A reasonable amount of paranoia.

It seems to me that in society we must need a certain amount of paranoid thinking to be able to survive and exist as functional members of society. Many people I talk to seem to be overwhelmed with paranoia and this causes worry that effects their day to day life. I talk to these folks and realize that although I tend to think in similar ways, I pay these paranoid thoughts less mind and it helps me function as a more or less regular human. Should I worry more about the richest people trying to make me their slave and destroy my free will, or should I live within the system that we have built over the last 30 000 years and find peace in simple things? The latter will make me rest easier, but the former seems important and apparent if you look at it.

The society we have today is the created world of 30 000 years of humans saying that they know things that they generally have little ground to know about, and the demanding of the others to follow their direction. This is why it is an imperfect system, and a human construct.

Even today we have people who have never lived the lives of those which they are able to decide the fate of, or at least to be free enough to think that they are doing so… And these are symptoms creating a great dissent within the people on the street. The worry is that we cannot do anything of substance when we were raised to think that we could do anything. They have stopped us, by creating social networks. They are keeping tabs on us.

By allowing ourselves to use this system, we are made to fear the ultra-rich and this remains their source of power over us. Without the fear we hold, that manifests as the acceptance that they are able to decide our fate and devise plans for our domination, they could not hold power over us.

The first thing to do is to stop making ultra-rich people superheroes and to stop giving them superpowers in our paranoid thinking. We can do more with the systems we have, with the real things that they are doing. The stuff out in the open is heinous enough the create all the suffering we can take.

Money is an agreement that people make, and without this trust and agreement that the money holds value, it will not hold any value. This serves as a metaphor for the power that we give these feared unknown people we hold in the abstract. It also speaks to the value we hold for money as the be all and end all of life’s worth.

We are not to blame for thinking like this, we are conditioned from a young age and from many years of human existence to think that this is the way that life is.

We use the constructs we already have to explain what we are experiencing, but who is to say that we know anything for certain? What are the chances that the books that we have read are the ones that are true? Who is to say the culture that we are forced to exist within is the one that we should? All theories are just someone’s intricate opinion, argued because the author feels the world would be better with their mind’s idea in the public discourse.

We have a hard time realizing this because what we know is all that we know, so we can’t find other things to relate to reality. This is why we must always be broadening our horizons, learning new things and finding more opinions to find our own truth.

This is my paranoia…

Is there an absolute, real and objective truth anywhere in this world? If so, does anyone know it? The intellectuals of the past did their best to describe the world as we now know it but were driven by their own desires and experience so to come to conclusions based in their own form of reality.

We are now able to find information from all over the world, to amalgamate societies entire depth of knowledge by searching the internet, but are we any smarter for these gifts? In a general sense, it doesn’t need to resonate with you. I fear that we are too far gone to realize that in knowing something we are taking a leap of faith, in learning we must trust those who are teaching us and in being fearful of the powers that be, we are being fearful of the unknown.

This is all unknown territory, from the computer forwards. We have no common record of this happening before now. There is a strange feeling that this is not new, I must admit. We all wonder if the world has always been this way, and just faded with time. It is the truly holy admittance, never to wonder if they are lying to us… We are here to be paranoid so that we find stuff out.

Words on Madness

Inspiration is something that comes from vast systems of majestic levers, held by elven sorts in that other dimension that we see sometimes if we smoke salvia or something like that…

DMT elves have taken all the inspiration and hurdled me towards the sun.

That must be the situation I am in tonight, unable to know just what I am trying to discover, what I am trying to accomplish, and what I am trying to do. There is a little burning mania in my mind, a madness of idle thoughts and lack of tangible accomplishment that haunts me because that is what I consider must be valuable.

I don’t know any thoughts that I want to send into the ether, but I am hoping to publish something every day to prove to myself that I can do it. We are at rest, the world keeps spinning and the people keep talking, all without knowing what they are saying. How do those news cycles happen? I suppose someone gets a lead and is sent to find quotes and answers to these concerns.

Is anyone saying anything that important? We are all just wanting to have fun, to believe that there is something in this world that will give us pleasure. We are pleasure seeking organisms. It takes teams of people to run a newspaper, though there are not a lot of jobs at them.

I suppose if I have nothing to say then I don’t really need to say anything.

I should, on the other hand, spend my time writing into the machine or some notebook because I enjoy the process. There is no need to stop just because I am not selling my work. This habit is important to my own well being and the descent into madness is caused by portions of the mind being left idle for too long. “A maniac is a person who just found out what is going on,” as I think Burroughs wrote.

Why is Political Madness Always Kind of Hanging Around Trying to be Cool?

Political madness has afflicted the world and we are all to blame. We have been fooled by colourful television and those same promises of someone different who will act differently than those assholes did before him, the same notions that fool us every time. We were trusting like we always are. In America, they were fooled into voting for a reality television star. In Canada, we voted for someone’s hair without realizing that he is definitely part of the same establishment that has been controlling us since this country was founded.

What can one discover about human nature by looking at the insanity that we have created with our beloved democratic systems? Those who seek power are generally rotten. The sweet-hearted don’t need to decide things for other people or at the very least don’t think they know best. Those who say they know what we should do generally know less than those who explain that they do not know the answers. The wise are prone to think they don’t know. The stupid generally say they know what to do. These are famous last words because of those who say that we should do what they think to believe the world works because all citizens rationally follow their self-interest. We have no room for altruism in politics.

There is no better system that we have found that to allow the population to choose the representatives that can speak on our behalf in the government. The human race has a long history of most of us being entirely oppressed by a small number of ultra-powerful people. This is perhaps why we are obsessed with that idea today, creating strange theories about their superpowers and massive technological advantage. I am of the belief that the powers that be do not know what they are doing with their lives, either. They say they know, but they don’t know what they are doing so they don’t even realize they are destroying the world and oppressing the people most of the time. If you look carefully that is what it seems like.

In most of today’s work, we are living with much less than the standard oppression of history. Things are not perfect, but we can at least be thankful of the regulations in place that allow us to not be forced to work 12 hour days for a tiny penance, and for the choice, we have to decide what work we would like to do. We could use a little more community spirit, a little more help for everyone from everyone, but we are at the very least free to do the things we would like to do if we are so determined to learn what we must to do them.

We are able to find ways to become qualified to do any job we would like to do, and everything we can think of is available. If it isn’t, there is most likely a niche market for it and a lot of money to be gathered there, at least until you create some competitors. With these freedoms, we should be thankful.

We are able to have our own opinions without too much fear of being locked away or killed because we state them. I worry that I just do not hear of those who are arrested for fighting the power. I recall meeting someone who spent time in jail for chaining herself to a tree near the turn of this century. I’d like to think that it is not too troubling, and we should enjoy getting to watch elderly folks make fools of themselves by telling everyone that they know what is best for the population. With the right set of eyes, one can be entertained by the dance. It is, in fact, the absurdity of life played out in the 24-hour news cycle. It is the madness of us all, shown like a mirror to all of society. Look at what we have created.

We should not stand for the oppression of anyone, and the lack of education of most people is oppression. We have this need to be heard, to be accepted, to be listened to and we do so much because we want to be part of a community. It is shameful that we cannot look inward and find our own truth, realizing that everyone on this planet has a different perspective than we do. I have read something like the line, “When someone says that they ‘think’ something, I just shut off my mind. They will not guide me to the truth.” This seems too common a thought. We want someone who knows.

We all want to find answers to the world’s problems, but we are generally incapable of curing the problems without seeing all sides of the equation, and on a grand scale that must be impossible. There is no way we can see this truth, considering the number of variables and the irrational behaviour of humans. There is no possible way that anyone can fix this world. The answer is that we all must together. If we did our best to act in each other’s interests, to help the rest of the people reach their goals and create a community where we get to learn about what we want to learn about and do what we want to do. This is self-interest, I suppose. Most of these jerks in power believe the world is revolving because of each of our self-interest. This may be the crux of this problem.

This manic phase of human existence, this “self-interest” driven world may be the real, prolonged state that we are living in. It would explain the madness of Facebook’s garden of delights, that vast web of human self-obsession for anyone to look through. That would explain why we cannot stop posing strangely and hoping people like us.

We think very highly of ourselves. We think much too little of the other people. President Trump is a product of each of our narcissism. He is that mirror of society. He spoke to that in us, we saw ourselves in him. This is just my opinion, which I gleaned from someone else’s opinion, which he gleaned from someone else, in turn. It makes me worry there are no original ideas, that all of these books speak of one real truth. It makes me think that no matter what we learn, it is a version of reality based of symbols, as a fish is not the same as the word fish, and even a number doesn’t actually exist.

Even the idea of rational self-interest is just some dude’s opinion. We can never forget that truth. Nobody really knows what the world is, what we are doing here, what the point of life is or what we should spend our time doing. As I get older I realize that not everyone has been spending their time with these thoughts in their mind, and most of the people who are seeking answers are bragging about the fact that they are seeking them. This is absurd, and more of the divide and conquer mentality that has been ruining our world.

To win in the game of life, maybe one needs to become a hermit and sit alone in the woods until travellers walk through the forest for three days to play music with him and he rises from his mediation to jam with them and they play the most powerful and fleeting improvisations that could be found, shattering the silence of the forest and warping the minds of the young musicians that would like to learn a way to escape this illusion of sanity that they tell us life is.

“If you sit and be quiet, you will learn something,” is not the same notion as, “If you sit and be quiet, I will tell you something.”

 

Everything is Imposing

All the things that I want to do scare me.

My friends, years ago, decided it was best to let yourself “Get Scared” because you will create some great things and put yourself out there. People respect those who believe in themselves. Manic depressive types do not consistently think they are up to anything spectacular, but ache for those days when they had in the past. I think it is a common delirium, to wish for the mania during the depression. In truth I should be scared of mania as well, I have never made good decisions while really up on that scale. I think a little bit of balance in the best way, manic in some ways, depressed about others and maintaining ones life so as to become the genius who we each can become.

The one thing that I want to do is write, so I must because I must. There is peace in that refrain, with the “because I must” continuing to reverberate forever. I want to do good works, I want to be one of the passionate types of great writers that create change everywhere they go. This is an example to follow, but does not consider the retribution that comes from actually creating change. This thought creates further fear in my psyche. People are killed for changing the world. The powers that be do not like people who expose that they are stupid as well. In truth, they are just like us. They have no idea what they are doing with their time. One person told me politicians have no idea what to do, that they just react. Another told me that the key to politics is not even to react, but to ignore it so long that the people fighting for the change will just shut up and go away.

I can set goals as well, and it seems that I reach every goal that I set. That is an interesting thought that can bring my mind to rest. I just need to know what I want. People in power know what they want, that is one thing that all the self-help books and seminars I have heard keep repeating. If I were to figure out what I wanted then I could work at making that thing a success. It is hard to be up to anything without knowing just what it is you are up to. For example, I am frustrated with looking for work so I told myself I want to write a piece for my blog. Look at what I have done just by defining the goal and sending my energy towards it.

• • I want to be a avid worker and create some great works of art.
  • I want to be a renowned writer who can buy a house from the writing he does.
  • I want to help the people who cannot help themselves, people who are lost and need peace.
  • I want to become influential enough to actually spark change in the world, which is a very odd place filled with suffering and disparity.
  • I want to make a difference in the world so that my family and friends are proud of me.

The last point on that list is the one that worries me. How special do I think I am? It must come from the idea that I am inadequate compared to how special they made me feel I was when I was child, right? This depression thing is an ego trip. I just want to be special like they made me feel when I was young. I have the lack of self worth and I refuse to accept that we are nothing, able to effect nothing in perpetuity and that scientific thought that the universe is a cold, unfeeling fluke. I refuse to believe that there is no point to life. That is not a trouble. It is a beautiful thing. It seems the further you go on the line that dictates happiness, the closer you get to the other feeling. It is like that line connects, like the connection of mania to depression creates a circle. The thought needs some more unpacking, but I feel like I haven’t got the mind to do that. It must be all the fluoride they give me so that I am complacent and apathetic. It must be the delirium ray that they shoot at us from the large hadron collider.

Written Progress

What is it to be?

This is one of the questions that keep me up at night. Am I being enough? Am I at all? Am I trekking through the wilderness trying to find a peaceful thought? Can I find a reason for all the universe, some notion that I will be able to understand? Is there a way to be something else, something better? These notions are used to find people willing to be crack-pots about anything because the details we must find to fill our minds can be used to write out our papers that need golden ratios. Just throwing intelligent words into a document does not make your art intelligent. Right thoughts and actions, learning and occasion for change seem to, though.

It is now that we must be. These notes are found to be rather long and confusing, and I know that we are all in different places. We want to be made of written works and find truth in our own ways. That everyone is constantly learning, even if they do not want to do so, is a trick to force you into the path of enlightenment even if you go kicking and screaming. I am one with this notion because all the details and those damned strange thoughts take my work and write it up like a society page. The tricky thing is to look at the righteous notes with happy thoughts in your head… I think thoughts are in your head, but one should note here that the ancient Egyptians thought that the thoughts happened in our hearts, so who am I to think anything different.

These thoughts are here with me because the little ones that watch me need to be righteous in the current sense. Otherwise, they are jumping up and down wondering about the reckless wandering the lighted way is concerned about. There is nothing here because all the wandering eyes are taking their minds for the little ones. There is no notions that haunt me that way, in the way that the little thoughts make me worry. They sneak up on me and the little ones need me to write like another one. I do not understand. I just want to be able to improve myself, but someone tried to convince me it was impossible in the same way that a number system cannot prove its own existence by using itself.

These days I need to find the homeland because all the other thoughts are dragging me through the mud. I understand that I need to find a reality, a thinking thing that lacks depression and worries so that I can belong to a society that makes sense. I am here for you. I know that there is hope within the walls and with those withering flowers. I know that all is mindful and well now because only the white-wash takes well sick people to the righteous end. I do not know the truth, of course. My water is fluoridated like everyone else’s. Maybe they are looking out for our best interest. Maybe I just want the government to act like my parents, protecting and providing for me because I refuse to take responsibility for myself and trust that everything will be well.

I suppose the belief in God can be considered in the same way. These want to convince me that all is well and I do not know about that. Someone is full of shit here, and whether it is the school system or the alternative media I do not know. The option is that all the righteous waters take the old way, and the little ones want my weight to take that proper amount of time to reach it’s potential. I don’t understand what I am to do with the rest of my life. The details of my little era and its divine spark must reach the other ones, those people over there. When I excitedly exist, because I am alone with my watering can and notice that the righteous thoughts take precedent (though I am not sure which ones they are), I know that these wordy passages are really for myself.

This is because the little “without holders” need no lines. They are fine with written progress, and I suppose that is what they have asked for.

Spiritual Bent

The world is filled with purpose if only we seek to find it. The struggle is that we already have what we are looking for. The magic has been in us the whole time. I find the need to repeat to myself that I know what it is I am looking for, that I already hold it and that the answers I seek belong to my mind in the present moment. Even as I type this now I do not fully understand why I am supposed to think this way. I think I was seeking answers and I was told not to seek. It was as if I had finally learned that the magic wasn’t in the shoes, it was in me while I danced. It seemed poignant at the time.

There is often a spiritual bent to me so I was very happy to find out this news. Because I have a pendulum of mentality in my mind it quickly swung back to the other side (depressive) when I began to think that was smart talking by someone who is selling happiness and the promise that the patron will feel better when they leave the seminar. I felt manipulated.

Right here, in these afternoons when for some reason I feel it is a good idea to drink wine, I spend my time wandering the walls of my mind thinking that I will one day find the answers I seek. Reading complex things I do not fully understand until I am tired and my brain is ready to fall from the sky, I rank my impulses to learn for the sickness that it is.

Perhaps it is a feeling of inadequacy that makes me try to learn as much as I can. Or it could be that there is some psychic surgery that I require due to a series of alien abductions that I do not remember. The answer to the quandary is not located in any words I have found. I’m not even sure I have found the questions I want to ask. The personal growth coaches tell me that I should know what I am seeking (if they do not tell me not to seek) so that I can know when I have found it. I think that I am looking for some grand unified theory of everything but that is just because I do not have the words to describe what I am looking for. All these rambling notes have been seeking that.

There is a reason for all this, of course. I am pure of heart and I think that I am going to be able to make some changes in my mind so that I can be a righteous saint that creates great works and is able to become one of those enlightened souls. The trouble is that all written work is delusion because it has been created by humans thinking, and even the channeled texts that have made such an impact on humanity are filtered through imperfect humans (if they are truly from some kind of alien or angel, depending on the perpetual wishes of the scribe). I think that in most of these books, the person is doing what I am doing. They are trying to create something interesting and beautiful by learning as much as they can and relating the information. There is no insight, there is no real imagination. We are automatons.

I think we are all trying to create something beautiful or at least believe in ourselves. It seems to be human nature. There is purpose in us the days we spend creating something magnificent. The world watches and we have peace in our hearts. I am concerned with nothing when I am reading because I know that something important is coming into my mind. The righteous should know that there is nothing truly important that can be found in realistic thought. It is in the mania and tempest that the useful work is created. It is good to think that I am no better or worse than these writers and speakers. I think one of them told me to think that one time.

Are they more enlightened that me? Is that even a thing?

Money and It’s Impact on Depression

Desperation is important because it is going to create a world in which this author is found by the universe, if not some group of readers who care what I have to say. There is very little for me with this kind of hope. We belong to happiness and find truth within the suffering. I think that all the people want to find happiness in their hearts. That is key to knowing the eternal reality of life. The other key is that drugs don’t seem to work, they just cause more pain.

I have simple happiness coming from this method of therapy, much more than I found in taking these painful feelings and sticking them deep inside. The peaceful and painful method of stuffing the feelings deep inside does the same thing as drug use does. It is an instant relief that causes more damage in the future.

Recollection of past traumas makes one think that they will be able to face the truth. I have things that haunt me and I will never be able to see clearly because memory is a fickle thing that causes one to only recall the last time that the person remembered something. I was talking with a psychiatrist about this once and they told me that even though I remembered being kidnapped and tortured it did not mean it had actually happened. I’m not entirely sure that it did not, because I don’t exactly know who I am if you look at me. I’m probably just the person I think I am, but whether I am or I am not who I think I am, there is half of my consciousness that is not telling the truth to the guy who is supposed to be in charge in here.

I do not understand my life. It seems that I am free to do these things, to write and make art with fervour, but it is like I lack the confidence to demand money from my work and thereby create a life that I feel it is good for me to continue to do these things. Like a peaceful kind of rapture, I find love in the simple things. I don’t need to make a lot of waves, I just want to heal.

My method of healing is to create a space where I can listen to soft music, audiobooks and other interesting things so that I can create some kind of actual resolution where I make real changes in the way I feel. I don’t want to hate myself but I fall into these traps. I am creating something important with my time but do not have much to explain that it has been worthwhile. I know that all these things I have done have been worth it because I am in the process of healing and creating skills that are important.

I am alone with my thoughts for a great amount of time every day and I cannot stand to not do anything. At the same time, I need to create something that benefits humanity and is for the greater good. Something that makes me feel insignificant and like I am a usable commodity (someone who is replaceable) makes it very difficult for me to get up the gumption to do the work, even when money is offered to me. This is something that I am afraid of, because it pisses a lot of people off. I don’t understand myself sometimes, most people just go do something they dislike because they are given money and they feel like money is important.

Money is important, but a part of me wants to say, “Nobody ever got rich working for a living.” I can’t say this, because I am not even making a little bit of money right now. I have income coming, but I am not adding to the amount that is coming in. Perhaps one day this work will be influential and will have the kind of audience that grants me the serenity of a hundred dollars a day. In truth, you will never know if it will unless you put in the legwork and take the risk. A part of me thinks I should be trudging around in the snow right now, though. I should at least shit or get off the pot.

Writing because you have to.

I am writing this because I have to, because “If you don’t have to write, you shouldn’t be writing.”

I don’t remember where I got this quote so it may not be righteous to add it here. The people in my head tell me you should give credit where credit is due. I looked it up on the internet and couldn’t find the author, so perhaps I thought of it myself.

Nonetheless, I think that the author who said that meant that people who are not deeply moved by the act of writing should do something that they are deeply moved by, but I think when I heard the quote it had something to do with the idea that if you are not in need of the money received from writing then you are too pompous to write anything of consequence.

I am currently recalling a manic episode I had a number of years ago when the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson told me, “It’s media, you know… Me to ya!” During this manic trip I was also hanging out with a bunch of invisible people, including what I began to believe was three Buddhist Lamas in meditation who I thought were one sainted Dalai Lama that I could not see. Mania is like this when it goes unchecked, so make sure you don’t begin to believe your own blessed bullshit. One cool thing from that trip was the idea that my soul had a different age than my body, that I was much older than I thought I was at the time.

In fact, that is not the only time the ghost of a character from the 60’s that has visited my deranged mind. A long time ago, when I was just a young rapscallion, I had a dream that I was partying and playing music with Jerry Garcia, which ended with the two of us shooting lightning bolts from our guitars while sitting atop a lamp post outside what became my favourite place to play music for about eight years. The weird thing about this dream was that I was not yet playing music and hanging around that block, but the dream inspired me to begin to hang around an open mic that moved to two different places before leaving the city block from my dream.

Mania is sometimes a righteous outlet for happiness and belief, but I once heard that people will begin to create delusions of grandeur because they don’t feel like they are being heard. It is like they are not happy with who they are so they create a reality within which they have some sort of fame, special trait or secret knowledge that makes them one of the most important people in the world.

It is a pain in the ass to fall into these thoughts and it seems that I go into these manias without feeling any more terrible about myself than I usually do. The last major manic episode I had including the idea that I was traveling from Pluto (where I obviously live) but was not yet on Earth so I could not be hurt. I was sent here to save the world from genocidal maniacs in out of place governments. This was quite a while ago now. I think it was mostly because I had not taken my medication for at least six months and just sat around trying to perform magic for weeks. I think that not understanding magic and trying to create magic realms to damn genocidal maniacs through art can backfire.

Thinking of mania often leads me to depression. There is a sad thought I have when I remember waking up feeling like every dream I ever had was true and I was a world renowned musical sorcerer of some kind. This lead eventually to me being admitted to the psych ward and finding out that I was just a sad and lonely person creating fantasies because I didn’t like my state at the time. It was clear to my neighbors, because I was screaming about the Devil and terrified that George Bush was going to come and kill me for the secret knowledge I had.

I think the thing to remember is that when we are afflicted with these sorts of problems we must try to take care of ourselves. I have been quite depressed lately, which is why I am taking so much time to write and discover my feelings. I should be doing something in exchange for money but I am lost in the world. The thing that I try to explain to people is that I just cannot function like the rest of humanity. It was a series of painful interactions that lead me to this belief. I keep trying to do the best I can do but it doesn’t ever seem good enough for the real world. I am ashamed to say that I haven’t been working, but in a way, I have been working harder than usual. Sometimes it is important to heal so you don’t wind up crazed out there in the streets or something worse.

I wish I felt better than I have for the last week or so. I am concerned with myself. I was worried that I did not have any opinions because I have a hard time saying what I want from the world. It seems to be that I do not know what I want from the world, but in truth, I have just been trained from youth that asking for what you want is not the way to get what you want.

I was belittled and made fun of by people that I looked up to when I was young, so I still hear their voices in my subconscious when I do things like try and ask for what I want or say what I want to do with my life. It took me 20 years of creating art to begin to call myself an artist because I was ashamed of myself. That is a serious subconscious issue that needs to be dealt with. I kind of feel the same way about writing and it is nearly all that I do these days. It is difficult to ask for money in exchange for stuff that you are ashamed about, no matter how good it is. I think that essence permeates my work, too. People can tell that I don’t value my work so they refuse to find value in it.

It is hard to understand my path. I struggle with these impulses to do what I feel is valuable. I think these words will help someone who is having the same kind of time that I am so I want to write them and leave them here. Welling in my unconscious is the thought from my childhood that my opinion doesn’t matter and that nobody cares what I think. It is difficult to create media with this over-reaching thought, but like the paradox that I am, it is all I want to do with my time. I hope that these works I am creating make you feel better than you did when you started reading them. I really want to add some kind of insight to the world.

Worthwhile Work Ethic

Delusions wrap my mind this morning. The idea that I can write for a living is making me think that I should spend a few hours every morning doing so before I head out the door to make the long trudge through the snow to painfully causing my hand’s permanent damage in a world where the air hurts my face. There is a pint at the end of all this, but I need to buy it myself.

There is purpose is this – something inside that belongs to me and just me. I am a grown adult and I can do whatever I want. I just need to be willing to accept the consequences. For now, I am going to spend a few hours writing before I trudge through the snow for a small penance because it makes me happy and it is good for my mental well-being. This is a good plan because otherwise, I am alone with my thoughts and unable to function for the rest of the day. These peaceful recreations of love make me better with time. I want to help people learn about the nature of happiness, the reality of mental illness and that peaceful thought that functions with the people of light.

A part of me wants to disassociate and think that I am an enlightened being of some sort. That is always a good time, though I need to be able to deal with the consequences. For example, without the work that I have the opportunity to do (sometimes called “wage-slavery”), I would be without a home and the comforts of my life, things like food and electricity. By disassociating I can be happy in this moment and feel like I am some incredible genius of light and love, which is sometimes a good thing that helps me feel worthwhile. The trouble with that is the eventual lack of money that comes with these thoughts made of ether and delirium.

I don’t know if the others fight the need to go work for wages without repercussions. It is strange that I still have this opportunity right now, I suppose it is because I haven’t fallen behind in the work and the time until the crops begin to grow again is not yet up. It is coming, but we will be okay. Currently, we seem to be in good shape and it is cold and snowy out there right now.

I am ashamed by the lack of work-ethic that I have sometimes, but then I realize that I am always working on my own projects. These are things that I find much more interesting and important in my life and I hope one day they begin to pay off for me. Avant-garde music and inane ramblings are not everyone’s idea of important work, but for some reason, I am called to do this stuff. One should always listen to their calling.

Whatever the reasons are, I am wondering about the point of these rather painful trials in my life. Work life should not need to be this kind of suffering. That is why I am spending these few hours in the morning before I go to work writing and making interesting arguments to myself about the reasons that I spend my time doing these things. I would much rather spend my time doing what I am right now, but that is not always the best thing to do with your time. I must be willing to take on the consequences of these actions. I feel that I am. I just don’t know why anyone would want to read this.

That is depression. It is something that I fall into between times of intense happiness and the manic creation of art. This is my experience, but I wish I was more like that guy who just stopped by my house. He is a good worker and likes to do what he does. I am a prolific writer and artist by any account and well-respected in my local area. People seem to like me. I do need to remind myself of these things daily because the realistic people are all at work.

What do you call a musician without a spouse? Homeless. In truth, I blame the recording machine for the reality that I cannot be a full-time musician. Before recordings, every restaurant and bar needed a musician because people want to be entertained. Now, there are very few musicians who make enough money to get by and far too many bands come to town and play for a couple of barflies.

This is a depressing note to look at. I am in a beautiful life right now and I can literally do anything that I would like to do in the world. I could get a credit card and run up some insane amount of debt this very instant. I could get some heroin and eat a bunch of pills if I knew where to get those things. Actually, I don’t know if the dealers would sell to me since I look a little too clean around the edges. Where there is a will there is a way, of course. I could call one of my friends that know where to get that stuff and ask him to pick it up. That isn’t what I want to do with my day, but the point is that I could. I am not willing to deal with the consequences.

With this note, I understand that I spending my life doing the right things. Even if I only make it out to the vineyard contract I am currently supposed to be working on for a few hours this afternoon, that is my prerogative. I want to do good with my time here. As those hippies in the Grateful Dead say, “Such a short time to be here and a long time to be gone.” I feel like these words and sounds I am sending into the internet are making more of an impact than my efforts in the field do. I know that one day it will all be worthwhile.

Mania and Other Departures

Let us (me) discuss smoking, tattoos, mental illness, and other forms of trying to be cool today.

I started smoking cigarettes at the age of 14 because I hated my life and thought the people that smoked were cool. I think I thought that because they seemed to agree to be my friends. I still live in a strange and sad world, because I had very few friends when I was younger because I was (and still am) a weird kind of guy. I’m not sure why I thought smoking would make me cooler, I think it had something to do with Kurt Cobain and the romantic notion that killing yourself slowly would make you feel good. Of course, when I began to smoke I didn’t realize that I was killing myself. It was only as I grew older that I noticed the correlation between my depression and suicidal thoughts and the fact that I was spending at least $10 a day to hurt myself from the inside out.

I realize a similarity between smoking and the tattoos I purchased when I was younger. It has been 9 years since I have gotten a tattoo, but I have 18 of them, I think. I remember telling someone, “I’m always going to be the person I think I am today” when I was 16 and got my first tattoo. Now I know, you are wondering how I got a tattoo at 16. So did my mother. In reality, I just walked into a shady tattoo parlor and asked for one. He laughed and put me in the chair. This began a seven-year relationship where I covered my body with small tattoos. I now regret these decisions, I think because I am a completely different person than I was when I got those tattoos.

A part of me wanted to be like this artist I knew when I was young named Manwoman. I also once declared that I was to be God’s artist. This is something that I still feel up to, but that makes less and less sense to me now that I am not concerned with the Devil and his influence over my high school. Most of these thoughts were, even to paraphrase Manwoman’s words (which always came across kinder when I would send him letters full of mania and fear), probably the effects of some kind of mental illness. I remember seeing Ganesha come down from the ceiling while in history class in grade 12 and explaining that he was my Grandfather to my Mom, who sent me post-haste to the psychiatrist and began to give me heavy anti-psychotics.

The medication had a strong effect on me. It didn’t cure the mania, the delusions took years of thought exercises and meditation to learn about. The one thing the antipsychotics did for me was to make it impossible to talk, which served the psychiatrist just fine and he felt that because I was not discussing aliens and Gods coming down from the ceiling anymore that I was probably just confused sexually and getting better with time. I don’t really understand where he got the idea that I was confused sexually, but I read that when I asked for my mental health documents from a freedom of information act request. I was also surprised at how few notes they had taken regarding me.

Anyways, because of the mental illness and the inability to talk I lost basically every friend I had ever made, mostly because we were 15 and teenagers don’t like weirdos. This was a difficult time for me because all I wanted to do was be liked. In my home life, I wasn’t too liked, (my Mom liked me but the others were pretty mean) and I think that made me think that I was in need of love elsewhere in the world. I would discuss the meaning of life with the voices in my head and thought they were people far away that I was yet to meet. I still have this ailment, but now I tend to think the disembodied voices are people in the room with me. This is still difficult because people I see exist as well. It is like living in two worlds simultaneously and can be troubling for those who love me.

They say that you hold on to the things that happen when you are this age because they are the formative years when your brain is doing the most growing. I just wish that I could leave the suffering that I went through behind and that I could create a life that I can be proud of with love and peace in my heart. The world doesn’t work like that. You must suffer in order to grow and I am thankful, in a way, that I suffered as I did, because now I am more understanding and forgiving of other people’s troubles.

A part of me wishes that I could be one of those functioning adults who runs a business and gets awarded great amounts of money for their efforts, but my work has been about rebuilding a fractured consciousness and trying to create a sort of normality to my life. I’ve never been one of those normal people, but I don’t really think anyone is stereotypically normal in this world. Even the one kid I am thinking of (he’s probably an adult now, too) is probably some kind of outlier. It is rare to be one of the successful ones, even if everything is handed to you.

I am a terrible worker most of the time because my mentality is to learn as much theory as I can and the transfer the knowledge I am learning to some kind of media. There are many successful people who do this – and I am going to lie and say that I am one.

I often disassociate from reality (even today a little bit) and tell myself that I am more successful than I am. That doesn’t really give the proper effect. It is as if I am being told that I am more successful than I am. I keep telling these voices in my head that they are voices in my head, but they don’t listen. I think they think that they are real people or something. My friend was telling me that they are spirit guides, and another (crazier) friend was telling me that they are false angels or something.

It is like I mentioned earlier, the thought that haunts me as if I am living two lives simultaneously and both of us are doing what I am doing, perhaps backward from each other. This creates great art and magic music when I play with the band, it creates interesting radio and a lot of happiness in my life. My imagination is the greatest gift that I have to use. It is going to add something important to the world because I keep repeating that it is. The flip side of that coin is that it is also something that causes me a lot of trouble. My therapist told me that she says that all the time to people, “Something that is your greatest problem is also your greatest gift.”

Alan Watts told me (in an audio file) that there is nothing without another side to it, “Imagine a person with just the left side of their body. It is absurd.” That is why these things are interesting to me. With smoking, after a while, I made a lot of friends who smoke and it seems like those people are the more interesting and depressed people in the world, whether they know that or not. With tattoos, I don’t see the point of the ones I got now, but when I was younger people thought they were cool. Even Sheena thinks that I look badass, as this grown adult with startling markings on his body. With mental illness, everyone has a cross to bear. I have learned more about myself and the nature of reality because I have struggled with the crazies than I would have if I was one of those functioning people in high school. It made me interesting as a person. People like interesting people.

I fear what I could have become if I was one of the normal ones. I think that is my point. Be glad that we are all different and all insane. All knowledge is created by people, so there really is no divine work and beyond thinking that there must be some logic to the entire creation of all knowledge wrapped together in this grand celestial burrito we have no idea what exactly is going on. That is to say that nobody knows what we are supposed to do in this world and I guess that makes me no different.

Some people make plans, execute their plans and see successes. I’ve done that, too. It seems to work. Right now I just want to find my life’s purpose, but that is the main issue for almost everyone. The brewer thinks that his purpose is to bring beer to the people. That can’t be the only purpose for that person. That is just what he is currently doing. Who knows? I guess that is the purpose to life, to find out just what reality is and create something wonderful that you can be proud of. I heard on a podcast the other day that, “Humans are the noblest of creatures because we come here to co-create with God.”