I just finished Scott’s book and I am sad.
I am sad that such a brilliant and creative mind suffered with drug addiction and unhappiness.
But I am in happy awe and gratitude that he was able to create the music he did and share it with the world before his overdose and death.
Sometimes cracking into the imagination comes with high costs. Or sometimes it takes unrelenting dissatisfaction and melancholy to break into the frontiers of artistic creativity.
Risk yourself a little every day or die a little every day.
Making excuses is the opposite of taking risks.
It’s doing nothing at all.
“We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend…Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.”
Finding differences between groups based on a few examples we see online or on TV exaggerates the superficial differences between all us human beings. But we are not different.
There is no us and them.
There are challenges for some people which can be too much to handle. These people cannot help develop bias and attitude because of their experiences. Whether a black person unjustly questioned and searched on the streets, or the officer on the streets being disrespected for being a cop.
These challenges are important to address, but they should not develop into lines drawn in the sand, divisions between people or races. Assuming negative of one group is just as bad as assuming negative of the other.
We help create the environment that we live in. Any true divisions between us are faint. We must be vigilant in not generalizing, catastrophizing, or amplifying those small differences, as much as these differences seem to stand out.
There is no us and them.
Don’t become a victim of the environment.
Our children will be taught what their parents, or parent, teaches them.
Our children will be taught what their community, and society, teaches them.
It can be a lesson that they are poor, so it teaches them a poverty of life.
And it can teach them that they are not valued, and that it’s not worth it to try. It can teach them hopelessness, so it teaches them a poverty of mind.
And what chance will they have after that?
I calmed myself and cleared my head with some yoga this morning, and I know now that everything is going to be alright.
I recommend you unplug from the overload of the hive and do the same. We were not meant to be consuming so much news like an IV of speed.
Between hammers pounding,
our heart exists, like the tongue
between the teeth — which still,
however, does the praising.
A fulfilled life is ever-present, through the challenge and judgments, if you show up, courageous, shameless, and openhearted.
Live strong.
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Many inputs into my life. The mixture is becoming more rich in social media. As it does, it dilutes me, my being, my originality. My self still peeps…as I struggle to find it in the noise.
The pathways of my brain become a slippery erase board of values, based on what the collective thinks, and so my mind gets pulled towards the hive. It’s like a black hole, and I’m stretching now, pulled into strings of psyche that are unrecognizable from my true form.
It is a powerful force, based on the concentrated mass of humanity, a crushing and relentless gravity. Ironically it’s not mindful, as it spews thoughts, observations, accusations, churning like the waves of the ocean, it throws us up, spins us around, and sucks us down without direction.
And with our equilibrium shattered and compass gone, we’re left wandering, thinking our focus is focused, but actually it’s the Generality we’ve reached, the Reactionary Equilibrium between loneliness and psychotic connection.
Because being plugged in doesn’t bring you closer to others or to reality, unless you believe it. And that’s what the internet is doing: Making you believe things, rather than think things.
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I was parallel parking this morning and a woman was sitting in a new shiny BMW behind where I was parking. I got out and she beckoned me. I thought I had boxed her in.
“Did I box you in?” I asked. She had long black hair, and fine cheek bones, she was expressionless, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. She answered me no, but as I moved off she said something else. I couldn’t hear, so I approached her. “What?” I asked.
“You tapped my car,” she said. My heart sank and my eyes grew wide. “Oh no,” I put my hands to my face. “Really?
“Yes,” but she was weirdly calm. “It’s fine,” she paused, then said, “We all need to get tapped sometimes.” I nodded warily, and moved off, worried and uncomfortable.
I thought about it later, after settling into my chair in the cafe, opening my laptop to work. I thought how she was being petty, seeking attention, and I grew angry…Then I stopped and thought, She was seeking attention…from me. “Everyone needs to get tapped sometimes”? She was hitting on me. And I had totally missed it.
I missed it because I was worried about myself. Giving others the attention and love they are seeking, and deserve, this requires confidence. Which is the opposite of fear. The fear that filled me when someone told me I had just bumped their spotless, current model BMW.
Oy.
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“Those jeans fit you almost perfectly,” I told her.
She looked at me and said nothing, but turned back around to wait in line for the cashier. I stood behind her awkwardly, then asked brightly, “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” she murmured without turning around.
Well, ok then, I thought to myself, I can’t do anything else. So I stood in line behind her and waited for the cashier.
It can be embarrassing putting your heart out there. But it’s not about how you’re going to be perceived or accepted or respected. It’s about being true and doing good. And those two things together are never wrong. It’s about her, too, and her feelings. And him as well, because everyone deserves to be complimented if you think they are deserving of one.
It’s a cascade that starts with your initiation and then moves to their feelings: Just be genuine and go from there, because whatever happens is ok if you’re putting positive vibes out there.
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The expansive field of symmetrically twisted metal, clean, exposed and ever-waiting. Their apertures are silent, the lines that feed them static without flow. It’s an industrial beauty. It’s engineering that provides for humanity. But what does it provide?
It’s high time we faced this gross waste of space and the resources that go into building it….The four burner stove tops.
arabedrossian.org 