Mundane Turbulence

I got a voicemail from my father a couple days ago:

“Hey. So, ah…give me a call, uh, as soon as you can. Not an emergency in that sense. Ya’know, give me a call, in any case. Love you, bye.”

I love it. Not-an-emergency emergency calls that sound sad. I didn’t really know what to think, so I skipped out on the episode of Mad Men that I was [re-]watching and gave him a buzz. It turned out that my third childhood cat, Sparks, had died.

He was 18.

Sparks was…a dumb cat. My second cat, Ike – the greatest cat who ever existed – was just the most friendly dude ever, and I have quite a few cherished memories of him. A girlfriend of mine even made a fake MSPCA ad starring him (he was just that awesome):

What a great little guy!

Anyway, Sparks. Do you know what the first thing I think of when he comes to mind? Farts. This cat smelled…just awful. Like hot garbage puke. And it wasn’t just the smell of cat-ass – it was also the sound. He actually produced audible farts, which, having grown up with 13 cats, I can tell you is a unique phenomenon. Other than that, and his seeming inability to understand that my toes, even under blankets, were still attached to my body and could feel pain, I really can’t recall much else noteworthy about the animal.

So why do I even bother mentioning Sparks? It’s something to do with childhood. My sister and I found Sparks here:

PJs. Da projects. Our backyard was beyond that wall.

Here’s a story that no one seems to remember but me: Ariel and I just got out back to play, when we saw these two other kids (assholes) throwing rocks at something in the bushes. We went over to check it out, and there was a tiny little kitten, mewing for help. We were sensitive little kids, so we ran over to him, and pretty much just cried until the assholes withdrew. We brought out a blanket, calmed the kitten down, and then, of course, brought him inside and begged our dad to let us keep him. We went all out: not just crying, but bawling, messy, sloppy tearing, screaming about how he’d be killed if we didn’t save him. Our dad, the softie! The kitten was ours within 15 minutes, and he had a name not too long after: our soon-to-be step-mom had a cat called Sparkles, who looked the same except bigger, so this little kitten would be Sparks. Children do come up with the most inspiring pet names.

Anyway, the moral of this story: I dunno! I just kinda feel bummed about that last living connection to my childhood home. I still have a couple friends from back then, but I don’t see them more than once a year or so. Sparks lived with my dad and step-mom, and he was ever-present. He was lame and boring and he never quite learned to fear a water bottle, but he was in my life since I was 10. So…that’s sad, right? I feel all gray about it.

Hmph.

I like to listen to the live stream at wbur.org as I start my day. There’s an NPR station in Missoula, and of course there’s the national station, but I prefer my home newscast…it helps me to feel connected (even if the weather report doesn’t match up). It’s summer, and I miss my people.

When I was home during the winter, some of the undertaking felt like a chore. I loved being around my friends, but there were occasions that I experienced as obligations (in part), or which were otherwise uncomfortable because of conflicting demands. My time didn’t feel like my own, and I experienced unfamiliar feelings towards my favorite people as a result. I didn’t like it. I don’t like feeling upset, and I like even less the disharmony that it elicits when associated with those who bring me comfort.

I adapted my summer plans accordingly. I’ll be back for ten days, instead of two weeks, and this visit is really only the result of my required attendance at a cousin’s wedding. But now all I think is: thank goodness for that wedding! I have learned that summer is easily the coldest season, absent the warmth of friends. I am so happy with the connections I’ve made here, but they necessarily lack the variety that comes with decades of establishment – a truth of which I was completely oblivious during the winter.

After all, I am spoiled! Not only have I been gifted with the most brilliant friends, but I have been gifted with an abundance of the most brilliant friends. Friends that inspire and entertain; friends that make me a better person for knowing them. They have been in my life for years – my best years – and they’ve been so consistently present that I’ve allowed petty logistical frustrations to dictate the terms of an entire future visit. How entirely preposterous!

I want to be stuck with balancing between different groups of friends. I’m looking forward to long and boring bus rides across town. I don’t care about meeting up with people at bars that I hate. I can’t wait to be home!

I love The Onion.  Back in February, an article about the inherent fallacy of money appeared (check it), and it was pretty brilliant.  The gist of the piece: money is totally made up; it possesses only the power that we all agree to grant it.  Money supposedly represents…what, the gold and/or silver that the federal government has?  (I tried to figure it out, but the Wikipedia entry was confusing.)  But federal notes get printed with seemingly reckless abandon – certainly faster than the rate at which we’re acquiring precious metals, at least – so it can’t be with any particular basis in reserves.

Anyway, what’s great about the article is that the sudden realization of the reality of money seems to incite some kind of grand liberation.  There is confusion, yes, but I think it would be pretty hard to read the piece without thinking, “yeah – this would be fucking awesome!”  And it’s not just because money is often used as a means of oppression (yeah, it can do plenty good, but its pursuit is pretty crummy news, even from the most mundane of perspectives)…the reason why the article’s vision is so great is because, with one satirical stroke, it demolishes one of our world’s most foundational illusions.  It reveals to us some actual truth.

What I really like about the article is how useful it is as a metaphor.  At the end of my first year of graduate school, I successfully proposed my thesis on something called “not-self,” which is a fundamental concept in Buddhism.  The idea, basically, is that the “self,” with which each of us identifies as being a true manifestation of who we are, well…isn’t.  It’s only a real thing as far as each of us believes it to be a real thing.

There isn’t a single thing that we can hold, or point to, or look at, and say, “that’s my self.”  All we’ve got is what we perceive to be a collection of stuff that we decide to call self.  Some memories, some ideas, some dispositions, some behaviors – that’s it.  We categorize these ethereal constructs (you can’t point to memories, either), and say, “yup, that’s me.”  But, interestingly, we also have some memories, some ideas, some dispositions, and some behaviors that we’ve decided are not what we consider self, even though all these things come from the same place: inside our heads.  How is some of what’s in us self, but other of what’s in us not?

The answer sidesteps the question.  As someone studying psychology, I necessarily believe that people are able to change.  Individuals can go from being too anxious to leave their homes to having no difficulties making quick trips to the local supermarket, touching all those things that used to freak them out.  How does this happen?  Well, they’ve changed who they are.  They went from being one self to another self.  The argument might be that the latter self was the “true” one, just begging to be set free, but how on earth can that be proven?  The reality is that the former self, however negative, was just as legitimately experienced as self.

So what is our sidestepping answer?  This thing that we consider self is invented.  Through whatever conditioning we’ve experienced in our lives, we decide what self is.  One day, we decide that self is obsessive-compulsive; later, after some different conditioning (i.e., psychotherapy), we decide that self is not obsessive-compulsive.  The point is that there is no fundamental self; it is without inherent qualities.  There does not exist a “this stuff in me is self, and that stuff in me is not” – we just make it up!

The reason that any of this is useful is because we all give a great deal of power to this invention.  If we experience things that the self doesn’t like, then it can become sad, or angry, or ashamed, or traumatized.  And we experience things that the self doesn’t like all the time.  If we explode the self, seeing it for its various processes, then its influence is extinguished.  The point of not-self is to see the reality of self; it only has power to upset us if we grant it that power.  More specifically, it is only able to distort the world around us – which is really just a bunch of valueless processes – if we grant it that ability.  Self disables us from truly experiencing reality.

Like money, the self is not inherently real.  We just make them both that way (because it’s expeditious), and in doing so, we place our behaviors into bondage.  When we realize the nature of things, we not only are able to throw down our oppression, but we are also able to better see the world as it is.

It’s been some time since I logged an entry here. Gee whiz, if only there’d been some recent interesting changes in my life, or the beginning of some major chapter, or some important obstacles successfully navigated (I wanted to list three things there, but I feel like that last one comes off as somewhat boastful – ah well). Nope, there hasn’t been any of that stuff in my life…

…OR HAS THERE??

It’s interesting; a year passes, and things certainly change, but mostly they’re same. My daily friends and surroundings have of course taken different forms, but my needs remain met. I have love, and I have shelter, and I have food, and I continue to learn. I’ve attempted to make an argument to my friends here: it ain’t so different from back home. I’ve realized, however, that the truth is simply that I ain’t so different.

And that makes me wonder about this process that I call my self. It turns out that I always feel pretty at home within my person, and for the most part I think that accounts for my general contentment. So how do I experience and conceive this self that is apparently so resilient? Am I okay regardless of environment because I’m some kind of super-adaptable guy? Or am I so static and unchangeable that environment doesn’t really affect me (as perhaps it should)? Or is it a strange combination of the two, whereby I’m unflappably malleable? (Yes Christian, we know – very meta of you, however redundant.)

It’s rock or it’s water, then. As I learn (while I continue to do so), do I become more same, or more varied? In other worlds: does my self grow more elaborate, or more dialectical – and how do I test in either direction? It’d be interesting to encounter that circumstance which would force my hand, revealing the nature of my most fundamental conditioning. After all, I’ve been through no true hardships, instead experiencing only those everyday disturbances that require nominal efforts to calm. I’m a white-American-male, which is essentially Life for Dummies manifest! God…is it really any wonder that white people love skydiving?

Oh my ephemeral thoughts – how I’ve missed writing you down! Summertime is writingtime.

It looks like I forgot to add my final trip update to my blog! Here it is: mine and my father’s great trek across our country:

2710 miles from home in Allston to my mom’s to my sister’s to Kelsey’s to a Super 8 in Henrietta, NY to a KOA in Union, IL to an Econolodge in Jackson, MN to Mt. Rushmore to a cabin in Rapid City, SD to a Days Inn in Butte, MT to Desi’s apartment in Missoula, MT

It’s a strange thing becoming part of a new home. Most cities, I think, are the same. You get cable TV, you get internet, and there are at least one mall and supermarket in town. What I wanted from Missoula was something different, and it’s very peculiar…it’s got all those same conveniences of everycity, but it simply is not that. I’ve been out dancing until the early morning more than once, and afterward wandered, inebriated, into a late-night diner, but this ain’t Allston. I’ve eaten great food and drank great beer, but this isn’t the northeast. The difference? There is a silence that is both beautiful and delicate. The air is thin and crisp. The water is cold and clean.

I think I’m going to like it here.