dir/new_school/rant: R e l a t i o n s h i p s   2 . 0

My stomach has been in a grind for the last few weeks. I call it High Anxiety. And I’ll be honest, I’ve been fucking around behind the curtains, pulling at the gears of life, and desperately hoping that I could change the future. And with that I live my life in a series of intersecting lines. I look towards the distant future and try to align things, so that the chaos eventually blends into the center, into me, maybe balance.

I also have no interest in living the divided life I have recently lead. KungFu is three years old folks and it all started with this piece . And while towards the end, where the lines came together in final frustration and the beginning of my last relationship of pain. When I laid the first words to this site, I started the first day of the rest of my life And I no longer want to lead a double life. I want to merge my worlds, bring my relationships together and lead a life that honestly makes me happy.

So many loose threads though…You can lead your life in a combination of these three basic principles. Past, Present, Future. I lived in the present, he died. I lived in the past and mourned. I now live with the future and remember the past, take some pleasure from the present.

We are no younger from dying and we waste so much of our time in frustration, regret and unrealized and I have to watch and wonder why. Life seems too short to deal with the bullshit, to live without happiness.

I want more then a commitment of pain and I want more then a partner in misery, but I commiserate none the less. And the truth is this, we waste time when we become depressed, when the anger shadows reason, when we become consumed. It’s a luxury of denial to the solution. To finding happiness. I feel all these things. I constantly battle anger and depression and sometimes make the Gungho Vulcan mistake of saying that this is my nature, my cool poise. This is American Zen and it is not the truth.

And all of this came in the end, at the start with words that are still true

To be honest
I’m afraid
I’m in love
and I’m afraid
But I’m whole
Little pieces wound
About your
Heart

And for some reason, now that I can admit this, everyone wants to tell me who to love, how to love, when to love. I love. You have nothing but a ticket to watch and share. And the fact that my love is endless and shared with many, many who don’t dig each other, "Nay….Many who don’t like each other" I lament, but I still love.

I am on the long chill, don’t disturb my groove people….

2.

The intersecting lines I mention represent-accumulated probability, which eventually builds into catalyst. Each individual line represents a individual and the socio-demographic factors that they bring in their nature and those factors which surround them. That intersection includes and is not limited to that person and how they influence my life as well as how my interaction with that person affects the other people in my life.We all live on these lines, we all intersect, we constantly experience the ramifications of the catalyst.

He died and the ache was so resounding, that it rang hollow, the silver dollar I threw on his casket, the binding, my own demurring sense of what life was, rang shrilly inside me and my life slowed down.

You can never tell when you will slowdown, when your own spool winds down with knots. You are different now and I don’t know why it always comes back to love but it does. Love, lack of love, loss of love, you feel that and you might just slowdown.

The HighAnxiety starts at night, when you hold your head in your hands and sleep becomes a nightmare. And this is when you become Angry or sad or whatever it is, or you slowdown and you fall from the rhythm of life and you see it all so differently.

When I did slowdown the first thing I did was quickly don sunglasses, cause everyone looks at you funny and you realize that you’ve lost your place in the act of life. This is the first time that people think you’re different and different is a thin line from dangerous.

I read a number of significant books, significant because they told me that I still had emotions. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, made me laugh, while I hid out at a Yoga Ashram, deep in the woods of upstate NewYork. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance made it clear that I could be further depressed then I imagined. I then read The Road Less Traveled and it taught me personal accountability. Other books continued the arc and the most prolific finally rested with The Art of Zen and Zen and the art of archery.

I had found my heart, courage, and brain but I still had levers to pull, I had not found my way back home. When you slowdown it’s not all bad though. You get to watch people from a incredibly detailed and vivid perspective, the actions come across clear, all the shit between the lines leaps out at you, you learn why people do what they do, what it is that makes them act a certain way. Sadly when you are outside the rhythm, you rarely get to participate much, it’s the balance, too much power in the Slow Ones, seeing things on the slomo analytical track and when you do interact, it is usually with limited success.

And I went five years like this, taking joy from experience, but not participating much. And to be honest it was better then the years of depression I spent preceding it

Things all came to a head a few more years down the line, while I tried to work my experience to action and lead my life. I failed miserably, but I learned and I did and in some respect it is all that mattered, because I had started to creep out of my shell again. I continued about my ways and worked with a combination of habit, selfishness and anger and it was interesting, I felt very free with the acts of rebellion and aggression, but they were not satisfying and I still didn’t believe in myself.

I took one more stab at the old ways and realized that I would never find that taste, never relive what ever it was I was seeking and I realized that while I might have vague notions, which never lead to success in your life. I knew that I didn’t want to be in a fucked up relationship.

Nope.

Things turn interesting then, because that push away from the RELATIONSHIP was the start of understanding myself and seeking some better sense of myself. The irony is that all of this came from very significant and intersecting relationships, the first one being the relationship with myself, the other came in the love I have found with the women in my life. It’s the plural aspects of the word "women" that really complicate everything. These lines always knot together. And the women in my life are mystical horned creatures, full of passion and pain, misery and joy, andI do not understand them. I do love them and with that love that I spread with nay a thought of exclusivity, I do not satisfy any of them, but they love me none the less and while I want more, as do they, I can’t think to ask for it. I don’t really know how to balance it, women defy the odds of probability.

So my stomach grinds and convulses and I feel High Anxiety about everything. I do my best to juggle and make everything right. All of these lines, most of them heavily colored in love always frayed with frustration, further carry along a path and to not acknowledge the other players, the husbands, the lovers, the enemies and the priests wouldn’t be fair. But I only have so many words and truth be told, to make this complete, to explain what all these lines are and the patterns that they create. They would have to write about it as well and that hasn’t happened yet and may well never.

I am alone and it does sometimes bring a sense of anxiety. I don’t always know where my place is in my relationships, nor how to safely stay a good and positive influence, when I know I want more. So I try to do what I think is good and I try very hard to constantly work at the knots and make a difference.

Happy Birthday KungFu