AUTHENTICITY : INSOMNIA

Sigh. This just happens sometimes, now way less frequently than before. I can't sleep. I just can't get my mind / body / brain to shut down and STOP for a little while. And of course it never "stops," really, but rather I am having great difficulty turning off the centers of my brain that we associate with waking states and turning it over to a sleeping state. (I could go into a long discussion about the reticular activating system and threshold levels of concentrations of particular neurochemicals, but that would require more Latin than I have the capacity for at this hour.)

How long have you been awake? they would ask.

I don't know, I'd say, What day is it?

This was actually my job for the better part of two years, i.e. that of the pharmaceutical prostitute. (Thanks Myo for the very fitting term!) I had insomnia -- severe insomnia -- and though the sleep disorder clinics couldn't fix this disorder, they were able to make me into a particularly useful (and well paid) guinea pig. Drug testing was my sole source of income for about two years. Granted, it wasn't much -- by anyone else's standards not nearly enough to live on, but I had some financial support from my family and there was *no way* I was keeping a conventional job at that point in my life. Think about it -- it is very hard to keep down steady employment when one goes through periodic bouts of not sleeping for four or five days on end. I was very thrifty (1000 uses for Ramen noodles! None of which involve insane amounts of sodium!!! 100 tea bags for the price of one 2-liter bottle of pop -- that's right, 100 BAGS!!!! Government cheese? It melts great -- slap some on those Raman noodles! And maybe a little of that Taco Bell hot sauce. One $0.49 taco = 40 packets of relatively legitimate hot sauce! IGA bread: $0.33 Kroger bread: $0.25 = it's worth the extra two mile walk! These are prices from the late '80s and early '90s but still -- I was thrifty.

Plus, I refused to be a Cube Monkey. Nope. No way. And I wasn't touching that greasy food either, or being called "Sweetheart," or getting anybody's coffee. ("No thanks, I've already got some," was my answer to "Hey Sweetheart -- how 'bout some coffee?" Much laughter ensued. I was very competent (despite my nightly drinking problem -- I really hated my cage -- I mean cube) though not very well-liked after that by the President of the company.) I would rather play in the snow all night then EVER go back to that job again. Nope. Won't do it. Thus I learned to live on Ramen.

Where was I? Oh yes -- insomnia.

You can see where this becomes an issue -- I have A LOT going on in my mind, pretty much all the time. (So does everyone -- I've just spent thirty years teaching myself to be attuned to all of it at once… which is a lot.) When I am "overly tired" as the saying goes, I can't shut this off. Normally, I can go into a deep meditative state and let go of ALL my discursive thoughts, but when I am too tired, I get scattered -- it all goes in all directions all at once and it's all full of words. (Words: my gift and my curse.) Which, granted, can really fun. (I make all my own recreational chemicals, right here in my brain, thus I have no desire to ingest them from external sources.) But sometimes, I want off the ride. Help!!!!!!! Isn't there a tent I can go to where some nice hippie will talk me down??!!?? I want off the ride!!!!!!!!

There were times in the past when my insomnia was a lot more prevalent -- it was more on than off. These days a bout of it is very rare -- maybe twice a year -- four times at most. Now is one of those times.

The last time I really slept (as in experienced one entire approximately 90 minute sleep cycle) was Saturday night; it is now Wednesday morning. In that time I have slept about three hours total, and not in a row. I am sure that I am quite tired. However, the systems in my brain that register those chemicals have other chemicals bounded to their receptors right now, thus I am unable to "receive" the chemicals that tell me to go to sleep, thus I am experiencing life as though I am awake.

I say "as though I am awake," because some of my systems *are* experiencing life as though I was asleep. (No, it is not really safe for me to drive right now, thanks for asking.) I am having mild auditory hallucinations, mostly just creatively combining atmospheric noise into other potential combinations. (In our typical waking mind, we usually experience sounds as discreet, picking out particular sounds as originating from a particular object, and experience that sound as evidence of that object's existence. ((We are *so* about identifying objects as homo sapiens -- it is one of our greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses as a species.)) In other states of mind ((i.e. when other parts of the brain are activated and others are quiescent)) we experience sound for its own sake, as sound itself, rather than just the indicator of some other object.) I am not, as I have been at other times, running around the house with a pink metal colander on my head yelling about the Phillip Glass Doom Machine hovering outside my house. Nope, that was someone else.

This can be fun IF I don't have anything "important" that I really have to do. Unfortunately, this often strikes exactly WHEN I have something really important to do -- like now. I have *so much* to do this week, to do tomorrow, and sleep would be REALLY BENEFICIAL to all of those undertakings. (To give you a hint, check out the time and then remember that my alarm clock is set for 7:00 a.m….. and that I haven't had a full sleep cycle since Saturday night…. and that I *must* function tomorrow, and that I *will* function tomorrow.) It blows me away sometimes to remember that some other people (most?) can't "control" their feeling of tired the way that I can. I can off-handedly discuss this level of exhaustion as though I were talking about the color of my socks. (Um, I'm a hammer.) Of course, then I sometimes say things like that, totally out of the blue. But I could stay awake for three more days if I had to, or even if I just had a mind to.

Oh -- then there's the drugs. Drugs are bad, um'kay?

Other than the times that somebody was willing to pay me thousands of dollars to take them, I've always pretty much refused drugs to reduce my insomnia. As it was such a chronic condition, I *was not* okay making that kind of relationship commitment with a chemical. (I've got plenty of my own chemicals, thank you. I don't like to mix my cocktails.) On occasion, rare occasion, I would take something "over the counter" to help me sleep -- an actual pharmaceutical drug.

Note: I am okay taking some of the natural remedies, and I have several that typically help quite a bit to "keep me regular." Liquid melatonin helps a lot (much of my inability to sleep stems from having trained my body / brain for so long not to produce melatonin and/or not to "receive" those electro-chemical messages if they were present) as does this crappy tasting (but effective!) valerian tea. (A very particular brand is all that I use -- there are only two brands I've found effective.) I also sometimes take tryptophan (I love Canada!) or a supplement called Orchex (an anti-anxiety supplement for my hyper-thinking head -- it's not anxiety, but it races just as fast) or kava kava. Sometimes I'll even have a shot glass full (read: about an ounce and a half) of organic Australian red wine. I usually take one or two of these things at a time, and tend to rotate depending upon what it is that is keeping me awake on any particular day, and many days I don't take anything.

But some days… some days none of this will cut it so I take half the adult dose of an over the counter sleeping pill. Last week, as whatever this current chemical cycle is began, I took a sleeping pill one night, really needing sleep. The next day I was so groggy I ended up taking a nap. Well, if I take a nap there is *no way* I'm going to be able to sleep that night, even if the nap is at one in the afternoon and it is the only sleep I've had in twenty-four hours. Nope, I'm all done for that day.

Unless I would take a sleeping pill to knock me out, which I did, not wanting to endure a sleepless night where I would have to function (and parent) the next day. Ditto on that day, and the next, and the next. It was a vicious cycle, which led to me being more and more vicious my self. Every day I was little more impatient, a little crankier, a little foggier, a little more unfocused. After about five days I said -- holy crap! This has got to stop.

And so it did. And here I am. REBOUND!!!!!!

I was once on a drug for six weeks (for money) -- it was intense. Every night, if you could fight the incredible drag toward sleep and stay awake, you would hallucinate. That in and of itself isn't all that remarkable -- an insomniac knows that you will hallucinate after about sixty hours awake anyway. (And that is with NO sleep at all in that time -- your system processes chemicals very quickly as soon as you lose consciousness, so it doesn't have time to "build up" enough for true hallucinations, rapid eye movement with your eyes open sort of stuff.) The remarkable thing was that you would hallucinate the SAME THING every night, and that thing was ENVIRONMENTALLY DEPEDENT, meaning you would see the same thing in the same place every time. And that wasn't all -- just as a further experiment (it's in the name of science!!!!) I had a friend of mine, a fellow severe insomniac, try taking one one night, as I knew that he would be able to fight through the urge to sleep. (A normal person could not -- I experimented.) I didn't tell him anything about my experience, only that it was "interesting" and I wanted to hear what he thought of it.

Here's the kicker: He saw exactly the same "hallucinations" that I did in exactly the same places at exactly the same time. Now, one could say that I "saw" these things because he was telling me about them out loud -- the power of suggestion and all -- but he was telling me about things I'd been watching (and journaling about) every night for the past three weeks. Coincidence? I think not. (Though, statistically speaking, there is *some* possibility that this was random, the dual experience of seeing a very short person running up and down the hallway repeatedly is unlikely. Oh my gawd! he screamed. There's a midget running around in your hallway! Yep, sure is. And those two folks in the corner go through that same series of gestures over and over, seeming to have the same argument every night.)

Anyway. Interesting as that drug was, after six weeks, the study was up. It was actually a very effective sleep aid (once I decided to go to sleep) with no hangover in the morning, no disruption (that I could tell) of REM states, etc.. (These are some of the many reasons I refuse on-going drug therapy.) However, the rebound from it was *terrible*.

For a like amount of time that I ingested the drug, i.e. six weeks, I had INCREDIBLE insomnia, as in I would sleep about twenty minutes every four or five days, and then not again for another three to five days, etc.. This went on for six weeks, nonstop. I could not function. I lost my job. I dropped out of school. I hid under my table because I was afraid that the trains in the train yard three miles away were creeping closer and closer to my house. (This was in the days before I'd acclimated to and really understood the nature of auditory hallucinations. And I'd like to note that the drug company sent no nice hippie to talk me down and explain all this -- I had to become my own hippie.)

And while the drug company offered little in the way of compensation for the disruption of my life (not that I cared a whole lot -- it was just another interesting and unique experience) it was able to offer me sporadic ongoing employment freaking out drug company executives for $100 an hour.

They loved to call me, their one Really Freaky Test Subject Outlier -- if a drug could put me to sleep, it could put *anyone* to sleep. At the same time, perhaps they wanted to put a "human face" on the intense rebound effect that this drug had. I would come in, all strung out, barely able to take off my sunglasses, even indoors, because my eyes were so light sensitive. I was in a head-space waaaaaay beyond social conventions -- I didn't care how I sat in the chair, what I said, what I wore, or what I smelled like. I didn't now where I was, how I'd gotten there (I drove!!!!), who these people were or what day it was. How long have I been awake? I don't f'ing know -- what's Monkey to the power of 10? Riddle me that Batman.

And then I'd laugh.

They were really so funny there in their Armani suits with their serious faces, two hundred dollar pens scrawling across legal pads, writing down *something* based on the gibberish I was spewing -- who wouldn't laugh in that context?

Mostly I was coherent -- What do you do all night when you're not sleeping? Do you watch a lot of television? I don't own a television, so no. I never watch it. (gasp! That was nearly as deviant as my sleeping habits.) So what do you DO? they wanted to know. I don't know -- meditate, talk to people, try to levitate, draw, write stuff, read books, stand on top of bar stools and rant about the social and environmental dangers of Rice-A-Roni to passers by on the sidewalk -- you know -- the stuff everyone does. [scribble scribble scribble] Can I have my money now? I wanna go buy an armadillo.

I finally ended my career as a pharmaceutical prostitute when I was given a drug that was some kind of anti-depressant. (Given the time, it could have been Prozac in its human trial phase. We were never told the name of the drug we could potentially get, only the class of drug. It was also just as likely that we would be in the control group and get a "blank" pill. Those studies were easier but not as exciting.) From a neurochemical perspective I am not depressed. (I'm actually "anti-depressed." The very same chemical imbalance that brings me insomnia also makes depression chemically impossible for me.) The first night I took it, the walls started to bleed about fifteen minutes later. Not cool. The second night, they started to bleed even more profusely. Even uncooler. The third night it was so bad that I really freaked out. (Again, I didn't understand the basis for hallucinations and chemical reactions, so it was very difficult for me to stay in a calm, objective state of mind like I could now -- and again -- no nice hippie was sent to talk me down.) After I was retrieved from where I was, standing in the middle of the street screaming (at a garbage can, I think) I decided to drop out of the study. No amount of money was worth that level of "experimental."

That was the last one I ever did. From what I hear, pharmaceutical prostitutes are not as well paid (nor considered as socially prestigious [guffaw]) as they once were. (Note: there was a one and only time that I did participate again in one, but it wasn't for sleep. There was a study to test a new yeast infection medication -- it wasn't even a new medication but rather a different "one time dosage" trial of an already existing medication. I wanted Christmas money so I willed myself to get a yeast infection (I've had exactly two in my life -- one after a round of antibiotics when I was very young, and this one, so again -- I doubt that this was random) so that I could participate in the study. That was my second measurably successful "mind over matter" experiment, the first one being learning to will my diaphragm from spasming when I have the hiccups. (Which is very useful -- I find hiccups unpleasant.) )

As you can see, I get very (parenthetical) when I can't sleep -- I actually often think and write like this -- it just "bleeds over" into what I categorize as my "normal" writing a bit more when I'm tired. And what is normal anyway? This is authenticity.

And insomnia. I think I will say a-do, trying again for some shut-eye, as popeye would call it. I am not *strictly obligated* to be anywhere until noon, and though I planned to get up at seven, I think that it is more important to break this cycle. Believe it or not, if I stay up it (as we can see) WILL NOT ensure that I would be able to sleep EVEN MORE easily the next night. For me, during these times, there is very little correlation between being exhausted and sleep -- very little correlation at all.

But I will try. I've downed two cups of valerian tea and had my shot of liquid melatonin a while back. I know that I am upsetting my serotonin levels by doing this, i.e. sitting in front of a computer, but sometimes, if I let my words (some of them -- I'm also thinking about six dozen other things right now) do something in the concrete, they will stop pestering me in the abstract.

Wish me luck….and some sleep.

SOCKPUPPET DRAMA

While shopping today, I heard an interaction between a woman and her daughter.

******8

The need for love is manifested in the body. It NEEDS love the way it needs food, water and protection from the elements. Our bodies suffer from lack of love -- from criticism, judgment, neglect. In our culture, the body is seen as the carrier of our minds, our emotions, our thoughts rather than as PART of those same functions. We feel in our bodies -- emotions and sensations -- just as we feel those things in our heads. Our head is part of our body -- our body is part of our head. There are neuroreceptors in many parts of our body, not just within our mind/head.

My suffering will never minimize the suffering of another. Likewise, I can never suffer for another. My suffering serves no purpose. Most (if not all) of my suffering is voluntary.

If I feel joy at seeing the joy of another, then I create more joy. If I experience suffering at seeing the suffering of another, then I create more suffering.

Compassion is not suffering, it is the antidote for suffering. Tears do not necessarily express suffering, though we are conditioned to believe that they do, thus our cultural fear of them, our repression. The limbic system is right behind the sinuses -- when it pumps out a big !gush! of compassion/empathy/interconnectedness/nonduality it activates these tissues. Thus, the tears -- they are nigh involuntary when this is felt strongly, or rather when there is a critical amount of these neurochemicals present. Some have more sensitive tissues than others; some cry more readily than others; some have more receptors than others.

What crazy socialized messages -- crying = weakness. Um, what? I'm "weak" for having more oxytocin receptors? For responding to my body's expression of compassion/empathy/interconnectedness/nonduality? This is like guilt over orgasm….

…. more or less exactly like that, only with some more chemicals added to it. Oh, the Victorians…. so afraid of their minds, so afraid of their chemistry, so afraid they would return to the days of knuckledraggingmonkeys if they allowed their brains free range.

Nope, can't think that thought -- some invisible force named "culture" deemed that that thought should (they deemed that word too) be tossed into the "bad" pile -- it's evil, donchaknow…. or is at least a gateway thought toward evil.

And what is evil in this culture my friends? The highest form of evil as taught by the culturally generally approved "authority" on morality? What? Disobedience? It is disobedience that caused The Great Fall, that cast down light into infinite darkness, that created the very threat of which we are all supposed (that word too) to fear? Eternal damnation… for disobedience? For questioning? For not submitting?

Um, yeah, whatever. This is not a principle to which I am willing to bow. And oh yes, believe me, I've done my share of prostrations, but not to a principle like this. Sorry folks, but that is not a heaven to which I would wish to go… would have a hard time, really, calling it heaven….

Hey! You there… the one THINKING. Knock it off, or you're out-o-here. You remember what they did to the LAST guy who was disobedient…..

Bleh. Disobedient. Fuck you, I'll SHOW YOU disobedient…..

Thus, a great part of my life. What kind of freedom is that? It isn't freedom at all, but rather the reactionary response to the same principle, only now instead of obeying it I am rebelling against it, thus it is still in control of me.

Tricky, tricky, tricky…..

Ok, here's the dichotomy -- you can either be on MY side, or HIS side. Which one do you choose? You're "free" to choose either. No choice? Oop -- you're either for me or against me, so which will it be? Come on, quick -=- what's the lesser of the two evils? (tickticktick) !!Quick!! Time's running out! If you don't pick ME I'll do TERRIBLE THINGS to you! It's your choice… come one come on come on. Time's up!

Dude, no thanks. I mean, that's just a really trite and clichéd plot -- circular drama. Tell you what -- you go do your "dichotomous" thing over there, and I'll go do my "nondichotomous" thing over here and, maybe some day, I'll check back and see how your story all turned out…. or not. Once one stops watching the soap opera, one can always go back and turn it back on and pretty immediately figure out who's screwing whom now and pick back up with getting sucked in. ( ) It's neverending conflict though once one realizes that one is free to just turn away and do something else, well, then, that's when the real choice comes into play.

Choose a side? There are no sides. Ever. This is just a construct created to keep us busy, to keep us suffering, to keep us obedient to an idea we carry around in our heads. The irony is that the oppressor suffers in equal proportion to the oppressed -- they are just unfree in a different way.

When we are trapped within our own minds we are the greatest prisoners of all. Tiny cells, experience locked away, believing the stories of our own intrinsic "evil" nature. We avoid our own experiences, our own chemistry, our own brains/bodies because we've been conditioned to believe that they are the gateway to unbearable unmitigated unfinite suffering so we deny them, disown them, neglect them. Rarely do we accept them; even more rarely to do we love them.

Gee… can't imagine why so many people in our culture are so unhappy. (Does this sound familiar? You have EVERYTHING -- what are YOU whining about. Spoiled brat.) We are both abusers and abused, perpetrators and victims, playing out the dramas of suffering within and amongst our selves.

The good news? We don't have to. Seriously -- you're free to stop any time. Not that quitting is easy -- samsara is more addictive than heroine, more addictive than TV. It is so addictive because you think it is real, that to even think about setting it down is… unthinkable. Suffering/conflict/duality? Just… set it down? Coldturkey? Shouldn't I go to a clinic somewhere and get little plasticcups of dilated samsara once in a while, just so I don't get…. twitchy? Bored?

Don't let Them fool you, my friend -- bliss is never boring.

In our culture, Mara has twodichotomoussockpupptes. Sometimes they are called god/devil, others good/evil. Should/shouldn't, deserve/notdeserve, and all of their allied affiliates and derivations. They are given power by the concepts such as "have to" and "must" under the authority of "dire consequences."

We carry around the words of oppression, using them every day upon ourselves, demanding and imposing our own obedience, and then we wonder why we do not feel free. We are our own oppressors -- we enslave ourselves to concepts, imprison ourselves in conditioned linguistic patterns.

Of course this means that each of us has a key. The good news is, we really are free.

TIMECHANGE; PRELUDE

I feel guilt…. no that's not a feeling, it's one of those four life-alienating thingies along with anger, shame and depression. Try again.

I feel…. sad when I think of others suffering. (OFNR… wait, try again.)

I am filled with bliss. I feel sad when I think of others suffering because I need liberation.

Wait. Not quite.

I am filled with bliss. I feel compassion when I think of others suffering because I value liberation.

Hmm…

I am filled with bliss and the causes of bliss. And while I sometimes have the illusion of being separated from the supreme joy that is beyond all sorrow, I also have awareness that this is never Really the case, thus even in the midst of my suffering I have awareness that it is illusory, yet if it did not seem so real, would I still have felt the catalyst to open to compassion? When the heart opens it feels…. so many things…. sometimes for the first time.

That is the nature of one level of resistance -- the resistance to feeling suffering. If I open my heart, surely that huge surging wave will just wash me over…. the energy, once felt, takes on the shape and ferocity of the infinite. Oh dear…. my ego shrieks -- that looks mighty HUGE! And it's coming straight for my heart! Is, in fact, moving through it! Yikes! All of the cultural referents I have for accounts of this sort of sensation are linked to brain responses of fight or flight / cortisol, and etc., so the experience has the potential to cause a likewise [ clamp ] right on that physical sensation. Nope -- I needed more information before I'd open up THAT gate.

Fair enough.

Before I could open my heart, I had to trust love. I had to trust, down deeper and stronger than my own bones, that love was, in fact, the answer and not just a witty metaphor before I was going to open THAT gate all the way wide. Ah, and I was convinced -- by both debate and example.

I am so filled with bliss that I have the sensation of the possibility of exploding into many pieces, repeatedly, so that I can inhabit seventeen (for a random number for today) different dimensions and write a different sentence in every one and follow that sentence as far as I am interested in seeing it go. Then, once done writing, I can neatly step back into one piece and go about my business as if only a moment…. a very richly textured moment….. has passed.

I am, it is seeming, ready to stretch time. I am learning about how to… taste the quality of time in particular moments, to feel the harmonichologram of the moment… you only need one moment to reproject all the others holographically. Time is like a particle only shinier. It flickers and reflects through the holograph of matter, gravity smiling inward, the pull of interconnectedness pulling it together toward itself, embracing, centered.

I would prefer writing blindfolded, I think, to lessen the effects of this particular light upon my serotonin production cells. I try to consciously rebalance, to keep those neurons from becoming overstimulated, but a blindfold would just be easier. Sure, the practice focusing is probably good for me, but if I just had a blindfold I could harness all that neurochemical control to attenuate on other areas I am likewise holding, at least loosely, into the big, shiny, gravitysmile that is me laughing, blissfilled, blissfulfilling.

I am sooooo shiny…. so filled with time. I am overcome with bliss just seeing myself glitter. And as I look around, we are all this way, all filled with light, all filled with shiny particles of smiling time looking at one another saying -- damn -- that sure was some drama. Can you believe we ever fell for those stories? Those selfperpetuatingloophatetapes? Wow, that sure did suck. And then you say, but wait -- there's a bunch of guys who still think the drama is real, who still care or believe in the idea of a hometeam for which to root, who believe that there are selfperpetuatingdichotomies like goodandbad goodandevil shouldandshouldnt worthandworthless deserveandnotdeserving. (I'd like to replace dichotomous thinking for 100jack!) but wait… I know some of those guys… hey wait, I *am* one of those guys.

So here's we are and here's we be, in some form or another until allwe'all get happyandshiny. I'm not leaving this party until ALL us drunkmotherfuckers soberup, rubourheads, and say -- whooo -- what happened here? Yikes! Did I throw that bear on you? Damn, sorry 'bout that. Don't know what came over me. It was this…. madness, this….. anger this….. samsara. Oh yeah -- that's right -- thus, the mess. Hey wait… I don't even remember showing up at this party -- it's like I've been here for….ever. Did I get an invitation? Surely there was a place I could have said no, could have forgone this conclusion. (heads.heads.heads.) Could have… stayed at home.

Oh, but the reasons not to are so beautiful, in the end, if you can get through the dramatic parts of the story in between. The end is sooooo…… beautiful….. that you realize it was, in fact, worth every page to get there. However, once it is over, once the end is the beginning and everyone lives happily eaverafter, then what?

Ah, yes, grasshopper….. that is written on the pages outside of the book; one must look first away from the story in order to see the Proverbial writingonthewalls. Oh it is funny, the meaning statedbutlost in the metatext.

I am learning that there are two ways to clean up messes. One involves cleaning up every little piece of it individually, and that seems… pretty overwhelming, at least to me. I am as old as beginningless time; when I look at the infinite complexity of karma I feel… awestruck… at how many pieces of it there are. Would you be willing to arrange these pieces into patterns that I can assimilate holistically instead of one at a time? That would meet my need for…. brevity. People are suffering; as they suffer, some part of me suffers withandas them. I feel… excited and energized because I have a need for…. brevity. There will be All The Time In The World once we forget about the party where everybody got into the mead that had 'gonefunny', or rather "notgonefunnyatall" but rather "gonemad." (I used to be mad, now I’m just funnyinthehead.) We are already filled with Allthetimeintheworld, so what's with my impatience?

Suffering. People are doing it. They don't have to. Some of them do not know this vital piece of information, thus the despair, the angst, the existentialnihilism (thank heavens for the pastries), the, the… SUFFERING. Suffering leads to more suffering -- if we all end suffering now, NO ONE ELSE NEED EVER SUFFER AGAIN. I mean really -- can't we all give this paradigm a try? Just for a while? The human race has been experimenting with violence and aggression as survival skills for a long damn time now, and I, as a member of the human race, would like to propose a movement that, just as an experiment, could we try, just for a while, to end violence and see what happens. If humans ever wanted to go back to violence and oppression for some reason, they would be free to do so -- it's that whole "free will" thing that we don't even give ourselves credit for.

(((Neigh! We've instead been conditioned to feel guilty for our autonomy, to deny it, to avoid it, to fear it, to be beaten away from it by some hottempered Asuric incorporeal being who was looking for a cheap ticket to hell…. oh the ultimate selfperpetuatingjackeltongue. Two jackelpuppets looking across at each other, glaring over an arena that, while large as compared to precultural homoerectus primates, is far from anything called eternity. You'll burn in hell for… as long as it takes you to figure out that you're the one keeping you there. Then, you're pretty much free to leave -- not much that can keep you there once you realize you are creating the walls from your own illusions. (Why am I here? Because I believed, for a moment, the dramadialog of twojacklepuppets -- not even real -- just characters in a story….) And you know, by the time you can do that, the metaphoricdemons are happy to see you go. In fact, as they were pretending to keep you there you, in your leaving, pointed out that they, too, were free to go anytime.)))

There is a…. construct that beings take with them from existence to existence. I don't know what it's called, but it looks like an… infinitely patterned raindrop of bluelight to me, lines like Idra'snet, points like neurons and starclusters… perfect little bundles of holography held together by the shape of gravity in whatever form in which their karma smiles. There is a way to smile -- every drop of existence has this inherent in it, that while each is unique the unconditioned whole is expressed unbroken and perfect within it. Every being has this, and every being in samsara has already, at some point, experienced suffering. If that suffering can be transformed into compassion, then might not all beings end their own suffering? Compassion, opening the heart…..

I have more information -- I requested and thus it was granted. Love. Is. The. Answer. ß

LANGUAGE AND LIBERATION


I have been examining for some time the causes and reasons for what I now would term “internal jackal speak” and feel as though I am coming to a realization. I’ve looked at the internal critical dialogs within myself and heard that dark and (seemingly everpresent) voice watching over my shoulder, waiting for any opportunity to chime in with criticism….

You suck.
What a selfish piece of shit you are.
You’re such a dumbass.
Why did you do that? You don’t deserve to live.
At the very least you should remove yourself from the lives of those you love – you don’t want to contaminate them with your presence.
Oh look – you fucked up again – what a surprise.
You stupid fucking bitch.

On and on and on. It took me years to hear the voice consciously; it took another five years to wrestle my destiny out of its hands. But oh… the liberation….

I was somewhat shocked and surprised to find that my Internal Jackal was not particularly peculiar to me, was not just a clinical manifestation of PTSD, but rather a seemingly wide-spread cultural phenomenon. Though we are conditioned not to talk about it, we also seem conditioned to internalize its presence, to allow it to reverberate in the dark places of our minds, always lurking, always criticizing, always there to tell us why we don’t deserve happiness. We are told that we are bad, that we are selfish, that we don’t deserve love from others and most assuredly not from ourselves.

Though Tibetans have a word for remorse, they do not have one for guilt – their closest approximation is a term that means self-hatred. In Tibetan Buddhism there is no sin, only insanity, that which is not life-affirming. Self-hatred defeats the first law of human nature, that all beings desire and move toward a state of happiness and away from suffering. In my observations, self-hatred causes a gravitation toward suffering, an almost addictive badgering toward spiritual annihilation.

And why, oh why, is it there? I have asked myself, looking for its causes in order to be able to find its antidote. Could it really be a linguistic tool of control? A conditioned use of language which ushers us down the road to a self-induced hell? Both for ourselves and the world at large?

I notice more and more how life-alienating so much of our society’s typical communication is and how that surely effects our internal environments – the way we speak and internalize language IS the way that we think – the two arise together. In other words, if we don’t have a word for something, we cannot really think about it, much less communicate about it with others. How many years now have I been looking at that? Saying things like “To control thought, control language. To free thought, free language.”?

Yes, it is possible that all of our “should’s” and “have to’s” are the key to our control, the key to keeping us in our places, the key to our belief that our fate, future and present lie in the hands of some (ambiguous) one else....

I should do....
I need to go....
We have to get....
Everyone has to.....
There are just things that you've got to.....

If I am the slave, then what is my master?

I once asked a Tibetan Rinpoche if Samsara could be looked upon as an addiction, i.e. that we continue to suffer because we are addicted to suffering. He thought about it, then laughed out loud – yes, Samsara could be looked upon as an addiction to suffering.

Having had an addiction, I know that letting go of it is no laughing matter… though in another sense, it is *exactly* a laughing matter. (Skillful application of joy is the antidote to much suffering.) But where is the addiction? Meaning, to what are we addicted and how do we take that substance into our beings? It would be something we use all the time, that we ingest regularly enough to cause a compelling reliance, something we couldn’t imagine ourselves without.

I am beginning to wonder if it isn’t the language which causes the underlying roots of the suffering we impose upon ourselves, and subsequently others. I came to the belief six years ago that self-hatred is the root of all evil, meaning that the hurt people cause to others is the manifestation of the hurt that they cause within themselves. It is why, regardless of how “unworthy” I might have felt at the beginning of the journey, I knew that I *had* to find and pull out the roots of my own self-hatred, for not doing so would most assuredly lead to the hatred of others. Hatred is hatred and only leads to more hatred; to hate myself is no different than singling out any other person or group to hate.

Is it really the language? I’ve known for some time the power of language – its ability to transform and create reality, so why not? Could it really be that simple? That complex?

The should’s, the have to’s, the judgments of ourselves and others, the lack of empathy, the obsession with presenting our side and “winning,” the comparison, the competition, the criticism, the denial of responsibility, the internalization of blame, the disapproval as a means to coerce conformity, the veneer of nice spread thin over teeth clenching rage, the control The Control THE CONTROL….

You suck.
What a selfish piece of shit you are.
You’re such a dumbass.
Why did you do that? You don’t deserve to live.
At the very least you should remove yourself from the lives of those you love – you don’t want to contaminate them with your presence.
Oh look – you fucked up again – what a surprise.
You stupid fucking bitch.
Sit down.
Shut up.
Do what you’re told.
Or else….

Fuck. That.

I would fight the Jackal, but the moment I fight is the moment I lose. Rather, I will let go of any fear or hatred of the Jackal, will empathize with the pain it must be feeling to lash out like that, the powerlessness, the rage, the incomprehensible sorrow that comes from pain inflicted by the Jackals and Jackals and Jackals before that….

Samsara had no beginning, but it does have an end.

I want to liberate the Jackal, to love it so much it loses its need to bare its teeth or bite anymore. We come from a history of violence, a history of suffering, a history of competition, a history of needing to control others in order to survive. But that world of scarcity is over – I want to tell the Jackal It’s safe now – you don’t have to be afraid anymore – there is no need to bare your teeth.

It may take a while for it to believe me, to stop growling and come over here and eat the bowl of milk I’m offering, but I’m a patient woman; I’ll wait. And while I wait I’ll do my best to not be intimidating, to stay low to the ground so that I don’t tower over the Jackal and frighten him anymore than he is already frightened.

Love isn’t so scary, really, after all – it’s just a matter of learning to trust that the hand that feeds you really won’t slap you afterward, just because it can.

NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTION


Marcella the midget queen.

Oops – that quote was supposed to be pasted onto the other document I’m typing right now. Sorry – wrong universe – but I don’t feel like erasing it. Serendipitydoodah.

Often when I haven’t posted in a while, I’ll offer some sort of explanation (read: unnecessary justification) for my extended absence. Here is the one for today – I’ve been too excited.

Life is just so damn great these days that I can’t seem to settle down enough to write a Blog. I can’t even settle down to write it now – I’ve got other files open at the same time so that I can skip back and forth to write in several places at once. Ahh… life… so many words and only two sets of fingers.

Why is life so damn great you ask? Hmm… that’s a tough one. Is it because life is different? Or because I am? Both I suppose, though the ratio between internal and external certainly leans more to one side.

Imagine, if you will, a universe where Sisyphus suddenly realizes that he’s supposed to push the rock DOWN the hill. Is it the case that he was always “supposed” to roll the rock downhill but subconsciously refused to believe that reality could be such a kind mistress? Or, did he finally succeed in pushing the rock all the way up and now it is rolling down the other side?

Life is ambiguous and full of metaphors:

Was it one big step? Or a mountain which angles up so gradually that one doesn’t notice climbing until the summit?

Imagine applying a great amount of pressure to a very heavy cart for a duration of time… oh, say, five and a half years… and suddenly, one day, it moves. Quickly.

The pressure has been constant, and though the cart would slowly, slowly inch forward sometimes, it seemed that at that rate the journey would take forever. Then, suddenly, all of the lead bricks disappeared in a puff of dramatic smoke and POOF! the cart suddenly weighs nothing. Now, with the same amount of effort, the cart rolls forward at 120 miles per hour, rather than the previous rate of six inches per month. So though five and a half years isn’t exactly “instant,” the sudden lurch forward has the feel of a spontaneous event.

Let’s see if I can pull some concrete images out of this quagmire of abstractions….

My partner started a new job at the beginning of the year which has led to a totally different schedule in our family. Just the change in hours, sleep times and how much he’s at home makes life feel different even though it is actually only an incremental change.

He was already teaching at a local college last year (actually two of them) but now he’s teaching as his primary job, i.e. what he does with most of his daytime work hours. This has meant that he has to be up and at work in the mornings, which has not necessarily been the case prior to this.

It also means that the time in the evenings when we used to both work on the at-home part of our previous / other day job is now taken up by him doing lesson plans, designing tests, etc.. We still do the other work, it’s just now instead of being split 60/40 between us, it is more like 90/10, which is totally fine with me. I’m “busier” in a sense, but I still get to hang out with him at home in my pajamas while I’m working, which has always been my favorite aspect of this job anyway.

Also, I started MOVING at the beginning of the year, both metaphorically and physically. For more than two and a half years, I’ve been either pregnant, nursing a newborn baby or both. This does not leave much time, space or energy for conscious physical movement, and my body is starting to feel it. But now I move all the time and it feels FABULOUS.

I started taking walks every day (now that the baby is old enough to not need to eat every fifteen minutes) and, since I don’t have a lot of “extra” time, I also added upper body movements, meditation, posture correction, weight bearing exercise, neurological reprogramming and core strengthening at the same time. Seven different kinds of fitness, twenty minutes, every day. Don’t have time to do them all? Do them all at once.

Then, when I’m not walking, I continue doing any and all of these things among and within my other activities. And, if the heavens part and I actually have a moment or two when I don’t need to be actively parenting, I do what I call Chaos Aerobics.

Any time, any where for any amount of time, I just MOVE. Arms up, arms down, march in place, jump up and down, bend over and touch my toes, flail randomly, slide rib cage back and forth, jump like a frog, stretch to one side, throw my arms in the air and wiggle them wildly… etc., etc..

It gets my body moving AND I’m very entertaining to the kids, which is nice.

Why do we stand so still all the time? I mean, when humans stand around talking to each other, generally they just STAND AROUND. Why? Are we so far up the food chain that we feel safe just standing there being stationary? Why not walk around, gesticulate wildly, lean this way and that while talking?

So, anyone who is around me these days is just having to adjust to the fact that I am often in motion when I can be. Interestingly enough, many people just sort of “fall into” moving around, too. Move more – it feels great.

Oh – I’ve also been doing yoga a lot more, especially with my Toddler. She loves to do yoga with me, and has a great time imitating the poses or making up her own. However, she has no use for holding a position for an extended length of time. Every five seconds I hear, “Different yoga!” which means she is ready to move into another position.

It’s like speed yoga – one posture every three seconds. On one hand the stretch may not be as deep, but on the other it is definitely more aerobic.

Sometimes we pretend that the Baby is a yoga instructor and try to do everything she is doing. It is amazingly HARD!!!! Babies are trying to build their core strength so that they can sit up, crawl, walk, etc.. Because of that, all of their rolling and flailing about is designed to make them stronger.

I’ve also been doing a lot of Tai Chi again (especially the “fast form”) and have added my own modifications which has made it A LOT more interesting and fun for me. Again, the Toddler loves to join in when she isn’t busy with other things.

Dance, too, is something I love to do which is great fun with a toddler. Mostly we spin around and fall over a lot, though there is also a great deal of flailing which is always good for upper body mobility.


What else…

Oh yes – jazz.

For Christmas my partner and I gave each other jazz. I gave him an instrument and the technique books for jazz improvisation; he gave me a season pass to live jazz every Friday night.

So, every Friday evening we pack up the family (yes, we take the kids) and go downtown to one of the lovely hotels and hear really, really fantastic jazz. (It was voted the “Best Jazz Scene” in Cincinnati recently.) It is in a HUGE open space, which makes it nice for a lot of reasons.

For one, though there is smoking, there isn’t SMOKE like there is in a lot of jazz clubs. It also makes it possible for us to sit in a place where we can still see but where the music isn’t too loud. There are tables, chairs and a couple of couches scattered all around, so we usually camp out on a couch, spread out a blanket for the baby and have a great time. And the Toddler LOVES to dance.

At first I was a little hesitant to bring the kids, but they have an absolute blast. Also, everyone has been so encouraging about them being there and thinks it’s adorable that the Toddler dances so much and has such a great time. Yes, we’re all out until midnight, but we’re on jazz time, right?

We are really into the idea of taking our kids with us most of the places we go and not segregating them into some separate world where they can never see what adults do. As far as we’re concerned, jazz on Friday nights is just another part of our Enrichment Program.

Now, at home, sometimes the Toddler will specifically ask for “jazz music” so that she can dance around. She also enjoys putting on interesting hats and sunglasses, then telling us that she is “one cool little kitty cat.” Now we just need to find a beret in her size.

And, finally, I am WRITING again. Not that I ever really stopped, but I had slowed down from my usual pace once I became a mom. Though to be fair to myself, I have written two book-length pieces since I had the kids, but I had not had the time / space to really make writing a regular part of my life.

Now, I’m doing it. After knowing for YEARS that writing was truly my vocation, what I had to be when I grew up because there wasn’t anything else I loved that much, now I’m finally making it an actual career.

It’s funny – if there is one thing parenting has taught me, it’s time management. I used to have a lot more free time before I was a parent, but I could spend a great deal of that time essentially doing nothing, or doing something but having nothing to show for it afterward. Now when I have space, ANY space, I DO SOMETHING with it. No more procrastinating, no more himming and hawing, no more staring off into space not writing something.

My head is on fire… in a good way.

I’m also finally utilizing, and enjoying, having two different residents. For months after the Baby was born, I more or less stayed out at the farm where there was 1) no steps between me and the bathroom and 2) an extra adult to help juggle both kids. For six months I maybe visited my other home, oh, four or five times.

Now I’m actually going back and forth and am really, really digging it. I always had the idea that two homes was the way to go for me, and I’m finding that doing things like this feels very right and comfortable. There are positive things about either place, so it is nice to be able to enjoy the benefits of both.

I have a tremendous amount of energy now and that is showing in all areas of my life. Hell – just this weekend I summoned Kali and cleaned out every nook and cranny of my kitchen, and had a great time doing it.

That’s just it – I’m having so much fun doing EVERYTHING in my life; even things like cleaning out cabinets or scraping old nasty food off the top of the microwave are joy-worthy events.

I have learned SO MUCH from being a parent – I had no idea that parenting was the way to get in the fast lane of my lifepath rather than a divergent turn off of it. As I watch my kids, I realize that we all come into this world full of joy and energy, but that over the years it can be conditioned and suffered right out of us.

As a parent, I feel it is my Sacred Duty to give my kids the space to be themselves and to express their intrinsic natures. And, as a parent, it is also my Sacred Duty to model for them that life can be fun and full of joy, even when you’re a grown-up. As a person, it is my Sacred Duty to provide that space for myself as well.

It’s been a long, difficult, consciously undertaken journey through very thick mud but I can say at the end of it, now that I’ve been hosed off and my cart is flying along smoothly, it was definitely worth every and any effort it did or would have taken to get here. I feel grounded on the one hand, and like I have rockets strapped to my feet on the other. And, as great as life is here at the end of one leg of the journey, the view ahead is even better.

It’s a good day to be me; it’s a good day to be alive. And, apparently, it was a good day to write a Blog.

POST-HOLIDAY HULLABALOO

No, we haven’t experienced anything recently which could be defined as a hullabaloo – I just like the word and am very amused that my spell check recognizes it. And, it begins with an H.

Though, really, I suppose that everyday in our house could be described as a "great noise or excitement," since that is just part of the general ambiance in the environment of a toddler. Despite cultural pessimism about this age, epitomized by the ubiquitous phrase "terrible two’s," I find it absolutely fascinating to have a child at this stage of development.... even if it means talking her out of schemes involving all of us dressing up like green monkeys and running out of the store without paying for our groceries.

She had a blast through the Christmas season and enjoyed giving presents as much as she enjoyed receiving them. My mother took her Christmas shopping and let her pick out presents for the whole family. I got a scented green canister candle since she knows I like to burn them all the time, and she picked out a crinkly book specially made for teething for her little sister.

My partner got a hat, though my mother did steer her away from her first two choices, one which said something about being proud to be a redneck, the other of which made a derogatory statement about vegetarians. Oh well – advanced as she is for her age, she can’t exactly read yet. Actually, her very first choice was a red and black plaid wool hat with ear flaps and a black tassel on top which her dad might have actually liked but of which her grandmother was unsure.

She REALLY enjoys giving presents, so much so that she is almost dangerous. Her method of delivery is to take the gift in both hands and run as fast as she can straight toward the recipient. Then, as she reaches maximum toddler velocity and is in point blank range of her target, she launches the present as hard as she can directly at them.

For soft gifts like hats and pot holders, this is fine. However, the candle almost knocked me off of my chair and the sharp corners on boxes were downright dangerous. Not to mention that she is often still attached to the gift when it lands in one’s lap.

As per usual, Hacksaw spent the season at our house, and Paisley came in for a few days as well. I had my (gasp!) fifteenth annual Xmas Eve party and spent New Year’s Eve at my very favorite annual party.

Every year it is a costume / black tie dinner party event complete with cocktails, champagne at midnight, and drumming and dancing until the wee hours of the morning. It is hosted by some wonderful friends of ours whose house is waaaaay off the beaten path, beyond where the dead-end road turns to gravel, on top of a hill through one of those way-too-cool wrought iron gates that opens when you approach / have clearance, down a long driveway to a lovely house which can happily contain dozens of people for dinner and dancing.

This year the theme was fairy tale or mythological figures. Though that would seem like an easy task, for some reason we just couldn’t figure out good costumes. Feeling somewhat lame in light of the very nifty theme, we finally decided to just dress up and be done with it.

Then my partner decided to wear my antique Sami shaman’s hat to make himself more "festive" and the costume was born. (The hat is a wool version of a jester’s hat with reindeer fur trim and rainbow colored streamers off the back to symbolize the Bifrost Bridge.) This, along with his black Italian suit and red silk tie, made him Loki Larkstuung from Pantheon Consulting, specializing in the application of chaos math to investment planning and off-shore banking. I, dressed in a velvet skirt and red/black floral print blouse (it hides bloodstains very well, doncha’know) with crossed hairsticks sporting tiny human skulls, was his associate, Kali, head of corporate restructuring and asset liquidation.

So, really, we had a schpeil for a costume, but it was amusing nonetheless -- my partner took great pleasure in telling people "She’ll render your assets liquid." And, when asked for his investment advice, telling people to focus on short term pay-offs because "Ragnarok is closer than you think."

We got a very unexpected gift for the holidays which is perhaps the favorite among us all, including the toddler. A very good friend of ours works for iRobot, and much to our surprise, he got us one. I would not have thought of us as the kind of people who would utilize, much less LIKE, a robot, but it is definitely an accepted and useful member of the family now.

Even the toddler likes it. She is in charge of pushing the button to make it go and then alternately chasing and being chased by it as it picks up all the dirt on the floor. She is also in charge of directing the robot to pieces of dirt on the floor by pointing and saying "Right there!" as it tools around the livingroom. If she finds dirt on the floor at any time while the robot is not actively engaged, she’ll say "Robot – again!" Or, if she drops something or steps on a cracker on the floor, she announces "Robot, clean up!" When it docks at its station to recharge, she lets us know "Robot sleeping."

I have to say that getting the floors vacuumed had become very difficult with two young children with different and somewhat erratic sleep schedules – the only time I could vacuum is when they weren't awake, which is the one time I definitely don’t want to run the vacuum cleaner. Any time I was feeling exasperated about how a day had gone and was listing my complaints to my partner, the last item was almost always "And I STILL haven’t gotten the floor vacuumed!"

Now, however, that is no longer the case. The toddler is even happy, willing and excited to pick up and put away all of her toys because she knows that the floor has to be empty before the robot can come out and play.

I can’t believe how useful this thing is – I have cleaner floors than I ever have in my life. For me, a room looks clean when the floor is clean. I’m not saying that this is rational or True, but to me a clean floor is the difference between a Clean Room and a Dirty Room. So, really, it was a tremendously helpful, generous and totally unexpected gift and seems to be the toddler’s new pet.

All in all we had a lovely time through the holidays. It was lots of fun, and I’m also happy to have things go back to "normal," though for us that changes all the time.

Starting tomorrow, my partner is going to be teaching nearly full-time at a college where he had previously only been teaching one class. (This is in addition to, not in place of, his many other jobs.) The upside to this is obvious and plentiful, but the down side is that he has to be at work early in the morning SIX DAYS A WEEK. (He was already teaching and doing massage early on Saturday mornings.) We are not morning people, and I have come to rely on him to take care of the toddler on the mornings when she gets up waaay too early for me.

So, for the first time in many years, I’m going to have to more or less function during morning hours. Sigh. In the long run, I think we’ll all have more time and get more things done, but it may mean some adjustment for me in the short-term. Oh well – at least the toddler usually sleeps until around ten, so it isn’t like I should have to get up early often. But when I do…. Well, I suppose I’ll handle it.

See, at some point in my late twenties I decided that I was a grown-up, and as a grown-up I could make choices about my life. My first choice was to never have to be up early in the morning again (except for special occasions) since no matter how many years I had been trying to do it, I STILL hated mornings.

But, now I’m a parent and that means getting up / waking up / staying up at all odd and random hours. Which, really, isn’t all that different from my previous lifestyle, so maybe that’s why I adjusted to that part pretty easily.

Speaking of which – Hey! It’s almost four in the morning! What am I still doing? Must sleep while the toddler allows…. Happy 2006, etc..

SHOPPING FRENZY

I would like to dedicate this space to a disinterested criticism of those caught up in the retail frenzy to spend, spend, spend with a detailed analysis of how marketing takes advantage of our insecurities and images of ourselves to drive us to do this, promising that we will achieve some sort of deep satisfaction in this (neverending) pursuit, and how we can buy and give love with just the right gift. I'd like to reflect upon and express my resentment at being part of a culture where I / we are collectively referred to as "consumers" and not "citizens" and assure my reader(s) that I, Chaos Monkey, lofty in her intellectual detachment, would never, EVER partake in such obviously manipulated orgiastic economic endeavors.

But I would be lying.

Yes, it is I frothing at the mouth with credit card in hand going totally overboard with my yule time purchases, eating at the trough of consumer packaged goods, clicking the "Add To My Cart" icon over and over again. It all feels so abstract... I find something I want and then enter the access code printed on this small, irresistibly shiny rectangle of plastic and POOF! Stuff shows up at my door a few days later with no other seeming effort on my part.

This is strange to me. Language is enough of an abstraction to make my head spin, but this? It is so far removed from chasing a wart hog with a spear that I can barely understand it. Nevertheless, a Princess Ballerina Cabbage Patch Doll outfit and a book on non-violent communication will be delivered shortly to my door.

It is like wedding presents... Love can magically produce a set of pasta bowls or monogrammed towels. If you invited the entire country of China, would any of them show up? Or would they perhaps send a gift? Though of course, there is the added catering costs to be considered...

But I digress.

I really enjoy giving gifts, I always have. The first Christmas that my partner and I were together, we had sixty-five gifts to exchange between us -- we opened presents for two weeks. One of my favorite things to do with him (I'm doing it again this year) is to sneak around and get him something that I know he wants but which he won't buy for himself. He'll mention it once, twice, three times and then I'll start asking questions in a seemingly innocent conversational tone, all the while secretly pumping him for information so that I can go get it for him. He is a chatty person by nature, so it is never difficult to get him talking.

The great thing is, he never suspects. Ever. Even though I do this to him all the time. I'll even commiserate with him when he finally decides to go ahead and get whatever it is and then goes back to the store to find that it's gone. Generally, these gifts have been musical instruments that he wants, though one year it was a very specific piece of furniture that I had to quiz him about in detail repeatedly to figure out what he wanted and then to find if it existed. Even after all those questions, he still never suspected.

And this year, the one in a million thing that he wants, the thing that he's gone back to the store to play sixteen times (according to what the owner told me when I went in), the thing that he can't bring himself to be frivolous enough to buy, the thing that he has researched and found that the price is a terrific bargain, the thing that he has considered putting on lay-away until after the holidays, the thing that he will be disappointed to find is gone when he goes back to browse longingly at it again, that thing is under my parents' bed right now. He he he -- I love being sneaky like this.

My partner and I have always enjoyed giving each other gifts and now we have a toddler who is *so* cute to watch. She has such an interesting imagination, and to me giving her "things" is more or less giving her tools to work / play with. She has a really fascinating ability / drive to find new ways to use EVERYTHING. The minute she masters something or figures out how it is "supposed" to work, she immediately tries to find other ways to use the same thing.

For instance, the first time that she finally got the crayon to start drawing lines, she immediately picked up three more crayons and wanted to make four lines at once. Then she started tapping them on the paper, gently and then harder, to make a weird sort of point / scratch technique. Or, she'll "practice" a swirl in the air three or four times before touching the crayon to the paper, then make one careful swoop, stop, look, consider, then go absolutely mad drawing all over the paper with three crayons in each hand.

Balloons sitting in front of a stuffed cow become "cow crackers," her toothbrush in the bathtub is a "juice pop," folds in a blanket become "animal houses," and a discarded upside down rattan magazine rack is her horse, Tipper, aptly named because it tips over if she rides it too vigorously. She'll spend twenty minutes pairing up all of her animals in a circle around the room (each set is a "mama" and a "baby"), or carefully line up fifteen blocks or a troop of small dinosaurs in a perfect row. If she has a castle with little people in it, she'll immediately figure out which other animals will fit into it as well and how many of the irregularly shaped figures she can stack on top of one another.

As you can see, I really enjoy watching her play.

And, though it is technically her third Christmas, this is the first one where she can really enjoy, understand, and open presents all by herself. The first year she was still in the NICU since she had been born ten weeks early, just a couple of weeks before the holidays. Last year she sort of kind of got that she was supposed to tear the paper and play with the stuff inside, but she only wanted to do that for a few minutes before it was time to go eat or do something else.

This year, though, she's ready. Her birthday was a good trial run, though she says repeatedly "No presents!" every time she even hears the words. However, she really gets into opening them once she gets started, as long as you don't call them presents. Actually, Christmas Presents are okay -- it's putting the word "birthday" in front of "presents" that actually annoys her. Hmmm... Apparently where she comes from they don't celebrate the day of someone's birth -- perhaps there was a strong taboo / superstition against it.

She's at the "just about time to officially use the potty all the time" stage, so I thought that a potty book would be a good idea. I read reviews for (no kidding) about fifty kids' potty books. I just didn't want to get anything that gives the idea that having an "accident" is "bad" since we very purposely don't use words like "good" or "bad" to describe anything our children do. I still couldn't decide, so I got four of them ... or five... it was late and I don't actually remember.

She really loves books -- she always has -- so books are a very good gift for her. She has TONS of them, and we also go to the library regularly, but she will go through more than fifty books in a day so they do get a lot of use. She'll also read one book, as long as it's interesting, for an entire hour while we're in the car. She reads it forward, backward, upside down....

Sticker books are also really cool right now since it is a craft / picture thing that she can mostly do herself. And wow -- sticker books are COOL! I would have loved such things when I was a kid. A good friend, wondering what to get a child of mine, was wondering aloud if there was a sticker book for "War And Peace." Now there's a project to undertake....

Then there is the (sigh) Cabbage Patch Doll which is officially from Grandma, but which I suggested for ONE REASON: They are easy to dress. My daughter loves to dress things -- mostly animals -- with old baby clothes. She can't quite manage putting a onesie on an octopus, so it usually requires a lot of help from me. However, CBD outfits are all velcro and easy to manage. And besides -- Grandma got it, not me. (If interrogated I'll stick to that story.)

Hmmm... what else...

Puzzles, musical instruments, a wagon to fill with stuffed animals and pull around the house, a used but serviceable rocking horse capable of more vigorous riding, a pop-up teepee, a stuffed monkey.... jeez, I don't even remember all of it. Between the sleep deprived detachment of late night internet shopping, a trip to Half Price Books and a Big Lots that was going out of business, it's all a blur.

And though I should have regrets, I don't. I'm a totally unrepentant consumer right now and can't wait until Christmas Eve... and Christmas morning... and the next day... and the day after that...

My daughter is going to think that December is a festival season dedicated to a seemingly perpetual stream of gifts flowing in her direction. Due to the scattered nature of family, a birthday party for friends and a couple of snow days which delayed get-togethers, she received birthday gifts nearly every day for over a week and now Christmas will be starting soon.

Though she enjoys it, she also enjoys giving people things, too. She and I made a card for her great-grandma yesterday which she took great joy in giving and she regularly brings toys to her little sister. If she even sees a picture of an empty-handed baby somewhere she tries to bring it a toy, repeating her understanding of the Universal Law which states that all babies need at least one toy to play with. (If the baby ever cries she comes running with a toy for her.) Just as she is beginning to understand the idea of receiving, she is also comprehending giving just as quickly.

Having a small child at the holidays also brings up the philosophical question: What do we do / say about Santa Clause? Is it a harmless holiday tradition, or the beginning of lies and mistrust between parents and children?

I actually researched / thought about this last year and came to the conclusion that people have vastly different experiences regarding learning the (un)reality of Santa Clause -- for some it was no big deal and they enjoyed believing; for others it was a huge trauma. It seems to be somewhat reliant upon how they found out the truth and whether that was a positive or negative experience for them.

We've decided to neither confirm nor deny the existence of Santa Clause, just like we neither confirm nor deny the existence of fairies, elves, space men, gods, or honest politicians. We won't push the belief that some guy broke into our house and left all this stuff under the tree, but we also won't insist that such a being doesn't exist either. There is a "spirit" of Santa whether or not the actual guy in the red suit (who was invented by Coke in the 1930's as part of an ad campaign) flies around, lives at the North Pole, utilizes the slave labor of a bunch of short guys, uses creepy omnipotent surveillance to constantly spy upon all children to see if they're sleeping, awake, etc.. Frankly, I think I'd rather let my kids invent their own mythology about Santa -- it's more fun that way.

So for now I'll be the earthly representative of santaliness in our house and not pretend that it wasn't actually us who bought all of this stuff for our daughter. Perhaps putting it off on someone else, some mythical figure who need not answer for his actions, is the way some parents deal with their own consumer guilt. But, since I'm not experiencing any of this guilt, I'll happily answer for all if it... or at least my half of it since I'm not the only figurative chubby guy in a red suit around here... though I would fill out the suit more convincingly.

Ho ho ho. Merry What The Hell Ever You Celebrate.

So, I'll enjoy my frenzy, thankyouverymuch, even if it requires foaming at the mouth or some other ghastly symptom.

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PS -- This is a great way to really give while giving and is perfect for someone who really does have everything and doesn't want ONE MORE THING in their house.