotions, clarify where HER anger was coming from. She had a LOT of it. I’m 87% sure that most of it was ALL directed towards Tom, but she projected her feelings of ill-communication toward me. That was very strange how she felt what I often feel. My mom said to dad and I “You guys are ganging up on me!”. Have the dinner conversation, my mom looked like a bulldog -- so utterly enraged, but quiet. When she spoke, I dont’ really know what she was trying to do...sound cutting or derisive? No Idea, I think she was interested in blaming me for the emotions she was feelling. Then she burst into tears, but pushed it back down. And then left to find the car. Things that irked me were I said to mom during dinner, “you look hurt”. Which was true, she kind of nodded to me that that was true, and the same when I observed that “you look aggravated”. Then I asked something like “how did you feel during the conversation”? and my dad turned to mom and said the exact same thing “how did you feel during the conversation?” Is there an echo in here? He did that a bout 2-3 times. That irked me because: 1)It conveyed a lack of authenticity on tom’s part. If he’s just repeating questions he thinks were good, said by me, how genuine can his intentions be in truly finding out how mom feels. 2)I kind of wanted to address how mom was feeling because she looked SERIOUSLY upset and she looked open to that, but my father, Tom (I’ve experienced this) has a way of asking questions that cause you to rationalize emotions instead of feel them. That’s okay for productivity and my dad is a MASTER of go-go-go and always getting thigns done, but sometimes for your healthy and emotional safety, you just MUST actually FEEL the emotion, so you can hear the signal it’s telling you (and then take appropriate actions). Emotions are like indicators of what needs to change for yoru soul, your life, your sense of peace, happiness, and joy. When you deny yourself from experiencing and heeding an emotion’s signal, you deprive yourself of such an invaluable beacon and bearing of ‘what to do”! Then after mom, in a heat of upset and rage and hurt, left the table, dad kind of laughed and joked that she wouldn’t be able to find the car. I love my dad for being able to joke and make a laugh out of almost any situation, but I was also a bit shocked. Dad said something about how “he just says things and gets them off his chest, while mom allows them to build up”. I affirmed that James (my bro) does teh “just saying thigns” method, while I occasionally do the “build up” method, but am trying to be more authentic and congruent. I asked, shouldn’t we go after her to see if she’s okay? He sai,d “she’ll be fine” and I said “It’s hard to know what to do when someone is hurt and upset. Do they need to walk and cool off, do they need a hug? Do they need someone to talk with?” So I end up running out of the restaurant, and immediately run into a runner who’s like “Wanna race?” I go “Sure!” and he says “You look fast. Anyone who comes out of Arigato running has a leg up on the comepitition!” I ran around the block, but couldn’t find mom and went back to dinner. Dad and I talked about how it was more complex than it looked. I remarked, “Oh good, I think I was making it even MORE complex. I was like What is going on? What made mom so upset? Was it just me being late? Do mom and dad have marital problems?” and my dad laughed at that one. What does that mean?!! That they do? children, of all people, pick up on these things, especially adult-children like me. There are just SOOOOO many eggshells (like fields and fields of eggshells) when talking to both parents about something highly emotional or volatile (when one is upset) because I think they have so many things to communicate about that they’ve suppressed, that they frequently get angry about something and then misdirect that onto me. Again, my solution to all this is to just convey and FEEL massive gratitude toward them both because they deserve that and much much more!
the reason why I am making such a big deal of this Arigato scene is that I feel like it was
A rupture of the can of worms between my mom and my dad themselves and I could have been more encouraging and therapeutically catalyzing catharsis.
Afterwards, I felt it was “bad” to surf. The next day, I woke up, felt AWFUL, hungover, hadn’t showered, hadn’t run, felt terribly disgusting, and then spent 5 hours with my parents doing hte lease final thigns on the apartment before going for a run and during the run this woman flagged me over to her car (Lucette) and said these 4 heinous accusations of an old geezer, I think of as a “step grandfather” (Jim Bogges), so immediately after teh run, I jumped in the car (after telling my parents that I’d be late) and visited jim to see if he was addicted to methadone, sleeping with the house cleaning women, attacking Lucette’s clients, and that he and I were lovers. Of course, all those 4 things lucette said were absolutely spurious and not true, but it was a “quite a drama”!!! The point is that Friday was day of service, doing things for other people nonstop and that night my parents were extremely giving and relenting about being late. Thursday was me surfing for 2.5 hours HAVING A BLAST, doing things for myself. I feel incredibly frustrated that when I seem to do things for myself and feel absolutely INCREDIBLY, people around me tend to get upset and act infuriated (atleast my parents do). I think a good rule of thumb is parents are great, I have TREMENDOUS gratitude for their financial and intellectual and leadership generositiy and they’re brilliant, adorable, great people, bu they aren’t friends. I have to pick a peer group that actually is enjoyable when I treat myself with nourishment (like surfing! this #2 Concept is BIG. Other people being upset scares me because I’m so focused on making sure other people are having fun and feeling happy, so when I feel REALLY happy (like after surfing that one time), I felt obliated to try to sort out my parents problems in this gordian knot impossible quagmire where they’re opposed to admitting they want anything sorted out in the first place! What do you think about that? Why do you think when I feel FANTASTIC (I had done the hollywood scene yesterday, I had surfed all of thursday, I was on top of the WORLD of FUN!) people sometimes (atleast parents do) get enraged. Do you think me being so full of life and happy causes them to identify with their true emotions? More importantly, how can I continue feeling HAPPY and FREE and GREAT about myself when other people seem to lash out at me? How can I NEVER feel guilty about feeling happy? Do you think my parents could intentionally try to subdue and smash down my happiness by creating confusing drama when they recognize me being happy? Something is VERY Fishy with that whole genuine happiness thing. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I trust that I’ll evolve to a state where i experience consistent truly galvanizing and guilt-free happiness on a regular basis!
9.09.2005
Emotional Authenticity: Sea Semester Story
An acute example of me expressing my opinion of an educational environment occurred on a Sea Semester trip I experienced. The Sea semester excursion was advertised, and my perception of it, was that it was to be an incredibly fun, alive, “cruise-like” experience. This was not the case, showing me, quite bluntly and painfully, the necessity of verifying the reality of perceptions. Instead of this grand cruise-like experience it was more like a slave ship. We were forced to live in cramped 5-foot by 3-foot “cubbies” which would act as a makeshift storage for all of our belongings for six weeks and as a makeshift bed. It was only a “makeshift” storage device because we had to sleep with and on top of our belongings because of the limited space, its pathetically small size for having 6 weeks worth of survival gear, the fact that you couldn’t fully extend your body (having walls on each side), and only having a small drape separating your ship from the outside world made the situation very “slave-like”. To enhance the slave-like affect, we had to wear shackle-like “harnesses” that covered our hips, torso, and shoulders, and while these chain-like harnesses were made out of nylon, the three to four connecting buckles made these so-called protective devices seem like clinking and clanking shackles that Jacob Marley from the X-mas carol, or real slaves being transported to America wore. It was a remarkably distorting experience because I have these real visions of students marching in single file, all wearing their shackles, up this ladder to go up and swab the deck. I couldn’t handle this.
The Guatemalan state bird – Quetzal – is a symbol of freedom and wealth. Wealth, because its feathers and jade were the most sought after trade commodities, and freedom because it would simply die in captivity – it couldn’t be contained. I am not saying that I am a symbol of this Guatemalan national bird (I certainly don’t have expensive feathers decorating my body), but I am saying that I certainly can relate to its fervent reluctance that is more of an incapacity (it doesn’t have a choice, freedom or death in captivity, essentially, suicide) to be contained when I was on the that ship. It wasn’t as though I was remember the series of Social Studies reading I had learned in grade school about the slaves, and was making a message for them, or something, I actually felt treated like a slave. We could only eat meals at certain times and couldn’t get food anytime else. We could only sleep at certain times, too. I know in the Korean P.O.W camps, Koreans tortured the prisoners in a mind-controlling game of torment to get them to confess their knowledge by allowing them to sleep 4 hours a night, stand the other 20 hours, and constantly interrupt their savory 4-hour bout of sleep. I felt their pain after surviving a mere 4 weeks from that slave ship. We actually had 4-hour sleep shifts which could fall anywhere throughout the day, mid-afternoon, early morning, dusk, so our minds and biorhythms (my melatonin was going crazy) were being mutilated. Forced to do manual labor (hoisting sail lines), sleep in cubby-sized squashed spaces, wear shackles, and eat and sleep on a predefined system, it wasn’t as though I was losing my identity, I felt like my humanity was being shattered, something far more severe – I felt as though I was becoming, because I had been treated like one, an animalistic, barbaric slave that had done something wrong. There weren’t demerits or some kind of punishment system, but the cruise was anything but savory.
I had originally went on board because I loved the ocean, and there I was, shackled, under constant physical surveillance and control (even though there were three entrances and exits to the cabin, we could only use one of them), and such insane regimen, I thought I would implode with the conforming intolerant, totalitarian-like control around. Even the little things, like deciding when you can eat, made me realize how much liberation is involved in such a simple, seemingly, innocent and pointless choice. After a week and half, I craved the immense freedom it seemed to decide when and where you would eat dinner. When I had to eat when everyone else did, or risk going hungry, I felt even more like a machine that was being force-fed “fuel”, manufacturing seafaring output to work towards removing the cogs in the mechanized nautical vessel.
In the first few days many people became nauseas and sea-sick, they said because of the movement of the boat (the one natural experience that wasn’t controlled or regimented on the vessel) but it had to be, primarily, because of the insanely prisoner-like regimen of captivity, when we thought we were going to be out on the water. I couldn’t’ believe how Hellish that experience was ( especially for a person who swims, runs, gets exercise, writes, and eats food on my own schedule) because the structure wasn’t helping me get things done, which I do normally. Being incredibly prolific on my own, but somewhat stymied around other people, aside, of course, from becoming more aware of how I react with other people, I couldn’t handle this regimen, which was all moving towards the habilitating of the ship, because it felt like a dictatorship. Even though it had a purpose – to ensure the ship functioned – the methods in which such manufacturing of crew energy was immensely manipulative. The setting and striking of the sails, with no wind, and the seemingly absence of movement in the ship, had become absurd. It seemed like we were setting the sails (which never seemed to blow in the right direction) just for the sake of exercise. I felt like the crew was a bunch of monkeys dancing and hopping around, doodling on maps, and cranking the steering wheel occasionally, but the majority of the time leaving the wheel “guide the boat” rotating and gyrating back and forth, providing no direction whatsoever. Ironically, I had studied spider monkeys from land, while they frolicked up in trees, in Mexico the earlier summer for a month. It seemed that now, I had endeavored a new experience, simply living and attempting to survive with a group of “crew-monkeys” on the ship. I don’t have anything against monkeys, and am not putting myself up on a pedestal, but I am just saying that I couldn’t believe how randomly imprecise the crew members were.
We had to do this routine check of the engine room where we measured the fluids, took temperature readings of the turbines, and other various fuel and oil level checks, but I was shocked at how imprecise everything was. Comparing the idea of a floatable piece of word, being pushed across the surface of the water by the random and wavering and direction and unpredictable speed of the wind, with the precision, accuracy and computerized connection to an airplane was a stark and frightening contrast. After having seen the videos on shore (with the intention of teaching us fire on ship, sinking ship, and man-overboard drills) that showed Live footage (real actual videotape) of a ship running aground an ship sinking because two people were attached to it (do to some harness and wires), I felt tremendously safe on board the ship for a number of reasons. First, the chances of running aground were dramatically increased by the monkey-see monkey-do imprecision of the navigation, the fact that we were using a map from 1995 – an 8-year old map – and only one – when there should have been four – depth-sounders to measure and navigate the sea bottom. We learned on shore, during the oceanography component (which, essentially, the ship was designed for, it was science ship with the agenda of oceanography; a wind-driven ship sailing around the Caribbean with the purpose of conducting oceanographic experiments) that islands can well-up via geological “hot spots” in a few years, so the map, which was supposed to show water depth, could be haphazardly outdated, jeopardizing the entire safety of the boat. The harness, in addition to being an incredible physical and emotionally depleting burden of control and domination, was dangerous because of the live footage of the ship running aground when two people died because they couldn’t disconnect themselves with the boat, and went down with it. The idea of being harnessed, strapped in, to a 137-foot sinking 2-masted schooner is tragically frightening. Because of these very plausible reasons, I felt remarkably unsafe on the boat, but hesitated, before telling anyone my concerns.
This period of hesitation was hastily and brusquely ruptured a week and a-half into the sail when 3 students, the third mate, and myself were set striking and furling a sail. We were out on the bowsprit – the front most point of the boat, a projection that projects outward and has not actual “boat”, woodwork and whatnot underneath it – dangling in this precarious situation, with harnesses on, trying to furl (tie down) the jib sol’ (sail). In this precarious situation this one student couldn’t tie her knot – a slipper reef knot – and because she was the closest to the boat, she was thwarting our reentrance to the boat, jeopardizing our safety. After trying to remind her how to retie it, eventually, the third mate reached over and said, “God, I can’t watch this anymore”, retied the knot for her, so we all could reenter the boat.
For some psychological reason, that phrase, coupled with the high tensions out on the bowsprit made me realize I can’t watch this boat continue floating and traveling on the ocean in such a haphazard, dangerous fashion – I became instantaneously committed to and genuinely practicing authentic communication. This shows you the powerful psychological, emotional, and physiological impact of language on person’s entire disposition – hearing those words, “God, I can’t take this anymore” from an authority figure (the third mate) empowered me to not only express my concerns but become appalled at how long I had hesitated to express them. The very program had planted the validity of my seeds of concern, and now, was causing me to examine their harvest. I immediately talked to the captain and said how unsafe I felt on the ship, pointing out, incessantly, the 8-year old map and the single depth sounder, and the dangerous (even though their intention was safety) harnesses. After discussing this approach more carefully, I realized that maybe I had unintentionally questioned his authority because he immediately ordered me to not discuss the incident on deck, but down below in the sealed-off captains quarters. In other words, it immediately became an “adult” conversation.
I discussed how, sure, the map was adjusted for variation (true north) after the 8-year span, but nothing could compensate the inaccurate “depth markings”. I was relentless because I had not other option – to call parents, leave the boat -- a change had to be produced. I was shocked at how imprecisely we measured our speed (with a log that dangled behind the boat) as our primary source of total traveled distance. I had been an A+ nautical science student on show, too, the Captain new this, and I knew it – my thinking made perfect sense to me, and probably, frighteningly enough for him, had some validity in his eyes, despite the traditions he had followed all of his seafaring days. And tradition and heritage is what we talked about for the next 5 hours!
After that the captain looked severely stressed out, which, maybe through some schadenfreude (German for laughing at misfortune), but more likely because it showed he was thinking stuff out. When he looked calm and collected, I was eerily unsure about what kind of conclusion he had arranged – whatever it was, the decision had not involved my choice, he had decided, like some inanimate object -- something I certainly am not, especially when I realize I shouldn’t hesitate in communicating myself on board the ship – had covertly crafted a plan for me. Eventually, the talks subsided, I was told to stay down below after my 40 hour bout of no sleep (which was due to simultaneously feeling concerned about my safety on the boat, and the excitement from what seemed like being on a gigantic surfboard with 24 intellectual, talented, extremely cool students) and two days later, this impromptu, unplanned stop in the Bahamas was announced. All of us were excited because we would get the opportunity to explore and experience new soil – which was, according to the Maritime studies component, the purpose of travel – to share with others who didn’t have the opportunity to travel, experiences and interpretations from the other lands. Of course, the best method of relating to a new, unknown environment, is actually stepping out, traveling there, and making your own interpretations, instead of having to interpret and translate some one else’s perception – which, to you, is, essentially, a second-hand, as opposed to a primary, source. But it held true that many of the things I pointed out – the poor navigational depth sounding and the quickness of new islands welling up, and the purpose of travel – I had learned from the SEA program itself and protested when they began to remarkably contradict themselves. After landing in the Bahamas, our anticipation to get off the cramped, slave boat, and explore a new country – step on the terrain of a new world – was brusquely severed when the captain said, “Okay, no one else is getting off the boat. John, this is your ticket back to Chicago”. And he pretty much forced me to get off the boat and wait in the airport for seven hours!
Now, I was in shock with a heterogeneous mixture of grasping and liberation at the idea of having to leave such an awesome “gigantic surfboard” and 24 of the coolest, most talented, and profoundly intellectual students I had ever seen, but simultaneously being freed of the policy-driven shackles, physical shackles, and chains of the brutally slave-like regimen of the Corwith Cramer. Because of this, there was no way I was going to wait in the airport for that long, so I left my bags, and the chief scientist, who was waiting with me, and started walking towards the ocean. The chief scientist caught up with me in a cab, and rolled with me saying that we needed to go back to the airport, but I put my hands in a “prayer” position (to not have my thinking be derailed) and, determined to get to the ocean, kept marching forward. Eventually, the 30-year chief scientist was out and about walking with we, and we couldn’t decide to go to the ocean (my choice) or back to the airport (her choice), so I suggested walking around in circles. And there I was, walking around in physical and psychological circles of indecision with a 30-year old chief scientist on the side of a Bahamian highway! Eventually, we conciliated to get in a cab-van go to the ocean, then return to the airport. One thing I noticed once we hit land, was how much remarkably older the chief scientist looked ,with her purse, clothes, and make-up (on the boat, I had felt, everyone (especially the chief scientist) looked and acted much younger – around 14 or 15 years old, sometimes 12. But on land, the image took over and everything and every person seemed more daunting and elderly. Maybe this was because of my age-old relationship with the historical sea, which has experienced so many violent storms, tossed waves, calm smooth-as-glass winds, bloody naval battles, and starry, moonless nights, that made me feel more rooted, older, and stronger. But the contrast was shocking on shore. Eventually we drove around with the intention to drive to the ocean, but stopped at this office building for about 30 minutes to speak (and I wasn’t sure what the hold up was, but was talking about how surfing was more important than eating) then headed in the direction of the ocean, but stopped at the hospital. I protested, “What the heck is going on here! I thought we were going to the ocean”. The thirty-year old chief scientist told me, “John, we are going to the hospital because you have been acting irrational”. Now, I had no idea what could happen in the medical corridors of the hospital with a “chain of command” procedure. Even though there is usually some kind of diagnosis and questioning, I feared the chief scientist would use her authority to pass me off to a doctor who would pass me off to a nurse, who would pass me off to a security guard, who, at that time, would just be following orders to bind me in a straight jacket and pump me full of drugs or something! So we both raised our voices, I said, “No I am not going in there!” She said, “Yes, you are!” Then I had to physically remove her hand from the lock, slide open the door, and bolted out of the van and was running around the Bahamas for the next 3-4 hours. During that time I met a director, after going away from the civilized part of the Bahamas (where the famous Atlantis hotel, with a waterslide was, which I had actually visited, but certainly didn’t recognize, when I was a kid. I asked a person when I had gotten into a very industrial shipping area with metalwork being done on boats, which way to the docks, and she pointed back towards the hotel area and said almost as an omen, to “go back that way, that is better for me”. But the journey was awesome.
During this mini-Odyssey on the new soil, while all my friends were back on the ship, I, an Odysseus just having escaped the wicked cave of the Cyclops, found an island that bore two surfboards in the distance. I crossed this bridge and saw two people aiming cameras at the surfboards, which were propped up against an RV. When I asked them what they were doing, they said this was a “hot set“ and were shooting a surfing movie. I saw people layering the ground with leaves, to help create the mood of the scene, while, as I was told, the actor drove around the mini-island. Eventually the director showed up, a big talkative, controlling and gregarious fellow, showed up angered. He said you can’t be here (I had, unintentionally snuck in around the fence in an attempt to get to the ocean) and I protested that my captain (whom I now dubbed “Bin Laden” instead of “Binh Lee” because of his tyrannical torts and methods) had just kicked me off the ship and you’re kicking me off the island. Where should I go?” I said, “Can’t I just borrow a surfboard, you’re a surfer, you know how awesome it is!” He said no and called for security to pick me up.
A very burly, Neanderthal-like African American security guard glided up and asked me with much intimidation and anger in his face: “You don’t want trouble do you?” I immediately said, “No” and was soon forced into a van (feeling like I was now being kidnapped after just being enslaved) and was driven to the perimeter of the “hot set” back on the main island with a resounding slam of a chain-linked gate fence in front of me. It felt like I was in prison, peering through the chinks in the fence. But aside from being denied the ability to use the surfboards, I was shocked at the timing of such prohibition. Right when I found the ideal place (with beautifully breaking waves of a crystal clear beach break) with boards, on a private island, opposition arose. It seems like if you pause and ponder that something is too good to be true, sometimes you are prevented from experiencing that entity and it, in actuality, truly becomes too good to be true. I ended up finding my way back to the boat, after stopping at a man doing carpentry on an abandoned looking building. I shouted up to him, because he was on the second floor, “What are you working on?!”
He informed me that he was working on building and starting a restaurant and I told him if I stuck around (in a very “Holden Caulfield-like” way) that I would definitely apply for work. I knew people from the other boat (the Tahitian cruise track) were planning to wait tables after their cruise was over, and, even though my cruise had ended unexpectedly early, the idea of working in the Bahamas was captivating and intriguing. So instead of dodging and burying the idea I investigated some French restaurants, asking about employee requirements and experience necessities, and eventually found my way back to the boat. Surprisingly , I was greeted by a gentleman in a golf cart, who referred to me as “Big John” to escort me back to the boat. It was as though I had been exiled and chased out like a rebellious, lunatic crook and was now being readmitted to the docks as though I was a VIP guest of honor! It was the weirdest thing back on the boat because everyone simply ate their dinner (at the normal time, of course), acted completely normal, and being 1 foot away from new soil, an entirely new country, had never left the boat. They kept doing lookout and watch outs – completely meaningless now that we were docked – as though they were marionette minions (like the team mind-controlled under in the move, “Fight Club”) with know will -- or awareness of the surroundings – of their own.
I ended up flying back to Chicago the next day, after delaying the cruise a day, causing an unplanned stop in the Bahamas, walking around in circles with a 30-year old woman scientist, meeting a surf-video director, being shackled and enslaved, and having a riveting and viciously charged conversation with the captain of my ship! IT was an adventurous like no other, and I such splendid travel, with suspense, personal intrigue, personal danger, fear, liberation, and finally, joy, could never be replicated in anything other than a magnificent story of tragedy, freedom, authority, and truth. Telling this as a fictitious story would simply be too risky because of its outrageous circumstances. The difference between my sea semester experience and such a potent story is that it took place in reality – with more tragic authority, freedom, and truth that could ever be imagined by any storyteller!
*****
After that Sea Semester I was charged up, here is the beginning of a letter I planned to write to the Dean of my school (someone I would never consider talking to before the sea semester experience because of sheer intimidation!):
I never finished it, but this shows how charged up I was about the incident in terms of legal policy (something I usually never choose to interact with). By the emotional and experiential impact was the most life-altering because I had never approached (and reprimanded, unbelievable!) an authority figure like that, but doing so was a necessity for my survival. It became the ultimate example of turning lemons into lemonade and connecting to the source of the experience not as a hardship, but as an incredibly intrepid, trying, and challenging experience.
I have recently realized that I tell people my Seas semester story because when my father picked me up at the airport, he said he hadn’t met this one person (the Dean of the program), and I transcribed that to meet who I really was, so I told him the story of the ship, captain, and depth sounders.
Ever since them I have associated that story with introducing myself to other people, but that is not the case! In fact, the story is incredibly invigorating and alive, full of purpose, but people can certainly get to know me other ways as well. Let’s continue to embrace the power and potential for connecting with other people by continuing to share our experiences, adventures, and travels, but recognize that our enthusiasm or splinter of compassion reveals our true identity of authenticity to people. Embracing the realistic certainty of love allows us to follow our heart because we will be guided by the strongest force imaginable.
Grand Consummation
The people in the woods survival example died because they became caught up in emotions, where the emotions of panic, dear, and doubt, prevented them from taking action and utilizing their surroundings to build a fort, find berries, and do whatever necessary to survive. I removed struggle in the classroom by changing my perception, realizing the importance of communicating my messages (but not needing to influence or persuade people), and the poignancy of not taking things personally. On the ship, I freed myself from the physical, emotional, and psychological bonds of slavery, regimen, conformity, and commands by communicating my emotions. The bottom-line here : the poignancy of emotions coupled with communication. In the classroom, the communication of messages aroused emotions, by communicating with myself to not take it personally, but to distribute the perceptions of compliment and/or insult with the rest of the class relinquished the exhausting shackles of feeling emotionally obligated to prove myself. Also, by communicating my thoughts and emotions, I was doing myself a favor – clearing and digesting my mind – not for the sake of sharing knowledge and insight, I was doing three things: connecting myself to my fellow humans more authentically, clearing my mind, and allowing them an opportunity for real discussion of my thoughts, reactions, and ideas. The ship example is the most lucid: expressing and being authentic with my emotions by communicating them to who should hear them (I normally communicated with my parents) the captain, I quickly caused changes, that, at the time may have seemed unfair or brusque or covert (with the phone calls), but ultimately placed me into an emotionally more adaptive, generative, and comfortable area. This is true for every circumstance, communicating to yourself to not take classroom comments personally fixates you in a welcoming emotional environment instead of a battle, calming your fears, places you in a safer emotional environment if your in the woods, and expressing your emotions in the case of the ship gets you off the boat. Let’s continue to fervently, lucidly, and creatively communicate our emotions – through humor, directness, conviction, and most importantly, authenticity -- so that we don’t become subjects of them, but use their energy to impassion and rejuvenate our soul!
Communicating to the Source
It is incredibly important to communicate to the source of our ingenuity and not connect an overly-sophisticated resemblance and expectation to people with authority . For the longest time I looked at authority figures as unapproachable. If I had a problem with an authority figure, I would be forced to talk to someone else about the person in authority because I created an “out of bounds” area where I only felt like I could receive commands from authority figures never question, and certainly never argue with them. This crippled my relationship in the classroom and left me with a myopic uncertainty about how to go about even asking questions to authority figures about assignments, etc. and whatnot. This all changed after the SEA semester where I had no choice but to talk to the captain about my concerns of safety, and this situation proved to be remarkably awakening because of the expedient, direct, and hastily manner in which the thing was resolved. By grounding ourselves to a point of religion to understand certainty of purpose, we can unite our authentic verisimilitudes and understand the necessity of personal comprehension. When we truly completely understand our internal motivations – an incredibly complex concept – we can rejuvenate our soul by carrying out the necessary predilections for things that vitalize our soul. We must understand why we spend hours wasting our life away watching television, eating junk food, and engaging in frustrating loops and embrace the certainty of purpose inherent in our capacity for love. Loving thyself will allow your patterns and vivacious habits to only by authentically rejuvenating because they will synchronize with the verisimilitudes of the soul! By targeting the teacher, the authority figure, the boss, we do ourselves a huge favor because we are honest to ourselves, don’t dwindle in commiseration (whining about stuff) and take the quickest route to producing a change that will remedy the problem that irritates you. It takes courage and confidence, but we must make certain we have authentic outlets for communication or risk going around in meaningless circles: take a deep breath; go to the source and say what you must say after planning it out! Love life to its fullest!
The Guatemalan state bird – Quetzal – is a symbol of freedom and wealth. Wealth, because its feathers and jade were the most sought after trade commodities, and freedom because it would simply die in captivity – it couldn’t be contained. I am not saying that I am a symbol of this Guatemalan national bird (I certainly don’t have expensive feathers decorating my body), but I am saying that I certainly can relate to its fervent reluctance that is more of an incapacity (it doesn’t have a choice, freedom or death in captivity, essentially, suicide) to be contained when I was on the that ship. It wasn’t as though I was remember the series of Social Studies reading I had learned in grade school about the slaves, and was making a message for them, or something, I actually felt treated like a slave. We could only eat meals at certain times and couldn’t get food anytime else. We could only sleep at certain times, too. I know in the Korean P.O.W camps, Koreans tortured the prisoners in a mind-controlling game of torment to get them to confess their knowledge by allowing them to sleep 4 hours a night, stand the other 20 hours, and constantly interrupt their savory 4-hour bout of sleep. I felt their pain after surviving a mere 4 weeks from that slave ship. We actually had 4-hour sleep shifts which could fall anywhere throughout the day, mid-afternoon, early morning, dusk, so our minds and biorhythms (my melatonin was going crazy) were being mutilated. Forced to do manual labor (hoisting sail lines), sleep in cubby-sized squashed spaces, wear shackles, and eat and sleep on a predefined system, it wasn’t as though I was losing my identity, I felt like my humanity was being shattered, something far more severe – I felt as though I was becoming, because I had been treated like one, an animalistic, barbaric slave that had done something wrong. There weren’t demerits or some kind of punishment system, but the cruise was anything but savory.
I had originally went on board because I loved the ocean, and there I was, shackled, under constant physical surveillance and control (even though there were three entrances and exits to the cabin, we could only use one of them), and such insane regimen, I thought I would implode with the conforming intolerant, totalitarian-like control around. Even the little things, like deciding when you can eat, made me realize how much liberation is involved in such a simple, seemingly, innocent and pointless choice. After a week and half, I craved the immense freedom it seemed to decide when and where you would eat dinner. When I had to eat when everyone else did, or risk going hungry, I felt even more like a machine that was being force-fed “fuel”, manufacturing seafaring output to work towards removing the cogs in the mechanized nautical vessel.
In the first few days many people became nauseas and sea-sick, they said because of the movement of the boat (the one natural experience that wasn’t controlled or regimented on the vessel) but it had to be, primarily, because of the insanely prisoner-like regimen of captivity, when we thought we were going to be out on the water. I couldn’t’ believe how Hellish that experience was ( especially for a person who swims, runs, gets exercise, writes, and eats food on my own schedule) because the structure wasn’t helping me get things done, which I do normally. Being incredibly prolific on my own, but somewhat stymied around other people, aside, of course, from becoming more aware of how I react with other people, I couldn’t handle this regimen, which was all moving towards the habilitating of the ship, because it felt like a dictatorship. Even though it had a purpose – to ensure the ship functioned – the methods in which such manufacturing of crew energy was immensely manipulative. The setting and striking of the sails, with no wind, and the seemingly absence of movement in the ship, had become absurd. It seemed like we were setting the sails (which never seemed to blow in the right direction) just for the sake of exercise. I felt like the crew was a bunch of monkeys dancing and hopping around, doodling on maps, and cranking the steering wheel occasionally, but the majority of the time leaving the wheel “guide the boat” rotating and gyrating back and forth, providing no direction whatsoever. Ironically, I had studied spider monkeys from land, while they frolicked up in trees, in Mexico the earlier summer for a month. It seemed that now, I had endeavored a new experience, simply living and attempting to survive with a group of “crew-monkeys” on the ship. I don’t have anything against monkeys, and am not putting myself up on a pedestal, but I am just saying that I couldn’t believe how randomly imprecise the crew members were.
We had to do this routine check of the engine room where we measured the fluids, took temperature readings of the turbines, and other various fuel and oil level checks, but I was shocked at how imprecise everything was. Comparing the idea of a floatable piece of word, being pushed across the surface of the water by the random and wavering and direction and unpredictable speed of the wind, with the precision, accuracy and computerized connection to an airplane was a stark and frightening contrast. After having seen the videos on shore (with the intention of teaching us fire on ship, sinking ship, and man-overboard drills) that showed Live footage (real actual videotape) of a ship running aground an ship sinking because two people were attached to it (do to some harness and wires), I felt tremendously safe on board the ship for a number of reasons. First, the chances of running aground were dramatically increased by the monkey-see monkey-do imprecision of the navigation, the fact that we were using a map from 1995 – an 8-year old map – and only one – when there should have been four – depth-sounders to measure and navigate the sea bottom. We learned on shore, during the oceanography component (which, essentially, the ship was designed for, it was science ship with the agenda of oceanography; a wind-driven ship sailing around the Caribbean with the purpose of conducting oceanographic experiments) that islands can well-up via geological “hot spots” in a few years, so the map, which was supposed to show water depth, could be haphazardly outdated, jeopardizing the entire safety of the boat. The harness, in addition to being an incredible physical and emotionally depleting burden of control and domination, was dangerous because of the live footage of the ship running aground when two people died because they couldn’t disconnect themselves with the boat, and went down with it. The idea of being harnessed, strapped in, to a 137-foot sinking 2-masted schooner is tragically frightening. Because of these very plausible reasons, I felt remarkably unsafe on the boat, but hesitated, before telling anyone my concerns.
This period of hesitation was hastily and brusquely ruptured a week and a-half into the sail when 3 students, the third mate, and myself were set striking and furling a sail. We were out on the bowsprit – the front most point of the boat, a projection that projects outward and has not actual “boat”, woodwork and whatnot underneath it – dangling in this precarious situation, with harnesses on, trying to furl (tie down) the jib sol’ (sail). In this precarious situation this one student couldn’t tie her knot – a slipper reef knot – and because she was the closest to the boat, she was thwarting our reentrance to the boat, jeopardizing our safety. After trying to remind her how to retie it, eventually, the third mate reached over and said, “God, I can’t watch this anymore”, retied the knot for her, so we all could reenter the boat.
For some psychological reason, that phrase, coupled with the high tensions out on the bowsprit made me realize I can’t watch this boat continue floating and traveling on the ocean in such a haphazard, dangerous fashion – I became instantaneously committed to and genuinely practicing authentic communication. This shows you the powerful psychological, emotional, and physiological impact of language on person’s entire disposition – hearing those words, “God, I can’t take this anymore” from an authority figure (the third mate) empowered me to not only express my concerns but become appalled at how long I had hesitated to express them. The very program had planted the validity of my seeds of concern, and now, was causing me to examine their harvest. I immediately talked to the captain and said how unsafe I felt on the ship, pointing out, incessantly, the 8-year old map and the single depth sounder, and the dangerous (even though their intention was safety) harnesses. After discussing this approach more carefully, I realized that maybe I had unintentionally questioned his authority because he immediately ordered me to not discuss the incident on deck, but down below in the sealed-off captains quarters. In other words, it immediately became an “adult” conversation.
I discussed how, sure, the map was adjusted for variation (true north) after the 8-year span, but nothing could compensate the inaccurate “depth markings”. I was relentless because I had not other option – to call parents, leave the boat -- a change had to be produced. I was shocked at how imprecisely we measured our speed (with a log that dangled behind the boat) as our primary source of total traveled distance. I had been an A+ nautical science student on show, too, the Captain new this, and I knew it – my thinking made perfect sense to me, and probably, frighteningly enough for him, had some validity in his eyes, despite the traditions he had followed all of his seafaring days. And tradition and heritage is what we talked about for the next 5 hours!
After that the captain looked severely stressed out, which, maybe through some schadenfreude (German for laughing at misfortune), but more likely because it showed he was thinking stuff out. When he looked calm and collected, I was eerily unsure about what kind of conclusion he had arranged – whatever it was, the decision had not involved my choice, he had decided, like some inanimate object -- something I certainly am not, especially when I realize I shouldn’t hesitate in communicating myself on board the ship – had covertly crafted a plan for me. Eventually, the talks subsided, I was told to stay down below after my 40 hour bout of no sleep (which was due to simultaneously feeling concerned about my safety on the boat, and the excitement from what seemed like being on a gigantic surfboard with 24 intellectual, talented, extremely cool students) and two days later, this impromptu, unplanned stop in the Bahamas was announced. All of us were excited because we would get the opportunity to explore and experience new soil – which was, according to the Maritime studies component, the purpose of travel – to share with others who didn’t have the opportunity to travel, experiences and interpretations from the other lands. Of course, the best method of relating to a new, unknown environment, is actually stepping out, traveling there, and making your own interpretations, instead of having to interpret and translate some one else’s perception – which, to you, is, essentially, a second-hand, as opposed to a primary, source. But it held true that many of the things I pointed out – the poor navigational depth sounding and the quickness of new islands welling up, and the purpose of travel – I had learned from the SEA program itself and protested when they began to remarkably contradict themselves. After landing in the Bahamas, our anticipation to get off the cramped, slave boat, and explore a new country – step on the terrain of a new world – was brusquely severed when the captain said, “Okay, no one else is getting off the boat. John, this is your ticket back to Chicago”. And he pretty much forced me to get off the boat and wait in the airport for seven hours!
Now, I was in shock with a heterogeneous mixture of grasping and liberation at the idea of having to leave such an awesome “gigantic surfboard” and 24 of the coolest, most talented, and profoundly intellectual students I had ever seen, but simultaneously being freed of the policy-driven shackles, physical shackles, and chains of the brutally slave-like regimen of the Corwith Cramer. Because of this, there was no way I was going to wait in the airport for that long, so I left my bags, and the chief scientist, who was waiting with me, and started walking towards the ocean. The chief scientist caught up with me in a cab, and rolled with me saying that we needed to go back to the airport, but I put my hands in a “prayer” position (to not have my thinking be derailed) and, determined to get to the ocean, kept marching forward. Eventually, the 30-year chief scientist was out and about walking with we, and we couldn’t decide to go to the ocean (my choice) or back to the airport (her choice), so I suggested walking around in circles. And there I was, walking around in physical and psychological circles of indecision with a 30-year old chief scientist on the side of a Bahamian highway! Eventually, we conciliated to get in a cab-van go to the ocean, then return to the airport. One thing I noticed once we hit land, was how much remarkably older the chief scientist looked ,with her purse, clothes, and make-up (on the boat, I had felt, everyone (especially the chief scientist) looked and acted much younger – around 14 or 15 years old, sometimes 12. But on land, the image took over and everything and every person seemed more daunting and elderly. Maybe this was because of my age-old relationship with the historical sea, which has experienced so many violent storms, tossed waves, calm smooth-as-glass winds, bloody naval battles, and starry, moonless nights, that made me feel more rooted, older, and stronger. But the contrast was shocking on shore. Eventually we drove around with the intention to drive to the ocean, but stopped at this office building for about 30 minutes to speak (and I wasn’t sure what the hold up was, but was talking about how surfing was more important than eating) then headed in the direction of the ocean, but stopped at the hospital. I protested, “What the heck is going on here! I thought we were going to the ocean”. The thirty-year old chief scientist told me, “John, we are going to the hospital because you have been acting irrational”. Now, I had no idea what could happen in the medical corridors of the hospital with a “chain of command” procedure. Even though there is usually some kind of diagnosis and questioning, I feared the chief scientist would use her authority to pass me off to a doctor who would pass me off to a nurse, who would pass me off to a security guard, who, at that time, would just be following orders to bind me in a straight jacket and pump me full of drugs or something! So we both raised our voices, I said, “No I am not going in there!” She said, “Yes, you are!” Then I had to physically remove her hand from the lock, slide open the door, and bolted out of the van and was running around the Bahamas for the next 3-4 hours. During that time I met a director, after going away from the civilized part of the Bahamas (where the famous Atlantis hotel, with a waterslide was, which I had actually visited, but certainly didn’t recognize, when I was a kid. I asked a person when I had gotten into a very industrial shipping area with metalwork being done on boats, which way to the docks, and she pointed back towards the hotel area and said almost as an omen, to “go back that way, that is better for me”. But the journey was awesome.
During this mini-Odyssey on the new soil, while all my friends were back on the ship, I, an Odysseus just having escaped the wicked cave of the Cyclops, found an island that bore two surfboards in the distance. I crossed this bridge and saw two people aiming cameras at the surfboards, which were propped up against an RV. When I asked them what they were doing, they said this was a “hot set“ and were shooting a surfing movie. I saw people layering the ground with leaves, to help create the mood of the scene, while, as I was told, the actor drove around the mini-island. Eventually the director showed up, a big talkative, controlling and gregarious fellow, showed up angered. He said you can’t be here (I had, unintentionally snuck in around the fence in an attempt to get to the ocean) and I protested that my captain (whom I now dubbed “Bin Laden” instead of “Binh Lee” because of his tyrannical torts and methods) had just kicked me off the ship and you’re kicking me off the island. Where should I go?” I said, “Can’t I just borrow a surfboard, you’re a surfer, you know how awesome it is!” He said no and called for security to pick me up.
A very burly, Neanderthal-like African American security guard glided up and asked me with much intimidation and anger in his face: “You don’t want trouble do you?” I immediately said, “No” and was soon forced into a van (feeling like I was now being kidnapped after just being enslaved) and was driven to the perimeter of the “hot set” back on the main island with a resounding slam of a chain-linked gate fence in front of me. It felt like I was in prison, peering through the chinks in the fence. But aside from being denied the ability to use the surfboards, I was shocked at the timing of such prohibition. Right when I found the ideal place (with beautifully breaking waves of a crystal clear beach break) with boards, on a private island, opposition arose. It seems like if you pause and ponder that something is too good to be true, sometimes you are prevented from experiencing that entity and it, in actuality, truly becomes too good to be true. I ended up finding my way back to the boat, after stopping at a man doing carpentry on an abandoned looking building. I shouted up to him, because he was on the second floor, “What are you working on?!”
He informed me that he was working on building and starting a restaurant and I told him if I stuck around (in a very “Holden Caulfield-like” way) that I would definitely apply for work. I knew people from the other boat (the Tahitian cruise track) were planning to wait tables after their cruise was over, and, even though my cruise had ended unexpectedly early, the idea of working in the Bahamas was captivating and intriguing. So instead of dodging and burying the idea I investigated some French restaurants, asking about employee requirements and experience necessities, and eventually found my way back to the boat. Surprisingly , I was greeted by a gentleman in a golf cart, who referred to me as “Big John” to escort me back to the boat. It was as though I had been exiled and chased out like a rebellious, lunatic crook and was now being readmitted to the docks as though I was a VIP guest of honor! It was the weirdest thing back on the boat because everyone simply ate their dinner (at the normal time, of course), acted completely normal, and being 1 foot away from new soil, an entirely new country, had never left the boat. They kept doing lookout and watch outs – completely meaningless now that we were docked – as though they were marionette minions (like the team mind-controlled under in the move, “Fight Club”) with know will -- or awareness of the surroundings – of their own.
I ended up flying back to Chicago the next day, after delaying the cruise a day, causing an unplanned stop in the Bahamas, walking around in circles with a 30-year old woman scientist, meeting a surf-video director, being shackled and enslaved, and having a riveting and viciously charged conversation with the captain of my ship! IT was an adventurous like no other, and I such splendid travel, with suspense, personal intrigue, personal danger, fear, liberation, and finally, joy, could never be replicated in anything other than a magnificent story of tragedy, freedom, authority, and truth. Telling this as a fictitious story would simply be too risky because of its outrageous circumstances. The difference between my sea semester experience and such a potent story is that it took place in reality – with more tragic authority, freedom, and truth that could ever be imagined by any storyteller!
*****
After that Sea Semester I was charged up, here is the beginning of a letter I planned to write to the Dean of my school (someone I would never consider talking to before the sea semester experience because of sheer intimidation!):
Dear Ms. Mcleod,
I wanted to inform you of some of the events that occurred on board the S191-Cramer cruise around the Caribbean. Basically, in a nutshell, I was very simply concerned for my safety on board the ship. I felt that I was put in dangerous situations and circumstances the jeopardized my safety on boat the sailing vessel.
On board the Cramer I was put under section "Safety" section of "Vessel Operations".
I am not criticizing the methods, procedures, nor guidelines that were used to conduct life on board the Cramer, nor the crews' (captain, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd mate, etc) application of these guidelines, but I am simply stating some facts and reactions, which I thought to be rational, to some of the events regarding the boat life of the Corwith Cramer, S191.
I never finished it, but this shows how charged up I was about the incident in terms of legal policy (something I usually never choose to interact with). By the emotional and experiential impact was the most life-altering because I had never approached (and reprimanded, unbelievable!) an authority figure like that, but doing so was a necessity for my survival. It became the ultimate example of turning lemons into lemonade and connecting to the source of the experience not as a hardship, but as an incredibly intrepid, trying, and challenging experience.
I have recently realized that I tell people my Seas semester story because when my father picked me up at the airport, he said he hadn’t met this one person (the Dean of the program), and I transcribed that to meet who I really was, so I told him the story of the ship, captain, and depth sounders.
Ever since them I have associated that story with introducing myself to other people, but that is not the case! In fact, the story is incredibly invigorating and alive, full of purpose, but people can certainly get to know me other ways as well. Let’s continue to embrace the power and potential for connecting with other people by continuing to share our experiences, adventures, and travels, but recognize that our enthusiasm or splinter of compassion reveals our true identity of authenticity to people. Embracing the realistic certainty of love allows us to follow our heart because we will be guided by the strongest force imaginable.
Grand Consummation
The people in the woods survival example died because they became caught up in emotions, where the emotions of panic, dear, and doubt, prevented them from taking action and utilizing their surroundings to build a fort, find berries, and do whatever necessary to survive. I removed struggle in the classroom by changing my perception, realizing the importance of communicating my messages (but not needing to influence or persuade people), and the poignancy of not taking things personally. On the ship, I freed myself from the physical, emotional, and psychological bonds of slavery, regimen, conformity, and commands by communicating my emotions. The bottom-line here : the poignancy of emotions coupled with communication. In the classroom, the communication of messages aroused emotions, by communicating with myself to not take it personally, but to distribute the perceptions of compliment and/or insult with the rest of the class relinquished the exhausting shackles of feeling emotionally obligated to prove myself. Also, by communicating my thoughts and emotions, I was doing myself a favor – clearing and digesting my mind – not for the sake of sharing knowledge and insight, I was doing three things: connecting myself to my fellow humans more authentically, clearing my mind, and allowing them an opportunity for real discussion of my thoughts, reactions, and ideas. The ship example is the most lucid: expressing and being authentic with my emotions by communicating them to who should hear them (I normally communicated with my parents) the captain, I quickly caused changes, that, at the time may have seemed unfair or brusque or covert (with the phone calls), but ultimately placed me into an emotionally more adaptive, generative, and comfortable area. This is true for every circumstance, communicating to yourself to not take classroom comments personally fixates you in a welcoming emotional environment instead of a battle, calming your fears, places you in a safer emotional environment if your in the woods, and expressing your emotions in the case of the ship gets you off the boat. Let’s continue to fervently, lucidly, and creatively communicate our emotions – through humor, directness, conviction, and most importantly, authenticity -- so that we don’t become subjects of them, but use their energy to impassion and rejuvenate our soul!
Communicating to the Source
It is incredibly important to communicate to the source of our ingenuity and not connect an overly-sophisticated resemblance and expectation to people with authority . For the longest time I looked at authority figures as unapproachable. If I had a problem with an authority figure, I would be forced to talk to someone else about the person in authority because I created an “out of bounds” area where I only felt like I could receive commands from authority figures never question, and certainly never argue with them. This crippled my relationship in the classroom and left me with a myopic uncertainty about how to go about even asking questions to authority figures about assignments, etc. and whatnot. This all changed after the SEA semester where I had no choice but to talk to the captain about my concerns of safety, and this situation proved to be remarkably awakening because of the expedient, direct, and hastily manner in which the thing was resolved. By grounding ourselves to a point of religion to understand certainty of purpose, we can unite our authentic verisimilitudes and understand the necessity of personal comprehension. When we truly completely understand our internal motivations – an incredibly complex concept – we can rejuvenate our soul by carrying out the necessary predilections for things that vitalize our soul. We must understand why we spend hours wasting our life away watching television, eating junk food, and engaging in frustrating loops and embrace the certainty of purpose inherent in our capacity for love. Loving thyself will allow your patterns and vivacious habits to only by authentically rejuvenating because they will synchronize with the verisimilitudes of the soul! By targeting the teacher, the authority figure, the boss, we do ourselves a huge favor because we are honest to ourselves, don’t dwindle in commiseration (whining about stuff) and take the quickest route to producing a change that will remedy the problem that irritates you. It takes courage and confidence, but we must make certain we have authentic outlets for communication or risk going around in meaningless circles: take a deep breath; go to the source and say what you must say after planning it out! Love life to its fullest!
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