It's Not So Bad

Sitting conspicuously alone on the sands of Point Dume at dusk, I couldn't help but be bemused by the chorus of "It's not so bad" blaring from my headphones. Over and over again, Dido's sampled angelic voice singing "It's not so bad..... It's not so bad..."

-I'm alone ...

"It's not so bad...."

-I'm broke ...

"It's not so bad ..."

-LLS

"It's not so bad ..."

And as the crimson sun gently kissed the western horizon, transforming the once azure sky into an amethyst tableau, I felt for a brief second, that it really wasn't so bad.

A Question of Time

Sometimes I don't blame them
For wanting you
You look good
And they need something to do
Until I look at you
And then I condemn them
I know my kind
What goes on in our minds

-Depeche Mode (Martin Lee Gore)

Obsession

You are an obsession
You're my obsession
Who do you want me to be
To make you sleep with me

-Animotion (Holly Knight/Michael Desbarres)

Time to get up off the mat

As I sipped an overpriced beer atop a Pacific lounge crowded by the "beautiful" L.A. people, I felt like a cowering ant lost amongst a forest of giants. And then I began to wonder why I felt so out of place. Was it the reflection of twilight off their glowing skin, their picture perfect bodies and outfits, or the confidence and arrogance with which they beamed?

Get The Balance Right

There's more besides joyrides
Little house in the countryside
Understand, learn to demand,
Compromise, sometimes lie

Get the balance right, get the balance right ...

But always remain ultimately selfish ...

You think you've got a hold of it all
You haven't got a hold at all
When you reach the top, get ready to drop
Prepare yourself for the fall, you're gonna fall

It's almost predictable

-Depeche Mode (Martin Lee Gore)

Sometimes a little flash is what's required

I was going over some of the blog entries and I noticed many, if not all, have a hauntingly dark tone to them. Chalk it up to years of listening to Depeche Mode.

But this morning I woke up with a rather sunny disposition, a rarity in my life to be sure. So to mark this momentous occasion and break the monotony of melancholy, I'm going to link to a friend of mine who exudes sunshine. She's an entirely different kind of leopard.

Time can never mend, The careless whispers of a good friend

A true best friend, I believe, knows when to tell me the truth and when to color it to protect my fragile ego. Above all she is always on my side cheering and rooting for me.

A complicated juggling act, but that's what friends do.

Even when you fall on your face due to your own carelessness, a friend should first pick you up, dust you off, and embrace you as you sob. He should never kick you when you're down by admonishing you for your stupidity. There's plenty of time for that later.

It is when these closest of friends disappoint, that love turns to anger. The ultimate test of the friendship, however, is if it survives the anger and turns into acceptance and resolution.

There's that magic word again, acceptance.

Love My Way

You can never win or lose
If you don't
Run the race

-Psychedelic Furs (Richard Butler)

The Things You Said

I heard it from my friends
About the things you said
They know my weaknesses
I never denied them ...

How can a view become so twisted ...

I get so carried away
You brought me down to earth
I thought we had something precious
Now I know what it's worth ...

I heard it from my friends
About the things you said
I've never felt so disappointed
Never felt so disappointed

They know my weaknesses
I never tried to hide them
They know my weaknesses
Thought that you liked them

-Depeche Mode (Martin Lee Gore)

It is what it is

Now I've got things to do
You have too
And I've got to be me
You've got to be you

"Stories of Old"
-Depeche Mode (Martin Lee Gore)

To err is human

"Guess what? Mistakes are gonna be made. Minimize them, fix them, move on."

-The West Wing

I know how this movie ends

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

It is in fact a psychological defense mechanism in which a person faced with a fact that is uncomfortable or painful to accept, rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true DESPITE overwhelming evidence.

I KNOW THIS.

But knowledge and acceptance are two distinctly different notions.

As I see it, first comes denial, then comes knowledge, then you get drawn and quartered by a horse drawn carriage.

And only when one has suffered through the ravages of knowledge for a seemingly interminable amount of time, does a speck of light in the form of acceptance pierce through the dark clouds of despair.

This, too, I KNOW.

But awareness, while helpful in short term rationalization and long term coping, does not cushion the blow when the sweet taste of denial turns to bitter reality.

Shin Mei Lo

"I don't need any more friends to complicate my life"

You gotta hand it to her that's a great line, there's no comeback for that one, absolutely none. Game, set, match!

Compulsion

Charms in limited supply
And refusing to stretch...

How many times must it be said
There's no plan
It had to happen
Got to move on sometime
And it's about time
By putting one foot in front of another
And repeating the process

-Martin L. Gore (Joe Crow)

The Naked Apes

To quell my boredom during a lull at work, I yet again pondered my inner psyche and googled "unique properties human brain". The first page that popped up was a masterfully written paper titled "What makes us so singularly human?" by Silvia Helena Cardoso & Renato M.E. Sabbatini, the salient points of which I have excerpted here.

... we can say that our uniqueness lies in our (enormous) brain. It is by means of this huge (brain) that we possess high levels of synthetic analysis. It is there that our worldview is analyzed, planned and programmed to carry out actions and thoughts.

... we gradually developed self-control, that is, the capacity to modify any social behavior, even an instinctive one, in order to make it more useful to our survival.

The more disciplined we are, the more capable of self-control and of planning, the more our rational mind will be able to dominate the emotional and instinctive minds, the more human we will be.

Therefore, human species also has the singular capacity of controlling the emotional brain by means of the rational brain.

Many philosophers even doubt the possibility of one day the brain understanding itself. Maybe the structural and functional complexity of our brain is so huge that we may never be able to grasp it.

A person who ponders about this knows that somehow, life is incomprehensible.

Given my past indiscretions due to lack of discipline, need I now question my humanity? And will I be better served if I abort my quest to understand the incomprehensible?

Let's go to bed

But I don't care if you don't
And I don't feel if you don't
And I don't want it if you don't
And I won't play it
If you don't play it first

-The Cure (Robert Smith)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled...

As I sit alone in front of my talking picture box eating cold spaghetti and store bought sauce, I wonder about the virtues of the path not taken.

The quixotic quest for reciprocity

Many times in my life I've FELT like I've been shortchanged by my acquaintances. Whether it's truly a lack of reciprocity, unrealistic expectations, a chip on my insecure shoulder, or a combination thereof, these feelings lend credence to my perception that life is a miserable chess match and I lost my queen shortly after birth.

Great Expectations

As I am broke and everyone I know (except the folks) was either busy with their own life or unreachable, I had a lot of free time to "think" this weekend . "Thinking" for me is not such a good thing. It just reminds me of the harsh realities I'd just as soon forget.

BTW (by the way) is anyone these days truly "unreachable"? I mean with the cell phone, voice mail, email, text and im's, if someone REALLY wanted to (and knew how to go about it) reach me, he could.

So I don't think it's so much a matter of being unreachable than it is a matter of choosing to ignore those who are actively trying to reach you.

I've tried dropping out of society a couple of times and it was very very difficult, darn near impossible. Often my life is far less complicated when I keep people out of it, but it's also far less interesting. Of course this time around I'm not really actively keeping people out, they're doing a fine job of it themselves.

So the delicate balancing act continues as I keep people in their proper orbit, ensuring they remain within grasp, yet not so close as to crash and burn.

Everyone needs a place to crash

Don't Sweat the Technique

"Quando dio vuole castigarci ci manda quello che desideriamo." -


"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers."