Friday, November 11, 2005
The Elusive Groove
The Animal has been extremely busy unraveling the mysteries of the universe while practicing the fine art of manic-depression management, the former being a piece of cake compared to the latter.
Being manic depressive is like being a tiny diamond needle on a vinyl disc that can't seem to get in the groove. You scratch through it as you skid up and down into wells and over hills on either side of it, and you get a hit of its synergistic power as you skip across it, but it remains frustratingly out of your control to stick with it and simply let the music play.
I used to create extreme sine waves with my dives and flights for radical experience and instant enlightenment, but now that I'm a little better than before, my deviations from the groove are less dramatic. I am able to traverse the dark and the light with the same intent I have always had in my rises and falls--to create and/or gather useful information and experience--without having to go nearly so high or so low to fulfill it, and in between I manage to surf the groove for days, even weeks at a time. The groove is not outrageous or any other adjective of extremity in affect. In fact, the groove feels just right. The music that rattles around your head is broadcast over the loudspeakers of your life when you get in the groove, and it feels just right.
Still, there's work to be done. When isn't there? Just right feels a little uncomfortable to a being who has never really experienced the Mama Bear phenomenon before. So the Animal still has highs that are a little too unstrung and lows that are a tad more grueling than he'd like in his attempt to reconcile his maniacal self to the gentle balance of grooviness.
This past week I allowed myself to become completely embroiled in the petty disturbances of self maintenance, most especially making a living. I started out on Monday exhausted after an over-indulgent weekend (Just in case anyone was wondering: Yes, it is possible to have too much sex.); and when I get tired, my always-lurking bile-spewing, pessimistic, unrepentantly harsh side takes over.
On Monday and Tuesday, I railed endlessly against the gross inequalities and foul misuses of power in this world like a demented preacher, screaming at the top of my lungs while smoking a cigarette, swilling black coffee and listening to psychedelic trance music real loud on my way to work. My poor, meek Asian ESL students didn't have a chance: If they weren't ready with an answer, I went to the next student, and the next, and the next, if necessary. And they were being blessed with none of "Rob's super-kooky ESL moments." Das Instruktor was on patrol, and taking no prisoners. One of my usually talkative students was so flabbergasted by it that he couldn't get one sentence out the whole week, and I relished it, as he was also spending a lot of those sentences airing his bigoted views about the American populace.
And now I'm relishing it even more, because I'm through with that school and its impossible Japanese-style bureacracies. The administrator there, a Japanese woman about my age, had made such a virtue of paperwork and formal etiquette that I have an ongoing image of her wrapped head to toe like a living mummy in sticky, red tape the color of blood, her words muffled by the wad that's stuffed down her throat. Thursday was my last day and, of course, I had about six pages of completely pointless paperwork to do. On Monday I'm off to teach at a school that openly shares with its teachers the fact that most of their students wouldn't be there if they could stay in the U.S. without a student visa, and trusts them to behave accordingly without having to adhere to a bunch of tight-assed rules and regulations. In addition, I don't have to either wear a tie or drive to the valley anymore. So life started looking a little better by Thursday afternoon.
On top of that, I got cable internet installed, which thrills me with its speed, and ordered a complete cancellation of all phone company services, though I won't be getting a new cell connection for a few days yet, and that made things feel even lighter.
And then, just to make sure I got the most out of my little trip down depression lane, I realized that I had no idea how to set up a local area network to include my roommate's wireless computer, even though I knew I had all the equipment I needed (namely, a modem, a router, and all the right cables). Both Philip and I nearly had apoplectic fits about it this morning, realizing that we were going to have to pay the cable company something like a hundred bucks plus twenty extra per month just because we were too computer illiterate to figure out a simple connection. I was so uptight about it that my heart was pounding way faster than usual, my nerves felt hot and I walked around the house screaming profanities like a Tourette's Syndrome sufferer, scaring the hell out of my sweet-as-hell cat.
And then Philip and I sat down together, made a few calls, did some prying and finally figured it out. It turned out that all we had to do was turn everything off, connect it all up the way we wanted it, then turn it all back on again. Et voila! Not only do we have much better internet accessibility than we used to have (SBC DSL) for less, but suddenly the wielding of worldly powers was within my realm of talents again. I felt in control of my own reality as I hadn't for--well, really, it's been a couple of weeks to tell the truth; a couple of weeks of feeling like life was nothing but a futile attempt at immortality, doomed to be crushed at the feet of the monsters who had hijacked our reality and recreated it in their own vile images.
But now I say, "Filthy Monsters, I DENY you!" and poof, they are gone, only misguided humans and misguided groups of misguided humans with impossibly large and dysfuctional egos once more. And I apologize to my roommate and my cat, though I'm still fiendishly gleeful that my repulsively racist now-ex-student felt the lash of my demon's hooked tail....
And now I've got some of my favorite music playing in the background, and I'm in the elusive groove. The groove is a simple balance between inner and outer forces. The groove is what people are talking about when they talk about living in the moment. It's the line between the yin and the yang;
in fact, it's the infinity symbol that the two lines of opposing yin-yang entireties make when overlapped, endlessly spinning like a hoola hoop around the hips of your own gravity's center. When you're there, you're there; nothing more and nothing less; and there's little to do but enjoy the flow and its fluctuations, which flutter like bright moths on your event horizon.
Yet despite the fact that I get it, that I feel it through and through, feel the truth that it is and the gentle power that keeps it spinning, I'm really still not all that sure that I deserve to be here. I know that's silly, a trick of the ego, yet I can't help getting annoyed at that little voice that urges me to see myself as less than whole and perfect as I am.
Hey, you! Yeah, you, buddy, back there in the peanut gallery. You shut your mug while the show's running or I'll have to come back there myself and straighten ya out! Ya got it, buddy?!
There, that should do it. That's about it for manic-depression management today. More on the Animal's other recent endeavors (i.e. unraveling the mysteries of the universe) in the near future. Don't you just love the near future?
Categories: depression, transformation, work, groove
Being manic depressive is like being a tiny diamond needle on a vinyl disc that can't seem to get in the groove. You scratch through it as you skid up and down into wells and over hills on either side of it, and you get a hit of its synergistic power as you skip across it, but it remains frustratingly out of your control to stick with it and simply let the music play.
I used to create extreme sine waves with my dives and flights for radical experience and instant enlightenment, but now that I'm a little better than before, my deviations from the groove are less dramatic. I am able to traverse the dark and the light with the same intent I have always had in my rises and falls--to create and/or gather useful information and experience--without having to go nearly so high or so low to fulfill it, and in between I manage to surf the groove for days, even weeks at a time. The groove is not outrageous or any other adjective of extremity in affect. In fact, the groove feels just right. The music that rattles around your head is broadcast over the loudspeakers of your life when you get in the groove, and it feels just right.
Still, there's work to be done. When isn't there? Just right feels a little uncomfortable to a being who has never really experienced the Mama Bear phenomenon before. So the Animal still has highs that are a little too unstrung and lows that are a tad more grueling than he'd like in his attempt to reconcile his maniacal self to the gentle balance of grooviness.
This past week I allowed myself to become completely embroiled in the petty disturbances of self maintenance, most especially making a living. I started out on Monday exhausted after an over-indulgent weekend (Just in case anyone was wondering: Yes, it is possible to have too much sex.); and when I get tired, my always-lurking bile-spewing, pessimistic, unrepentantly harsh side takes over.
On Monday and Tuesday, I railed endlessly against the gross inequalities and foul misuses of power in this world like a demented preacher, screaming at the top of my lungs while smoking a cigarette, swilling black coffee and listening to psychedelic trance music real loud on my way to work. My poor, meek Asian ESL students didn't have a chance: If they weren't ready with an answer, I went to the next student, and the next, and the next, if necessary. And they were being blessed with none of "Rob's super-kooky ESL moments." Das Instruktor was on patrol, and taking no prisoners. One of my usually talkative students was so flabbergasted by it that he couldn't get one sentence out the whole week, and I relished it, as he was also spending a lot of those sentences airing his bigoted views about the American populace.
And now I'm relishing it even more, because I'm through with that school and its impossible Japanese-style bureacracies. The administrator there, a Japanese woman about my age, had made such a virtue of paperwork and formal etiquette that I have an ongoing image of her wrapped head to toe like a living mummy in sticky, red tape the color of blood, her words muffled by the wad that's stuffed down her throat. Thursday was my last day and, of course, I had about six pages of completely pointless paperwork to do. On Monday I'm off to teach at a school that openly shares with its teachers the fact that most of their students wouldn't be there if they could stay in the U.S. without a student visa, and trusts them to behave accordingly without having to adhere to a bunch of tight-assed rules and regulations. In addition, I don't have to either wear a tie or drive to the valley anymore. So life started looking a little better by Thursday afternoon.
On top of that, I got cable internet installed, which thrills me with its speed, and ordered a complete cancellation of all phone company services, though I won't be getting a new cell connection for a few days yet, and that made things feel even lighter.
And then, just to make sure I got the most out of my little trip down depression lane, I realized that I had no idea how to set up a local area network to include my roommate's wireless computer, even though I knew I had all the equipment I needed (namely, a modem, a router, and all the right cables). Both Philip and I nearly had apoplectic fits about it this morning, realizing that we were going to have to pay the cable company something like a hundred bucks plus twenty extra per month just because we were too computer illiterate to figure out a simple connection. I was so uptight about it that my heart was pounding way faster than usual, my nerves felt hot and I walked around the house screaming profanities like a Tourette's Syndrome sufferer, scaring the hell out of my sweet-as-hell cat.
And then Philip and I sat down together, made a few calls, did some prying and finally figured it out. It turned out that all we had to do was turn everything off, connect it all up the way we wanted it, then turn it all back on again. Et voila! Not only do we have much better internet accessibility than we used to have (SBC DSL) for less, but suddenly the wielding of worldly powers was within my realm of talents again. I felt in control of my own reality as I hadn't for--well, really, it's been a couple of weeks to tell the truth; a couple of weeks of feeling like life was nothing but a futile attempt at immortality, doomed to be crushed at the feet of the monsters who had hijacked our reality and recreated it in their own vile images.
But now I say, "Filthy Monsters, I DENY you!" and poof, they are gone, only misguided humans and misguided groups of misguided humans with impossibly large and dysfuctional egos once more. And I apologize to my roommate and my cat, though I'm still fiendishly gleeful that my repulsively racist now-ex-student felt the lash of my demon's hooked tail....
And now I've got some of my favorite music playing in the background, and I'm in the elusive groove. The groove is a simple balance between inner and outer forces. The groove is what people are talking about when they talk about living in the moment. It's the line between the yin and the yang;
in fact, it's the infinity symbol that the two lines of opposing yin-yang entireties make when overlapped, endlessly spinning like a hoola hoop around the hips of your own gravity's center. When you're there, you're there; nothing more and nothing less; and there's little to do but enjoy the flow and its fluctuations, which flutter like bright moths on your event horizon.Yet despite the fact that I get it, that I feel it through and through, feel the truth that it is and the gentle power that keeps it spinning, I'm really still not all that sure that I deserve to be here. I know that's silly, a trick of the ego, yet I can't help getting annoyed at that little voice that urges me to see myself as less than whole and perfect as I am.
Hey, you! Yeah, you, buddy, back there in the peanut gallery. You shut your mug while the show's running or I'll have to come back there myself and straighten ya out! Ya got it, buddy?!
There, that should do it. That's about it for manic-depression management today. More on the Animal's other recent endeavors (i.e. unraveling the mysteries of the universe) in the near future. Don't you just love the near future?
Categories: depression, transformation, work, groove
