Theory on fear and loss

So I wanted to write this yesterday. I read some old journal entries from years ago and laughed about ex-boyfriends and my ideas about everything and how emotional I was and still am. And then I was also driving down the road behind my sisters and was thinking about how I am afraid that other people will die someday.

Its a serious and quite real fear. Its when you think of morbid possibilities and then want to be away from people so you won't be there if something dreadful happens. Some mothers perhaps get to the point where they become overbearing and anxious and that prevents their children from actually living. But it is the truth, death is nothing abnormal or hideous (even though for some reason we feel it is). Why we feel it is, relates to the depths of our inability to deal with loss, which I believe is reasonable considering the ways we condition ourselves.

How many people have you seen die? Probably, in all reality, none. I've not, other than dogs and cats that I've loved. But its like how I've thought I've seen certain animals at the zoo, when in all reality, I've only seen them on tv. I've seen millions of people die on tv. Some of them were real people, like 9/11, and some were just acting like they were dead; but they all were the most real deaths that I've seen. And what they represented to me was the same as a real death--like all acting--to have meaning they must represent something in reality.

My ideas don't go as far as to understand all the real implications of this, but I do think that the reason we have these morbid ideas enter our heads is because we've seen it before, and experienced some sort of simulated trama. So we don't want it to happen to us in the real sense of life.

What I do want to connect these ideas to is the inablility for many of us to have trust and depth in relationships because of the same exposure to loss that we repeatedly give ourselves. I believe that repeated exposure to loss naturally grows in us a solid self-preserving fear, and its funny how we are encouraged to be comfortable with this loss, and even farther yet, to be repeatedly putting ourselves in situations where loss is most likely: i.e. dating when we know we don't need a relationship, dating for the fun of it, dating someone we know we could never really see ourselves with, etc. And here obviously when I say loss, I do not mean death, although a breakup for many people means that person becomes the same as dead to you.

So we repeatedly traumatize ourselves, like someone who's fought on the frontlines, and then expect ourselves to be able to have normal healthy relationships, after years of trying to be comfortable with loss, and instead developing a way to be numb and unfeeling where feelings so be so natural. Developing ways to detach and prevent oneself from "normal" attachments. And this becomes "normal."

No wonder everyone gets divorced. We cannot even love without fear.

What Am I supposed to Do?

A wise but ever struggling family friend who is overflowing with wisdom (we teach best what we need to learn) told me once that everyone is made for a certain job, "calling" or whatever it is that you want to say--I like to say "work" because I like the word and I think that work is mostly beautiful and not awful like "task" or "chore" or "job" or sterile like "occupation."

But I believed it then and sometimes I wander from it, but fate brings me back. Cliche it may seem to say, but moments and people I think act as catalysts for change, and not chaotically coincidental, for if that were so, more of us would be dead instead of that thing that happened to save us right before we made that last decision.

And those uncoincidental accidents that bring us back to remember what it was that made us fullfilled--think on your life and when you were fullfilled--if you can remember it--and think on why you aren't doing it, and also think when you are brought back to it--no coincident is that powerful to continue to remind us of what we should be other than the fact that something true and real is deeper than our reality.

I was reminded this evening that a life without christ and community is the most boring thing in the absolute world. Despite the fact that I love drinking and living in debaucherous intensity, even debauchery is boring after a while because it becomes mundane to be intense all the time. And by jesus christ, I by no means mean going to "church" or reading the bible or praying out loud on street corners or whatever it is that you judge him by. Instead I simply mean something that has depth for me in the ideas of service, grace and the constant search for truth and denial of my constant lazyness and ignorance in that. So vague I know.

But things that ring true to me cannot be explained in paragraphs nor conversations or sermons or books but instead in perhaps in things like plato's idea of forms. Things that are very real and logical but also at the same time unscientific and absolutely abstract.

This is the perfect reason why this leads to what work I have to do to live. When I was seventeen I went to a place called L'Abri and it didn't do much for me then. I was too young and self-concious and struggling to relate to group of people who were the age I am now--I was introspective, to the absolute extreme; perhaps this is a problem with monasticism? But L'Abri and the lifestyle of living communally, intellectually, and simply but not fanatically--is the closest thing to being how I think people should live that I have ever experienced. (that is why I want to go to south america and live with indigenous/native peoples because they seem to satisify many of those latter aspects of living)

So anyway. I am not going to say what I want to do because I say it all the time and it loses importance when I do. But I will do someday when I get older and have kids and horses and chickens and learn more about being satisfied.

Check these places out too, they are different and perhaps more religious than the work I want to do, but they are similar.

http://www.catholicworker.org/index.cfm

http://www.newmonasticism.org

http://www.thesimpleway.org

p.s. I still like good old debauchery. And mullets.

Leaving Home

(I write this as bernie sits licking an empty McDouble wrapper)

Everyone leaves home at some point in their lives. It is said that you can never go back home, and I don't dispute the truth of this, but that is only because that sort of home is a state of mind based on expectations and relations.

I'm sitting at home, bernies finishing up some dog food cause he thinks he's not getting a McDouble today, (josh has some leftovers still sitting on the table from last night, and my black coffee is keeping me from the distractions of all the clutter). In this way I've hardly ever left home: there's an uncomfortable, yet powerful consistancy in the clutter at my parents house. I have no reservations at sleeping outside, no fear of dirty dishes or dust or overflowing trashcans--if anything it makes me a versatile traveler and comfortable in trailer houses and poor communities. The negative is that it makes me impulsively stuck up to those who grew up with money, that their experiences must not be as full as mine or tempestuous (which may be true, but love many people who have suffered to grow up rich). I think these experiences, the ones that made me more full, is the home that I cannot go back to.

When I was really little, everyone of us four children, except josh (he would pretend though--we would tell him what to do) had a club. Summer started it with a kitty cat club. There were neighborhood kids that came over and the boys would be the puppy dog club. We were perpetually at war. I don't remember what we did, but I just remember being thrown around, hiding with summer leading the battles. Then when it was over, summer would sneak out with her friends; not from her parents, but from Abbey and I so we wouldn't follow her around town and she could have fun being cool without us. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes we caught her and went along. I remember a few rock piles in the back yard and they were our mountains. Summer and abbey and josh had big mountains and I had one rock. It was a small piece of concrete but it worked. It was about the right size to sit on, and I would sit on it until I got tired of being on my rock and went running after the dogs.

That experience was about at the time when my mother went through her "one bite" or "just pick up five things" phase. This was most devastating phase of my domestic life. We'd be sitting upstairs with clothes everywhere and all the legos all over the floor and barbies and jewelry all around and my mom would come up and tell us we had to clean up. We would tell her we were on our way outside to go behind the school and play. She would then say, "ok, well pick up ten things before you go." Of course I would just pick up legos and dust bunnies. She said she didn't make us clean so much because she wanted us to have a fun childhood. Well we did, but you can imagine how devastating it was when she finally said, "clean your room." I never knew such pain before then.

My dad was the opposite. When he had a chore for us to do, it was huge and epic and sometimes I ran away, or pretended to run away, and just cried behind a tree for a little while until I gave up thinking that they were sad that I was gone. When he had a project for us to work on, it didn't matter how old we were, we had to help. Like the time he put a roof over the basement and abbey wouldn't help and so she got spanked, but I don't think she even helped after that (shes always been the most stubborn) or when a dog would get hit by a car, which was quite often (we were the unofficial stray dog sanctuary of the neighborhood) because we lived on a busy street, he would make us dig the hole. I remember holding a shovel that I couldn't even dig with because when I stood on the top of the shovel, I didn't weigh enough to get it to even go down into the dirt. Of course I started crying.

My dad wasn't an evil dictator though, he just wanted us to work and my mother obviously wasn't accomplishing that. We had a strong fear of work, though not of work that was fun, like washing cars, planting flowers, or making tree houses; we just had a fear of work that was unending, like the clutter of a house. Or unsatisfying, I should say.

My dad didn't make us work that much anyway either, but I think he wasn't really made to work as a child either when he lived on his grandparents farm in oklahoma. He was the youngest and the baby and I think his brothers may have resented him being spoiled for a while, because back then, I'm sure work wasn't just a skill to teach your children so they will be competent when they grow older, but a necessity.

Work... This brings me to myself right now. I have to give mr. bernie another bath and head out of town to hit knoxville this evening. I could write about home for the rest of my life. I wonder if it really was that good and crazy, or if it was just my child-mind.

A Rough Draft Very Short Story

The wind blew cold that year. The sagging front porch bore the weight of the leaves unswept and the sun barely knew us. We were growing older but I felt young and insignificant in the unwavering winter winds. Our cat had late kittens and they revived us till they grew and winter came hard and they slept warm, hiding under the porch. I asked John if he felt old and he laughted at me and blew smoke from his old cedar pipe--I hated him when he laughed because I knew it was because he felt old when he was with me.

I walked out to the porch and carefully stepped on the boards to not make them creak. He would not hear me and I hoped he would turn the television off. The sun shone low and the fields looked empty with the shadows of the fallen weeds and leftover wheat. I stepped quickly and walked down and felt the frozen ground break beneath my steps. The river looked cold across the grass and the trees insulated it from the tired, dry fields. I wished summer would not ever treat us so poorly again.

Walking towards the river I felt the wind brush my mousy hair across my red cold nose and I looked at the river, remembering the children's book about the houseboat spaceship (how absurd it seems to remember now, but how I would jump on sort of boat now!) As that thought entered my head a barge began to drift slowly into view-a tired giant-an antique, living, yet still slowly, in our ever increasing speed demon america. A man was walking up and down the barge; working, I supposed; living a free life, without the burden of family or expectations of the city, community--living, drifting slow--working simply.

"How happy he must be." I thought and believed it wholeheartedly. The man sat down at the very front of the boat and I envied him through all my neglected desires.

As I thought this standing near the corroded red riverbank, the man stood up and his shadow, long in the setting sun, touched me as he stepped off the edge into the water, the splash not making a sound, nor did the boat hitting his body as it went over him--the slow hum overwhelming it all.

All except the stinging gunshot that came from the farmhouse where John said goodbye to the T.V. once and for all.

the end. So I know this was kindof melodramatic but maybe thats ok. I wrote this out in the field (how depressed it makes me seem :) but I wanted to put it somewhere and see how it looked all typed up. I think its kinda slow.

Well, to Start...

Hello fellow nerds and friends in the blogging world, I've broken down and joined your ranks. I suppose I should have done this a very long time ago--(I'm a creative writer who no longer writes), but now here I am.

Why should I make a blog, you nerds may ask? Other than the reasons that it may prove to be fun; I may make lots more friends, become desperately popular, and find true love, I have a few reasons "why," that I feel are absolutely important:

First, writing is absolutely necessary to live life to its fullest (perhaps making documentaries and films, and maybe music can at times replace old-fashioned writing, but not wholly). Life, in my opinion, is comprised of thousands of memories that shape our perceptions of what is real and important, and more intensely, how we should feel. When those memories begin to dull, we no longer are as affected by those memories and experiences. If we are to take charge of how we want to shape our lives and want to embrace the emotions that come with living fully, we must re-remember the things that have shaped us in the most profound and joyful ways.

Re-remembering is obviously not simply remembering, but instead uncovering what has been forgotten and what was almost lost to shadows of our past that we unpurposely dismembered from our lives. It is more intentful than simple remembering because it creates in itself new experiences, the new experience of the past, and begins new selves, emphasizing the parts of life that have been and will continue to be most real to us. In that possible joy and grief and whatever we want to hold close, life can become more and more intensely real.

My other reasons are that I need the external motivations of writing for an audience. I think most of us have written in a journal at some point in our lives. A journal is private and can be exposing and we can learn alot about ourselves. For myself, I become bored with writing only for me, and anything that may be poignant and exposing are still not as raw as it should be to mean anything to myself, so I have little motivation to write, and I just don't inspire myself without a possible audience (I think most of us who obsessively post the details of our lives on facebook or twitter can relate to the need to validate our life experiences through sharing them with others). So audience, whether or not you are here, I pretend you are and that is all I need.

There are several other reasons, but as I sit at my family's dirty dining room table and finally have peace from everyone trying to talk to me, despite the fact that I repeatedly explained that I was writing, with the peace I feel uninspired. And those other reasons would just be rambling and over-analyzing that I can save for another time.

I will though, be posting some work that I've done in the past year. Which is not much, but I want any sort of critique and ideas about it if you have any. The other reason I write is to become better and that is a pretty important reason in my mind.

Screw grammar though, don't respond about that, I'll work on that when I go to grad school.

Hello World.