Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in dan_the_goat's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, October 29th, 2006
8:07 pm	i did it... i created another blog. it's very original, you'll never ever guess. dan-the-goat.blogspot.com don't ask me why, cuz i don't know. (i don't got no money and it goes to show-oh! - couldn't resist the old skool g'n'r). check it out. maybe you'll find it interesting....? Current Mood: superlative (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
10:32 pm	fun fact of the day: the Hindu/Buddhist deity, Mahakala, has a name which can mean: Great Time, Big Black, Great Death, the Big Terrible One.... Props to Mahakala. if for no other reason than that he gets to be both Great Time and Big Black (as if the two weren't already synonomous). Great Time, Big Death... He has a lot to teach us, always has. chag 'thsal lo... otherwise. why... really now... why does it bother me when girls i've dated find new people to date, to care about? Why am i so upset that a girl that i don't really even have any desire to date has been dating someone for a couple months? maybe because things come and go... because the people i date find new folks to really invest in, and i don't... the latter mostly because i insist on changing not just towns or even states but f'ing continents on a regular basis. But then... maybe it's because i don't ever actually get over anyone. In any case, i've started seeing someone, and she's real cool, but i'm amazed at how upset i get that my ex - whose family is famous, and it's always being rubbed in by media varying from Natural Born Killers to the L-Word - found someone else. call it Ego, cuz that's what it is. am i the only one here, really, who secretly wants to get over his ex's but never wants them to get over him? c'mon... alright, liar. ;) i see the point. i may not be _the_ asshole, but i sure am _an_ asshole. i'm also an asshole who is, apparently, moving to Tibet. Along with (but not like, With) said ex. and is, currently, drunk. Been thinking a lot lately about Time. not just time, but Time. When we decide what really needs doin, time stops mattering. somewhere along the way we all just sort of die, but we keep working. "We're all on a path," as Rae-la says. I don't know if she knows how right she is... I've been ebbing and flowing. I sure haven't been super-creative of late. But defintetly, time changes when you decide to let go. Time changes, when the goal becomes sufficiently important. Time become just the unfolding of the mind, and nothing more.... yech.... can't talk. will talk more, later, as always. till then, be well. sems can thams cad bde ba dang bde ba dang rden par 'gyur gjig (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
12:18 pm	It's official. I'm going to Tibet for the year next year. this is mostly thanks to the support of the fine folks at the University of Chicago, who are letting me take a year or two off before going there. so things are working out. wheels return. otherwise, i'm unemployed. my computer keeps breaking and i have to pay absurd amounts to fix it. i somehow owe uncle same more in taxes than pretty much everyone else i know combined. checks bounce, money drains. things are sputtering. -This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning.- this is the world reminding me that i haven't stopped deserving/needing/secretly kind of wanting a serious smackdown. it's a recurrant theme. it's also a big reason i've always suspected i might unconsciously be a devotee of Kali or Bhairava, and am not in fact Buddhist at all. eh. alright. back to work. maybe the spirit will move me to say something more interesting later. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
2:54 pm	Day Two of My New Life i wrote this at 3am a couple nights ago. i'll actually update again soon, i promise, now that i have nothing to do but quell the drama in my life and look for a job. and sit. finally. hopefully. ---- CJL once told me that our bodies are always out of balance, even when they’re healthy. This fits with most philosophical systems, and with common sense. It’s a question not of balance or imbalance, but of healthy vs healthy imbalance. We’re all riding tumultuous waves; stasis is not an option. Which, when what feels like real imbalance comes, leads me to ask: should I be happy, or should I be sad? When old insecurities, old fears, old unnamed winds that move and shake me out of bed at 3am come to rise. Things I thought I’d put to rest years ago. Am I sad that they’re still here? Or am I happy that I can see them now, after they’ve been hiding all this time? I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to cultivate the latter. It’s doing me alright, though pain is pain, impermanence is impermanence. This is what shook me out of bed this am, what leads me to pop in the newly acquired DJ Krush cd and try to physically verbalize (an odd idea – manifesting sound as physical presence. Written and spoken words… they aren’t really the same, are they? Funny the nets we make, and then forget we made). Against the ghostly warbling of the VCR as Audrey Hepburn shouts ‘you don’t own me,’ against the warm and snoring form against me, i see a black form at the bedpost that I know is just my mind. And I think, wow. Everything truly is impermanent. In one great teacher’s biography, there is narrated a scene in which he’s fallen into a river and all of his possessions are wet. He’s sitting naked on a rock in the sun, letting himself and his things dry. And as the story goes, he looks around and realizes impermanence, and thinks wow, nothing is needed. Everything just is what it is. This feeling I had: it’s not like that. It’s the feeling that you can’t really count on anything, that you shouldn’t really. I don’t mean that in anything like the cynical way it probably sounds. Rather: how could we expect people not to change? How could we expect ourselves not to change? We can’t trust our own bodies and minds, much less others’. This faulty expectation is exactly what causes statements like that to come off as cynical. Because underlying them is another expectation, that things shouldn’t be this way, or – more deviously – that they aren’t, actually. That we’re just in a bad situation, and we can make everything okay eventually. There was nothing but shivering heat and energy in me. I tried to lay down, but realized I wouldn’t sleep. Because nothing felt right…. at all. So I walked out the door, and the fresh breeze of the night told me I’d done the right thing. That maybe this way I’ll get some sleep. Haven’t yet, I’ll keep trying. Things are out of balance. With me, with others, with us all. That much is clear. But the clarity is itself an illusion; like the space in front of us it is clear, but there’s nothing clear about it. Its clarity is concealing, multifaceted, an illusion which nonetheless illuminates. The last thing I want is to make things more dramatic, and that seems to be what I do lately, in spite of myself. That I thought I had put these tendencies to rest is clear. That I haven’t is equally clear. Ought I be happy or sad? I guess neither. But somehow satisfied and smiling, remembering there’s always more than meets the eye. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 25th, 2006
9:13 pm	pick up the pieces, put 'em back together one more night, and mercury retrograde is over. after tonight, i start poring over just what shook and bounced and broke during this absurd rampage. now isn't really the time to explicate, but i can't turn down a request to update ;) so, briefly.... -no, really: never say never. the world is capable of dishing out some truly jaw-dropping mind-fucks. -i'm not completely sure yet, but it seems quite possible that i'm going to have to move to Tibet. for, like, 2 years. i'm also going to at least explore the possibility of opening a dance club in Northern India. that said... off to the party. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 10th, 2006
9:39 pm	rock n' roll spinouts jai sez: -we have to desensitize the goat.- it's true. why i see fit to never, ever let go of being in love, even when it's clearly destroying my friendship with someone i haven't even dated in months and months, is something i have yet to really understand. but here it is, yet again. other news... the rock star lifestyle is a double edged sword. i feel like i'd like to collapse, mentally and physically, about now. really good things happen, really crazy things happen, really bad things happen... then you look around and see just how fucked up everything is that's happening outside your little box and it's hard not to curl into a shiver and crying ball. on that note: happy march 10th. the 47th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa against the People's Liberation Army. i can't believe that somewhere in some dark corners of the country, there are still people in chains, old and near death, that have been in prison since that day. how many people dead and tortured... all these thoughts near the eve of a bombing in banaras, the city i used to live near, and love dearly. my friend rakesh - maybe you know him - his brother was in the temple, but is okay. i received a deeply disturbing email from my friend in sarnath about how he's afraid to go anywhere, how he's so upset about people not being careful with religions, theirs or others. still other news: i've heard from two of the three schools i'd like to go to next year. it looks like i'll get into them all, and like none of them are willing to offer me much money. which is fine, but i really have to ask if 15K in debt for a year is really something i want to undertake right now. Tibet is looking brighter, some cave in colorado even more so... when i feel this way. crushed. i try to remember Santideva, who said in apostrophe to Bodhicitta, the great mind of compassion (loose, loose paraphrase; haven't read it in months): "when my own and others' poisons pile upon me like a boulder, so much so that i can't move, all i have to do is think of you and smile, and all these troubles disappear." may we all develop compassion, and may we all have the strength to cut through both our own narrow bullshit and paralysis at everything that's not our own narrow bullshit. both are products of the same misconception. nothing is manageable unless its just... causes, conditions, emptiness. and if it is those things, then it's a snap. even so long as i try to transcend my own petty bullshit for greater causes, and hence misread just what are those greater causes (huge lumps of individual interactions not at all different from my own petty bullshit, just alterified), nothing will work and i'll just keep smoking hash and crying and spinnin on out. things i should think on more, as some great boulder keeps constricting. Current Mood: crushed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
8:44 pm	how to cook up a sunday evening existential crisis: push hard. steamroll. no regrets, now or later. dance. drink. laugh. recollect the important things, the real jewels, even in the dance floor strobe light. try not to lose your perspective, but if (when) you do, ~really~ do it: become something else, some new perspective. this happens anyway; there's really no in-between. if you're not yourself you're surely someone else; or, from another angle, you never really were yourself, and there's no one else to be. most of us prefer the former, but the latter seems more accurate. new perspective, though, that's this whole other thing. go with it, and get your "bearings" when you "land" (by which we all actually mean slow down to a coherent pace, contra the general connotation of ceasing to move). welcome to my sunday evening existential crisis ("SEEC"). i'll give you a topic: "the oft-asked question, 'does Buddhism mean i can't enjoy my life?' is actually more insidiously present and complex than it first appears, at least to someone who thought they'd solved that little sum'n sum'n long ago." and now a sub-topic: i used to want to be a poet, to create things, and the cessation of that want - need, to be honest - is the topic of most of my SEECs, regardless of what day or time of day they take place. The ambiguity is that i feel like i've been freed of that need, with the con-sequence that i no longer really want. A common word for needing something and not wanting it is: addiction. glad to be free of that one, but not super-glad about the deadening affect it sometimes produces. because deep down there is a want there, a pleasure of doing and creating and thinking through. it's a choice between freedoms. the freedom i cho(o)se affords a fine line between total ecstasy - complete Inspiration in the truest sense of the word - and a dead complacency. Like one who says in an offhand voice, "oh, yeah, impermanence; whatever, i understand all that." the offhandedness means you don't but think you do. and i say to myself, 'i'm happy to dwell in the play of whatever happens without having to push and stretch it intentionally, to be actively creative when the creative process of natural unfolding of the world is literally saturating our eyes and ears and minds.' how to take it? do i even understand what i'm saying there? i mean, sometimes, sure. sometimes yes when i stare at the wall or the screen or the beautiful form, sometimes no. sometimes yes in the hot smoky club with the girls and the drinks and the diamond light. sometimes no. but the ambiguity is problematic, as are the consequences. "does Buddhism mean i can't enjoy my life?" baby, Buddhism says you don't have a fucking clue what enjoying your life really even means, and it can show you. but it doesn't come automatically. by what feels at this juncture like a similar token: letting go of hopes and fears and ignorance makes everything into a beautiful dance. but it doesn't happen automatically. and one can be lulled into thinking one's got it, when actually one had it and lost it long ago. like fooling yourself about still being in love, about being happy in your job, about anything positive. there's the real thing and the shade of it, and sometimes we all get confused. maybe i'm confused right now, maybe i'm trying to figure out how to operate. how i got to my SEEC: destruction, it breaks everything up. shakes it up. ontogenic earthquakes, conceptuo-genealogical-gnosis. how i feel about my SEEC: kind of great, actually. maybe it's fire for the pine cones, shit for the fir trees. maybe it'll stir up some more genuine happiness. goals for the week: (1) don't stress. (2) let go of a need for stability, cuz nothing is. (3) recognize that (2) is not actually depressing at all, but actually really beautiful and youthful and full of potential. (3) being the fine line between happiness and sadness, freedom as beautiful vs paralyzing. and the line is drawn by: ignorance. Om ahrapatsana dhi.... Current Mood: and bouncy, all at once (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
1:37 am	cheap thrills for the new year this is the time of year where i like to put on my best (well, only, unless the gigantor khampa fur coat counts) chupa and hang out with tibetans, singing songs and dancing and drinking sketchy indian whiskey at 8am... i guess decent american whiskey at 130am is a permissible approximation? it is, after all, circa noon in india, which means by all rights that i should be 3 sheets to the not-even-really-proverbial wind. i'm not, nor will i be - out of whiskey - but c'est la tse. there's a saying in tibetan culture that you'll spend the year the way you spend new year's. this was definitely true for me last year - drinking, meditating, speaking tibetan, eating meat, being mischevious. it was true the year before - again, drinking and meditating and dancing in the streets of katmandhu at 2pm. i think it will probably be true this year as well. it's been a deeply stressful couple days - only because of my interpretations and relations; nothing external really - but apart from that i've been meditating a lot, drinking a lot, studying, having good conversation... which is probably how my year will go, regardless of what i do today. hopefully not so much stress for the whole year. that said.. i hear back from grad schools at some point soon, which will be interesting. i'm pleasantly surprised - awed is more like it - everyone seeming to take for granted that i'm going to not only get in everywhere i applied, but get a near/full ride as well. i hope my laxity in the application process won't lead to disappointment. but i take refuge in the fact that the people who have something like a say in what i do in life all seem to be supportive of my going to the university of tibet for a masters. if all else fails. in any case, my job is moving to denver (i hear they're looking for people, if you're interested) in early april, and i am not moving with it (and i'm frankly kind of surprised at people thinking i should consider going... recipe for hedonistic disaster if i ever saw one). so i'm going to be toasting to my victory or defeat either way with a whole lot of vigor and a big ol' jug of carlo rossi. let's hear it for cheap thrills. meanwhile... the universe continues to be unsubtle with what it wants me to understand. the theme lately is, don't worry about (romantic) relationships, just hang out and do what you gotta do. trying not to hurt or be hurt; trying, and its oddly difficult, to be interested in dating (much less invested). but this is all a familiar roller-coaster. i guess i'm waiting to be dealt some hand that i can't ignore, is the bottom line. til then i'm content to hang with my friends and my cushion and my copy of longchenpa. losar tashi delegs; may all beings have happiness and its causes. Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
2:01 am	muttering she once told me: the greatest facet of her story is that it would never be told. then she gave me (truly a gift) a smile that made me believe it. my heart feels heavy and ready to burst. i would pass away the days in a forlorn stupor, if only i were a genius and it would be worth something to someone. in the meantime i'm trying hard to stave off the fears that all i ever will be is a might be. may all beings be free from suffering and its causes. Current Mood: forlorn (Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2006
8:05 am	ech.... all of the below being said, conclusions: i'm clearly out of balance and in transition. this is not an inherently bad thing; it's even actively healthy, up to a point. (i've definitely taken it past that point). but the world has a tendency to beat me with a big ol' stick until i take whatever hint it's trying to give me, and i think the point of late is that there's way too much dualism in my life right now, and it only seems to be getting worse - meditation vs non, scholar vs practitioner... lately, increasing desire to date and be social vs the part that thinks these things are actively bad for me. none of these need be acual, meaningful dichotomies, and they all serve to illustrate how (and how much) i'm out of balance right now. which i'm glad for: it was there anyway, and now it's come to my attention. that said: work. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 19th, 2006
11:40 pm	an excerpt from an email to a friend: -hope london is doing you right. life here is odd; been altogether absurdly debauched of late. maybe i'm just hanging out with jai too much; i really don't know anyone who can keep up with that motherfucker. his friend gave me appx. 2 shots of absinthe (in a very decorative bottle), which i drank tonight, and which led me to about the same reaction as i had last time i had a taste: that was cool, but i want more. so i took a bath and read about cannibalism. (i can't wait to see what links google recommends to this email, incidentally). but. roughly three people in the last couple days have commented that i'm clearly holding myself back from even trying to date, and hence i am my own biggest obstacle... (and they're surely right). ech. who knows. but i do know one thing: i'm either going into (am in?) official holy-shit-i'm-a-rock-star-and-will-be-dead-in-2-years mode, or super-hermit-don't-fuck-with-me-i'm-meditating mode. not sure which i'm rooting for.- additional vignettes: (1) the queen and i dressed to the nines in the lonely cnter of the dance floor, grinding to drum-n-bass in a surreal high-school-dance style "rave" peopled by roughly 30 high schoolers and a couple friends. we aim to scandalize; it seems we succeed. (2) 2am, impassioned kareoke rendition of 'hit me baby one more time' interspersed with sake shots, shared with a middle aged japanese woman and a couple random blondes. (3) i realize that i'm going to turn 26 at (hopefully) an Orb show in chicago, as the apex-cum-conclusion to what looks like a five-day 'goodbye miss q records, goodbye gainful employment' celebration. if you're reading this, you'd better fucking be at the official going away/dan's b-day party at chez k-man, circa march 26th. 'no,' and any variant thereof, is not an acceptable answer. this means you, captain i'd-rather-be-peeing-on/off-of-mt-kilamanjaro). (4) i have no clue how in the shit i'm going to pay my rent this month. call it the admission fee to this lil' party i've been calling life. so that's what's been up. no complaints to lodge lately; more profound musings to ensue. till then... hope all is well. sem can tham cad de ba dang de ba'i rgyu dang den par 'gyur cig. (may all beings have happiness and its causes). Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
2:44 pm	myoosing whenever i'm driving and i see a sign that says "traffic from (direction)does not stop" i sort of feel like i'm being lied to. Current Mood: bleary (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
12:18 am	still more irresponsible etymology reading Wallace's _Consider the Lobster_, which a few articles i have to digest and will almost certainly be writing Mr. Wallace a letter or two w/r/t - one of his reviewers (back of the book, favorable of course) is named "Eugenides." it strikes me: (a) this name literally means something like "good-blooded kid," or (if orient-oriented) "son of noble family," etc. it also just means "Eugene's kid," if you're that sort of killjoy. (b) we're all sort of lucky there's not a figure of Foucauldian stature named Eugene, lest "Eugenic" become a bivalent term meaning either (1) the (exceptionally racist and evil) attempt at creating a "good race" (greek: eu + genos) or (2) of/re: Eugene. it is technically both anyway, but (2) is not in general usage any more than "dan-ic" (or perhaps a devious, equally unused valency of "danish"). (c) Eugene really does just mean 'good dude,' and might be way more in vogue if "eugenics" didn't have that extra connotation of nazi-ish. grrr. (Comment on this)
12:02 am	explanification funny how that's - almost - so many words. my computer broke. the power cord just gave up, fell out. now i have a shoddy imitation, but it's sumthin. i'm also famous. in madison, at least. just check out the isthmus. now everyone who cares to will know that i'm a single, "eclectic," slightly bitter non-dater. schweet. but. further musings on the last topic (thanks for the comments; sorry i've been so sharty about replying): i drink too much. like, a lot too much. i accept this. i also think that a random poster to Mike's journal was exactly on point: "i think tantric practitioners who drink a lot are basically just fooling themselves." (paraphrased). my drinking has absolutely without a doubt affected my mediation negatively, which in turn affects everything in my life. negatively. why, then do i do it? i dunno, is genetics a good answer? i'm mostly irish and part quebecois, which basically puts me in the top .05% of alcoholism-risk cases, right below all the shamans and "shamans" (soma-oriented sadhus, lepsha priests, et alt plurima) of the world. anyway. in response to the above question, no. genetics is not a good answer. but this is getting away from the point: why not both a scholar and a yogi? it should be possible, and i'm sure it is, but it just doesn't seem likely. because i'm one or the other at different times, but never really both. because apart from the whole question of drinking, there's another problem: when i'm really involved in meditation, i don't follow thoughts. i just sort of watch them rise and fall, and laugh. and it's great, and i'm never bored. but i'm also incapable of the rigorous analysis which scholarship necessitates. and scholarship causes rampant conceptual proliferations that inhibit meditation. so... it's not that one ~can't~ do both - that i can't - it's more that i just sort of don't, haven't figured out how. so maybe i should rethink, put more emphasis on trying to weave the two together. there's still time, and these days i think more seriously about moving back to nepal or tibet than about actual graduate study, which would give more time toward figuring out. maybe at 25(almost -6!) i'm still not ready for academia. all i can really do is pray that whatever is best will occur, and look at whatever occurs as a learning experience. and maybe at least think about drinking less ;) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
12:11 am	lady or the tiger? in my future, i see two possibilities: (1) drunken scholar and (2) yogi. not both. it's a shame because both are, genuinely, fun and good and beneficial. the latter probably entails my living a lot longer but benefitting a lot fewer people, directly at least. thoughts on this, my dear chos kyi pungya? how to live in the world and not of it? Current Mood: contemplative (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
11:33 pm	ach.... uber-stretch hum-v limos are literally the most ridiculous things i have ever seen. i opine that they aim to the pinnacle of absurdity, and in that capacity they really should be engineered to have walker legs, or at least tank treads. along with a signed letter from the president (or, if same, their daddy) saying that they can crush whatever car or building happens to get in their way. and let's not forget the forbidding soundtrack - something from the exorcist, or if you're feeling saucy, army of darkness. blaring from 30 foot heights, whilst walking across crowded streets and shooting green lasers at rebel bases... so, yeah. what i'm really saying is that given the point these fricking vehicles seem to want to make, they really should just come out with land-walkers, a-la empire strikes back and return of the jedi. the green lasers really are a must. it seems inevitable that every once in awhile i have to forgo everything else to get drunk on wine and listen to sad music and write meaningless words, inevitably ending up at 2am playing solitaire and listening to billie jean. (no, really; it's uncanny how it always ends up that way). somehow, talking to an ex for the first time in a couple weeks saturates me with sadness. there's an irony here... perhaps i became interested in Buddhism precisely because i just can't deal with things falling apart, ending, with people moving separate ways. or maybe i'm still, somewhere in there, just plain addicted to sadness. probably both, to some extent. this is not to say i want to rekindle my relationship with kim; it's just the whole damn situation of ups and downs and hopes and fears gots me down. like spinal menengitis to ween... Current Mood: drunk (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 26th, 2006
5:09 pm	springtime thoughts in january. i can't deny it anymore: i enjoy student life, even the fake student life i currently live. and i actually hope, for the first time in awhile, that the whole grad school thing works out. fancy that. today has been full of encounters that feel like they're out of some english textbook. you know, the day-to-day dialogues: "hi, how are you? i am fine. where are you going? i am going to a restaurant. okay, see you." i kind of prefer the dialogues in my tibetan textbooks, between the tea-merchant, the nomad and the lama. "where is kunga? kunga is at the beer house." but it's both surreal and eerie to find pedagogical structures mirroring real interactions. is this a case of life imitates art (imitates life, imitates art....)? last night i spent about an hour talking drunkenly to a valiant but embittered state legislature. i think we both got sick of the circles: him explaining how 20 years of exasperation makes one a little tired (understandably), how no one seems to want to fight against the war, for abortion rights and gay marriage; me replying that giving up is not the answer, there's nothing to do but keep fighting against the wave of absurdity. in other news... i think i'm going to start actually trying to date again, instead of just sort of pretending. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 17th, 2006
12:18 pm	further elaborations on putrife/purifications. so i guess i'm in one of those spaces where i don't want to talk to anyone, least of all about how shitty i feel. so of course its all i can think/talk about, and my attempts to contain the negativity just make me come off as short-tempered if not outrightly mean. man, is that ever awesome. is this really purification? does it really make things better? chris, i'm fairly sure, would say no, because i'm reacting to the things that come up. i would say yes and no, personally. it puts blocks in my path that i have to climb over. they seem like large ones because they're the ones i've never been able to face before. it's not the first time it's happened, by any means. i get wrapped up, i relax, things get better, then they get worse. last night i had a dream that i was arguing with a snake. i got angry at it, we started fighting, i tried to kill it. i did lots of things that should have disposed of it - cut it up, stomped on it - but it kept attacking me. at the end of the dream i was screaming to someone to get me a burlap sack, while standing on top of the writhing thing. trying to hold it down, keep it from being able to jump up and bite me. it said something like, 'you're not going to win. i'm faster than you, and you can only hold me down for so long. you know there's no way you'll get rid of me before i bite and kill you.' recurring theme in dreams, over the last month: anger dooms me. the pain or distress i feel in dreams sometimes tends to be a direct result of my own negativity (in the dream). i'll depart from Freud here and venture i can take that pretty literally. this is where the 'yes and no' of 'does it help?' comes in: i have to keep recognizing that, on every level, and sooner or later these circles will stop. till then, (my idea of what) Chris (would say) is right: keep making more samskaras, keep driving in the tendency for anger and frustration. but it's not as if this is all making me more tightly knotted; the opposite. i let go of things, i loosen up, i feel better, then i get challenged again. slow and steady wins the race, provided we're moving in the right direction. woo! off to the post office, then to bed. Current Mood: sick (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 15th, 2006
11:27 am	putrefurication ech. clearly my body and mind are purifying. this is partly because i've been treating it like feline feces lately, and partly just general dealing-with-things. or so i hope; i've been feeling horrible for three days and it sure would suck if it was all because of one drunken, doped up, idiotic drinking 9pm-5am style night on the town. watching aphex twin videos surely never helps; seeing that dude's creepy distorted smile while shrieks of 'I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL' reverberate through your verterbrae is not the coolest mental even to fall asleep to, when you're already feeling crappy. but there's more, of course. last night i accidentally got a little drunk and became utterly hysterical re: love and relationships. sweet irony, since earlier that evening with rae and megan i was mocking myself and my 'oh, dan's a sad clown, dan will never find love, oh poor poor dan, oooh...' type stylins. but. last night was the second time this month something like that has happened, i have a distinct memory - one of very few from that night - of slipping on ice and wandering around with mr chris and then suddenly getting wall-punchingly intensely sad about relationships. and for me to punch a wall, drunk or no... yeah, that's sayin something. so i guess this is my body-mind telling me i have to let go of some shit, figure some shit out, kinda fast. intense negative emotions that manifest only (and violently) when drunk? yeah, that sure is a good sign, right? right?... the better news is that i had a wonderful, wonderful time dancing my ass off in a three piece suit at the inferno on friday night. drinkin water, smoking free hookahs (probably another reason i feel super-shitty), dance dance revolutionizing. so... yeah. helluva time, all around. lots of things churning, mentally and physically. and i'm just trying to keep together, keep healthy, clean myself and my space out as much as possible. may we all be free from suffering and its causes. Current Mood: nauseated (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 8th, 2006
10:17 pm	an overarching theme in my life: beware when you really make resolutions. they will soon be tested. example: two women contacted me recently, both of whom i had more or less completely given up on (albeit for very different reasons), whom i had resolved to tell, if we ever spoke again, 'i'm sorry; don't take this the wrong way, but you're bad for me, and i can't really talk to you right now.' i felt proud of myself for genuinely not blaming either one, but rather aknowledging that there were (are) issues in me that make it better to avoid these women just now. an 'it's not you, it's me,' but a genuine one. it's easy to feel proud about things you feel like you won't have to face. facing it is going alright though; justin has good if slightly pointy advice: 'if it's not okay for you to talk to them, make it okay.' 's funny cuz its true. and the truth is it is okay, i just have to keep things in perspective. the thing these two people have in common is that they're both dangerous in that i find myself drawn into them both more than i'm comfortable, more than i should. the ugly side of vulnerability, the knowlege that i'm in over my head, that i couldn't stay away from the situation if i tried. that's what gets me, that's the 'it's not you, it's me.' it's not you, it's just that when i think of you, you're all i think of. that sort of thing. maybe i just put the 'hopeless' in hopeless romantic, sometimes. and in moderation, it's good for the soul. last time i was in varanasi i had dinner with two good friends and an acquiantance, a Canadian Saiva renunciate (Sadhu) named Govinda-baba. he took a deep interest in my relationship with Siva, with Buddhism, etc. i told him the world has a way of slapping me around when i need it, which i still think is true (maybe what's more true is that the universe is always slapping me around, but i don't always see it). he told me Siva hasn't much bothered him in life, he just gives his God what He wants, and hangs out. it was good for me to hear, made me really accept and understand that not everyone learns the way i learn - ie, through the destruction of accepted paradigms. i'm with Foucault - "knowledge is for cutting." zab mo'i gcod yul, etc. the mutual inability to accept different modes of learning has cost me more than one relationship... but then, i tend to date the sort of girl who threatens to break up with me when i over-use the passive voice. as per this point, the world is slapping me around again, which is a sure sign that i'm paying attention, for once. telling me not to be so goddam arrogant, reminding me just how much i have to learn. so i probably need to step up to the plate, to follow mr. justin's advice and just sort of make things not 'not okay,' not only in this realm but in all realms. eh. we'll see how it goes. (2 Comments |Comment on this)