Macwriter

Mac kills PC in so many areas. I find that my workflow crashes to a halt when I have to go into the office and use their Windows systems. I hesitated in downloading any Microsoft programs onto my Mac because I don’t like anything about them, how they are organized. Even using Excel, which is still far more substantial than Apple’s Numbers program, I am quick to get in and get out. The one shining Microsoft program out there is Livewriter. It is great. I does everything that a blogger needs and wants. It has two-way communication with accounts and one can write, post, and draw from with ease.

So I am trying out MacJournal. I am hoping that the latest update will address some of the workflow problems that I had. We’ll see. A big problem for me was the lack of tag support. Not that the program doesn’t use tags, it does. But that it doesn’t draw from the list of tags one has already started on an external server. Livewriter does this well. But other programs, not so much. Instead of a seamless work environment I am forced to print out a list of tags and hang it on the wall. This. is. stupid. Either that or I am stupid and I cannot figure out a workaround.

warriorhood, PTSD, myth, masculinity, treatment, character, strength, resiliency, and more

There may be a solely physical reason for PTSD.  Perhaps I should back up, for the physicalists would claim that ‘thoughts’, seemingly immaterial ‘things’ are, when it is all said and done, the effects of physical actions.  That is, atoms and molecules and neurons and neurotransmitters and so forth.  I am inclined to agree with the notion that Descartes was wrong in splitting the mind and body up into two. 

Back to my point.  If one were to take a purely physical stance on PTSD, there is an exposure to events and/or conditions that build up changes in neuropathways.  Triggers are built to ramp up the fight/flight system at a moment’s notice.  Associations are learned and encoded in the brain.  And, as one speaker at a lecture today on allopathic approaches to PTSD commented (It was in the CBT section) there are stuck points where cogntive self appraisals are unable to move past. 

If this is the case, then the therapies to approach this would naturally want to include methods that address the paths of thouht within the brain and the handling of the flight or flight response when it occurs (coping mechanisms).  That is, creating better diet and input of nutrients (lessening of caffeine and smoking) to help create a better mental soup to start with, addressing triggers and possibly forms of coping (meditation, visualization, story telling…), working on the precognitive thoughts that might be tuning mole hills into mountains or ignoring real problems (ignoring a mental loop where one might be saying my family would be better off without me).  And then the addition of social networking with others (alike and non alike, who share in the experiences and who don’t). We are, after all, social animals and we bounce ideas off each other all the time in many ways of affirming or denying concepts, attitudes, beliefs, rules of behavior, and so forth. 

On this last note, I can’t help but laugh… for I was at the university campus late last night and had locked my computer down at the cofffe shop so that I could run up stairs to the latrine.  Being late at night the campus is deserted save for those hardy souls who take night classes.  I fell in behind one of them as we walked up the stairs and I laughed, out loud and without thought, at the kid in front of me.  He was a young 19 year old kid with unkempt hair and clothes as is usual for many his age, yet he was sporting the style that has never ceased to cause me to laugh.  His pants were below his buttocks and pulled tight across his upper thigh, showing his boxers.  As I laughed out loud at first glance, he must have known the reason for my laughter for he self consciously pulled his pants up a little.  Watching him I was aware of all the frailties of his lack of identity.  He was a kid who did not know himself and was constantly projecting back onto the mirrors of those around him.  Who did he know?  What did they do?  What values did they impart among each other.  I do not, in any way, want to seem as though I am imparting that we ‘older’ folks have values and the youth do not adn I certainly do not want to be accused of sounding like an old stuffy person (kids these days have no values…).  No, I mean values not in the tradtional or conservative sense, but in the literal psychological sense.  Literally, what were the values that this kid and his social connections imparted among each other?  And what reinforcements did they recieve from those from outside their group? 

This little example shows, among other things, two points.  One, creation of identies (and the trap thereof… for what if this kid is seen as nothing more than a hooligan and likewise believes himself nothing more than a hooligan) and two, the importance of diversity, both laterally and horizontally, in our social networks.  We need people of different types in our network (this kid’s social group ought to include teachers, guitarists, store managers, etc…) as well as the very young and the very old.  When we watch movies or read stories that are very great, we see stories that transcend a time, a place, and and age group.  Likewise, when our circle has diverse elements within it, the bouncing of ideas, of values and life meanings pick up more truth. 

And yet there is something else…

I shot off an email to a professor and classmate for a class that I had to skip today (juggling a lot of stuff).  In so doing I reflected on some of the new things that I’ve learned lately in philosophy.  There was a time when I have taken some new theory, or outlook, and thought that it was the tool by which I could solve all questions.  While this may again be the case in the future, I see each new tool as another tool in a growing toolbox.  If a philosophy class, or a poetry class, or a particular psychology book, or such, were enough to pave the path to enlightenment, then we’d notice a change in upper classmen as compared to incoming freshmen.  Instead, we see the idealism of the young give way to the an acceptance of the old(er).  What if both could be like the other at the same time?  What if the dreams of the young fueled the pragmatic nature of the experienced? 

But I get off track.  I am thinking, here, of other things… mythic themes, stories, meaning.  We want, we need, we crave meaning.  How does meaning work, exactly?  Can one write the importance of meaning in one’s life as simply as heuristics and patterns within the frontal lobes by which one looks at stimuli and experiences?  Doesn’t sound very sexy, does it?  Can there be something said of myth making in a world of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)?  And if so… why?  If not… why?

For the physicalist the question I have is, is there a spirit/soul?  Is this different than mind?  Is it a qualititative state of the mind?  If the answer to the first question is yes or no, the third question is still important.  Is the spirit/soul a qualititative state of the mind?  I might note, here, that I believe a large part of the fear and anger toward atheists by the common masses is that they are afraid of the mortality of their selves, that the notion of no afterlife is so hurtful to think of in light of a life ill spent without endeavor or meaning that they cling all the more the notion of a heavenly afterlife.  We attack with greatest hatred that which we are most fearful of within ourselves.  Whether or not the soul/spirit is immaterial or if it is a qualititative state of the mind (I mean state differently than a mood or emotion… perhaps aspect is better suited), whether mortal or, as Socrates had said, immortal, it seems that this is an important aspect of healing the person.  It is said by some that a complete healing in a medical setting take into account the psychological needs of the patient (and doctors are supposed to have a good bedside manner).  And I would say, also, that a more complete psychology would be more than simple positive affirmations and declarations of I see and respect you as a person and other kitchy phrases passed around in seminaars and team building exercises and so forth. 

Again, we crave meaning. 

In reading The Knight: A Jungian Healing Journey by Marvin Spiegelmann, Ph.D., I wonder as to some near connections that I’ve made in the past.  Through my readings and beings and dealings with others and so on… the notion that magic and ritual are (though similar,some would not claim any difference, others such as myself would) are forms of some sort of personal therapy and in the meeting and partnering with the entities within the landscape of the soul. 

Revisiting what I wrote in March 2008:
 (Begin March 2008)

Is this, the cognitive and pre-cognitive processes that Beck writes of, the point of therapy?  There is, here, in my infantile understanding of such, a dichotomous pathway to choose from.  On the one hand there is the surrendering of the self as ‘broken’ and to go into therapy.  This goes against our culture as soldiers on many levels as well as that addressed above.  We are told and strive to be, responsible men/women in charge of all that is around us.  We choose our reactions, we choose to attack/defend/flank/withdraw and so on.  It is a big step for such a soldier, particularly higher in rank (responsibility) to admit that he is not in control.  Yet this is the language given to us.  We are encouraged, via the stoicism that appeals to so many in the military and the culture itself, that we are indeed  within control.  To challenge this is to challenge our core ideals about ourselves.  It is much easier to say that it is not a failing of my own (why I have nightmares, why I am so angry all the time) but that it is some mysterious brain chemical that can be fixed by a pill.  I do not know the numbers, but dealing with my own buddies there are far more on psychological medications than those that go to therapy.  We do not admit publicly (I, personally, do) that we go to therapy, yet many will readily tell the pills that they are currently on.

Another path is one of strengths based counseling.  That is, recognize that you are watchful of people and instead of this vigilance being symptomatic of your inability to ‘turn it off’ (hard to do for you will turn it back on during your weekend training and other times of training).  Instead, view it as a strength.  What are the strengths of the warrior? Bring these out.  Recognize that your emotions are automatic response generators and that this is a GOOD thing for you.  Think of it as if you have gone through Ninja training.  Now it seems cool.  While others around you are oblivious to what is going on, you have noticed the drunk driver ahead of you and avoided it, have noticed the gang of thugs at the bus stop and have stayed to the side, have heard the alarm two buildings over of the fire that others seem to not notice, pay attention to the noise in the hallway and are ready to react if it is another campus shooter, have smelled that odd scent in the air (was it smoke) and are ready to call for evacuation.  You are, it seems, a guardian of your society and always ready to help, aid, protect, defend, and attack.  Whether it is aliens, terrorists, depressed teenagers, chemical spills, or whatnot, you are that selfless defender.  You are a hero in waiting.   The precognitive processes that send in signals are now addressed in this light.  Is it now easier to assess the five Arabic men in the student rec center as hopeful students and then ‘let it go’ as compared to noticing the emotional state that is now in conflict and noting it as paranoia and holding onto this as a sign?  Thoughts here are of ‘don’t think of the white elephant’ phenomena, also the meditation practice of letting thoughts go instead of holding onto them, and the notion of hypochondriacs who notice a spot and then obsess about it.  Have we, in looking at PTSD in the first vein, created a condition whereas we are somewhat forced to become obsessive about it? 

And what of our warrior training?  Is it enough to train how to kill?  Some thinking is that only those in charge must know the whys of killing (the officers) and that those who are the foot soldiers must only satisfy themselves with doing so and not to question why.  A common saying in the Marines is “ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die”.  This works if only the soldier is able to stick to it.  Yet come back home and surround yourself with a people who all want to know your opinion of if we should be in Iraq or not (and don’t say you have no opinion, for then you are just a mindless, brainwashed robot, which we are certainly not), and t.v. and movies, and there are so many opinions about the war.  Personally I had no ill effects from Desert Storm until I saw the movie “Three Kings” in 98 (or thereabout) and different whys of the war hit me like a brick and I went to a bar and had some stiff drinks after the movie.  Killing others for oil?  It hurt me deeply that I had been a part of such.  And yet you cannot have a fighting platoon where every man makes up his mind whether or not to fight a fight.  You need obedience, swift and sure, to orders on the battlefield.

Our warrior training ought to also include virtues of the warrior as protector and so on.  We might still have to go into a village and react to contact and so on, and civilians are killed.  This is a different issue than straight PTSD from stressful situation alone, in that I am given different ways of grieving for those I’ve personally killed.  There is literature on anxiety, PTSD, and such on such choices that I am still reading and have to incorporate here.

(end of March 2008)

I cannot help, as always, to make connections. Everything is connected.  Yet as I read about the neoplatonism of Plotinus and a brief introduction on his concept of evil (earlier entry) I see the story… or at least the roots of the story.  It is pretty closely aligned to negative feelings about mental disorder in the military and I must be sure to illustrate the right points in the proper proportion.  There are a few schemas that do not match well:

The manly man schema
I am a man who, acting like a man in that I am strong and able and not shirking from a fight, have joined the military.  There are different degrees of manliness, and those of us who perform certain tasks are much more aligned with what we are and what we are supposed to do than others.  I am much higher on the manliness scale than, say, a male nurse.  In such learned skills, such as how to shoot a rifle and how to move tactically, yet underneath it all I am still a man.  Because I am a man I am able to perform the demands of what the military asks of me; road marches, exposure to the elements, violence and war.  I am not frail, either mentally, emotionally, or physically, for the arguments against women in the military is that they are too weak to carry the physical load and are not emotionally tough enough (i.e., unimotional) to perform war.  As a man I do all that is required without a hitch.  If I hurt something, it is through grit and determination that I persevere, carry on, even though I have a sprained ankle, a hurt leg, a gunshot wound, a missing limb, or other physical wounds.  Such perseverence is spoken of with respect and admiration among us.  We are physical beings and prone to weakness and my willpower will push me on.  My soul, living inside this imperfect body, is essentially the same, though I’ve not got a good reason what went on during childhood (that was just a phase between the heaven before life and my adulthood existence).  The real me is the adult me.  The mind that psychologists talk about is really the ‘soul’ acting through the brain.  There is no such thing as someone on trial for insanity, or unfit for trial.  We are all responsible.  Period.  If I break down or start to show emotions at my actions of being in a war, I am not exercising my will.  I am not ‘enough of a man’.  The essential ‘me’ is not worthy, for life is the testing ground of our worthiness of character, and by breaking down, I show my true colors.  Denial is a form of ‘reigning in’ those lose elements.  Tighten it up.  Keep it together.  Don’t give in.  Never give up.  If it is one against many. I’ll fight that fight.  If it is one against wrong with surety of death.  I’ll go.  If a sacrifice must be made, better me than those I protect.  I do.  I do not try. I either succeed or ‘die trying’. 

This is highly problematic.  It impedes all manner of things from occuring.  There are values to be had in ‘the manly man’.  For there are times when great sacrifice and courage and a ‘never give up’ attitude is needed.  However, these traits are not the sole domain of ‘the man’.  Our thinking has become that to think of a man is to think of these traits and vice versus.  We ignore the fact that there are single mothers that sacrifice greatly all the time, or teachers that work in a distressing environment to perform a needed task, or a student that works three jobs while trying to pay for school to achieve a dream.   

Our individual humanity is a collective, shared, humanity.  Within each of us is a divine spark.  Within each other is the very same.  I wonder what our thoughts on the current military actions in Gaza would be if we struck from every single newscast, newspaper, radio program, flier, book, and so on, the words ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ and used instead ‘people’ and ‘people’.  I know, I’m a peacnik hippy now.  Spare me.  Peaceniks have gotten on my nerves as much (if not more) than others in the past.  I could go on here, but I wont lest I get off track, only to say that the quickness of some to jump to the side of Israel in this (and other to that of Palestinians) is bothersome.  Angelizing one side and demonizing the other is to lose one’s perspective and thought. 

Back to the point.  An example of evil as not existing as a thing (that is there is no pure essence of evil) is like the physicalism example of the non-reality of the holes in swiss cheese.  One can have nothing but cheese on a plate (filling in the holes, in layman’s terms) but one cannot have nothing but holes on the plate… it would instead be an absence of cheese.

I’ve called the narcotic methamphetamine an evil.  The thing in itself is not evil.  Sitting on a shelf it is not evil.  Shot off into space it is not evil.  So my language is flawed… methamphetamine is not evil.  Yet the manner that use of meth has negative impacts on every facet of a human being’s existence is an evil in the Plotinus’ sense of the word.  And this brings me to Positive Psychology and the focus on flourishing.  The case is made, and evidence backs this up, that we are happiest when we flourish.  To flourish is to be authentically human and to experience happiness and emotional depth as well as to live one’s life within the context of some meaning. 

The approach that occurs to me is one of meaning and one of character.  That is, you are an essential person that moves into a role.  We might take on giant roles that are bigger than we are, or our breadth of self might transform the role.  Those who are great at something are likely to be the latter.  Note, this is similar to the above notion about the soldier being a man underneath.  The point here is that underneath the role of the man is the greater truth of the human.  This is terribly scary stuff.  What does this mean to be human? Does this make me not American?  Does it turn me into a wimpy pushover?  Aren’t there such things as gender differences?  If there is a deeper self than our gender roles, then this means (gasp) that same-sex marriage and relationships and (double gasp) realize that same -sex sex doesn’t really matter. 

On a side note… in reading a book and their reports of responses to same sex fantasies and the great emotional answers that men gave in denying such (affirming again that we are most angry/violent against what we most secretly harbor.  Therefore, the minister at Westboro Baptist Church, that den of hate, is likely very very very gay and in deep denial, so much so that it is causing hate and venom to spew forth onto the outer world… the same that he would spew at his latent sexuality were he to manifest it).  A study had men watch gay porn.  They checked attitudes toward gays beforehand and rated them on how anti-gay they were.  There was a positive correlation between those who were loudest in attacking gays and those who were aroused at the sight of gay porn.  Basically, the louder one shouted against gays, the more aroused you got during viewing.  Listening to men talk over the years, and judging reactions and so forth, I wonder if I were to compare ratings among ‘manly men’ across all walks of life and to see who they expressed more distaste toward… John the gay man, or Bob the guy who had sex with a sheep secretly.  Sounds absurd, but is it?  There is a t.v. show that plays surveilance tapes from around the world.  One that I remember was a man having sex with a sheep in Mexico City.  Guys that I know that have seen it all laughed at it but thought nothing much of it.  Not the same reaction given whenever the famous scene from ‘The Crying Game’ is played. 

This is but one aspect. There is another, the social aspect and shared identity.  It seems that we have, and this is not an attempt at a pun or a joke, but we have a crusader mythology going on in our time.  We men, we soldiers, we crusaders, carry forth the fight forward into distant lands.  While we might have started wars under the banner of ‘you hit me first, I’m gonna hit you back’, we’ve definitely started wars under the guise of ‘our ideas are great and you need them’.  When the WMD, of which I too was convinced with all the rhetoric that the existed, were shown to be a lot of fabrications and half-truths (why is it a half truth and not a half lie?) our rationale for going into war in Iraq was shifted to ‘ridding the world of a dictator’.  This is a tricky one.  The world is better off without Saddam.  I believe that.  But so too would it be better without the dictator in Zimbabwe.  Why are we not there ridding the world of him as well?  Lack of oil? 

Because we crusaders go forth and carry the battle away from home, we do not bring it back with us.  Our homes, families, towns, are insulated from it. They do not share in it.  They are then not connected with us in a very meaningful part of our experience and identity. 

Side note.  We have a core self but that core Self is not bloomed at the beginning.  It learns through childhood (which is formative and not just a chapter between eternity and eternity).  The most beautiful of souls are those are express most fully those qualities and traits that we hold in high esteem, especially if done under circumstances that were difficult.  (note, there are connections here for the existence of evil in the world from the Western Christian metaphysics but these question lack completely to account for such in light of an omnipotent omnipresent God).  It is our reaching our potential, our flourishing, that we are beautiful and it is our not doing so that is ugly.  We are touched on a deep emotional side when we encounter a story of someone who, against the odds, gave of themselves to another, or accomplished a meaningful goal.  In the presence of such we are elevated in our own emotions. 

Here is, then, a paradox.  For we veterans have gone into a war and have done things we are most ashamed of.  I do not think we are every really seperated from what it is to be ‘human’ (that is, identifying only with the ‘manly man’ or other roles).  How, we ask ourselves, is firing at an enemy who is in the midst of civilians, aligned with our core humanity?  We cannot identify it with such, only in terms of our roles as soldiers.  And so we might do, as I’ve talked with many, many soldiers who do this very thing, the worst thing for our own healing… that is to build a wall betwen our roles as manly men and soldiers and that of our deeper humanity.  We cut off all emotions and concerns for others.  At least we believe we do.  We don’t really. We suppress it.  Freud, I believe, had a lot to say on the repression of things and so forth.  These things, in a Jungian sense, attach themselves onto our Shadow.  And do we ever see the Shadow out there among others!  The world is a dangerous place where people kill indiscriminately and without reason… exactly the sort of things we harbor in accusation toward our selves. 

Yet the others side of the paradox is that this tragedy of war is one of the greatest (in magnitude and scope) of stages within which we bloom.  What courage, what sacrifice, what love and comraderie, what heroism are given chance to be exhibited here!  What nobleness of self!  As dark and terrible as one side of the coin is, so bright and shining the other side.  They are forever connected.  We get angry at peaceniks that attack us as vile and evil people, and we are uncomfortable with the hero worship given by others (who’ve never been in a war) toward us.  We know we are vile and beautiful at the same time.  Yet in this positive aspect of who we our, our expiences, those back home have not shared in this.  Their hero worship is not born from shared experience.  They haven’t seen our blooms in the rocky patch of dirt we lived in for a year.  That connection is not there.  And in this I am reminded of a Finnish study on PTSD prevalence among veterans of WWII.  It was quite low.  It was commented in the study that perhaps this was because the general populace went to war, suffered, labored, along in the invasion by the Russians as well.  Not only the soldiers along the front but the entire country who sacrificed and labored.  This shared suffering allowed the spreading of experience and the mutual recognition of each other’s blooming in such trying times. 

Here is a strength of Mosaic’s welcome home ceremonies (www.mosaic.com) where veterans tell their stories and poems to a listening community audience.  It is natural for us to feel the joy or pain in another’s words and in such an intimate environment we feel what the veterans are telling us on the stage.  We share, we witness their blooming as something more than soldiers and men (for there are women veterans also!) but as human beings. 

And in this I have a notion.  What of a similar thing for troops after a deployment.  Take some soldiers away for a weekend and let them talk among each other and tell their stories on a stage before an audience.  Just like what Mosaic has done.  Now also, do the same for the families and spouses of the vets.   I am thinking that one ought to do it on different days, say one on Friday and another on Saturday, with those of one in the audience of the other (as well as general members of the population).  For both ‘sides’ have sacrificed during the deployment.  The connecting of the two sides will show, I believe, that there isn’t any ‘sides’ at all… but different experiences (for ‘side’ usually means a side of an argument or logically opposed position)

There is more… much more… that I could write on.  More details, more thoughts, and so on.  But this is at five thousand words already and it is getting late at night.  I must go to bed and sleep and get ready for school tomorrow.  I’ve got some books to finish reviewing for a project I am on, homework for class, a letter to write to HR on poor management behaviors, another powerpoint presentation to start on, contacts to make about possible training in the Army Battlemind program (cross my fingers), and more.  Not enough time in the day. 

Deora Ar Mo Chroi

Deora Ar Mo Chroí

Irish Gaelic

Deora Ar Mo Chroí	Tears on My Heart
Ba dheas an lá go hoíche Na glórtha binne i mo thaobh ‘S aoibhneas i gach áit gan gruaim Áthas ar mo chroí go deo He-a-ro He-a-o-ro Má shiúlaim ó na laethe beo An ghrian ‘s an ghealach ar mo chúl Níl uaim ach smaointe ó mo shaoil Deora ar mo chroí go brón He-a-ro He-a-ro He-a-o-ro	It was beautiful all day [1] The sweet voices by my side And beauty without despair everywhere Joy in my heart forever He-a-ro He-a-o-ro If I walk from the alive days The sun and the moon behind me [2] I’ll only need thoughts from my life Tears sorrowfully on my heart He-a-ro He-a-ro He-a-o-ro

1. Literally, “It was a beautiful day til night/nightfall”.
2. Literally, “… on my back”.

It has been a flurry of activity for me this morning.  I crammed for a quiz in Astronomy this morning and took it and left, explaining to the prof that I was going to a panel of vets with a US Senator and didn’t want to be late.  The panel was good and I passed a handwritten business card to two people for possible opportunities helping vets in the future.

I left and walked with two vets, talking about working long hours and going to school and comparing envy of those students around us who have what seems like lives of less stress and concern.  I saw three of the attendees from the roundtable, they from a community college, looking at the campus map.  I offered to walk them to where they needed to go and that turned out to be abandoned and then I walked them to the new building and that turned out to be not used.  There is, right now, no Veterans Center on campus. 

In walking with them, however, we talked and compared notes and interests.  At the end they gave me a card to contact them.  They are giving resources, space, for a veterans center and need a personality to help affect change, to facilitate things, to move things, to start things, to help build a cohesive veteran group on campus and to help steer them to the resources (educational and mental health) that are available for them.  I, in turn, am looking for an opportunity to put together my military experience with my concern for vets groups with my need to do a psychology practicum for PSU. 

I just sent an email.  Lets see if it is a good fit/opportunity.  Right now it seems it would be.

I also emailed two professors asking for advice and possible advising.  Both are amazing individuals and I could gain so much from their mentorship.  I included a copy of my presentation on PTSD to everyone. 

I was also just called by a reporter for the Oregonian who asked me some questions about my history in the military and my experience with the GI Bill. 

Now I am sitting here and on my iPhone I am listening to some music and Enya’s “Deora Ar Mo Chroi” comes over my headphones and I am transported back to Iraq.  Before I bought an iPod I had a small MP3 player that held a dozen songs.  One of the ones I had on it was this song.   While down south of Baghdad with long hours every night on guard duty and long hours during the day on patrol, grabbing little sleep and so forth, I would put this song on repeat and fall asleep to it.  I had no idea what it meant, it is in Gaelic, but it was soothing and calming and I understood it with my heart.  It was a cherished means of peace in an unpeaceful place. 

What is the source of the emotions that well up as I listen to this.. it is not nostalgia.  I’ve felt this before in times of peace because underneath this peace is a sense of something… something like… sacrifice.  Something along the lines of we know what happiness is if we’ve experienced fully what sorrow is and that when feeling the subsequent joy there is, in framing it, a rememberence of that darker time. 

But that time wasn’t that dark for me.  I wasn’t scared all the time.  I was just not at peace.  I’ve still not fully figured out what my experience has wrought within me, but it is a deepening and a gathering of complexity. 

A useful analogy I used in therapy yesterday was that of a star.  A star in a binary system (two stars orbiting each other) may get mass from another star over time.  That mass in turn creates greater and greater density which in turn has greater gravity and this presses the mass closer together leading to greater density and so forth.  When the magic number (I believe it is 1.4 solar mass, but I am neglecting my astronomy studies) is reached core collapses upon itself and rebounds out in a Super Nova!  I am a potential supernova… I feel it… yet I do not have enough density yet and I move in many circles, read many things, seek many experiences, trying to add as much mass as possible to my core self, to increase its density. When that magic number is reached…

… my life will nolonger be my own.  I am not afraid of turning my life over to service, to something larger than myself.  I am on the edge of exploding… but not quite there yet.

on being beautiful

Interesting dynamic occurred in therapy yesterday.  I can’t write much now but will hit the main points.  I was talking about how I had a line of thought for potential research (I always have a line of thought about some sort of research or other) concerning something I read in "The Negativity Bias" by Royzak and Rozin.  I’ve mentioned it in earlier posts and will not repeat it all here.  Suffice to say that things are easily contaminated downward but not so easily upward.  That is, one small rat turd ruins a whole hell of a lot of cupcake batter, but one little bit of cupcake batter doesn’t make a pile of rat turds any better.

There is a similar theory for positive things called "The Pollyanna Principle" of which I must go read, for there is research supporting both… how can this be?

In walking through the park I thought of those things that strike us as good as being normative and those things as bad as being exceptional.  In class this morning, a organizational psychology class dealing with the workplace, it was summed up as such as well.  But I sense there is something else going on here as well and that it isn’t quite so tidy as this.

Recall the quote about the stars… http://www.quotegarden.com/night.html

If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!  But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

And again….

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space.  Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages.  Otherwise there was no reminder of human life.  My companion and I were alone with the stars:  the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon.  It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators.  But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.  ~Rachel Carson

Yes… it is like that.  This supports the negativity bias.  For my gods-!!!- what amazing beauty there is in the heavens above.

By night, an atheist half believes in God.  ~Edward Young, Night Thoughts

To awaken, periodically, to the splendor that is around me is one of the primary reasons for my rituals outdoors on full moons and for going on hikes.  It is an inward pressure that forces me outside into the world, to slow down and to take in the sights and sounds around me.  Those sounds, scents, and smells most healing for me are from nature.  But I get nourishment from other sources as well.  I cannot help but laugh from the depths of my heart when I see a train of kids on a long tether being lead through the park blocks at PSU.  Small toddles, all marveling at the many shapes and noises around them, dressed cutely, with bubbling voices and giggles and bright, wide eyes.  Such sights and sounds are nourishing indeed. So too the scent of cedar on a damp hillside in the evening.  Yet as much as there is pressure to go out, there is pressure to go in, to escape to my thoughts and to just let things be silent.  I am able to charge both on solitary hikes.  But time alone for a while I desire to have contact with others.  It is natural for me.  I like people.  The qualities of me as a kid growing up were that I was curious, creative, and liked people.  I’ve a concern for others, a protectiveness of others, and a desire to understand others.

Long tangent there.  A thought crossed my mind that other things become normative as well, as history has shown…. we can become used to common events that occur often and that odd event strikes us as particularly powerful.  The person in an abusive relationship, year after year, who finds her/his self suddenly interesting to a nice person.  This is not negativity bias, it is unique bias.  It could be, and I am purely speculating here, that the negativity bias is more likely to occur in affluent cultures and communities within which most of our physical needs are met without much thought and effort.  This is also not taking into account explanatory styles, such as optimism or pessimism (see Seligman’s book on learned optimism as well as the one on happiness).  What would this unique bias, negative and positive, have to say about someone living in, say, a small town with little industry other than working at the mill, no obvious support systems or means to get away from the life that is dictated to him/her and all the social pressures around him/her seem to point to the same ends?   I am getting a little off my point here.  The point in this paragraph was that it could be natural for us to become habituated to whatever environment we are in with all of its various levels and acting forces, and that something novel really strikes us as more meaningful.  I am curious, as well, if the articles that I have on my laptop that is on my waiting list to be read have anything to say about volition or locus of control or such.  I am particularly interested in volition and autonomy.  The example about the negativity bias is that finding $100 is not as big of an impact as losing $100.  Given two people who are at the lower end of the poverty scale and each finds a $100 bill in the middle of a field (so that there is no moral qualms with keeping the money) I wonder if there is a difference between the two people in regard to their sense of their own volition.  For one it may be a lucky break to ‘get by’ for the day.  Nothing changes, this is just another band-aid on a deep wound that continues to gush blood.  The other sees it as a resource, a tool, to use as a small stepping stone to a larger stepping stone, it to another, and so forth.

As a side note, I wonder about attitudes toward the poor.  Does this dichotomy play itself out in our attitudes and beliefs toward the homeless and poor we see on the streets? Do we view the five dollars we give the person on the corner as a tool for them?  That they are hoarding their gathered resources to create a stepping stone and to move up?  What of those individuals that go to http://www.kiva.org and give microloans?  Are the feelings much different?  Are some of these attitudes partly determined by the setting?  How much is by the individual?  What other factors are there in this?

And thinking on this I am reminded of Danny, a homeless man in Portland whom I sat with on a park bench for a spell recently.  It broke my heart.  When asked about it in therapy I felt terrible for him.  After looking into the encounter I felt even worse of a scoundrel, for I did not ask Danny if he had any place to go, if he had been attacked, if he had any friends or family, when was the last time he ate, or anything.  Realizing this then, and now,  I feel like a selfish lout.  And perhaps this is underneath what I meant, but not realizing it, when I asked myself the question ‘what would a good man have done?’  My favorite professor would ask us in class to perform ‘self checks’ on our beliefs and attitudes.  I’ve got a ways to go.  It is not that the love isn’t there, it is blocked by habit and automatic actions/thoughts that form the banks of the river of my mind.

And this leads me to the point I began to write about.  I wondered that there might also be positive things that, just by their touch or presence, impacts us.  Just a one single rat turd might ruin a large box of muffins, so to, I feel, one beautiful thing/person might enrich a whole time period of life.  No long and necessary rituals here for purity.  No lengthy absolution recipes.  Just the fact that it is there has an impact.  My example was that of Julia Butterfly Hill.  I am not of a religion that has saints, however, were I to imagine what it would be like to meet a living saint, it would be when I met her.  The very air around her seemed alive with love.  I feel that I was enriched just by contact with her, that something about her helped to make me a better person, to slow me down, to deepen me, to help bring me along the path of who I really am.

And then sadness overcame me.  When asked I tried to explain that, perhaps, I was of such a type, I was a thing of great beauty of which contact with for a brief moment enriched and changed the lives of others for the better.  Tears flowed… even now emotion wells up in me and I struggle to fight back wetness in the eyes…  as the therapist asked why this was sad- she said that she felt I was such a thing.  I said I felt that I had not done enough, had not given enough, had wasted so very much.

I recall what I wrote earlier about the Shadow self and Waste.  It hurts to think of how much good I am not doing.  I feel that there is something there, something within me, some greatness that is world changing… and yet… some sort of… fear (?) keeps me from opening up to it.

The thought that comes to mind, now, as I right this is of the Martyr.  That a person would sacrifice his/herself for something out of love (not the martyr in the relationship, I don’t think this is entirely healthy).  The question is, just how can someone fail at being a martyr?  What’s the worse that could happen?  You die!  Well, that was the point all along, so buck up and get to it.  And next, in my mind, is the concept of love.  There is sacrifice for duty, propelled by love, and there is also sacrifice for love only.  The question I am wondering is, if love is isolated from other motivators of sacrifice (duty, honor, loyalty, etc…) then how can sacrifice not be a joyful event?

And if this is so… what is its new name?  For it is no longer sacrifice.

And this leads me to resiliency… somehow… and this path is not too clearly defined in my thinking… but I feel the connection there.

…without complacency…

A quote from Helen Thomas and I found it utterly beautiful.

 

“in an unconscious way as I grew older I came to realize that everything that is a part of life is inevitable to it, and must therefore be good.  I could not be borne high upon the crest of ecstasy and joy unless I also know the dreadful depths of the trough of the great waves of life.  I could not be irradiated by such love without being swept by the shadow of despair.  The rich teeming earth from which all beauty comes is fed with decay; out of the sweat and labor of men grows the corn.  We are born to die; if death were not, life would not be either.  Pain and weakness and evil, as well as strength and passion and health, are part of the beautiful pattern of life, and as I grew up I learned that life is richer and fuller and finer the more you can understand, not only in your brain and intellect but in your very being, that you must accept it all; without bitterness the agony, without complacency the joy.”

 

Soldiers are often said to have an inability to connect with people, or to be on a different channel than those around.  I don’t know about this.  However, the last sentence of this quote struck me.  The rest of it I’ve come to my own realizations in the past, noting the necessary valleys in life that also create the peaks.  However, the last sentence, where she writes ‘without complacency’, that part struck a chord within me. 

 

This is unknown to a lot of civilians, or those not touched by or witness to death.  It is a caricature of cancer survivors in movies that they become enlightened beings that, as Warren Zevon says, ‘enjoy every sandwich’.  Perhaps, I don’t know.  I do not meet a lot of cancer survivors.  I do know myself.  Before Iraq I collected moments, times of peace, tranquility, and beauty.  I would pull over on the side of the highway simply because the sun was setting the sky and I wanted to enjoy it.  At times I’ve done this while running late for work.  I did not want it said on my death bed that I gave prominence to work over a sunset.  Which would we trade for what when lying on our respective death beds?

 

I am  no enlightened saint.  Most days I fail to appreciate the great gift of life that I have.  Most moments of opportunity slip me by.  Yet sometimes I do give pause and am a ‘being’.  Sometimes, but not all. 

 

Right now I put down my computer to pet the three tiny little kittens, barely big enough to walk.  Earlier I simply enjoyed a cup of tea.  There are things in life that I cannot let pass without giving it my full attention.  What sort of life would it be if I did not?  The soft lips of a recent date, for example.  Is this not the sort of thing that makes life worth living?  There are other things, to be sure, and I’m sure there are things in life that gives meaning to one’s philosophical stance.  Yet we are sensate creatures that thrive on the senses.  What fragrance fills the room right now?  What sounds in a symphony?  What soft touch of the lips and neck of a woman?  What taste of a well prepared meal?  All these things and more… they are all loves of mine.  I appreciate them.  I cultivate them.  And in turn I think that they deepen me.

Spem semper habemus

 

Do not look at me and say that I am a hero.  You have not seen me worry.  You’ve not heard me mutter a prayer hoping to live another moment.  You’ve not felt my anxiety.  Do not consider me a killer either.  You do not know the love that I hold within my heart and the sacrifice that I make.  Do not look in my direction and say the words ‘coward’.  For where were you when I went into harms way, over and over again?  Do not call me fearless.  For I am very afraid.  Do not call me great.  I have failed more times than I care to remember.  Do not call me a saint.  I have been petty and shallow and selfish.  

 

I am a human… a man… afraid of losing… afraid sometimes of even trying… afraid of loving… afraid of being alone… afraid of dying… afraid of killing.  What human lives in a box?  Is anyone lucky enough to be born in a world without pain?  What sort of human… what sort of soul would this make?

 

One of the arguments for/against the existence of God is the question of evil, and one of the answers of such is the development of soul.  I cannot remember my stance on it.  I investigated this argument in the past and came to some philosophical conclusion that is recorded in some dusty section of my brain.  This, however, is not philosophy right now.  This is my life.  What sort of soul would I have were it not for pain?  I have so much to give… yet would this be the same were I not beaten, bruised, bloodied, shamed, humiliated, horrified, sickened, lonely, frightful, overburdened, restrained, frustrated, or more?  I am no great soul.  I am no towering intellect, nor deep heart, nor novel thinker.  I am simply… used goods.  I am a life that has seen a fair share already.

 

Spem semper habemus…

… we always have hope.

 

I have a love of beauty.  It is my religion.  There is beauty in the most unknown places, un-thought of areas… ways and means that escaped me before.  In our hurry to reach the top of the mountain of enlightenment we sometimes miss the brook beside the path.  I believe that I have worth and value and that those things I offer are wanted… at least by someone.  Pardon me if I am not too terribly heartbroken if Paris Hilton does not appreciate me.  I find her impoverished, though I am going on as she is presented in the media and not on direct knowledge.  I could be wrong.

 

Somewhere there is someone that fits well with me.  Someone who matches me well and who feels the same way.  What magic might exist between her and I?

 

Yet the question was raised by myself, and indeed was echoed by the voice of someone else, what right have I to ask someone to care for me, to invest her heart and feelings into me, with the possibility of another impending deployment to combat?  How selfish and uncaring is it of me to think of my own desires for companionship and intimacy to ignore this?  As was told to me earlier, it is ‘her choice’ to do so.  Yes, it is.  Doesn’t make it any easier for me to settle it in my heart.  Yet it doesn’t make me want to keep from contact either. 

 

Spem semper habemus…

 

… we always have hope.

Peace

I’ve spent the past hour going over old journal entries, visiting a friend’s website where she wrote of her own trials of the heart and offered her some Zen advice.  I bought a gorgeous pendant that is called “Gawain’s Pentagram” and am once again visiting some of my writings in my warfare of literature class.  I tried converting one of the sections into a webpage and it was several megs in size.  Huge.  I’ll try to get around to posting it online, pictures and all, and having a disclaimer for one to start the page loading and then go make coffee and come back.

My life is a miracle  I sit and am amazed at what I’ve gone through and learned and developed into.  There is such a treasure of love and depth to me to offer.  I commented to a friend in 95 that I wanted to write a book but felt that I had not experienced enough to write about the human condition.  I wrote that I wanted kids, but had not grown enough to warrant the shaping of young minds and hearts.  That I wanted a great love but felt that I had not deepened enough to experience one.

I will not say that I am ready for all… for as I recognized then how much I had to learn, so now do I recognize how much I have to learn and grow.  I have sadness for failures of the past.  But I also have joys of the past as well.  I hope to keep in mind the person that I am… that I truly am… right now. Wow.  And what of other people?  To see them as they truly are… not as my irritations or hopes or fears or resentments or dislikes… but as they truly are.  How changing this is to one’s view.

I feel peace.

Good day

Up and off to class.  I decided to take the bus to the train.  It was about the same amount of time, but will cost me four dollars a day.  An adult pass is $73 a month, and to get the student one, much cheaper, you have to get it the first week of school.  What a crock.  So I’m not buying into it and will find other routes to go to school.

The test was easy.  I wonder who writes the questions.  Some were obviously stupid questions with absurd answers, gimmies, and others were debatable due to syntax.  I guess that you shouldn’t philosophically read into test questions.  But if I miss one of them I will argue my case.  The prof said that the questions would come from the book test battery.

I listened to “Answer” to start my day off with.  But this time I used it as emotional energy about what I was looking for and what I wanted to be in a relationship.  I used it as fuel for me to keep trying to develop, to become the best person I know I can be, to deepen my awareness and cultivate my compassion, to sharpen my intellect, to exercise my body, to broaden my awareness, to further my experiences.  Such is the type of person I am looking for… such is likely the type of person She, whoever she is, is likely to be looking for. 

Then I let the iPod pick random songs.  Queen’s “I want to break free” came on and it was a welcomed upbeat song.  It seemed to fit also.  Then Alanis Morrissette’s “Not the Doctor” came on and it was great.  Then “Reprise/Fly Away” themes from the movie “Superman Returns” came on and it too was great.

During the morning, while walking in the sunshine, my prayerbeads around my wrist, me working down the beads slowly, saying to myself “I am worthy” each time, and listening to the music… I sensed a negative tension in my face.  I’ve feel it often in the space between my eyes, like I’ve quite frowning my forehead and suddenly am aware of not contracting muscles there.  It is an odd feeling.  This morning I felt this, feel this now, in the bottom corners of my mouth, the parts that are pulled in a frown.  As I walked through the park, I couldn’t help but smile, heart light and hopeful, sunshine gleaming through treetops and blue skies. 

I am still acutely aware of the pain and the baggage that lies beneath my easy smile.  I cannot help but laugh in joy at many things around me, but with each laugh, each smile, each twinkle in my eye there is a stabbing of pain, very faint, but it is there, a reminder of the darker, harsher, sharper edges of life.  It makes whatever it is that brought me to laugh that much nicer, that much sweeter.  It is like the story of the man on the vine between two tigers, one above and below, and he sees a strawberry and eats it… and it is the best strawberry he’s ever had.

Am I learning a lesson now?  Will I forget this lesson?

in the black, geese, change within

I am in the black regarding my bank account.  I celebrated by walking to Powell’s books downtown and buying a $7 book called “Green Psychology” by Metzer (I critized an essay of his several posts ago).  This book so far, is wondeful.  He weaves together things that I’ve read in such different sources as Jung, biology, science, philosophy, witchcraft (yes, a psychologist speaks of witchcraft in a positive manner) and more.  He speaks of an ecological framework in dealing with human psychopathology (something I tried to express to my psychopathology prof recently) as well as the relation between humans and the world.

So far it is a great read and I’ll likely read portions of it again.

I went on a walk tonight, near midnight, after completing the rough draft of a paper critiqueing Singer’s article on Animal Liberation.  I enjoyed the darkness and the quiet in the Fanno Creek Park.  A hundred or more, maybe five hundred, geese were awake and calling to each other in a great mass of excitement before taking to the air and flying in high, wide circles around this part of town, honking loudly and excitedly.  I wonder what they are up to.  I’ll have to look it up in my book on bird behavior. 

Speaking of books.  There was a $20 book I wanted that detailed plants of the Pacific Northwest and medical uses.  Not in a manner of making Taxol out of Pacific Yew plants, but in using the leaves and berries of Hawthorne as a heart tea to aid in a heart condition.  I really wanted this book, but thought to save my money instead.  But I’ll get it soon, I know.

There has been a change coming in me for months now.  This past year has had great impact on me in many ways.  Little seeds of thought have germinated and sending roots into the deep layers of my soil.  The winter is a time for introspection and this is what is going on with me.  I sense and feel a deep upheaving of paradigms and belief systems that I cannot yet place my finger on.  It will come out, in its own time, to be sure and I’ll not hurry it.  For now I will continue to feed it literature, poems, dialogue and writings.  I’ve asked for growth and I know that growth cannot come without hardship.  What the price is to be, or has been, I cannot tell… I am deep within the process.  Perhaps with the retrospect of age I will know someday.  For now, I enjoy the moment.

Truth and Beauty, ever my heart and eye looks for you.  May you always be my compass points, my North, my calling.

spem semper habemus

I picked Classical Music as my genre for the night.. and it shuffled through Wagner and DeBussy and Chopin and Beethoven and Bach and others… and eventually landed on Mozart’s Requiem.  I remember when I downloaded this. I’ve never had the full requiem before, only snips here and there, and while I was in Baghdad I purchased it from iTunes and listened to it all one night, in the dark, through my headphones.  Powerful, moving, and listening to it again now it moves me the same way.  I can almost capture that same sense of place and time as when I was sitting in my room that dark night in Iraq. 

When I listen to Beethoven’s 7th I can almost feel the madness and complete loss of perspective in the world as when I felt my heart break, my conscious mind in a drunken stupor from the pain (no… I had done no drinking or anything), and I destroyed my room in a rage.  When I listen to Beethoven’s 9th I can remember multiple instances, like driving around Houston, near the Rice Village, in one circular motion, because I didn’t want to get out of the car until the 9th, being broadcast over the radio, was finished.  Or another one, when I heard it come on the radio and I was filled to tear in love of life and looked at the girl that was with me with eyes filled wtih tears and wondrous joy at there being beauty in the world, at purpose and joy and love and meaning.  I realize clearly now that I was in a completely different universe than her.  Our relationship did not last at all.  She dumped me.  HA!  Tore my heart out though.

Then there is, again, the 9th, when I was listen to it at home, lying on the floor in the dark with just a single candle on the shelf.  This was in Houston.  I would begin with Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus and it would propel me into deep depression.  But Beethoven’s 9th would bring me out.  Starting at the first movement, in the dark, with a hurting heart, one can hear all manner of things in the music… hope and ambition and carefree joy and purpose and letdown and recoil and trembling and boldness and courage and fear… all the great and wide things that make a heart fully human and rich and complex and worth having.  And to listen to this, while hoping beyond hope that somebody, anybody, would come to the door and knock and say ‘hey, how are you’ at the same time that you try to stir your ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ doggedness… and to come to the fourth movement.  Ah… what joy, what fulfillment, what beauty.  The fourth movement, all 21 minutes of it, is nothing short of the miracle of human existence.  And to hear the “Ode to Joy” coming out of the speakers after a night a deep depression, is to feel one’s soul reborn, to feel wings sprout and to have the hosts of heaven sweep you up and to fly brilliantly into the skies of hope.  It is this song that is behind my love of the phrase Spem Semper Habemus…. ‘we always have hope’. 

There is the concert that I went to, the Houston Symphony playing Beethoven’s 9th.  I’d never heard it live before and to hear classical music of any sort live is to be enchanted.  As was my custom when going to classical music shows I’d buy two tickets and take a random person (a person I usually didn’t know that well)/.  I never made a move on any girl I took… I was sharing beauty… not trying to hook up.  I took a girl from the Hooter’s restaurant across the street.  She was very nice and her and her coworkers would come into our bar often, and we theirs.  I warned her about possible emotional outbreak from listening to the music.  Yep… it was powerful and moving to me.  I doubt I could heart it live even today and not cry.