Discovering the hidden power of STFU & GTFO.

Chances are pretty good you encountered the health care meme bouncing around the Internet. Here’s the first I saw of it yesterday on Facebook:

“So-and-so believes that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and nobody should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.”

I did not react positively to this. My inner-teenager resents being told what to do. Flipping his hair out of his face, he points out the moral extortion swimming along just beneath the smooth surface of the post: if you DON’T surrender your Facebook status and help spread the word, well then… I guess now we all know who thinks poor Americans SHOULD die and sick Americans SHOULD go broke.

You uncaring monster.

Being young and so-so-sensitive, Emo-Jung wants to call someone a monster back. He puts me to work on a really biting status update, letting everyone know how morally inferior they are for alluding to everyone else’s moral inferiority. Then I remember that teenagers, no matter how bright and right they can be, still need guidance. So I tell him “No. We’re not gonna do that.” He glowers, flips his hair out of his face AGAIN (why don’t you just get it cut?) and wants to know what we ARE going to do. He’s daring me to ignore it. Smirking.

I can, but I won’t. The sentiment being expressed does bother me. And I’ve learned emotional discomfort is the same thing as physical discomfort: a message from unthinking-me to the thinking-me: “Something is off and would you please take steps to adjust, thank you.”

Whenever I catch myself struggling against what I perceive as an outside attempt to define me, I choose to give that definition a trial run instead. In other words I don’t fight it anymore… I experiment with its validity.

The message I got from the status update was essentially “People are suffering and you don’t care enough to really do anything about it.”

What’s important isn’t whether that is what is actually being said, or was intended to be said, or anything else having to do with other people’s choices. What’s important is acknowledging my response, and investigating the truth of it.

Are people suffering?

Yes.

Am I doing anything about it?

Nope.

Do I care?

Yes, I do.

And now I know why I was bothered. There was a contradiction hiding in the folds of my life, and my emotional center seized on the opportunity presented by the cascading meme to shake that blanket out and let me get a look at what was nesting there.

Now I could do something about it. I posted two status updates to Facebook through Twitter yesterday.

1: “Your Riverside Community Hospital Auxiliary Volunteer Information Form has been submitted. A member will contact you soon.” #py$wymi

2: Thank you to whoever started the #healthcare meme. You got me thinking–so I volunteered at my local hospital. b/c that matters more.

The first is quoting from the form response I got at Riverside Community Hospital’s website. #py$wymi is short for put your money where you mouth is. As a reforming yammer-mouth and armchair-everything, I’m discovering that the usually insulting STFU and GTFO are very powerful when combined and applied to oneself.

In this case, rather than debating health care, now I get to provide some.

The last couple of days were rough. It feels silly and stupid to write that in the past tense — the roughness only stopped about ten minutes ago when I left my bed and logged on. I didn’t expect that to make me feel better, but for some reason giving up on sleep and listening to some woe-is-us break-up music has soothed me.

Resentment and I have been slugging it out, toe-to-toe, and it’s been to the gym since the last time we squared off.

I know it’s no good, these thoughts of blame and anger directed at someone else. It’s chewing over rotten meat — all you’re left with is mold on your tongue. But it’s such a challenge to escape.

I try to keep an even keel. I remind myself of my own one-sidedness, recall my own persistant failure to love. I acknowledge that the way I feel now that we are no longer together must be very similar to they way my wife often felt while we were. I admit to all the time I was given to change and make better choices, choices that considered someone else’s feelings over my own. Now I don’t have that time anymore. Now it’s my feelings left in the dark.

It’s only fair.

But that doesn’t make it right.

And there’s the crack in the floor I fall into. Because whatever fed into it, the ripping apart of two people joined by vows is a betrayal. The fact that my daughter doesn’t live with me anymore, she visits; soap gets in her eyes during her bath and she cries for mommy — the simplest, most natural request of a child — and I have to tell her she’ll see mommy tomorrow, because mommy’s somewhere else.

You feel powerless and it’s natural to point fingers at someone else.

But that’s the lie. I feel powerless. But that’s only how I feel. And I’m learning to perceive through the illusion.

Anger is a threat response. Someone cuts you off on the freeway, you feel endangered, you yell in your car. Doesn’t make you any safer.

I’ve been wrestling with resentment and anger and bitterness. Somehow, tonight during the walk from my bedroom to the office, I stepped out of the ring. Somehow my soul recognized that everything that upsets me is a lie. And a lie only has power over you if you engage it. Fight or give in, you are subject to it either way. You win by not fighting.

So I didn’t come through as a husband. I’m a better man today then I was yesterday.

So I was betrayed. That’s a result of someone else’s choice to believe a lie. I don’t have to believe it too.

So my daughter got soap in her eyes. We rinsed it out. She went to sleep. In the morning she’ll wake up and see her mommy.

And that’s something to be grateful for.

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
- John W. Gardner

I’m sitting at a red light. To my right is a video store. In this day of the download, those old brick-and-mortars don’t look so hot. Oh, they try — but so do the trannies in fishnets back on Santa Monica boulevard.

Still no green. I look at a very large poster for a movie I’ve never heard of.

The design elements are:

* a whole lot of white space

* a title I don’t remember

* a tagline in a font too small to read from the street despite the poster’s window filling acreage

* a man

* a woman who is Beyoncé

* another woman

* the arrangement of man-woman-woman to imply a love triangle of menacing nature

So, an awful poster for what looks like an awful movie.

I grew up in this neighborhood. I know this is the longest red light in town, but still — get me out of here.

Then everything that is on my right resonates with everything that is off in my life:

What if I write a movie like that? What if I write a screenplay and I think its really good because its the best I can do but then I see the poster and its something like that because frankly the marketing guys just don’t have a lot to work with? And the movie is awful and uninteresting and even I want to change the channel because I caught it on TV — didn’t even bother to DVR it — because frankly the director and actors and even the art department didn’t have anything more to work with than the marketing guys?

What if I write a bad movie?

I relate this story over sushi to my friend, a business director in her position and a novelist in her soul. The sun is now disappearing outside.  “Well,” she says, handing the black check presenter back to our server with her credit card inside,  “At least you’d get paid.”

My friend is very clever, and she’s right: I should be so lucky.

Back in the car, and now I’m looking out at the morning sun in the rearview mirror.

You should be so lucky, to write a terrible movie. If your first draft is coherent at all, it would be a happy accident.

I think of a screenplay sitting in my closet at home: a copy of an early draft of The Last Samurai. Its radically different than the story that Edward Zwick actually filmed, and not nearly as satisfying. Captain Algren isn’t a drunken soldier of fortune haunted by memories of genocide — he’s the darling of West Point. Katsumoto is the enemy and he stays the enemy. Algren is married, and his wife dies — predictably. All in all, rather bland.

“I’m like that too,” my friend says between sips of water. “I want it to be perfect the first time.”

“I guess it’s like what Hemingway said about first drafts,” I reply.

We smile at each other. We’re both writers; we know the quote. No need to curse during dinner.

The light turns green, and I pass through the intersection and continue towards the onramp. Time to go home and write something awful.

Caught Eminem’s video for Beautiful.

It’s him walking around in Detroit. These are not nice neighborhoods.  They are economically devastated. There’s even a stadium being torn down.

I’m watching Em. He’s got money. Being in this environment isn’t the trap for him that it is for almost everyone else.

Of course, this album is the one he made after disappearing for five years into addiction and depression. Money was a bigger trap than poverty was.

Something about the look on his face, it just hit me.

We will always feel the way we do.

There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no achievement that will erase this strange soul-ache.

There are moments. Connections. Foretastes of heaven. But satisfaction? No. This body isn’t capable.

This isn’t depressing. It’s freeing.  I felt happier when I realized that no matter what changes, I’ll never be happier. No more chasing the wind.

Most unhappiness in life is a result of false metrics — being unsatisfied with your perfectly good apples because they aren’t the color of someone else’s oranges.

Yeah, it’s a cliche, that whole destination vs. journey thing.

But maybe a cliche is just a truth everyone has heard but few have felt?

Link to the video.

Decided to meditate today.

Went in my room, shut the door, closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing.

Sitting wasn’t really comfortable, so I cleared off the bedding and laid flat on my back, no pillow, hands rising and falling over my stomach.

Ah yes… my stomach. That tricky little bag of complaints. It wants, it gets, it wants again.

I could complain… but not without giving license to myopia. Its hard for me to eat enough. Eating effects my energy level and mood and stuff, but as far as my body is concerned, “weight gain” might as well be a foreign phrase in a pocket guide book.

No, I’m thinking about my stomach because it’s the only part of me that is moving. It’s drawn my attention, and I’m hungry because I haven’t had lunch yet, but I set the alarm on my blackberry for 4:30pm. Half an hour of meditation during which I don’t have to check the clock because the clock will let me know when to stop.

Up and down. Breathing. Relaxing.

Maybe.

Thinking about appetites. The stomach’s obvious, but there’s more than one bellicose empty space in my body. I’m covered and surrounded by them. There isn’t an inch of me that doesn’t clamor for attention.

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” –Herbert Simon, “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World”,p. 40-41 (1971).

My hands, my feet, my mind, my heart — they’re all telling me they have space to fill.

They want to build, to go, to grasp, to know.

There’s a choir of concave hollows, singing, sometimes howling for the convex contentment that had been their earlier blessing.

But it was for the fulfillment of appetite that the pleasures of the Garden were lost. As it was in the days of our fathers, so it is now — even in this age.

Simon spoke of attention as commodity. As I lie on my bed, eyes closed, ears open to all these damned pressing needs (there are none, not needs, not really — but I can hear them nonetheless), I know the economy is in shambles.

Throw a dart at a map of Africa, and you will find the state of affairs in my body. Oh, we’re a republic in name, to be sure — on good terms with the West and its NGO’s and charities and chartered institutions. We wouldn’t get by without the daily influx of foreign aid. But the hospitals are staffed with one doctor per ten thousand residents, infrastructure is a nightmare of intermittent services and milk-skimming dairy hands, and for want of employment, the streets abound with young men with guns. Young men who do not always agree.

My body is a bundle of cravings. Satisfying one means denying another.

“Do you consume so that you may produce? Or do you consume in search of satisfaction?”

Well there’s a thought I’ve never quite heard before — not that succinctly.

I know the answer. Why the inmates run the asylum. Or maybe it’s the old folks who have taken over the nursing home, popping all the pills they want. Sending there hearts into overdrive and tripping on colors and four hour erections.

Jesus and the fig tree — a tree draws nutrients from the soil its rooted in and the sun that shines on it and the water that comes to it, all so it can produce fruit. We’re no different. No fruit on this tree; Jesus curses it. It withers, releasing its components to be reclaimed for productive use.

Why would a tree fail to produce fruit? Couldn’t have been healthy. Like those corrupt third world fiefdoms. Like me. I can feel the pressure in my head — anxiety. Every message I’ve ever internalized, the light and the darkness in conflict. You’re everything; you’re nothing. You’re only worthy of contempt, sometimes not even that: only indifference. You’re loved; it’s a lie. You’ve been given so much; you’ve given so little. You’re a whore and a thief. You’re a saint — pure.

I think about what I want. Not my appetites. This is passion. Desire for wholeness. I ask for it. My body strains after it, physically. It’s not relaxation — it’s yearning.

The mob settles down. The Blue Helmets arrive. Oh, the country’s still a mess, sure. But the urban fighting stops. No more automatic weapons fire at midnight. There’s going to be an audit. Money will go where it was intended.

The blackberry goes off, and I sit up. Centered.

Time to eat.

Went to Monkey Butler last night. Gabe was giving us personal evaluations, so it was a good chance to get his observations on where I need to develop as a performer.

So funny how improv training is synonymous with life training.

After class I went over to Chris Taylor’s house to see my buddy Nate. Chris is out of town on business, but his girlfriend Jeanne was there. She is an amazing woman, and becomes more amazing to me every time we talk and I learn more of her story. Last night she looks at me and says (with her wonderful French accent), “You’ve changed since the last time I saw you.”

Jeanne’s incredibly perceptive, so that got me to sit up and take notice. “Really? What’s different?”

“When I look into your eyes, there’s confidence. It wasn’t there before. I could see it even when you were outside, coming up to the house.”

Nate echoed the observation. “Oh yeah dude. You’re totally different then you were when I met you.”

I know there are still huge gaps in my life where I’m not confident at all, things where hidden terrors hold me back from moving forward.
But I am coming to accept that I can move forward. I have in other areas, I can in all others. Its the paradox of taking responsibility: you are where you want to be. You brought yourself here, but by the same token you can take yourself somewhere else.

Jeanne and Nate finished their wine, I had a beer. We talked more about adversity and purpose, relationships and vulnerability.

I haven’t achieved total victory over the darkness in my life. But the fact that my friends see the light that has come, the ground that’s been taken; this a great encouragement. I’m totally in love with these two people.

The couch was offered for me to crash on, and I accepted. These days I take every night I don’t come home as an adventurous accomplishment.

Nate’s off to visit family in Indiana for a week and half. Said goodbye and see you soon, then hopped on my bike and rolled down the hill to my place.

Because I don’t know how much I’m drinking without them… but I’m guessing its a lot.

God bless Maker’s Mark, and George Bush for buying the bottle.

(a note for the uninitiated: speed pourers are those nifty little rubber and metal spigots you see affixed to the top of liquor bottles at a bar. The regulate the rate at which the liquid comes out, allowing a professional bartender to measure by count, instead of having to go through the slow and cumbersome process of pouring into a measuring device like a jigger and then pour that into the glass. However, I haven’t been able to find any decent ones for sale, so I’m just eyeballing it. Generously)

A Metro Day Pass in L.A. is $5. With it you can hop on any city bus or subway and go where it takes you.

Which is what I did Sunday.

Started by getting on the bus here in Pasadena at 9:00am. A transfer in Eagle Rock brought me to Say Cheese restaurant in Silver Lake, where a co-worker of mine works the Sunday Brunch shift. Say Cheese has good coffee, good prices and–what else?–great cheese. Chatted with Nicolai a bit and then, after finishing my Ham and Gruyere croissant at 11:30 got up to go who knows where.

I like to navigate by sense of direction, so I set my feet south on Hyperion Blvd and started walking. Went over a few hills and took in the vistas of Los Feliz, Hollywood, Downtown–the charred patches of Griffith Park from last year’s fire. Walked past the dog parks on Silver Lake Blvd and up the east side of the Reservoir, then down to Glendale Blvd. Saw the Red Lion, where Mark–another co-worker and fellow screenwriter–used to work. They had a big sign saying they serve Bitburger beer, so I think that’s where ‘ll go with my parents next time they’re in town.

Caught a bus into the city. They were shooting a movie called Hotel for Dogs. Whatever.

Stepped into the lobby of the Wilshire Grand to get away from the street noise so I could make a phone call. Turns out there pool gate doesn’t have any sort of lock or keypass on it. So I grabbed a chaise lounge and tried to even out my farmer’s tan.

Had some Thai food at this great little place with a sweet old lady, then went to the Mayan to see if there was any help I could offer with set-up. My meager contribution was carrying a table and a box for Jason, the DJ; we hung out and traded stories for an hour or so. His fiancee used to babysit Adee–they’re getting married in five weeks!

Church was awesome. The speaker, Hank, is an exciting new voice at Mosaic with a fascinating life. At one point he asked if there were any parents in the audience–mine was the only hand that went up. Sort of a little snapshot of my present life and context.

At the end of the message Erwin took the mic for a moment just to let people know that he was indeed present, that Hank wasn’t filling in, but rather “he’s first string.” Erwin’s so good at encouraging and lifting people up. Even though he only said about four sentences, I was tearing up at the genuine respect and affection he was showing his protege. It was a public act that pulled back the curtain a bit on the real beauty of relationships.

Saw a lot of friends: Andy, Ray, Garett, Brady, Skyler. Had a good conversation with Leslie. Met Dany in the lobby beforehand and she was kind enough to sit with me, even though the service was arranged theatre in the round style and I picked a tall table and bar stools right behind the band.

Got a text message from Tyff inviting me over for wine and games at her place in Culver City. Took a little while and a bit of backtracking, but I finally navigated my way down the Blue Line to Staples Center and then along Venice Blvd. A guy on the bus asked to borrow my phone because his was dying and he needed to call someone in Santa Monica. Apparently he was picking up some money but he wasn’t going to get there in time, so they had to figure out a hiding spot where he could retrieve the cash. This is just one of a half dozen fascinating things that happened on the bus that day.

Arrived at Tyff’s to find a game of Taboo in full swing, and that every other guy there was also a spec screenwriter. Lots of fun, cheekiness and consumption of Rice Krispie Treats ensued. I don’t drink wine so I had to make due with the one Coors Light we could excavate from the confusion of the fridge.

The night wound down, people went home. We laid Tyff’s co-worker to rest on the couch to sleep off his one-tequila two-tequila three-tequila floor, then stayed up way too late ourselves talking about God, ourselves, this life inbetween, what you want and what you get. Even dead tired, Tyffany’s and awesome listener. She very kindly let me crash in the living room opposite the hibernating waiter. She kept insisting that the couch pillow wasn’t going to be very comfortable and wouldn’t stop trying to give me another one until I threatened to throw it at her.

The absolute best part about all of this was that I was writing the whole time. If I was on the move I’d just type into my phone, if not I’d write in my notebook. I guess I’m just inspired by being out there and taking everything in.

Woke up at six. Caught the bus back into downtown. Had coffee and a bagel with cream cheese, then took the Red line to the Gold line to the 181 home. Got off the bus at 9:00am.

Best five bucks I ever spent.

Morning:

God brought to mind Mary and Martha.

Martha, Busy busy busy

Mary, at the Lord’s feet, because she recognized that’s what he wanted. He wanted to spend time with them, not sit in an immaculately kept house.

Faith and works. Doing for vs. being with.

God wants to be with me.

All the busyiness- if anything isn’t part of being with Him, its worthless: a distraction.

Yes, I am to work hard, provide and connect with others.

But because that makes me more like Him, closer to Him. If it doesn’t, forget it.

Later… was napping on the couch. Like a scene out of a suspense movie, I heard a male voice say “Forgive me.” And woke up with a start. Like, Nap OVER.

First impulse was to call Christina and ask her to forgive me. Sure I will, but don’t think that’s what is meant here. Christina’s always my first impulse, and that’s got to be re-aligned.

Get the sense this is more that I am to forgive someone. Myself, certainly. God? How can God need forgiveness? He doesn’t sin.

Jesus baptism comes to mind. “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

Jesus went through the act of baptism, though he had no sin to be washed clean of, at least, none of his own.

So that’s a connection.

“Fitting for us.”

I can’t shake the feeling that it was God speaking those words: Forgive me.

If it was, it is a direction for my benefit.

Maybe this is like Moses and Abraham “changing” God’s mind.

I don’t know. I know a lot of my perception of God is off kilter, in terms of my self-mitigating behavior.

Guess this a step towards something different.

Suppose we’ll see.

There certainly will be more dreams.

I THANK YOU

by E. E. Cummings

i thank you God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

—————-
Now playing: U2 – Wild Honey
via FoxyTunes