I do not require validation.
I do not require validation.
I do not require validation.

They say if you wish something were true, repeat it often, and eventually something will change. God may eventually look down and say, "Can't you see I'm busy? Find something better to do. Don't go far, Eternity is in five."

Yesterday, I rediscovered "Radiolab" (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/) and I listened to the first two episodes. The first one was on stress. It spoke at length about how anxiety causes the same bodily response as if you were running from a predator, and how those who have regular anxiety can get sick from experiencing this bodily response so often.

I then listened to the second show, "Who Am I?" - featuring discussion about self-awareness, dreams, and the "soul." It featured a story of a woman whose personality completely changed after waking up from a coma.

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I kept wrenching myself awake every time I began to fall under. My heart was racing, my head was filled with dark images, and all I could think was, "What if I never wake up?"

I could think of nothing that could relax me. That is, until I remembered that the stress show had suggested that aggression is a natural stress-reliever. So, as I made my final, ultimately successful attempt to fall asleep, I put one thought in my head.

"Fuck you, Radiolab."

One thing I've noticed in recent years is an attraction shift. The personality characteristics I am attracted to have changed. It used to be that I was attracted to very confident, discerning types. Often, if we're going to call a spade a cocker spaniel, this means sometimes floating towards snobbery and pretension. Those who know me well can probably think of at least one rather glaring example of a person I dated who characterized these traits with poetic ease.

In recent years, I've gradually shifted over to a preference for compassionate, considerate, and flexible-minded people. I find myself distasteful of those who take pleasure in advertising their superior knowledge, who boast, who correct others' minor mistakes, or use unnecessarily complicated language. I suddenly leave a room or distance myself from people whose gossip has reached a certain level of intimacy or condescension.

The interesting thing about a shift like this is that there is a gap between the time when your opinion changes, and when you realize that you yourself continue to characterize many of the traits you've come to loathe, continues to attract the attention of those sorts of people, and alienates those whom you have come to admire. It's the valley of hypocrisy, and it's almost inevitable you will arrive there anytime you embark on a major idealogical shift.

Whether it's a result of the naive, innocent sort of short-sightedness that occurs when entering a new mental realm, or simply a symptom of our own intractability as creatures, it's an uncanny valley all of its own. Uncomfortable though it is, I can't shake the feeling that to be in this valley is to know you are truly changing, and is a moment of truth in vast uncertainty.

Statement of Truth: I don't know much, but I know I'm wrong.

Ooo, I just got chills. That feels kind of good!

Rochester is lovely, quiet and cool, and I feel the same. Staying with Melissa and Jon these few days has made me almost doubt my decision to pursue California instead of coming here to Rochester. I am certain I made the right decision, of course, but the momentary doubts simply go to show me how special these friends are to me.

The sky is active and dark, clouds hanging, dark but luminous, as if the spreading night originates from within the foggy masses sagging in the sky. Though that sounds melancholy, I am comforted by the presence of weather, by the weight of the sky over the low-lying buildings spattered on this rolling landscape. Sacramento often leaves little to be desired, but I do admit to missing weather. The air is crisp and refreshing here, a stark contrast from the chemical fumes of Long Island (as much as I came to appreciate some of the island's virtues this trip, I may never get used to breathing that air).

Melissa is a beautiful, natural picture of maternity, and Jon is as healthy and engaging as I've ever seen him; and the conversations we have are blissfully depthful, open and frank. I really needed this vacation. It has been too long since I have done so little for several days at a time, and it reminds me how precious my time really is, and how much of a sacrifice it is for me to fill my days with meaningless work.

Family trip is going surprisingly well - It turns out it works to 1) Go in with a game plan, 2) To assume the best about your loved ones, rather than the worst, and give the benefit of the doubt.

Who knew? It seems my anxiety was misplaced, and partly through my own efforts; Though I give my family (particular my sister, C) HUGE props for giving me the same benefits, thereby changing the rules we play by pretty dramatically.

I am very excited to see my best friend Melissa this upcoming week. She is due to give birth in a few weeks and I haven't even seen her since I heard the news that she was pregnant. It will be nice to hug my best friend. It will be nice to sit on the couch and talk with her face to face instead of through a Skype connection!

Looking forward to the future,

- Lynne

I can tell how much I rely on Lucy because of how I feel right now.

On Friday, I will be going to New York for two weeks. I am always pretty anxious about visiting, since the place has a lot of emotional history for me. However, I also looked forward to seeing Lucy, who was under the care of my mother. However, the last time I visited, I brought Lucy back with me... and now, I have to face New York without her, and to make matters worse, she will be here without me for two weeks.

I know John will take really great care of her, and my ex-girlfriend will be coming by to spend some time with her during the day, but I still feel like this is going to be... an incredibly difficult two weeks, for both of us.

I've gotten pretty good about crying, but this matter is making me rather weepy. The worst part is that there's no communication... for a creature that I spend so much time with, there's no way for me to warn her what's about to happen. How lonely it must be for a dog when her loved ones disappear.

Me: "Hey, I have a question for you. Are you busy?"
Her: "I was just learning about lobsters."
Me: "Lobsters?"
Her: "Well, I thought I'd gotten a false Snapple fact, but it turns out it was true. Well, the conga line part wasn't, but the rest of it was totally true."

Today, it's raining.

This is magnificent; It is perhaps the third time it has rained since the beginning of the summer. I feel happy and calm, as if the raindrops are sinking into my skin as they sink into the soil. I am still a whirlwind of internal energy, forever feeling driven to work, to sink every effort I can into creating sustenance for my life... but I am also putting some of that mental energy into learning, thinking, pondering, which is what I like best.

I like to ponder origins. I like to know where a thing comes from before I can suggest where it might go. The more I read and think and watch documentaries, the more I feel that Anthropology was precisely the right field for me to study, but feel that instead of distracting myself with work, I should have also studied Biology, and Physics. I feel an urge to understand "Why?" in a way that's deeper than I've felt in the past. Perhaps this is because I'm feeling so satisfied in my contemplation of my own behavior and motivations. I've gotten a taste of what it feels like to discover, and I think I want more.

The smell of flowers wafts through my open window, and takes me by surprise. The rain is conjuring up dormant smells, smells that remind me of happy moments in a life I've left behind. I can't help but feel a little mournful, but I am thankful for these moments of reflection. They reassure me that the life I lead now is meaningful, that years from now I, and others, will reflect upon these moments and will learn, or be entertained, or saddened by those memories. My "right now" soon becomes a story, and I cannot predict the path that story will take, though I know eventually, even for me, it will expire and make space for the new.

This week, I've been making some calls to friends I haven't been keeping well enough in touch with.

I have awesome and incredibly entertaining friends!

Also, I'm been keeping a handwritten journal. It is a valuable tool, friends, and Livejournal is no replacement!

Click the image for an explanation of the Illusion!

John is visiting NY, and I'm hanging here alone. It's actually pretty decent, I'm enjoying not having to cook or clean more than the minimum required to sustain myself. My schedule is a little off, because I usually gauge the end of my work day by when John gets home, so I can easily slide towards 7 and not even realize it. Still, I'm getting a lot of important thinking done.

It will be a huge relief when I resolve my current mental questions. They're extremely helpful, but also extremely painful, and I'm eager to get them "processed" and get past them. I do wish, however, that my family members would stop saying ridiculous things, because when my family is being crazy and dysfunctional, it rubs off on me.

So guys, let's do this together. One... two... three... STOP BEING CRAZY. GO. NOW.

Okay, I hope they heard me. Moving on.

In other news, my best friend is having a baby next month, and I'll be visiting Long Island the last week in October, before going up to visit her. Yes, I will be around for Halloween! So if anyone wants to hang out that weekend, let me know. Otherwise, I'll just find a hill and moon-gaze.

When doing the inner work of self-healing, I'm learning there is a risk you take, one that is very likely to occur: In facing one's shadows, one is likely to realize that one possesses the qualities one dislikes, even loathes, in others.

It is very painful to be in the midst of an interesting book passage, a lovely conversation, or a peaceful, reflective moment outdoors, and to be struck with unpleasant self-knowledge. At times, through reflection, I am shown the flaws I possess which cause family members to react badly to me, vices that at times make me an unappealing companion, transgressions I've made that have caused friends to leave my side.

I am comforted by another thought: Every time I recognize and accept a personal flaw, my ego is lessened. Ego is the cause of all pride and pain, and thus, as my ego lessens, I suffer less.

In this spirit, I must say the following in some semi-public way.

I have pain in my heart, aching pain, for friends with whom I no longer have contact. But despite their distance, I have two things to say to them:

I still love you, lost friends, the people you were at the time we connected. Our laughter and conversations still live with me, and I am working to abandon the rest. I hope that you feel the same, but I accept if you do not, for the person you are now may not be the same as the person I loved then, and I must not expect that person to live forever.

I am proud of you for making a decision about your path, even if it did not include me. Whether it has brought you good luck or ill, the path is yours to tread and you can honestly say, that in making difficult decisions, you did not take the path of least resistance.

In a continuing attempt to release useless old bitterness from my heart,

Lynne

An interesting article I fell upon by accident: In a Literary City of Tiny Apartments, a Struggle With the Weight of Words.

This recalls my own, significantly less extreme, collection of books, half of which I've yet to read. Quoted from the article:

"As Anthony Burgess said, there's no better reason for not reading a book than owning it," said Mr. Skinner, who recently moved 2,250 more books to a $90-a-month storage locker he had furnished with bookcases on casters. "It's always there to read."

This has to be the most impressive splash page I have ever seen!!

http://producten.hema.nl/

In the book (and BBC series, and upcoming movie) "Neverwhere," citizens of the underworld, though perfectly corporeal, are ignored and overlooked by normal people who go about their daily lives, ignorant to the dark and mortally dangerous world lurking around their very environment.

I realized this week, in attempting to listen to an episode of my very favorite radio show, that I have the same "blanking" mechanism for words, perhaps (I can only assume) words that represent more unpleasantness than I can easily handle. Certain words just flip a switch in my brain, the "don't pay attention" switch. Words like: Terrorist, Informant, Investigation... whether used in a factual context or as political buzzwords, my current best guess as to why I automatically ignore the words is that they are overused in the media and are so often associated with either highly-charged political involvement that I feel helpless over, or stories from incredibly biased sources (one way or another), or badly written fiction based on current events.

So there's this great show about a government informant gone all wrong, and today I am going to listen to it for a third time, and this time, I'm going to try to hear the words they are saying.

I have been chatting recently with some people who believe in the metaphysical, and in some concepts that, open-minded as I am, I have trouble widening my mind towards until some of my sources of skepticism are addressed. Often, I feel that experiences that people claim to be supernatural are actually very natural, and for me, that fact takes none of the magic out of it. To me, God is nature, is an all-encompassing awareness, and all that is natural has spiritual aspects, and the idea of something being supernatural, or "above nature," is immediately suspect.

What does it mean to be "above nature?" The internet tells me that this is a slightly misunderstood word meaning "not existing in a physical sense," or "not subject to explanation according to natural laws." Hmm, natural laws... like the ones that Plato and Aristotle taught, where all things were composed of the four elements, plus some squiggly fifth ethereal one? How about the natural laws that originated around the same time and whose influence lasted well into the rennaisance, where a person's health was believed to be based almost entirely on the precarious balance of four humours?

"Supernatural," then, is not a permanent definition, but a label we give to anything that is transitioning from two stages of human awareness, the stage between when we notice a pattern, and when we learn what that pattern means in the larger scheme, where it derives from and what it affects. It reveals nothing more than our own level of ignorance. Simply because we don't understand something, or do not have the science to understand it at this time, does not make it above natural laws, only men's current best guess at those laws.

Of course, there are some persistant themes that are regarded as "supernatural." These are the items or experiences that people maintain are a modern presence, that continue to create patterns, but which there is no way to study scientifically.

Take for example, the idea of an "astral plane," or the existance of a shared mental/spiritual space. I certainly do not disregard this theory out of hand, and would not be surprised to learn if some of my more intense dreaming, drug experiences, or meditative experiences may have taken me to a different level of consciousness, one that is perhaps shared by others. I have to share my planet, my food, my time, my lodging, my money, and pretty much everything else with others; what makes my mental space any different?

However, if someone begins speaking about "the astral plane" with any sense of authority, I am immediately, deeply suspicious. Because if an astral plane is a space we can visit only mentally, then until we find a way to better monitor brain activity or increase awereness of our dreams, it is not something we can rationally observe or apply any scientific process to. Such concepts lie refreshingly within the range of "purely speculative," making it open game for man's other method of exploration: through imagination, visual art, storytelling, music, poetry, performance, mumbling to oneself on the street corner, or through pure, lovely madness; It can only be explored through that which births from, and effects, the brain in a purely trial-and-error fashion which I, for one, thoroughly enjoy.

This is why I look with distaste upon those who would apply pseudoscience to the "supernatural" (ah, that ever-popular misnomer), and then call it pure science. Why is the human need for control and knowledge so great that we must pretend we know more than we do? It is pretentious, self-aggrandizing and outrageously false to claim objective knowledge of a subject to which the scientific process can not be applied. Not only that, it steals away the material of speculative art, and scoffs at those dreamers who are applying the only process that might actually lead us to the truth: Taking a wild guess.

* Notice the word "guise" here: Applying actual logic to a previously unexplained phenomenon, to the extent that it is possible or when the means to do so becomes available, is a whole different story. I fully endorse real science, and trying to keep that label firmly associated with answers gotten through the scientific method!

Disclaimer: I take full responsibility for my opinions at the time, date, and mindset at which I write them. I retain the right to adjust, reevaluate, rethink, retest, revise, recount, restate or outright change my mind on any and all subjects.

Comments, particularly constructive and lucid ones, are very welcome. Random or unconstructive attempts at comments will be give equal attention, if not consideration.

Llama.

A very lovely friend of mine volunteered a photo of herself for me to create a painting from. Here's the sketch:



and the idea is I'll be doing it with a cubist slant. See, for example, Picasso's "Woman Playing the Mandolin":



More to come!!!

Over a year ago, the talented PKitty supported me at Anthrocon by commissioning me, and then got utterly lost in the madness of my move! So I went ahead and took the liberty of doing two versions of this badge... being fun to do was just a bonus.

I just signed up for some poetry communities, hoping to acquire some word-smithy friends, and I just have to say... wow. Good poetry can be so good, but bad poetry is like nails on a chalkboard. But I think, for the most part, it's worth wading through for the gems.