Your light's reflected now, reflected from afar We were but stones, your light made us stars
Pearl Jam
It has been a month and I still have Pat Tillman on my mind. After reading and writing about the Jon Kraukaur book about his life, I have been unable to rid myself of the weight of his life. I recently read, Boots on the Ground By Dusk, another book about Pat written this time by his mother. This post, however, is not meant to be a review of the book, although it was beautiful and intimately written. This post is not even meant to be a deeper look at Pat’s life, although I will touch on it to springboard my thoughts.
I want to write about the impact learning about Pat Tillman’s life has had my life. Or better put, how I hope it will affect my life. There is a chapter in the book, where Mary Tillman transcribes the various speeches given at Pat’s memorial service. As I was reading, with tears in my eyes, I began to think about what kinds of things my friends and family would say about me at my service.
Reading about Tillman’s life has made me realize that life is too short to spend being apathetic and bored. The last three years have been rough on me. I can already see people shaking their heads, my wife included. Why would I complain about spending the last three years watching my two amazing daughters grow each day? I am not saying it has been all bad, but living here in Qatar has been one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It may be hyperbole to say that a part of me has died after living here, but it is not an exaggeration to say that I have had to spend much of my days on auto-pilot in order to stay sane. I have been a productive teacher, a loving father, a good friend, and I hope a reliable husband, but the part of my spirit that burns bright and fuels my creative spirit and those around me, the Pat Tillman in me, has been bidding his time. I am not sure if the moping, tired, withdrawn person who enters the rooms here in Doha is the same person that I could be. I am not sure that I am this guy anymore:
The single best thing about Pat’s life is that he made you feel alive…He made you challenge things, he made you appreciate everything every day, he made you appreciate your family and friends and respect them, he made you laugh, he made you think and made you want to be a better person.
Maybe, I am being to hard on myself or on Doha. Maybe this slowing down is all part of growing up. But I hope that after reading Tillman’s story and moving away from the desert, both literately and figuratively, I can focus more of my energy on spreading the light that I know still burns inside me. I have written enough posts about various things I want to do to become more like the person I want to be, so I will spare you reader a fresh manifesto. I simply want to say that I feel like the flame that has been flickering inside me for the last three years has had a fresh breath of air. Thanks to Pat Tillman, I hope that I can begin to appreciate the words spoken by Jake Plummer at Tillman’s memorial service:
To me beauty is living life to a higher standard, stronger morals and ethics and believing in them, whether people tell you are right or wrong. Beauty is not wasting a day. Beauty is noticing life’s little intricacies and taking time out of your busy day to really enjoy those little intricacies. Beauty is being real, being genuine, being pure with no façade-what you see is what you get. Beauty is expanding your mind, always seeking knowledge, nit being content, always going after something and challenging yourself.
I recently received this email from a really good friend. One I have known for twenty years.
random question: something ive been journaling on lately is How do i derive my sense of of personal worth? i'm having a hard time answering this. i would have hit this answer out of the park at 25, but now i realize those answers would have been blustery and thin and platitudinous--and proffered in the hopes of masking the frightening idea that, at bottom, i really didnt know. How do you derive personal worth?
I have been thinking about this question for a few days and have also had a difficult time answering it, much less knowing where to start and what direction to take, so I will simply jump in and hope that when we reach the end there will be at least a nugget of wisdom or meaning.
The first thing I felt when faced with the question of my personal worth, was an overpowering sense of worthlessness and insignificance. Rather than face my inconsequentiality with dread, I gained a subtle sense of freedom from knowing that no matter how I feel, I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But if I had to pin my worth down more accurately it would look something like this:
I see my personal worth as a set of ever changing self-righteous platitudes I try to maintain. Sometimes I succeed, but more often a fail. I do my best to stay true to these shifting values and self-imposed expectations. However, I am one of the biggest hypocrites I know. I say love mankind, yet I drive around in this desert seething with an uncontrollable rage. I speak about protecting the earth and animals, yet I produce enough garbage to build my own landfill mountain, and I ignore the cat I have had for seven years.
What I am trying to say is that I try to lead an ethical life, but often find myself mired in guilt and shame, because I fall short. I guess my self worth is derived in the times when the person I am most closely resembles the person I want to be. This is difficult since both versions are constantly in flux. So in no particular order the following are the ways I try to find value in my self, my family and the lives that happen to fall into my orbit:
I want to be the best father I can be. This is my most important job. I want to love, guide, inspire, and ignite a fire in the hearts and minds of my girls. I want to expose them to everything the world has to offer. I want to make them to feel free to take risks and fail. Truth be told, I want to be the best father I can be to everyone I meet. You can call me by different names: teacher, husband, friend, son, network node, or stranger, but all I want to do is connect and inspire people to take their lives less seriously and enjoy the simple things: a bean plant anchored in a pot of soil, a great song, a camera angle in a film, a passage from a book.
Not sure if this answered your question, but it is as close as I can get at this time. I derive my personal worth by how I see myself in the people around me and how I let them enter me. Guess it could look something like this:
With the release of a remastered edition of Ten by Pearl jam, I have decided once and for all to document my connection to the “organism that is Pearl Jam,” and the role the band has played in my life as therapist, role model, and friend.
Pearl Jam’s music has played as the soundtrack to my life since the first time I heard Ten in 1992. Since that time, every few years Pearl Jam releases an album that appears to mirror my life both in content, style, and growth. Pearl Jam is in a different category than most bands for me. There is music, and then there is Pearl Jam. I have never felt this type of connection to any other artist. The following posts will be an exploration of this connection.I realize that for some reason liking the band carries a stigma in Indie elite circles, as if Pearl Jam is a has-been band that peaked with the release of Ten. I have nothing to prove to anyone by writing these posts, I simply want to catalog my memories in one place.
I cannot write about my life without writing about the music of Pearl Jam and vice versus. I have spent so much of my life immersed in their music, and now I feel compelled to explore the relationship for myself, a sort of inventory of my life.
In the next few months I hope to write blog posts that chronicle my appreciation of every song in the Pearl Jam catalog. Ambitious, I know. Maybe this will take me longer than a few months. Maybe I will be writing about the songs for the next few years. Like I have plan to do with Zen in the Engaged Life series, I hope to examine lyrics, share my thoughts, life associations with the music, and perhaps create some mash-up art that reflects my understanding of certain songs.
I hope that readers will join me by sharing your thoughts and memories to the songs that resonate with you. If you are a Pearl Jam fan, I hope you will share your thoughts on the songs, the band in general, and on my recollections and blog posts. If you are not a fan, I hope my investigation will open your eyes as to the why Pearl Jam is more than merely a recording artist.
Before I begin, please take a look at this short clip about the history of the band and the release of their deluxe remastered edition of Ten. I will not spend too much time in this introductory post giving back story about the band. I hope that I can flush out all of that history in the detail in the coming months:
Amongst my friends, I have a terrible habit of hating something one minute and then loving it the next. Loving it so much, in fact, that the person who first introduced the thing to m, whatever it may have been, is flummoxed by how devoted I can become to something that just weeks ago I could care less about.
My introduction to Pearl Jam is a textbook example of this scenario. It is 1992, the year I graduated high school. My iPod playlist, had I had an iPod at the time, consisted of The Use Your Illusions albums by Guns and Roses, Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys, a little Sex, Sugar, Magic, by the Chili Peppers, and lots of Lynryd Skynrd. Don’t ask.
My friend’s and I have always had an unspoken competition about who discovers what first. Music, books, articles, we all want to be the first to say we found the next big thing. We still do it today, and while it may appear to be sophomoric, it keeps us on our toes. I had first heard Alice in Chains on 120 minutes and so laid claim to their discovery, while a friend who I always resented a bit had found Pearl Jam. Because of my immaturity and pig-headedness, I couldn’t admit that Pearl Jam was any good, for if I did, he would have out scored me in our little game.
Anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I am a bit obsessive when it comes to Pearl Jam today, so to hear that at one point I said, “I can’t get into them. They don’t have any rhythm,” would be shocked. It may sound sacrilegious, but that quote will always haunt me. I said it. I admit it. I was wrong.
Honestly, I hadn’t really even given the band a chance. I had only seen this SNL clip and was trying to be flippant:
I will wait till I get to Alive before I talk about the song and this performance in particular.
A few weeks later, the Pearl Jam juggernaut was gaining momentum worldwide. They appeared on MTV unplugged, they were performing at Lollopallooza, they were featured in the film Singles, and on constant rotation on MTV. Once I actually started to listen to the music, I knew that this was not a band I could afford to be flippant about. These songs spoke to me on a level that no music had ever done or has done since.
These were songs of pain and redemption, of abuse and survival. These were songs for victims who had overcome adversity. These were songs written about and for me. These were songs of healing. I took the music and locked myself away with it, as I have a tendency to do, and I came out reborn and baptized. Suddenly I didn’t feel alone, because I knew that there were at least five people out in the world who understood what it was like to be me. Broken. Hurt. Pissed and most importantly hopeful.
Pearl Jam’s music is not only filled with angst, as many people tend to portray it, it is a music that looks at the true nature of human suffering and pain and defies it.
Let us begin with the first song off of Ten- Once:
I have always related to the themes that catapulted Pearl Jam to be the spokesmen for the disenfranchised. I hope to explore the roots and nature of my angst and rage in the coming months, but it is worth noting that as early as the age of nine, I have felt a strong sense of victimhood and anger. These feelings were/are symptoms of a lonely childhood, alcoholism in the house, and abuse. Pearl Jam was music that could easly relate to feelings that had been festering in me since I was a child.It was as if I had finally found a voice to give life to my confusion and rage.
While I appeared to have a “normal” childhood and adolescence, I have always harbored my share of demons, and Pearl Jam was the first band that not only acknowledged that these demons were there, but openly invited them to come out and be examined. Pearl Jam has been my therapist since 1992 and has yet to let me down.
The song originated as an instrumental demo titled "Agytian Crave" that was written by Gossard in 1990. The instrumental was one of five songs compiled onto a tape called Stone Gossard Demos '91 that was circulated in the hopes of finding a singer and drummer for the group.
The tape made its way into the hands of Vedder, who was working as a gas station attendant in San Diego, California at the time. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him. Vedder recorded vocals for three of the songs on the demo tape, one of which was "Once", and mailed the tape back to Seattle. Upon hearing the tape, the band invited Vedder to come to Seattle and he was asked to join the band.
"Once" is the middle chapter of a trilogy of songs in what Vedder would later describe as a "mini-opera" he entitled "Mamasan", with it being preceded by "Alive" and followed by "Footsteps". "Once" tells the tale of a man's descent into madness which leads him into becoming a serial killer.
I admit it...what's to say...yeah... I'll relive it...without pain...mmm...
This song for me is about the idea that the past functions cyclically. We revisit times of trauma, feel healed, only to have to face them again. Although we have been damaged and scarred, by allowing ourselves the luxury of imagining an alternative past, we may help alleviate some of the pain. The irony is that even after coming to this realization, we are forced to deal with the painful reality, unaware where we are living in the time-lines of our lives, we are eventually forced to face the possibility of living beyond time. The lyrics fluctuate back and forth between the possibility of an unblemished past and the reality of pain. This oscillation between past and present, fantasy and reality, if we are not careful, the protagonist shows us -can lead to insanity.
Backseat lover on the side of the road I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play...
The chorus tells us that we are constantly forced to wage the battle between the past and the present. Reality versus fantasy. And of course there is the enticing idea of giving into insanity. Despite the pain we may have had control over in the past, we are ready to let go and give into what we have always wanted- a reality bathed in fantasy and insanity.
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah...
Oh, try and mimic what's insane...ooh, yeah... I am in it...where do I stand? Oh, Indian summer and I hate the heat I got a backstreet lover on the passenger seat I got my hand in my pocket, so determined, discreet...I pray...
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah, yeah...
It is interesting to note for anyone who has been following Pearl Jam since the early days how much their songs have evolved and changed. It is eye opening to go back and watch these early concerts and watch how much they have all changed. This post has already become longer than I had planned, so I will not comment much on Vedder's antics here. We still have the rest of Ten to go through for that, but it is great to see how young, reckless, and chaotic he was on stage. More on that later.
In closing, I have spent a lot of time with the song Once. I cannot count the number of times I have been alone screaming the words to the ghosts in my head. Although, I first heard this song in 1992, throughout the years it has been one of my go to songs for letting off steam and antagonizing my demons.
I remember a specific night some time in 1993/94? When my friend Anthony and I, walked to the edge of sanity and for a few drunken hours considered the possibility of madness. Screaming around the room, knocking over furniture, unhinged. Free.
An empty Latte cup. A young Chinese man with a hip haircut. Bored airport waitresses. Modest Mouse on the head phones swirl with the fog of insufficient sleep to assemble this moment. 9:22 am, somewhere on the globe. Soon it will be 8:27am, an hour ago and I will arrive.
I am a thirty-four old man wearing plaid print pants and low top vans. A royal blue t-short with an Elliott Smith silk screen in white. I am typing methodically on a Mac Book listening Dead Prez and Sun Kil Moon. I have an SLR camera, a video camera, a laptop , and an ipod. One might ask what am I documenting. I am not sure, but I am ready when it makes itself visible. I just identified myself by my possessions and my clothes; I am okay with this because it is this shell that walks these airport halls. What’s inside is still brewing. Perhaps a good subject for documentation.
I am reading The End of Education by Neil Postman. I am not sure what any of this data means, but I know if I were asked to create a sketch of who I wanted to be as a younger man, it would look eerily similar to the person sitting here right now. This creation is comforting. I have a beard and my hair is in a ponytail, I am a cliché, but one that somehow feels matchless.
My two best friends are in a border town in El Salvador and I sit in Shanghai. Last night I was in Kuala Lumpur and in a few hours I will be in San Francisco. I live in Doha and hope to move anywhere after that. My friends write of rain and delirium. I wrote of lattes and Macbooks. Three years ago we were all in Vietnam, experience what my wife calls the “bad times” and what I call the “awakening.” Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
It is finally quiet in my head. Below me, I see nothing more to investigate, but when I look up, I see only limitless possibilities. I am open to the idea that perhaps I am still disoriented, but I am comfortable with that. I will journey towards the possibilities, whether up or down, I will carry on. None of this means anything to anyone, not even me, but somehow it still begs to be heard. In the end, I know I will always end up here in the silence of my own mind.
My friend Ari just sent me an email with a short story written by a friend of his. I do not know this third-party friend and feel strange quoting his words, because I cannot adequately cite his work. I have no name, no website or blog to which to lead you; I only have his words.
As I sit in the airport in Shanghai at 8:39 am waiting for an eleven hour flight that will take me home to San Francisco, the words seem to resonate with me:
To me, life is all about exalting in those rare moments of clarity, brilliance and elation one is so fortunate to get every so often. They are small and far too short but so intensely, purely wonderful -- maybe, if you are lucky, a total of 5 minutes a week (but too often far less), reveling in the wonder of the beauty of the world and not wanting to be anywhere else with anyone else. You have them. You know what I am talking about. You stay alive because those moments of peace and happiness and wonder are better than any drug or religion or any fiction or construct -- they happen half from good fortune and half from worthy effort, and you just get them and they are the reward, and that's why you'd never choose to be dead over alive because you'd be crazy to miss out on even one more chance of that kind of moment being available to you.
The sun is shinning all around me and outside a strange social experiment called China rummages in and around the earth searching, searching. The soft music plays in my earphones and in a few hours I will cross the Golden Gate knowing that I am home. I have no idea what home means anymore, but I know the feeling this golden span gives me. It is something very similar to what was described above.
Today marks the year year anniversary of when I stopped drinking. I would hope that by this stage I would have stopped keeping track of the days, and to an extent I have, but it feels good to know that it has been three years.
I can't imagine ever drinking again, the idea of unleashing that beast no longer feels scary, but unnecessary. I was very nervous about how I would deal with my identity as a non-drinker when I first quit, but it has been quite easy. I have written a lot about addiction here, so I have nothing more to add, no profound insights on sobriety. I just wanted to state that I feel certain I have made the right choice, for all the insecurities and angst I display here on this blog, I am sure not drinking is the best decision I have ever made in my life.
I have done a lot of whining here at Intrepid Flame the last few months. I have, selfishly, assumed that being fired from my job was some sort of global calamity. I have assumed that being out of the classroom has somehow been on par with the millions of people who never have the opportunity to work for enough food for their families, and here I am drinking five-dollar cappuccinos, upset because I have to wait eight more days to start my summer vacation which includes air trips to Kuala Lumpur, San Francisco, and New Mexico.
I am not proud of my behavior, but it has been partly beyond my control. We often react to our lives in ways that are incomprehensible to ourselves. My wife and I were arguing this morning in the car. She asked me to stop being so grumpy and get out of my funk. I am tired of being in Doha. It is hot and the sky is filled with a ten-day-old sand storm. I haven’t seen the sun in just as long, and I yearn for the days when it was simply hot and stifling. It is hard not to be grumpy.
I try not to be so selfish. I see the laborers on the side of the road working themselves to near death for little to no money as I drive by in my air-conditioned car. I make myself sick. I hate Doha more for the guilt it inflicts on me. It is a vicious cycle. But really, my time here has got to be a test. I do not want to be the kind of person whose happiness is determined by his environment. I want to be able to wake up and see the sky filled with sand and smile. I want to walk the streets feeling the 120-degree heat and bask in it. I want to delve into the freedom of boredom and come out refreshed and lighter.
These are not easy tasks to accomplish. Our egos demand more attention than we may want to give them. I am writing this post as an apology to my wife for being in a constant state of funk. We have an amazing summer ahead of us, and we are lucky enough to be careless and free- even here for the next eight days. We have our four-year anniversary to celebrate, as well as day-after-day of relaxing and spending time as a family. Who cares if the weather is not perfect? Who cares if there is nothing to do? Who cares about anything? We are alive and free to do what we like.
In closing, I received the following email that put things in perceptive:
Dear Intrepid Flame,
Thank you for your writing. I have no idea who you are or where you came from, but somehow I stumbled upon your blog several months ago and fell in love with your words - your wisdom. I couldn't go to sleep tonight without letting you know that - for what it's worth :)
No, I'm not a stalker or flatterer or a maniac at that. Just another intrepid explorer sharing her thoughts. Hope this finds you well and I wish you and your loved ones all the best.
Peace, Sama
Thank you Sama. It is funny, when I started this blog I wanted to have a huge following and connect with thousands of people, but since then I have learned that I write more for my own sanity. Having said that, it is always reassuring when someone out there in the universe hears my voice and makes the connection. I am glad you find my ramblings wise, because I simply see my words and thoughts as they are: life. We all connect to it in our own way, it is reaffirming when we connect in the same way.
I just finished reading A Million Pieces by James Frey and it has left me gutted. I did not and do not care about the publicity surrounding the accusations of its factuality, his dealings with Opera, or the unfortunate involvement the book had with the American media hype machine.
My two best friends read the book; one claimed that Frey’s memoir was one of the top five books he has ever read (he has read some great books), and the other friend ordered that no one was allowed to even mentioned the name Frey in his presence because the books was so appallingly bad, that it made him psychically sick. I was meant to be the tiebreaker. I succeeded and I failed. I am left gutted. I am empty. I am complete. I read this book looking for something. I am not sure what that was or if I found it, but I know that it was vital I read it.
I hated the first two hundred pages. Anthony was right and for a while it appeared that together we were winning. Frey’s gimmicky prose grew tiresome and downright boring. His self-loathing, perhaps because it hit too close to home, was irksome in its persistence. Page after page of choppy dialectical sentences about fear, hate, Fury, rage, redemption, were miring me in a pit of hatred toward Frey. I often found myself bored by his hopelessness. What I was not realizing at the time was that he was spiraling the reader to the bottom. Once there, Frey carefully directs us back into the light.
The second half of the book explores Frey’s personal strategies towards not only overcoming his addictions, but overcoming them on his own terms. His struggle demonstrates that if we look inward and harness our individual power to connect with simple truths and choices, we can bring about change in our lives.
Readers of this blog know that the topic of addiction is a very personal one for me. In my last post I claimed that perhaps we are all addicted to a variety of things in our lives, but what Frey’s books showed me was that this view may not necessarily be true. Normal people do not face the struggles he does, that we do. Our addictions are not only with drugs or alcohol, but also with the constant struggle of addiction itself, the constant need to consume and annihilate the world, to use it up, the constant need for more more more. I can relate to this hunger in a very real way. I was never addicted to crack, never slept in the street, never lost my job or family, but I have sat in many a dark room alone contemplating my demons. Frey paints a very vivid and relatable world of what it feels like to be a prisoner to addiction. The constant battles we face, giving into and resisting temptations.
Nothing beyond desires exist. Intertwined within my mind they think we are one, but I know they control me. We argue and yell, threw bottles against walls, as if rage were a practical remedy. Let us be. Let us not need. I am gone. Empty eyes stare, but reveal nothing. When did you become my enemy?
In the novel, Frey often talks about his battle with an uncontrollable Fury. He explores the roots of the Fury and finds them sprouting in his childhood. An ignored and misdiagnosed ear infection results in two years of agonizing pain for the two-year-old Frey. His cries are ignored and as a result his therapist feels Frey developed a sense of abandonment and pain. Coupled with an addict’s genes, it is not a far reach to see how his life spiraled to rock bottom. Frey himself argues that addiction is a series of choices, and that we cannot blame childhood trauma or poor genes for our addictions, but reading the book made me examine my own rage, and I tried to track its source.
My search led to some places that even I keep private, but I realized that my childhood was one long scar still healing. This self-exploration made me see the various traumas in my life and how they led me to be so angry and self-destructive. Filled with suicides, abuse, exile, and loneliness it is a surprise I didn’t end up homeless or in rehab. I did however, see a pattern develop in the types of people I gravitate toward. Through Frey’s words I began to hear a repeating voices of my heros:
Elliott Smith Eddie Vedder Kurt Cobain Anthony Kedis Hunter S. Thompson Henry Miller
Any one of them could have been the narrator of A Million Pieces. All scarred. All healing. Some fight on. Some quit. But we all share the pain of the struggle. In our words, my own, Frey’s, Smith’s and the rest, we hope to find solace and peace. I hope through these words you find peace and understanding as well.
Like Frey, I pride myself for moving past my addictions or better dealing with them on my own terms. I still feel such guilt and shame for not being able to fully “appreciate” everything I have. I know I have a great life. I know I am strong. I know I am doing “well.” But the doubt and the pain still exist. This is the nature of the struggle with addiction. Nothing is ever enough.
He uses the iChing and I turn to Zen. The fact that they are very similar philosophies reassures me in the power of their simplicity. But that is for another post. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is dealing with addiction in any form, or for those of you that want to better understand the mind of an addict. The prose can become tiresome, but give it a chance and see if it can open some doors and shed some light for you as it did for me.
Whether the story is true or exaggerated is a moot point. Fiction is designed to help us better understand the world and our role in it. This book does just that!
Reality, when one examines it closely and becomes fully aware of its magnitude, rarely disappoints. I have been mired in conjecture and wishful thinking since March 10th. Today, I finally accepted my reality, and it looks a little something like this:
I will be living in Doha for one more year. I made a mistake coming here. I made a mistake of over exposing myself on the Internet and was fired for it. I chose to come here. I chose to take the risk. The results of my actions are mine alone. I am not a victim. I am healthy. I am sound of mind, and I sleep in a warm king size bed in an air-conditioned house on a nightly basis. I have more than enough food to eat and my family income is more than sufficient for our needs. I made more money tutoring a kid tonight than some people make in months.
I have the most beautiful little girl who has ever walked the earth. She is a constant source of magic in my life that I try not to ever take for granted. I have a beautiful wife who loves and supports me. We are best friends and I love her company. My family has never done anything but love me unconditionally. They call and are concerned by my daily angst. I have a group of friends who inspire and motivate me to be a better person. I talk to them often about books, education, and life.
I have access to state of the art cameras, video equipment, and computers to express myself and connect with the world. I have two guitars, which I love dearly, and two cats that I don’t give enough attention to. I generally love the world and am aware of the little things like the flowers blooming and being tossed by the sun and sand in my garden.
I have over six thousand songs on my iTunes that are a constant source of strength and courage for me. I have been offered a job next year here in Doha that will pay me more than I was making at my last job and allow me to work with K-5 kids. This will be very rewarding for me.
I will spend my summer in Malaysia swimming with my daughter, catching up with friends, going to movies, and relaxing. We will spend some time in Angkor Wat and Phuket. I will take many photos that will touch people who see them. I see the world in a unique way. We will become tan. My beard will grow. So I am not moving to Belgium or Japan. Maybe they are right- what is meant to happen will happen. Who am I to try and force anything else? Reality is just fine with me. Finally, I feel it…there it is, Peace.
"I found the key, but returned to find an open door." Pearl Jam
I haven’t worked for almost two months. No classroom, no lessons, no books, no students. Although, I have spent the last eight years interacting with teenagers on a nearly daily basis, I haven’t seen someone under thirty for over sixty days. What does that mean? Well about a month ago it meant a near complete breakdown of my psyche. I had woven my identity so intensely with my job, that when it was yanked from me, I flipped out. Coupled with anxiety about the future of my family, the episode proved to be a difficult one to get over.
In times of crisis we chose our battles and look for our crutches. Unable to disappear at the bottom of a bottle, I had to find alternative remedies. I look to Zen, and while at first the philosophy seemed to mock me and point out more problems than solutions, I think in the long run it helped me find this clear space. The lesson I focused on is this one: Take the middle road. When riding a roller coaster it is not wise to become overly excited about the ups, only to become disappointed in the drops. We have all ridden life coasters before and the important thing is to remember that, “This too shall pass…” no matter good nor bad, “This too shall pass…”
With my new mantra, I am now sitting in a coffee shop eating a tomato and mozzarella panini, listening to the Michael Franti, wondering where I went wrong. Why did I resort to what a friend referred to as “emotional outburst emails?”
At the worst of my troubles, I wasn’t strong enough to go straight to my Zen practice-simply sit and concentrate on the reality of the now. Instead I chose to publicly grasp at whichever emotions were available to me at the time. The fact that I wasn’t allowed to harness the anger I was dealing with in a public nature intensified the situation. I chose instead to deal with anxiety, self-pity, and confusion.
Enough of the past, I am here to present the flip side of the breakdown. I want to highlight my current state of mind. A few minutes ago, I was walking through a parking lot, iPod headphones making me bop as I walked. Things seemed to be working. I made sense. The sun was shining. I didn’t hate everyone I saw. Things were back to normal. I was hopeful.
I have been busy. Maybe I am filling the void with work, projects, and time fillers, but I need something. I have created a new classroom. I have reconnected with the people I need most, students. The sense of needing something to do has been enough to make this project at least appear important.
I have a list of video projects, podcasts, art projects, songs to record on deck to fight off my irrelevancy. Please don’t shake your heads, I can feel you thinking that I am simply filling my life with arbitrary projects, so I won’t face the fact that I am not happy with my current situation, but let me assure you that while this may be the case to a certain extent, I don’t know what else to do. I am looking forward to eating better, exercising, and spending the summer in Thailand.
Believe it or not, I have a million things to do, so I must go. I just wanted to touch base and say that I am fine and ready to move on. A few job leads are hot in Doha, but no need to get excited. I am taking the middle road and spending each moment as best I can.
I am an advocate for words. I have faith in their objectivity and power. I am perturbed and often feel the need to defend them when they are shackled by connotations, either positive or negative, and forced to mean things they do not necessarily want to mean. Armed with dictionaries and thesauri, I see myself as a benevolent arbitrator for words sentenced to miscomprehension.
So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, today we will be hearing the case of the word addiction and its derivative addict. These words have been hijacked by the war on drugs and its conservative puppet masters. When presented with the word addict, most people are forced to imagine dirty sex-fiend junkies, wallowing in their own filth as they follow every hedonistic urge, but I am here to argue that we are all addicts dealing with our own unique compulsions, and if we expose our addictions, we will see that we are all obsessed with many things. I will prove that the very nature of life is addiction. The question is not who is an addict and what is their vice, but rather how do we face our addictions and see them for what they are?
I have been an addict for as long as I can remember. Before you judge me, please let me present the word on trial for closer examination:
someone who is so ardently devoted to something that it resembles an addiction
What is addiction you may ask?
The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
If we look at the definition above than it could be argued that we are all ardently devoted to something. When seen as passion, we applaud addiction, but when we become obsessive, we are told we have a problem.
Perhaps I have gone too far down the wrong track, let me back up and better explain my case. I was in the third grade when I first became cognizant of the emptiness that would cloud the rest of my life. Even as a child I was fully aware of a small void that seemed to fluctuate in size and follow me everywhere I went. The mistake I made as child was feeling that I would have to spend my life trying to fill this empty space. It was then at the age of ten that I started my obsession with filling this emptiness. I forced myself to constantly function in a state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that was psychologically or physically habit forming to such an extent that its cessation would cause me severe trauma, in short I became addicted to finding meaning in my life. I became obsessed with trying to fill a hole that was never meant to be filled.
Throughout my life, I have been addicted to many things, but as I look back I see that every obsession was rooted in one addiction, a desperate attempt to fill this emptiness.
I am here to argue that everybody is addicted to filling the emptiness in their lives on their own terms, but more importantly I want to share the lesson that I have learned, which is that this void need not be filled, on the contrary it is vital that it remains to allow us room to breath. This nothingness is the source of all life and not only do we not need to close it, we must learn to nurture and cultivate it.
Reality is empty and meaning is an illusion. Life need not have meaning. When we try to assign experience with value we are clouding the emptiness of reality. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an nihilist, I am simply arguing that it would behoove us to simply sit and become aware of the emptiness of life. We should not be afraid of it.
The more we throw into the abyss, the more traumatic our lives will become. We will find ourselves in a state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming to such an extent that its cessation would cause severe trauma, the definition of addiction.
I have also realized there is no healthy way to fill the empty space. Some people try to fill the gap with: love, god, politics, social-action, music, art, and family. We think of these actions as healthy, while other peoples’ choices are looked down upon as vices: money, consumerism, sex, drugs, war, and violence.
A few weeks ago, as my life was falling apart around me, I crawled into bed in the middle of the day with the shades drawn and confronted my emptiness. I saw all the things I had used to feed my addiction to finding meaning in life. I saw my vices and virtue swim in-and-out of the abyss in the darkness, when I suddenly realized I didn’t have to try so hard. I am here now to air my list of addiction as a way to expunge them and make room for my emptiness. I invite you to take a look and think about what you use to fill your emptiness.
There is no judgment here, there is simply an addict dealing with his addiction to life. Some of my habits may appear virtuous and worthy of praise, while others may seem manic, neurotic or down right psychotic, but these labels serve no useful purpose. Because as I said earlier, any attempt to fill the void is a mistake. I am trying to learn how to swim in the nothingness of my life. I have spent so much time and energy chained to my habits that it feels good to let them go and float about in this darkness. Below are the things I have used to fill the emptiness in my life:
Art, the need to connect with other human beings, music, literature, words, language, drugs, alcohol, love, friendship, tattoos, technology, politics, social justice, near death experiences, film, writing, the search for god, spirituality, women, poetry, teaching, traveling, being an outcast, fitting-in, work, communism, socialism, Buddhism, capitalism, vegetarianism, the end of isms, philosophy, education, concerts, food, television, fatherhood, the need to share every aspect of my life with as many people as possible, blogging, photography, science, rebellion, revolution, marriage, gadgets, clothes, sense of style or lack there of, and gardening.
I am sure I could think of more, because ultimately everything we do is an attempt to escape from simply sitting and seeing that life is empty, and that this emptiness is okay.
After I quit drinking and using drugs a few years ago, I thought I had cured my major addictions, but now I see that drugs and alcohol are merely minor aspects of addiction. I will always be an addict, until I can sit and observe reality and become comfortable in the void I discovered as a child.
So what do you use to fill the void? What are you addicted to?
I am reading a book called Three Cups of Tea, by David Oliver Relin about a man named Greg Mortenson, who after failing to summit K2 stumbles into a small village in Northern Pakistan called Korphe and promises to build the people of the village a school. Reading this book coupled with my friend Jason’s work with his school the Daraja Academy has got me thinking. What am I doing? What is my purpose?
The last few days have been a series of intensive soul searching journeys for me to find out the answers to these questions. While it may appear that I am being a bit melodramatic about the whole affair, I do take my life goals and plans very seriously. I have never wanted to simply live your average middle class life. Even as a kid, I imagined that I would do bigger things. I imagined that someday, someone would write books about things that I had done, or better yet I would write them myself.
While I am not shy about admitting that I have had my share of self aggrandizing feats, I still feel like my life is building. I haven’t done enough.
That is when it hit me; tonight, here in bed, as my wife lay sleeping reading about how this guy Mortenson had a huge set back in his plan, and his girl friend dumped him I realized just how alone and miserable he must have felt in the Richmond district of San Francisco. I felt sorry for him. He was not some hero out changing the world. He was a mortal who was broken. I felt connected to him.
I guess what I am trying to say is that we needn’t change the world all at once and all alone. We can allow it to change us, back and forth, until we become something we can recognize and live with. I have been racked with guilt that I came to Doha to make money, and that being fired was the price I paid for turning my back on my true nature to work for an oil company school, but my true nature is to simply be the peace that I want to spread. The kids I interacted with here needed education and guidance just as much as the kids in Kenya or Korphe. And I was, until they pulled the plug, getting through to them.
I am a teacher. That is what I was born to do. I was put on this earth to interact with people and try to better understand each other. I prefer working with young adults, because that is the age I felt I needed someone most, eighth grade to be specific. I am realizing that I do not need a classroom to teach. I simply need to be the peace I seek here and now. Where ever I am, interacting with whomever I meet. I am not angry at myself or others for how they perceive my actions. Perhaps there is a hint of hostility in the way I see the world, and that is where I need to start the change.
I may not be building schools in Pakistan or Kenya, but I am on a path that will lead me some place worth being. Actually this very path, my journey is in itself the most amazing thing I will ever experience. And if there is no one there to write the book about it when it is done, you could say you were reading it here all along.
End note: For all the edubloggers out there, here is my question. This was originally written for my personal blog, as a way for me to sort out my thoughts and share my thoughts with the small community of people that I have built there, but I also see the value of posting it here. This is where I am having a hard time separating private from professional. Wouldn't other teachers or perhaps parents who would read a blog post like this not benefit, from seeing this side of a teacher? I guess I will just double post till I figure it out.
This is where I am right now. This post may be a bit messy and jumbled and all over the place, but like I said here is where I am. A few days ago I received this Rumi poem from my mom:
An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits, when they are held up to each other, that's when the real making begins. that's what art and crafting are.
A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise, the trunks of tree must be cut and cut again so they be used for fine carpentry.
I have wanted to write to her and thank her ever since. I have wanted to write something about it, but after a week it has simply floated in my subconscious, and now I offer it to you. I am not sure who you are any more, but I realize now that you have the power to take my job and restrict my freedom. Funny, cause I thought no one was reading these words, and now you are so ever present in how I think, feel, write, and live. I am no longer free.
I am not angry at you any more for taking away my voice, because, really, you have helped me find it. I repeat myself so many times here that even I get tired of it, but I am sorry if I offend. I am not sure what is so offensive about trying to understand peace. I suppose those hell bent on war find peace offensive. There is nothing I can do about that. Remember the enemy is within don’t confuse me with him.
Speaking of Elliott Smith, I have been listening to him a lot lately. I also received this email from my best friend last night:
People can offer sympathy, direction, answers, but we know all of this amounts to little. It's easy to draw connections and sharedness to people through their emotional states, but in the end sadness, depression, anxiety are terribly isolated (and isolating) events that we work out (and through) alone. Whatever i can do to be there for you, please let me know, and if its just this all the better.
It makes me feel good in the same way that Elliott Smith does. I locked myself in my room today with the following books, my guitar, and wrote three songs. Here is the first one called River. I hope to have the others recorded and on a Youtube near you this week.
I couldn’t sleep last night because of my back pain and some kind of weird dehydration. So I sat at the computer and wrote this poem:
12:39 am
can’t sleep my mind is full of indecisions not mine to not make
i can’t piss because of dehydration or urinary track infection or some other unexplainable abuse of my body my back still stress aches,
i sit in my underwear freezing in an overly air conditioned house in the desert drinking cup after cup of ice cold water hoping i can piss it all out and get some rest
the words drip out one by one i drink my water, and read Bukowski poems they have been the only thing to ever make things right
I am not sure, should I apologize to you for using the word piss? Where has my freedom gone? Are you still there? I figure that I am paid to teach poetry and sometimes in poetry people use the word piss. If that is not appropriate, I am sorry. Don’t blame me. Blame the poets.
I have been reading a lot of Bukowski. Is that okay? Some people go to the Gospels for guidance, I go to ole Hank. Here is what he had to say:
nobody but you
nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit, and/or die quietly inside.
nobody can save you but yourself and it will be easy enough to fail so very easily but don’t, don’t, don’t. just watch them. listen to them. do you want to be like that? a faceless, mindless, heartless being? do you want to experience death before death?
nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it
think about it. think about saving your self your spiritual self your gut self your singing magical self and your beautiful self save it don’t join the dead-in-spirit
maintain your self with humor and grace and finally if necessary wager your life as you struggle, damn the odds, damn the price
only you can save your self
do it! do it!
then you’ll know exactly what I am taking about.
So there you have it. Writing poems, songs, while reading to Bukowski and Elliot Smith. It ain't pretty but it gets the job done. Now, it is 1:56 pm. I am thirty-three years old and waiting for my daughter to wake up, so I can take her to water our garden and play in the water. It will be about 105 degrees and our first tomato may be ready to eat. I have been looking forward to that for three weeks. We will listen to something happy and cheerful. We will get wet. We will dance. I will wonder if there is anybody teaching my students, right now, in my classroom to:
think about saving their self their spiritual self their gut self their singing magical self and their beautiful self
But then, I remember that nobody taught me how to do that. I just kind of figured it out on my own, with the help of some friends, family, books, and my freedom to write and make mistakes. So I am sorry if I offend, but like Hank says- there is a lot at stake here. This is my life and it is the only one I have. I have chosen the power of art to save me, and I am not about to give up on it now.
Check back tomorrow, I am sure I will be some place else....
Lately, I have had several friends ask me how I like living in Qatar, and rather than send out several, however well thought-out or well intentioned personal emails, I have decided to simply write a blog post that chronicles my thoughts and feelings about living in Doha after a few months.
This place is not a city. It is a series of shabbily built malls and villas connected with miles of constructions sites and rubble. There is little to no sense of culture, unless you consider slavery a highlight of civilization. I am not trying to be judgmental, so let me qualify my words: whatever hints of culture there may be here I Doha, they are hidden by compound walls, abayas, and a distrust of foreigners and anything that deviates from the homogeneous, Islamic, conservative ethos that prevails the desert wind. I am not sure if this isolated closed hospitality is due to the Bedouin roots of the people here, or if it is the sense of entitlement that a trillion dollar GNP brings, but one does not feel welcome in Doha. You are not meant to make eye contact with the heavily made up eyes as they peak behind the black veils in the local mall, nor are you invited to see what happens behind the doors of the fortress walls that line the streets.
I think of cities I love: New York, San Francisco, Paris, and the one commonality is that these are places where people from all over the world spill out onto streets and bleed into the city’s very fiber, but here people only drive recklessly in their Toyota Land Cruisers and give you dirty looks if your eyes deviate from the road. Having said that there is a sense of satisfaction that comes from being a long haired tattooed person blasting Tupac’s Picture Me Rollin’ in the car as I drive the sand swept streets, because I realize that I have seen so much more of what the world has to offer than most of the people living here will ever allow themselves to see. From outside its cage, ignorance is an even uglier creature.
Wow! That was a bit of a tirade, because the thing I find the most fascinating about my time here is that although by the sound of it I should be miserable, I am totally content. I guess after years of traveling and living overseas, and being a slave to the grass-is-always-greener mindset, I am learning that that one’s environment should play a small role in their overall acceptance and appreciation for their daily lives.
Instead of looking over the fence or beyond the horizon at places I could be living or things I am missing, I am looking carefully at the things that give me pleasure where I am. This list is short yet sufficient. Number one has to be the time I spend with my daughter. It doesn’t matter where I live or what I have, what matters is the quality of time I can spend with her. One could argue that perhaps that time could be better spent in a place that has more trees, or is closer to water, or a place that has parks or shade, but I think the biggest lesson the desert is teaching me is how to make something out of nothing. By having to focus on the things that give me pleasure on their own, I am realizing how valuable they are.
This leads me to my second sources of happiness and coping mechanism: My garden. This small patch of land that I have transformed from rubble to a tiny green eco-system is both literally and symbolically my answer to the inhospitality of Doha. It is my small oasis in the midst of everything I find difficult about living here. First and foremost, I’ve created it from nothing. Out on my street, I literally swept away garbage, dirt, and left over construction material, and I created a small patch of soil and life. In it now sits a bed of flowers and cacti. Weeds and other plants have somehow made there way into my little Eden. The other morning as I was watering my grass with Kaia, we spotted a Praying Mantis. I wondered out loud how it knew to find my small patch of green in the desert. I allowed it to walk on my finger as Kaia looked on with awe. It is moments like this that remind that I don’t need to be in Paris to have a good time.
The third factor that helps me keep my sanity is my lovely wife. The longer we are together the more I am amazed at how good of friends we are. I couldn’t imagine spending this much time with anyone else in the world. It is very difficult to explain this kind of connection. I guess people who have had it know what I mean, and every one else will spend their whole life looking for it.
Finally, I have my music, my books, my writing, my computer obsession, my work, my guitar, and my overall sense of adventure. Every experiences is a learning one, and so while I may not love the city, I know that these years will be the ones that will start with the line, “When I lived in Doha, we…..” and as any world citizen knows you can never have too many phrases that begin like that.
So how is life in Doha? It is good because I am aware enough to know how I am living it. I am mindful of my expectations and disappointments. It is good because I am living honestly with myself, and I know what I want from life. It is good because I am exploring my symbolic desert and creating oases that need constructing. It is good because it is here and now, and I am not hiding from any of it. And at the end of the day, if you live this way you will be happy where ever you are…
The weather is becoming cooler here. It no longer feels like a frontal assault every time you open the door to a place that is not air-conditioned. They say that by November it will actually be enjoyable: cool nights and cloudless agreeable days.
My weekend:
Thursday night found me in my front yard hosting a pre-party for one of the biggest parties of the year. I didn’t plan on going. Every year one of the teachers from our school invites two hundred and fifty people to her compound clubhouse for an Oktoberfest. Standing around watching people get drunk while I stayed sober didn’t sound like my cup of tea, however sitting on our new patio furniture smoking my hookah, chit chatting with new friends before they went off to party, did.
Obviously they talked me into going. At one point I found myself walking home through the desert at one am as a blood soaked moon lay crescent I the sky. Counting down a few more days till the end of Ramadan. The party sucked. I watched people get wasted on Jell-O shots and squirts of Tequila from a super soaker, as they told me how much they admired me for not drinking. I shared a few of my stories, like the X-mas tree jail tale to the awe and pleasure of my new drunken friends. Maybe next time I will roll out some cocaine or acid stories, I told them. They looked at me like I was HST, although they have no idea who he is. I felt so cool being sober. Since everyone was drunk, I was the odd man out. Once again I found a way to experience my own reality.
The next day: ran errands, took Kaia to the pool and watched an episode of American Dad that I bought on iTunes and watched on my ipod connected to my TV. I am making technology work for me.
Today, I collected nine 11x14 and three 8x10 photo for the frames in our house. I cleaned them all and put up my photos throughout the house. It is nearly done. A large mirror still needs to be mounted on the wall, and we still need to put up a few wall hangings form Laos and Vietnam and we can relax.
Then I went to the dump to collect two carloads of rocks for the little garden I am building outside my curb. Pics coming soon. After that I was off to the Plant Souq, or market, to buy some greenery for my enclosed yard. I bought two Bougainvilleas, a Frangipani, and a few other trees. It was dark by the time I got home, so I will plant them tomorrow. Gardening may be my new Zen meditation thing, if I can keep it up. I will keep you posted
I am reading a mediocre Kurt Vonnegut booked, called Galapagos, so I have to get to bed, if I want to finish it so I can get back to my Vidal series, Hollywood arrived last week.
It is ten p.m. on day four of our arrival here in Doha. I am lying in my king-size bed, adorned with sheets from Zara home, typing away on a brand new MacBook given to me by our school. A L’Occitane Orange Blossom candle flickers beneath the central cooling system, and outside and across the street there sits a barren construction site; it is 90 degrees. The sun set hours ago; during the day it is 105.
I will write a more comprehensive post regarding my first impressions of Doha and the culture here, in which I will juggle and experiment with the several metaphors I am considering to describe this surreal place: A pearl, a secret, or the obvious one an oasis. I want to use this time to let my friends and family know the practical details of life here in the desert.
Let’s start with the house. We are still waiting for our shipment from Malaysia, so I will hold off on sending pictures until the house is presentable, but in the meantime let me try and paint you a picture with text. The house is one of ten villas on Al Waab Street. Street is an overstatement. We live in the middle of a sand field surrounded by a construction site. We are number 21, there is no reason why that should be important except that 21 is my lucky number. The houses are all brand new. While most people, myself included would automatically think that freshness, when it comes to housing, is good thing, I think it is a good idea to keep in mind that complications can arise when you live in a house that has, up till your move, been vacant. For example, there are no shower curtains in one of the bathrooms, or the shower that has doors leaks water into the bedroom, because the drain has been precariously placed on a small mound in the center of the shower floor instead of being at the end of a gentle slope. I don’t want to sound like I am complaining, so I will stop with this statement- A new house has glitches that need to be tended before it can be properly and comfortably inhabited. Our school has assured us that these slight tribulations will be tended to at the earliest opportunity. We are flexible and okay with that. The kitchen is big and spacious and there is lots of light!
Rather than describe the house in further detail, I will ask you all to be patient and wait for the pictures in a few weeks. But here is a fun little quirk about living in the desert. Out water tank sits outside in our backyard above the ground, thus nearly boiling the water that comes through our pipes, making it nearly impossible to take a shower or find any cold water from the taps during the day. That is all I am going to say for now about the house. It is nice; it is new, it is comfortable; it has potential. Kaia seems to love running around all the open space.
Let’s move on to our school. We have been attending daily orientation meetings and the school itself is one huge constructions site. (See the trend) There must be at least 200 South Asian men (There will be a future post about my thoughts on slave labor and the moral dilemmas one has living so close to exploitation. Doha has a population of 300,000 people with two thirds of them foreigners working construction and in the service industry.) working in the stifling heat to make sure the school will be opened by September fourth. There is no way this will happen. The administration is optimistic, but realistically there are still a few weeks till we can bring in students. I am not sure how they will handle this. We will wait and see. We are flexible and okay with that. (see the second trend) But Oh my god, what a school this will be. They are building an entirely new Middle and High School wing and it is out of control! The design is inspiring and I can honestly say more imaginative and practical that my university. It is all glass with spacious classrooms, a huge indoor pool, track, library, presentation rooms, a 700-person state of the art theater with orchestra pit, fountains, and a baseball field complete with dugouts and a concession stand. Again I will not send pictures now, because it looks like crap, but wait and see what this place will look like in a few months. Do you see the third theme here in Doha? Potential!
The curriculum and the Atlas Rubicon system they use to share the Understanding by Design Units is so far ahead of my last school that I am giddy with anticipation to get started. The admin seems friendly and professional, and the fellow new staff has potential for some friendships. All in all, we are settling in nicely.
I did, however, experience some culture shock the first few days. Doha is a place of contradictions. Where else can you see women dressed in full black Arabyas, with their entire faces covered as their children dance to Pussy Cat Dolls blaring from the radios and giant Plasma TVs at Carrefour at 9pm? The city itself is a barren, hot, dust covered, flat no man’s land, but then you can take a Gondola ride or go ice skating at the mall as you shop at the Gap, drink a Starbucks coffee and get the latest CD at the Virgin Megastore while people watching. There is so much to see, photograph and write about, but, I will write more on the city soon. There will be my trip to the falcon market, camel races, jet skiing in the bay, sailing lessons, 4WD in the sand dunes, camping at the inland sea near Saudi Arabia, trips to Jordan, Oman, Turkey, Iran, and Bahrain, and I am sure a million other things, like the fact that I was dancing with Kaia the other day to the 80’s hit Mickey as a Qatarti family looked on contemplating the birds and fish on my arms. Wahabi Islam I am here!
It is getting late and I must be up early tomorrow for work. I will have Internet hooked up at our house in a few days, so I can share the details as they dribble from my confused head. This place makes me think and feel uncomfortable and different, and believe it or not, that is why I like living overseas. I love the idea of living in a place that is so different than the places most people have lived. I love being able to say, “Oh yeah, when I lived in Doha things were….” Be patient. I think we will be here a while and I will do my best to find out what is really going in here, and I will keep you posted. In the meantime, we are busy finding a car, a nanny, waiting for our shipment, trying to get our cats imported, and all the other millions of things that must be done before you can sit back one night, put up your feet, sigh and say, “I am home again.”
There is nothing as dull and banal, and dare I say perfect as a routine. As a young, I guess I should say younger man, a predictable habitual lifestyle was like an anathema to everything I found important. I prided myself on spontaneity, impulsivity, and a live-in-the moment existence. The very idea of routines was the equivalent of death to me.
There is nothing quite like turning thirty, getting married, and having a baby to change the way a person sees everything. I am not here to espouse the idea that with age comes responsibly, or the ever so popular suggestion that we cannot simply wade through life only thinking of ourselves, that we must grow up at some point. No I am here to state that it is possible to develop, and yes even enjoy routines and a more sedate lifestyle, without feeling like your life is over. There is a middle ground between getting drunk on Tuesday mornings and passing out naked on your deck before noon and being buried in some bizarre suburban landfill death.
I have been in New York City now for two-weeks. It is amazing how structured my days have become. I wake up around 6:30 am courtesy of our baby alarm clock and take my daughter for a walk. (Actually this is every other day. My wife and I alternate and some days I can sleep in to the lazy hour of 8:30) Then it is back home for some play time and her morning nap, at which time I read, take a nap or doing some writing depending on my energy level. Around noon, it is time to shower and head off on our morning activity. Usually we head to a site in Brooklyn and try to be home by three for her afternoon nap, because a cranky, tired baby on the F train is no fun for anyone.
Yesterday, we went to a trendy little neighborhood called DUMBO and enjoyed the sun and water and the views.
Once home Kaia is back to sleep, hopefully for an hour, and after she wakes up, we are off for our afternoon walk, which usually consists of walking down Fifth Avenue and then back up Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. We get some ice cream, look into the shops and enjoy the sun as it brings about the soft glow of early evening and struggles to toss out the last of its heat. Our trip usually involves stopping at the bookstore where we toddle around the children’s section before we head home. Once home it is time to listen to some music, dance, play, eat dinner, and take a long bath. Kaia and I play in the tub then shower to rinse off. After she is asleep, my wife and I eat dinner, watch a movie, and head off to bed around ten.
I wish I would slow down and go into detail about how each of these seemingly mundane activities actually fills me with awe and wonder. It is so amazing to spend this time with the two people I love most and watch as we all grow as individuals and as a family. I wish I would write a bit about how I sat at the park at 7 am the other day watching Kaia play with a boy named Evo as his dad and I talked about how to help kids learn to share. I wish I could explain the thoughts in my head as I watched the clouds float over the scene below and felt as if my life, for that one instant was perfect.
I am not sure how I would have reacted to this scenario when I was twenty-two, but these days it feels pretty good. I have a friend who is currently in Brazil, sending me emails about how he is partying all night with strangers and whizzing through the streets of Sao Paulo. While his tales of adventure still keep me in their gravitational pull, I am left wondering would I trade my five o’clock walk for a night in Rio, and I am quite certain that my answer would be no.
I don’t ever want to be the sermonizing family man who says that everyone needs to grow up and accept his or her responsibility. I think people who preach in that vain do it out of frustration. I, on the other hand, am simply saying that for me, establishing these routines has proven helpful. I am learning to understand that life is lived in awareness and mindfulness of what we face everyday, not in searching for it beyond our daily routines.
Having said all that, I still have a soft spot for adventure and explortation. My entire life is sitting in a container in Malaysia waiting to be shipped off to a country in the Middle East I have never set foot in, and I have been living out of suitcases for the last two months, so I guess my sense of adventure is still more attentive that most people’s. As I mentioned earlier, there has to be some kind of moderation in life and as long as you are living mindfully and actively making decisions that affect your life you will be living it fully.
The Buddha says that all life is suffering, and once we become aware of the different causes of our suffering, we are able to alleviate it. But what does it mean to suffer? How can I, a person who is living a fairly comfortable bourgeois lifestyle possibly have the gall to say I suffer? Compared to the people being killed daily in Iraq or Sudan or any other number of places where people’s daily life is a constant bout with suffering, my life is a paradise.
The Buddha goes on to say that we all suffer in our own way and that the degree of suffering is not what is important, but the easing of suffering, first in ourselves and then the world, is what matters. I was laying in bed last night, thinking about what I was going to write in this post, when I started to think that perhaps the word suffering is a bit too harsh to describe what it is I am trying to write about. When I say suffer, please do not think only about gut wrenching pain and anguish, but try and envision the daily frustration we all face as well. The little things in our lives that make us wonder why it is that our lives are not perfect are just as painful as the big events. Sitting too long at a traffic light, laying awake all night because it is too hot, or wondering how to deal with one of your favorite places with a new identity are all forms of suffering.
I want this post to be an examination of what is causing me these frustrations and how I can help ease them in my life. I hope that the lessons I have learned and am learning will be helpful to whoever is reading as well. The Buddha also says that the cause of almost all suffering is the ego. The idea that we are alone and separate from everything in the universe is a major source of pain for all human beings. Because of this sense of isolation we feel that the world is happening to us. We first look to ourselves as victims of a universe hell-bent on not going our way. We constantly want to control our surroundings, because our ego, after all, sees itself as the center of everything that happens. So when it is too hot, we feel frustration because we cannot control the weather.
I think it is important to be able to try and relinquish as much of the control or even the need to control our surroundings as much as possible. Being able to go with the flow, no matter what happens to us is the first step to easing our daily doses of suffering. Here are a few examples of things that have happened to me the first few days we were here in New York that caused me some irritation. I now see that it was simply my ego trying to control things I could not.
1. The weather. It always surprises me how much of our lives are affected by the weather. Here is a phenomenon that we have no control over, but we are always bitching about it. It is too hot, too cold, too rainy, too dry, on and on we whine. But really, I think it would behoove us all to simply try and find enjoyment in whatever weather we face. I just spent two weeks in Sweden where it was cold and rainy, I dreamed of the hot sunny New York sky, but as soon as I arrived, I was complaining that it was too hot. So rather than go out and enjoy my time in Sweden, I sat forlorn staring at the gray sky outside, and once in NYC, I was reluctant to venture outside for fear of being too hot. The last few times I have been outside however, I have made a conscience effort to simply be aware of the heat on my skin and meditate on the sun, or to enjoy the breezes as they move through the tress and give me comfort. I try and remember that I am not a separate ego being affected by the weather; I am part of the system that generates it. I too am made of water like the clouds that bring the rain. I too inflate and deflate with air like the wind. Sorry I got a bit too new agey again…moving on. 2. My second big cause of suffering was that I didn’t have my technological tools. I had no Internet connection, no phone, and I am still not able to edit my photos or make my movies. I know this sounds shallow and superficial, but these connections with technology, for better or for worse, have become a major part of my life. And I felt very lonely without them. After a few days, I have figured out a few places to connect to the Internet and do my work, but I am still frustrated because I cannot get on whenever I want from the comfort of my own home. This is a great lesson in being able to go with the flow. The fact that I have to go to a café to do my work on the internet (I don’t only mean blogging or checking email, I need to buy tickets, take care of some certification issues, as well as try to fix my drivers license) is annoying, but it is teaching me that I shouldn’t allow something so trivial cause me undue aggravation. That is the situation that I am in and I must learn to deal with it. 3. Lastly there is the issue I raised in my last post: The idea that New York is a different place for me now that I am not drinking anymore and have a daughter. I feel like I am still trying to push my square peg into the old circular hole, when I really should be looking for a new hole all together. I remember when my wife was pregnant, thinking that I was tired of always thinking only of myself all the time; I wanted to start living for someone else. While I understand that living for someone else is the, or at least should be, the very foundation of marriage, we all know that our egos are far too strong for that; we still cling to the ideas of ourselves as individuals even in holy matrimony. My wife’s motto is, “more of the we and less of the me,” but as any married person can tell you that is harder than it sounds. Before my daughter was born, I was very much looking forward to her birth, because who else would be easier to bestow my love and affection on that my own little girl. Since she has been born, every time I think of something that is about me, I try and put her first. Being in New York is a perfect example of this role reversal. The last few days, I have been focusing on all the things that I can no longer do because of her, when I should be thinking of all the things I can do because of her. Like simply walking to the corner store with her in my arms to get a muffin and laughing at all the sounds we could make, or watching her feed the sheep at the prospect park petting Zoo. I am starting to really understand that the ability to love a child is the perfect lesson in Buddhism. First we love our children, and then see where this love will take us.
I guess that is all for now. Kaia is taking a nap as I write this. The weather outside is spectacular. We are off into Manhattan today, and I will post this later tonight as she is sleeping. I will stop at the café in a few minutes to buy my tickets for Lollapalooza and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs show I will be going to later this month. Who would have thought going with the flow could be so easy?
The heat is letting up a bit, and it is easier to breath. The day we arrived in New York City the mercury was up at around 100 degrees with an equal degree of humidity. Kaia had a hard time sleeping, probably due to the heat, jet lag, and the fact that she hasn’t been in her own room for almost a month. The first night we all laid in bed while she cried, moaned, and whimpered her way through the night. Last night, she slept all the way through, well almost. We sponged her down, changed her diaper, and gave her some water to get her back to sleep at around two thirty.
Being back in New York as a dad is proving to be a very strange phenomenon for me. I remember New York in many ways, but few of my memories involve timing my day to be on the train in order for Kaia to make her afternoon nap. I remember simply exploring the city usually with my iPod, a pack of smokes, and a toke of something to make the leaves crisp, but now I no longer smoke anything, and I need to be find places where my family and I can stroll and explore that don’t involve long stretches of suspect neighborhoods, too much sun, and long train rides that may result in a baby breakdown.
I am curious to see how my time here will affect my attitude of NYC. Gone are the leisurely meals at nice restaurants, nights at the movies, or shows. No longer will I stay out till four a.m. with friends getting drunk at some hipster bar in the East Village. NYC without a stop at the Cherry Tavern doesn’t seem to make sense. New York has always been associated with bars, restaurants, and swerving through the streets on foot or in cabs in some altered state. I have been here for three or four nights now, but I haven’t even ventured outside after seven, because that is when Kaia goes to sleep.
Regardless, of how things go, I will try and update my readers on the things I am learning while here in NYC as a dad who has given up drinking, partying, and staying up all night. Here are a few of my initial observations:
I am staying in Park Slope, Brooklyn at a friend’s house, and while at first I was a bit taken a back at the feel of the neighborhood, it is growing on me. Living in KL, I didn’t realize how sterile, clean, and artificial my surroundings were. I spent most of my time at pristine shopping malls, at a school built smack dab in the middle of one of the most expensive, synthetic areas of the city, so walking the streets of Brooklyn feels differently than it did three years ago when I lived here.
It’s funny how habit and predictability shape how we interact with the world. In Malaysia everything was so clean and easy, that I forgot how much I actually enjoy the grit and character of New York. The first morning after we arrived, we walked down the street for some bagels and coffee, but I was made nervous walking down the street with Kaia, because of some homeless guys sleeping in the park, but today we had an amazing stroll all the way down to Flatbush Avenue. We talked to a few people who commented on how pretty she was, and we enjoyed looking up and down all the side streets. I realized that the neighborhood where I am staying is amazing, in that it offers just enough of the trendy bars, restaurants, and boutiques that people look for in New York, but it is still authentically Brooklyn. I am not sure what that means, but it has something to do with old men sitting on the sidewalk waving to whoever is walking slow enough to notice them.
New York is a city for explorers. Like most cities, it begs you to stroll the streets and alleys ways looking for places to spend your time. While the last time I was here, that usually meant crawling into some dark bar to drink sake till three in the morning, this time it will have to mean something entirely different. We are off to the petting zoo in Prospect Park later today. I am pretty sure that with an open mind and the ability to find something worthwhile in everything that we do that will prove to be just as exciting. Although it is cliché, I firmly believe in the idea that life is the journey and not the destination is entirely true, so with no place to be and nothing to do for a month in New York, I cannot wait to see what we find.
Oh and by the way, a thunderstorm cleared away the humidty and the city is sparkling today.
This quick post is for those of you who stop by here regularly and are wondering where I have been. I spent the last eleven days visiting with my family in Sweden. I have a lot to say about the thoughts I have had about what it feels like for an only chilld to hangout with six aunts and uncles, but now is not the time nor the place. I am off to bed, tomorrow we are off to the airport- next stop NYC! I hope to be able to post more regularly, but don't hold your breath. I will be enjoying summer time in one of my favorite places on earth.
Here is a picture I took, when I went for a quick sail with my uncle on his boat. Summer in Sweden is grand!
