Goodbye Gray.
Gray was my cat for 17 years and was an amazing animal.
Archive for Zombie Life
Problems with Linear Time
Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time’s recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal – whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves. When we deem our social destiny entirely self-directed and out personal lives self-made, we lose any sense of participating in a collective myth larger than ourselves. We cannot ritually join with those who come before and after us. Situating us at some intermediate moment eons away from both the beginning and the end of history, linear time leaves us alone, restless, afraid to stand still lest we discover something horrible about ourselves. Most Americans would agree with Mary McCarthy that “The happy ending is our national belief” – but few of us have any idea what we would do if we ever got there.
“The Fourth Turning – An American Prophesy” – William Strauss and Neil Howe
Posted in Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
Kim, Will and the Revenge of the Living Dead (9:47- Short)
Kim and Will live on neighboring farms, stuck behind the fences that keep the plague of zombies from killing them. Will they be able to explore their budding love or will they succumb to the revenge of the living dead?
Posted in Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
More on unilateral contracts
I am terrified to have children because the thought broils through my head that I may pass on the cycle of violence that was inflicted on me. I have severe violent impulses when I get fragmented and inundated by things around me. Many times I have wanted to beat the crap out of my cat for crying at the wrong time.
I learned violence from being abused. When abused my mind would fragment and I would rush off, mentally, to a safe place. This fragmentation was there to keep me safe but all it does now, as a learned habit, is avoid the problem and expose me to what I learned as a child through direct interaction – violence.
Fragmentation is the art of escaping the moment and sadly, the moment, is the only true place one can live happily. I strive to be in the now, in the moment but, I fragment very often and the moment is lost until I refocus.
I really am a healthier zombie but, a zombie nonetheless and with that these ancient habits sit waiting to spring to life. Fragmentation is the root of all evil. The innocuous psychiatric phenomena of personality fragmentation was there to protect me and is now only here out of habit. And it does not help me as an adult.
Posted in Adult Children, Zombie Life
1 Comment
All this fixing and still broken
Years of hard work, changing habits, examining motives, understand tendencies and using the tools I have found to make myself more whole; to help myself be an adult on the inside…all of that and more yet, I get this far only to realize there’s an enormous part of me that’s still a fucking child.
Oh how frustrating this discovery is, that I, when motivated by the right external forces, revert back to the depressive, challenged and brokenhearted kid that has dominated my life for its entire existence.
Feeling my thoughts go back to that awful rumination, that inability to see the truth and going into that place where nobody likes me, everyone hates me and all I am left with is eating worms is harrowing. Seriously though, how disheartening to realize all of this recovery has to happen on several concurrent platforms of my identity, some of which I didn’t realize were lacking. I’ve made great strides in professionalism, self-interests, socialization, friend making, appearance, expectations, planning, my money…but then to get blindsided by another plank of my person that I forgot to experience and grow is as frustrating as all hell.
Ugh! This is love? I forgot about love! How could I forget that emotion?
So here we go again, back to the slow slog of change, back to the road to recovery and once again to feeling things long dormant that must be felt and experienced while making subtle changes to get to a place where I can feel and be whole again. Thank you Universe for reminding me that my job is nowhere near finished.
And thank you to an old friend for reminding me about this part of me that I have been avoiding. You woke me up and now I can’t go back again. You brought me joy which I turned into pain, that has always been my way. Without you I’d just be in denial. Mad mad props.
Posted in (sigh), Adult Children, Rant, Zombie Life
Leave a comment
How come he doesn’t want me
Everything I could ever say about my father is said in this clip:
I don’t necessarily blame him because his father did the same to him but, without the ability to express it to him, this clip is all I have. Feelings of abandonment are the hardest to face. They reside in the darkest holes and deepest pits of our psyche. Thanks to the Fresh Prince, I can cry about it now.
Posted in Adult Children, Guyland, Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
If – Rudyard Kipling
This poem is about 115 years old and gives me hope for humanity
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!
Posted in Poetry, Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
smeared
…across my face.
I send props to my creativity, while awesome it is hidden behind a defense system almost not worth fighting.
Maybe I’m not going to ever be a worthwhile writer, a worthwhile member of society. Might be that I am just a regular bloke that does his job, keeps his head down and muddles through life.
But Americans are taught they can be anything, do anything and shoot all the way to the top. They soaked my addled mind with such tripe when I was a little boy. My grandmother took me aside once and told me:
I see you becoming famous one day. Not sure why or how but I think you’ll be an actor.
Now, I’ve been waiting ever since, frozen and unable to act upon this bit of information. One thing to tell some kid that to help him along but to say that and then do nothing support wise, school wise, college wise – hell, how about require me to do my homework?
I lived a childhood where the most important thing was keeping things smoothed over to avoid the inevitable drunken fight between my parents. I didn’t care about books, just peace. And here I am decades later and I’m still that little boy – frozen, scared and motivated by a desire to be left alone and do nothing.
Maybe I will never reach escape velocity to leave my childhood behind.
Science has found that 75% of our adult behaviors were developed before the age of 10 and never change. And what if those behaviors were learned poorly or not at all? Nothing worse than an adult walking around with a childish mindset; making childish mistakes, using childish emotions, being an adult child.
Will I ever escape this…
Posted in Adult Children, Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
Modern Advertising: It’s Okay to Hate Men and Treat Them Like Dogs
Modern advertising needs a Foil in each buying situation they depict (like this commercial) – The purchaser can look down on and feel superior to the foil and thus identify with the product later on at the point of purchase (at the store, at the beer cooler)
I’m tired of ‘foil’ advertising especially when they make it so hateful.
My feeling is we need real, involved ‘consumer unions’ to get our collective power back from corporation through the threat of mass product/brand boycott.
A couple of million people strong would do it…maybe as little as 300,000…unified on buying habits.
And these commercials boil my blood. That’s what motivated this post. I want to punish Miller Lite…
Posted in Rant, Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment
Rejection
Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least
I have been entangled with a female friend/lover for 15 years and it has been 15 years of “come here, come here” mixed with a lot of ‘get away, get away’. And as the both of us have gotten better in our separate ACOA-type recoveries, I find that neither one of us can change or stop this dance and the roles are desperately hard to change.
The first five years she was in love with me but I was living with a girlfriend. I think that bind-ed her to me through rejection. Then 5 years later we come together again and for a year we were able to be lovers…but our recoveries ripped our intimacy apart and we went our ways. But we never let go fully, always keeping a line open.
Fast forward to the last 2 years and I am better but can’t let go of her. Things have swung and I am seeing her for the first time; the beauty, the passion, the friend, the lover – but of course, now she is reluctant and doesn’t care as much as I do…she wants to be the super close friends we always were but doesn’t want the lover I can be and want.
And on the cycle will go as two people spin their sick dance of intimacy, unable to break free and live their lives in the new way they have discovered through recovery and unable to take the relationship to a secure and safe place of love and support.
The good news is that I am finally a man in my heart and cannot (for the first time in 15 years) let this twisted, unsatisfying relationship continue like this. I confronted her and told her the truth. Of course she didn’t reciprocate and wants me to remain as a brother-type friend which I refuse to do. I broke off any friendship and am respecting hers and my boundaries.
————————————-
It’s just so frustrating to realize the last 15 years were wasted when I could have been experiencing relationships and love and all kinds of things that were lost to my scared mind that holds onto sick relationships like a junkie to his drug. Releasing her this last time is so hard and scary but for the first time in my life it is not a dreaded thing that will kill me. I will be okay and flourish but I worry that my weakness for her will lead me back down the path of this sick intimacy that her and I share.
But honestly, I know this sounds a little dark and truth be told, I am so much better than I ever was and so much more mature than at any time in my life. The air is cool and the sun shining. i will be fine.
Posted in Adult Children, Zombie Life, Zombie Philosophy
Leave a comment