i have these words right now. yesterday i had few. and it was a grand experience. you know…. and instead of trying to map it out here, i think i shall instead keep it small. so as not to drown out the raw, gorgeous, simple experience with a looming shadow cast by lovingly manufactured descriptions. writing about some things…even when you get it right, especially when you go all out and “get it right”…writing about those things led someone once to coin the phrase “kissing and telling.” and why would they think that worth its own phrase? because when you do that, something sacred, no matter how frail or significant, leaves.

so i’ll just note that i passed my belt test, and it was a good moment, a good reflection, and a moment that will inspire me going forward. which i will do.

—

sometimes i have conversations with some people in the world of twitters and both of us experience an uncomfortable place, i think. where we both care passionately about a topic or idea, but have different experiences with it and feelings about it. we cannot change each other’s minds about it. i guess we don’t understand the others’ point, in the end, as much as we think we do. or why keep having conflict? maybe in those moments, we’re not being good at hearing…or at expressing what it is we are feeling or thinking.

one of those areas of conflict i’ve met online is in my striving for the positive; for what is possible in a moment (not necessarily what is probable or practical); for sending a continual (or as much as possible) message of YES to myself. YES to my bones, to my blood, to my immune system, to my brain. by now it is automatic. it has been maybe 15 years i’ve been training my own mind to do this. (some projects are long term ones!)

this comes to me from many things. one is common sense. one is the study, however peripheral, of the effects upon the body of mental energy/belief. in self-healing. (interests indirectly found through being the son of a nurse). one is a thread from my days as a counselor, and before that, as a student interested in CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (which attempts to retrain thought chains in the mind and mental habits with willful forced changed habit). and another important fragment of this tapestried philosophy (and practice) of mine, is martial arts. tho i’ll note that the philosophy of YOU CAN DO IT and I CAN DO IT and YES I CAN is probably inherent in all athletic training.

the conflict i run into with others is a certain backlash that proposes that espousing this attitude (or what they perceive to be this attitude) is harmful to others; it is preventing “emotional diversity.” some say this (i’ve seen it referred to as the “stay posi cult” !)  is a way to hush, to shut down those who might have a negative attitude or experience at the moment, or comments that are seen as not to be fitting in with this approach.

it’s so strange, in a way, that we have this argument that won’t resolve. on the one hand, i think they are not really hearing me, but instead are remembering some other people they ran into, or an experience they had. because i’m sure there are some automatons out there who shovel and tamp over every uncomfortable blip in a day with “stay positive!” and if around them, i might struggle with urges to belt them until they cried good and hard. but that is not at all what i’m talking about. that’s why i wonder if our problem is one of communicating our reality. or perhaps of listening. or both?

i also wonder if these people have ever even trained athletically, or have had some other experience with tending to their own energy in mindful, manipulated doses and so could understand this view on it at all. that we are often less a plaything of the tides of emotion or pain than we imagine.

mostly i think that they feel that people who promote this (or related) idea(s) are directly criticizing them, as they are aware that they do hold many non-positive thoughts and feelings throughout time. in the “use positivity” talk, they see a target on their natural selves.

i get that, totally.

as i see it, this reaction misses the point entirely. we are human. as a human, you cannot be positive every moment. you cannot account for any given emotional experience you may have. and you must allow all these seasons to pass through your being as they need to. trying to control yourself and the world and render either polar would be impossible and unhealthy.

BUT

you CAN train yourself to be ready at all times with a reflex to the positive. or i can. maybe you can, too. maybe you cannot. so i don’t want to assume. but if you are like me, then you CAN program yourself to respond differently to adversity, to challenge, to setback, and to pain. so it’s not a matter of controlling those forces…but of your relationship to those forces. CBT teaches us that as deep and profound and real as feelings are, they are built on structures of thought. they are part of a chain that has been constructed over time. you can rebuild that chain. science tells us that when you do this, you reroute your own nerve synapses.

when i am attempting to make things happen in my life, be it a project i’m working on, a piece of art i am attempting, a hook kick to a sparring partner’s head, a flawless performance of poomsae, there is no room for me to sit around like charlie brown and begin second-guessing myself. that’s just not how you do it. you are attempting, in moving forward and up, to unseat entropy! to meet a freight train nose to nose. and you have to be ready for that weight and that effort. you have to load the furnace before you hit the hill.

you don’t begin to run across the floor and prepare to launch yourself at a target or sparring partner in a flying side kick and think “I can do this! Or…maybe I can’t. And if I can’t, that’s okay, I’m still a valuable person in the world!” There is no room for this. There is only room for I can do this. I trust in myself. I’ve trained well. My muscles know what to do. And I will do my best what I have to do consciously. And if I fall or fail, I will get right back up into fighting stance.

Actually, there is no room for all that, either! Time is of the essence sometimes. So there is all that, but you encapsulate it in this:

I can do it.

And you help make it true. You do. Hell, you can watch the difference immediately. In a very concrete happening. Like a kick.

As you launch a kick (or cartwheel, or any activity that takes effort, training, skill and doing), ware your energy and the non-verbal energy that your brain is messaging to your body. If there is a dim, dour, hesitant, anxious, fearful, unsure, confused [ all are NO energy ] in your body, your kick will fall a little short. be a bit weak. perhaps off balance. but launch the same kick and first catch yourself. catch that energy in your body. in your mind. see it, refuse it, redirect it. change it. reshape it. resend it: yes i can do this kick. yes i will land high. yes i will keep my balance. yes i will explode into power at the right moment. i can do it.

your kick—or poomsae—or whatever else will look remarkably different. guaranteed. will feel different.

and this energy and mental messaging sent to your body over and over, every day as you progress in achievement to arrive at abilities you never before possessed, has an observable effect over time. on yourself and your life.

once you’ve seen and lived this…you cannot unsee it! nor would you. you can wield energy to affect your own destiny at will. why would you want to forget this?

so. does this mean you will always get what you want? always be what you want? never feel bad, never stumble, never trip? no.

additionally, being human, sometimes i like to just sit in the rain. sure. sometimes i want to savor a painful moment, or allow myself to fully embrace moments of doubt or whatever else. but when they come along, it will be a conscious choice of mine and i will be a participant in a chosen event, not a piece of leaf wildly careening in a stream.

tho this is not an always or never thing, either. you can do it moment by moment. no need for an unrelenting committal, if the idea is intimidating. no need to tell yourself “From here on in!!!! I will always !!!!”

it begins with a decision. and then with a habit you begin to create.

there is no denying that we can all access this power, and that it is a real force within you. either this will all make immediate sense to you, or you won’t understand it, or will have endless quarrel with it.

people who hear talk of the power of positivity and simply reduce it to “emotional policing” are having a different conversation. i get you. you don’t want me or anyone dictating your state of mind. you don’t want pressure away from your preferred mode of operation, whatever it might be. i guess when i slip up and try to remind others there is another reaction to have, it’s not so different on my end. peoples’ haphazard application and (lack of) control of their own energy creates noise in my signal, as well. i don’t want pressure away from my preferred mode of operation, either.

so we will learn to travel the highway together, at our different speeds, with our different styles, with our various destinations. and when we can manage it, to pull off at rest stops and have small tailgate parties.

mostly, i’d want those who have not experienced what can be done by focusing your energy selectively to experience it. or to recognize that they do experience it. because we all do this to different extents. it’s how we’ve learned anything at all, it’s how we’ve made it through the things we have, only to grow deeper and stronger.

—

i think the culture here begins teaching you early on that you are a passive recipient. pushes you down that road to thinking you must go along, must suffer, must acquiesce and aren’t good or strong enough to really do much about it. then again, if only the messages transmitted throughout so many layers of US culture were so simple. the truth is, the messaging with which we are bombarded with for the most part is far more convoluted and crazymaking. an odd mix, designed to pull you in splits. on one hand we are taught we are mighty, number one, top dog, unstoppable, best evah. on the other, we are shown that most of us hate our jobs, loathe our bosses, envy our neighbors, desperately scramble for a sense of satisfaction through endless toys and distraction, use pills to escape a billion pains, fear the smells of our own body, and gather in conforming hordes.

to successfully navigate chaos like that, you really do need to reclaim ownership of your volition, energy, emotional state, and self-image. or you will be dead early, if only in spirit.

sick of the internets. sick of the blogging and the opining and the pace and the posture and the constant chatter. sick of politics of following liars and power seekers and pretending that rebutting TV-heads means a damn thing. sick of all these fuckers with opinions. their damn crumb-lined keyboards and whoaskedforyafuckin opinion(s). glad i’m typing this on a corn cob. i’m the real thing. just like coca cola. 

just picked up my guitar. been a while for that. my fingers reminded me that it’s been a while. i still remember how i got with faita. she was impressed by my putting out a cig on my fingertips. so movielife, eh? so rebel with out a nerve ending. or something. i’ve noticed it’s always something like that. something you dont expect. some little burr of personality or free-floating quirk that catches in their steam-net, that pops open their plum-shaped corvette. later none of it matters of course. now my fingers are numb from jamming bronze and they don’t even remember touching faita. though i do remember how she touched me.

five years since i smoked? don’t even remember. i guess i dont count that night at mcmenamins a couple years ago when i went with c and j and their friends and we all drank and i had someone’s american spirit and puffed that shit like it was sticky-icky and ended up getting really sickfeeling. it was only a reminder of why i quit. 

shot an hour or two of a dance show last night. thought my arm would be sore today, but it ain’t. have another show to shoot tonight. pay’s not that great, but i’ll probably get more work out of it. and if i don’t get paid better eventually, i’ll pull a tyler durden and start splicing in quick shots of random bathroom cam scenery. it will be like “jazz hands…and baaaack, and WTF?”

actually it was the first night working with someone else whose camerawork will be cut with mine (video). so i hope we weren’t too out of sync with movement and such. i hope my inserts are going to be able to cut with their floating wide shot. i hope i was not moving too fast. i was trying to get some dynamic pans and track in interesting fluid ways, pulled a few little quick zooms as well as slow ones.  i was letting the music guide me, of course. the music and their dancing. i think at the better moments, it will be fantastic. the rest is just me finding shots or focus or experimenting, but i was doing pure insert work, so the editor can cut to the WS at any time.

it’s a great spontaniety, no scenes, no rehearsal, no shot list. how sweet (tho nervewracking) to just get in there and play. knowing someone has the master shot covered. hit a tight focus on telefoto and ride a contour down and around to an outstretched arm following the finger, pan quick to the other dancer who spins and moves house right and you are still tracking right on time. when it comes together, it’s better than ice-cream and sex all at once. which is actually a pretty weird thing. especially because i prefer rum-raisin. ew no i dont i’m kidding. ice cream and sex sounds far more appealing than liquor and ice cream. dunno. either way, i think some compartmentalizing is called for up in here. 

i’m glad that i’m being used for the interesting camera work. dude was talking to me, telling me on an upcoming shoot he’d like me to cover the artsy shots. dont know what word he actually used. it wasn’t “artsy” and in fact i hate that word. hunh. anyway, that’s what he meant. you know. non-standard, intuitive, perhaps anti-conventional at moments. skillz, baby! skillz for bacon. that’s my name.

anyway, even self-aggrandizement is boring me today. wow. i’m outtahere. 

The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear. [...]

I slumped to the kitchen floor and lay there in the fetal position. I didn’t want to exist. I had made my existence so public in such a strange way, and I wanted to take it all back, but in order to do that I’d have to destroy the entire Internet. If only I could! Google, YouTube, Gawker, Facebook, WordPress, all gone. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for an electromagnetic storm that would cancel out every mistake I’d ever made. [...]

Knowing that the worst of my online oversharing is still publicly accessible doesn’t thrill me, but it doesn’t scare me anymore either. I might hate my former self, but I don’t want to destroy her, and in a way, I want to respect her decision to show the world her vulnerability. I’m willing to let that blog exist now as a sort of memorial to a time in my life when I thought my discoveries about myself and what I loved were special enough to merit sharing with the world immediately.

—Exposed

well, it seems ebay finally wised up.

eBay’s Feedback system continues to evolve as the community and marketplace dynamics change. 

The eBay Feedback system was originally designed to provide a simple, honest, accurate record of the buyer’s and seller’s online experience to ensure safe and satisfactory trade. It was driven by the belief that through a transparent reputation system, members could hold each other accountable. Over time, we found that the transparency of the Feedback system made some buyers reluctant to hold sellers accountable. For example, buyers fear retaliatory Feedback from sellers if they leave a negative. …

Sellers can no longer leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers.

Buyers should leave honest Feedback without the fear of receiving negative or neutral ratings.

tonight for some reason i couldn’t sleep. maybe its because my daughter decided to crawl over me and lie in my spot. she looks so sweet and tender, i just said hell with it and got up anyway. i was already restless. now i’m in that weird limbo. it feels like when i get up, but i’m tired. when i get up at 4 or so, i’m usually ready to go. love it. love being up then. now i feel bleary and tired and irked. 

i got new contact lenses yay. finally went to the eye doctor. got another exam. eyes the same. no more old scratchy lenses all dried out and ragged. mmm. next is the dentist. funny how i stalled that appointment once my jaw (that TMJ junk rememba?) stopped acting up. that was wild shit! i never EVER had my jaw do that, wow. still dont know what that was about. but i should go. i bet it was stress. my body is good at that. did it in college, too. not with my jaw. but making me sick when  i pushed it too far. but i was REALLY pulling some serious weight in college. double time! 24 credits. had to get special permission. and tons of extra curricular stuff. and work! i was a fucking madman. but hey i still am. typing here at one am i bet i’ll be back to work at five. on a sunday and feeling like i got a late start. mad i tell ya!

i’m tired. i want lasagna. i should sleep and get it out of the way. i have lots of work to do.

i’m on that facebook thing now if it matters. 

maybe i’ll go lie in bad and watch a movie on my iphone. yeah. at least until i fall asleep.

peace.

the human body is a metaphor for all reality. the word made flesh, they say?

JA! 

or for those who prefer an english spelling, BWAHAHAHAHA!

and specifically: nunca.

i just think its a shame when energy and creativity go almost solely into furthering negativity or attack or casting derision. propping up a raw, hot, irritated little cluster of self-pity and envy and anger. go ahead, dress it up as healthy or helpful or cynicism in the service of doing good…but honestly. i hope you’re at least having a little fun or bringing a little beauty into the world somewhere along the way! and the rare posts about baked breads don’t really count, given the proportionality of everything.

my visits there get fewer and less and more spaced apart. because even the fun i get from seeing them sulk and grumble and fume lessens as time goes on.

ah, baby…nothin’ lasts.

in other happenings, i am perhaps getting closer to carving out some breathing space in my schedule. not quite roomy yet, but if i keep at it, i think i can put a job or two away before long. which—you don’t even know—would be like having a “two ton heavy thing” off my back. i just laughed. did you ever hear that song by queensryche? building empire its called. in the beginning is a phone recording by bush I, or dan quayle? don’t remember. he tries to articulate something “hanging over you like a…two ton…heavy thing.”  i think that’s right. funny.

i’m adjusting to this election year on the road politics journalism thing. i’m way too much of a painter or poet type to get it instinctively. i write what is a blog for me about hillary’s appearance and i post it in a few places (thanks M), and it is the morning after her appearance here and it is first hand reporting and so it gets picked up in a few places and i don’t mean to say nobody likes it, seems most feedback was positive, but later i’m fielding return fire and i realize after that you have to nail certain things down because people, some people will always not like what you are saying (especially when you stake out an opinion) and they will come at the weaknesses in the piece, if there are any. and you learn what those are. i got hit with an unsigned comment at one joint, and they were like “this location (the high school where clinton was) seats this many people and the other one (the pit, where obama showed up) five times as many and you wrote that ‘you could fit nine of these rooms into the bigger one” (even though i wrote that it was a rough guess) and getting all judgmental and googlish on me and i realize that i can’t just write emotionally like that… i mean i’m not going to get flavorless. and i am me, and this is not traditional media. but it just helped me think about the particular field and  what makes those types of pieces stronger and what strengths should be brought to it, and such. i can see why new media freaks out traditional J-school types. but i think there is a middle ground. or a nezzle ground. i want to find this new ground, at least where and how i am meeting it, based on my own integrity, how i see the medium. but even in my own view i don’t want to confuse people like that. i didn’t technically mean “seating capacity” x 9. i meant the overall area. one place felt and was and sounded vast! and the other felt smallish. but i was probably being a little too figurative about the space. and people read those political pieces like hard news. so even if they have to adjust to a different style, i do want people to believe me when i say “its nine times as big.” or maybe not. maybe my writing will just become known as being emotional and figurative! i guess i have to decide those things. it was a good experience. really, i just get surprised sometimes by how many eyes can—just like that—be on your piece. i want to keep that in mind is all. i don’t know about you but sometimes when i write i still feel like i’m just writing to myself.

oh, and the mexican newspaper got back in touch with me. they still want me to write that regular column. coolio.