Shades of Gray

White always wins,

in a world where

first-move advantage

dictates the outcome.

 

But in the real world,

shades of gray enter the scene,

the picture isn’t half-toned,

and first-move advantages is washed away.

 

So often we fall prey to false dilemma,

splitting our lives into categories.

“You’re either part of the solution

or a part of the problem.”

 

Black or white, choose a side!

What happened to the middle ground

where the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses

can’t reduce all our efforts to nothing?

 

Campfire Talk

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. —Salman Rushdie

I’ve been telling it all wrong, sticking to one story and letting that cycle through my head, time and time again.  I’m stuck in one particular variety of narrative: tragedy.  Christopher Booker suggests that we, ever fallible human beings we are, tend to stick to 7 particular types of stories, that of: the monster, rags-to-riches, a quest, a voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth.  I’ve felt myself shifting mindsets, from the continually looping tragedy that was born of my desire to have my story already written at 21, to know what was to come for the rest of my life, and having that fail.  And as I’ve come to let go of that story, I’ve shifted into that of rebirth, the story of a woman not scared to embrace life.  And now, that I’m thinking about stories, I’d like to become the woman reborn into a mindset and lifestyle that does not involve writing my story too far ahead, that doesn’t involve seeking out a plot line that I can carefully craft into my own, and then live out until my dying day, unchanging, unfaltering.  This kind of mindset doesn’t allow us to embrace the changes that we don’t have the ability to foresee, the events that rewrite our entire carefully planned stories, until we are broken, from the shock and difficulty of warping our already existing life story into this new, changed existence that we never wanted to be living.  I would like to be reborn such that I am embracing the story that we are in a constant state of chaos, a constant state of “mess”, but that out of that mess can come a constant state of rebirth.   Let the rebirth cycle back to rebirth, until each day, each moment, has a chance to be the next moment of change, of inspiration, of action.  And the search for a coherent story line that I’ve felt since I “lost” my storyline, the search that I wrote in my mind but that became the tragedy that was my early twenties,  that search can end because there is no coherent story.  There’s only now, and the error margins on either side, the edges of now, determining how many minutes, hours, days, or even years, we choose to let fall into our current story point.

The above is drivel, inspired by the following:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_stories.html

Shoot for the Stars

The paint on every ceiling in my house is peeling. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried about it, but I spent so much of today looking up at it, that it became a reflection of my life. I shine up the surfaces at eye level, in the hopes that all the guests to my sad little world don’t notice that it’s secretly falling apart at the seams. Just like me.

I cycle, and cycle, and cycle some more, turning over ideas, concepts, and my reality like it’s a skipping stone that I picked up on my last trip down to the river bed, and I’m trying to find the bumpy patches and wear them down with love.

Love for myself, what a foreign concept. To find that I am enough, exactly as is, in the house that I’m in, with the job that I have, and the degrees, and the knowledge. I don’t need anything else to make me lovable, to make me “enough”, the ever elusive enough. I shouldn’t need to shoot for the stars in a soyuz craft in order feel like what I’m doing with my life is good enough.

But part of me does. The small part, the petty part, driven by ego and desire. I say fuck her. And I’ll shoot for happy instead.

The Forgotten Days

We caress the edge, becoming familiar

with the ins and outs of nearly falling,

of being so close, and yet, so far.

 

We contemplate forever, thinking of love, of that closeness.

Precious butterfly-like fragility paired with beauty and grace,

Scathed by the slimy oil of the brush of a fingertip.

 

We know that responsibility lies in wait,

accountability lurking with her at the edge of our view,

waiting to pounce, to punish us for eyes shielded from reality.

 

And we pretend, that spending just a few more hours

won’t hurt us both secretly, once we’ve parted ways,

and look back, wondering,  just what happened?

 

In the hours in between, in those forgotten days.

Waiting; Scared.

Waiting.  Scared.

Or scarred.  Or both.

What’s an “r”, when there’s so much

time between the pain and the present?

When there’s so many lies

between the truth and the tale

that we tell ourself in order

to tuck ourself safely into bed each night

to turn the lights out

on another day, another chance

to change to it all, to make

the dreams that haunt our nightmares

become more than just the bitter taste of waking up

not knowing who we are

or who we were

or how we ended up here

Scared.  And waiting to understand.

Waiting to know

what came before what comes after

The purpose of the proposition of productivity

when every day is filled with busy

work work work

heads stuck in the

sand sand sand

because running frantically is easier

than knowing.

understanding.

not waiting.

scared.

Batman Socks

I’m wearing Batman socks today, as well as an orange shirt from many years ago that made an ex of mine realize that he actually liked bright colors.  Because of these itty bitty little objects, I can feel power and excitement surging through my veins.  I feel like I have super powers.

So, I spoke with my mother today on the phone about my research.  She wanted to know why I sounded like Eyore on the phone whenever the subject of my research came up.  I tried to explain to her that I was just not excited by it.  That I didn’t know what I was doing.  That I was unmotivated and unenthusiatic about it, so every time I even considered coming to campus to work on it, my heart sank.  I realized, as I chatted with her, that I’ve been struggling to do this project for months and months because I never bothered to get myself interested in the background of the project.  To just expect myself to pick something up in a completely new field that I’ve never studied in and suddenly want to work on it, without understanding the need for that tool, without really having a feel for the context of why the work is being done, is something that I just am incapable of doing.  Without the context, I loose all interest in the actual problem.  So, in future, I need to remember that for me: motivation is born of contextualization.

 

Sure

Keys clicking away in the dead of the night,

Opening and closing of offices

boxes full of trash, emptied, one-by-one

e-mails read and pushed aside with a left

index finger

pointing, always pointing

right back at us as we point away

“it was him. no really.  It wasn’t me.”

but it was always us, hiding away from

the turning of locks

of hair, of keys

to hearts, to shackles

binding us to the choices we never knew

we were making

or breaking ourselves, with every action

every smile, every heartbeat, every breath

but we were.

A slight change of pace…

in a slightly different vein than recent posts, and far more cool, was waiting for some runs to complete at the office today and so each time I was waiting, I worked on the following:

I sometimes use BBC’s Day in Pictures as inspiration when drawing.  This is one from today of a “Libyan National Transitional Council fighter wearing a bandana that reads “free” in Arabic … , waiting near the front line of Bani Walid, south of the capital, Tripoli.”  I loved the shadowing across his face and the reflection/opaqueness of his glasses, so wanted to try my hand at capturing that.  Thoughts?

Here’s a link to the original photo, if you’re curious! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14894299

On Finishing Grad School: Week 2

Well, week 1 is over.  And I feel like I procrastinated it away, watching Glee and trying to pretend that I was busy, all the while letting go of the stress of the summer.  Normally, I would be a little disappointed with myself for that, but honestly, I can’t help but think that it was for the better.  At the start of another week, I feel great.  The house is cleaner than it’s been in months.  I’m sitting down at the office, working through the second chapter of one of my books, actually giving a crap about learning the material in advance of the class tomorrow.  These are great steps towards being a more responsible person!

On the down side, I think I’m terrified of doing research.  Which is going to make it Really hard to finish my thesis this term.  So that’s the next thing to tackle in life.  Everytime I think of working on my research, I fill with dread.  I feel like I’m stuck, spinning my  wheels in the mud.  This isn’t at all fair, as I’ve got a few really good next steps that are just waiting to be implemented.  But I haven’t made significant progress in so long, I can’t help but feel stuck.

So, this week, I’m going to implement all of the things that my advisor and I discussed last week and stop procrastinating.  I’m going to just take the leap. Stop being scared of my own work.  Stop feeling sorry for myself and avoiding it, and just dig the fuck in.

Ambiguous overarching goal, MADE. Results: Still to come…

On Finishing Grad School: Day 2

Old habits die hard.  Slept in again today.  Didn’t get up until 10am.  On a weekday.  Started the day slow, with the second half of a movie and two cups of coffee, to boost me.  Then it was back to the living room for another morning warm up, just 10-15 minutes of easy exercises, followed by 10 minutes of stretching and 5 minutes of “meditation”.  I call it “meditation” because it’s not really formal “meditation” as taught by any kind of religious or spiritual leader.  It’s just relaxing, letting go of all of my concerns, and letting myself breath.  I made myself take the time to embrace the relaxation.  To think of all of the people that I’ve been harboring discontent with lately, and then to breath out while letting go of that discontent, of that disappointment.  I feel better emotionally because of it.  At peace with my past, at least for the time being. I feel better physically because of the stretching and small amount of exercise.  More limber, ready to jump and sprint and take on the world!

Which is exactly what I’m doing in my small way.

I was reading a book on simplifying your life yesterday (who I can’t for the life of me remember the author of right now… :-S…sorry buddy!) but it asked us to sit down and write a list of “What I most want to accomplish in life.” As corny as this is going to sound, the only thing I could think to write yesterday was ‘loving.’  So I wrote it.  I have a list of length 1 that encompasses so much.  Loving friends, loving family, loving complete strangers, loving myself.  There’s so many areas where I can work more on this.  And I will be, believe me!

Peace, love, compassion…that’s my mantra for the week…(possibly longer )

So, when I got to campus, Seth Godin, a world famous blogger that I’m sure you’ve heard of before, had a post on a book that the Domino Project had created to try to earn money to bring an end to malaria and I decided, what the hell, and purchased a copy.  There we go.  Today I did something I wouldn’t normally do that was a way of loving strangers.  It was a tiny thing, that only took 5 minutes of my time, but that’s a start.  At least I spent 5 minutes of today loving strangers, which is 5 minutes more than I often spend on the average school day!