Let's Go Meditate on Brachback Mountain

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 22

"God loves those who keep their promises,

and hates those who don't."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm supposed to be meditating right now, but this is far more fun.

AIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

WHOOPIEDOOP-DOOPATY!  

Look at me, way up high, suddenly, here am I, I'm blogging!!!

I mean, seriously.  Meditating?  What's that going to get me?  Inner peace?  Christ.  What do I need that for?  And chances are, I wouldn't get it from meditating-- that's what I eat corned beef for.

I feel bad, though, because I promised my therapist two weeks ago (well, two weeks ago tomorrow) that I would listen to a Tara Brach podcast and meditate.  Actually-- no, that's not even true.  I promised him that I would listen to a lecture by Tara Brach: not even one of her guided visualization meditation exercise.  

"Because," I now remember my therapist saying, "I know you won't do that."  I guess he figured he would try to get out of me what he could.  Sometimes, I don't know what I'm striving for: to be the best patient, or the worst.  Maybe it's both.  I can't quite accept that it might be neither.

I made the mistake of reading Tara Brach's Wiki.  It all went downhill from there.  

Apparently, Tara Brach is an "American psychologist and is well informed about Buddhist meditation. She set up an Insight Meditation Community in Washington. It is a spiritual community that teaches and practices Vipassana meditation. This group's Wednesday night meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, which is taught by Dr. Brach, regularly attracts hundreds of people per week."

Did you read that last part?

"regularly attracts hundreds of people per week."

I know, that's supposed to engender confidence, because hundreds of people who learn at her sandal-enshrouded feet every Wednesday must be onto something.  In my head, though, it says "cult leader."

In sandals.

Want more?

"Brach's talks are downloaded free nearly 200,000 times each month by people in more than 150 countries."

UH-OH!

I'm sure, if David Koresh were around today, his podcasts would be pretty popular, too.  You know, with a certain se(c)t.

I'm sorry, I know I'm being a penis-pimple about all of this, and I also know that a huge part of my reticence has to do with how popular this woman is and my ardent belief that anything lots of people get gooey in the pants over must automatically be full of shit, but it is a philosophy that is so terribly hard to break free from.  I mean, remember how many people liked "Titanic"?

(Estimates have it at between 200-250 million people saw it in theatres, and 60-100 million saw it on DVD.  Sorry, Sandals; you've got some catching up to do.)

I think there is, too, a little bit of the oppositional streak in me at work, too.  I don't like it when people tell me what to do, even if they couch it as a suggestion-- especially if they believe that suggestion is going to be "good for me".  But, my tiny hamster mind thinks, if I've lived with me for thirty-three years and I don't know what's good for me, how the fuck does some handsome guy with a knit bison on his shirt who isn't even half Jewish going to know what's good for me?  Because he has Psy.D. after his name?  Believe me, I have MAEd after my name, but I know sure as shit I shouldn't be let anywhere near a classroom.  Even if hundreds of people wanted to flock to it every Wednesday.

I don't know.  Lying down on somebody's floor kicking and screaming, "I DON'T WANNA!" till your face turns as red as a hemorrhoid just isn't acceptable at my age, even if you've just paid the guy $50 and he's got the sound machine on, but that's what I want to do during my sessions.  I don't wanna take meds, I don't wanna do meditation, I don't wanna "find my inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty" because that's what DIFFICULTY IS.  It's supposed to feel difficult.  Difficulty isn't supposed to feel peaceful and you're not supposed to find wisdom in getting fucked over at work or sprinkling your pants with pee-pee dribble right before a meeting or when some cocksmoke is tailgating you and your family is in the car and everybody has a gun and the lights are all red and the waiter fucks it up and the house is too cold and the money is tight and the girls are all hot and the idiots just want to talk about "Titanic" and how Leo has matured and really come into his own and Vipassana meditation and mindfulness and finding the core and finding center and finding Neverland and Johnny Depp's another one and God give me a fucking break already.

Please.

I don't wanna.

I know I'm going to disappoint my therapist tomorrow when I tell him I haven't done my homework.  Or maybe he won't care one way or the other.  In school, I did the homework I was excited about, and the other homework I either did on the bus on the way to school, and it looked like it was done by my great-grandfather who had advanced stage Parkinson's-- or I just didn't do it at all.  No one ever called my parents, or, if they did, my parents never told me about it.  My teachers were all pretty chill.  They must have meditated like motherfuckers.       

Saying Yes

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 6

"Don't go to war without wise guidance; there is safety in many counselors."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

A few months ago, I found myself at the library where my mom works, dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, reading Dr. Seuss stories to a bunch of kids.  

These things happen sometimes.  

One of the books I read was "Green Eggs and Ham".  I guess, when reading Dr. Seuss stories, you don't really trouble yourself too much thinking about what internal struggles the characters are going through during the course of the story.  But try it some day.

Try it, try it, and you may!

I was thinking about how much I identified with the poor stuffy bastard in the crumpled top hat with the big furry ass who doesn't want to eat the green eggs and ham.  

I mean, I get it.  That's me-- my ass is even furry, though big it's not-- and that's how I've always been.  Anyone who's ever tried to convince me to have an alcoholic beverage or watch "Titanic" can tell you that I'm as truculent as they come.  When I try to convince my children to ingest even just a small morsel of food at dinner time when they don't want to, and they twist in their chairs and swipe off every comestible speck from their trays and defiantly shout, "NO!" I have that sinking feeling that tells me unmistakably that, yeah, they're mine.  

"NO!" is my middle name.

I say "NO!" a lot.  To social engagements-- I've said it so often that the inevitable has happened: people stop asking, stop inviting-- stop.  There are no texts that come in saying, "Let's hang out".  And I'm not crying in my Caffeine Free Diet Coke about it, it just is what it is.  

If a solution to a problem is offered to me, "NO!" is generally how I respond, even if I never petulantly come out and say it.  I've learned to at least behave polite, but I might as well be standing there with a frowny face and my arms crossed in front of my chest peeing my pants just to make the point that I want you and your solution to STAY AWAY FROM ME.  

STAY.  A-WAY.

I don't like you.  

In therapy, I've said "NO!" to mindfulness, to meditation, to alternate ways of thinking, to behavioral modification.  I've said "NO!" to homework, and even to something as simple as "give this some thought for next time".  I just... don't.  

But, after three years, I'm finally saying "yes" to medication.

Why now?  Because I am an absolute anxiety-ridden mess.  And I'm depressed.  I am so consumed with panic that some days I can barely function, barely focus.  Barely get through the day.

Now that I have a desk, it's very tempting to just curl up into a neat little ball underneath it.  That space underneath desks makes a great hiding place.  No one will try to feed me green eggs and ham if I'm all folded up like a pretzel in there.  Especially if I'm peeing my pants.  

My therapist is happy, my wife seems happy, but I'm not happy.  Maybe that's because I haven't found an in-network psychiatrist yet.  Maybe it's because I haven't looked for one yet.  But I have made up my mind to try it.  While I am extremely apprehensive about taking medication that "the way __________ works is not completely understood", I've resigned myself to it.  It's the best we've got at this point in time, and clearly what I'm doing for myself (saying "NO!") isn't working terribly well, so it's time to try something else.  And if I go running down the street naked while ululating and playing the triangle, we'll know I probably need to, um, not be on meds.  Or different ones.  Maybe it'll take some fiddling and some switching and some tweaking and-- hopefully not THAT kind of "tweaking"-- we'll see what happens.

He was so gentle in his suggesting.  He's quiet.  His tactics were barely perceptible.  But I noticed, and I pushed him off.  Away.  

No.

And he would yield, and be quiet about it-- for months sometimes.  And it wasn't because I'd be doing well.  I wasn't.  I don't.  I don't do well.  Not in therapy.  But he knew when to be quiet and when to speak up.  It's a dance, you see.  He leads, I lead-- it's a whole thing.  

"But I shouldn't need it.  I should be able to do this on my own."  He raised an eyebrow.  "Well, with you."

And maybe I could.  But how much longer would it take?  Five years?  Seven?  That's a lot of $50 co-pays. Maybe I'll be paying those forever regardless.  Who knows?

One thing I do know, though, is that every day feels like I'm going to war.  And that may sound a trifle dramatic, but it's how I feel.  And even Robert E. Lee didn't feel like that every day.  That's too much.  You get tired.  And I need to not be so tired.  I have 20-month-old twins that I need to be awake and alive and silly for.

Thoroughly silly.

I was rolling around on the bed with them kissing their necks and their ribs and they were laughing so hard that I wanted to eat the world, hug the globe, kiss the sun.  Go to war-- but in the good way.  The lusty fife-blowing, drum-banging, button-gleaming bagpiping your brains out up and down the square way.  

Cannons.

Sabres, glistening in the sun.  

Left wing, right wheel.  

BAYONETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charge.   

RARRR!

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 4

"Jealousy is more dangerous and cruel than anger."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"I'm not really sure I understand," I said to my therapist, crossing my legs like a girl the way I do, "that I understand the point of getting angry."

He raised his eyebrows at that.  He's a good eyebrow raiser.  He doesn't raise one, quizzically, like a therapist might, he raises both at the same time, making him look rather like an eight-year-old Macaulay Culkin whenever I say something even remotely surprising or unexpected in session.  He intimated that I was angry at him, which I wasn't but, the moment he said that, making the session about the interplay between me and him, I got angry.

"I noticed that, when you got angry at me, your attention wandered away, and you got quiet and sort of shut down."

I stared at the wall-hanging on his, well, where else would it be-- his fucking wall.  Hanging there.  It had frayed edges, like a little rug, and I didn't like how the fringes at the top sort of just flopped over like a bunch of spaghetti noodles.  It looked silly.

"What?"

---------------

I don't know how to be angry, and I don't really think anybody else does either.  Sure, you can take anger management classes, or teach them, but I don't think that means very much.  Once, a patient told me "you're not allowed to get angry inside a psych hospital" and I went all therapist on him and talked about how anger isn't the problem it's the expression of it and how there are appropriate ways to be angry but, really, he was right.  Pace angrily, and we're going to watch you.  We'll "give you space", but we're putting a plan in place.  Go to your room and slam your door, we're telling a nurse.  Yell and scream?  Well, guess what.  We have ways of dealing with that, too.

Early on in my confused adolescence, (I know, whose isn't?) I tried using my precocious nature and facility with the English language to express my anger through letters, when I felt slighted or like there had been some sort of injustice.  At fourteen, that got me dis-invited back from a summer theatre program.  At twenty, it almost got me thrown out of college.  

Every time I get angry at my wife, it feels disgusting.  Sometimes we're "fighting fair", sometimes we're not.  I don't think that really matters a damn.  It's still disgusting and hurtful and shameful.  When I scream at my father, it feels great.  It's cathartic.  I'm releasing endorphins and testosterone and triptophan or whatever and that's great but it always feels horrible afterward.  Like, I expect, drinking feels, you know, after.  Or sex, you know, with the wrong person.  Or the wrong hole.

Whoops.  Went too far.  That happens sometimes here.  But you knew that.

Of course, holding it in doesn't feel so hot either.  I know, because I've done it my entire life.  And letting it out in a very controlled, precise, measured way feels, well, very controlled, precise, and measured.

And that's not so good.  What's the point?

"The point," my therapist said, "is that people get angry, and that's okay."

Wow.  Can I have that on a bumper-sticker?

---------

I got angry after reading this today.  I get it.  The author got 6.7 thousand Likes on Facebook and 217 people tweeted it and 469 people shared it.... some other fucking way.  And he's an internet phenom and I'm an internet schmuck-nom, and that's wonderful and all.  And I remember when I was dumb enough to write, um, a whole book to my then-unborn children.  And it was full of the unfettered depths of my psyche and it exposed them to all of the awful stalagmites that grow unchecked in my head, the depravity and the heat.  And I said provocative things to them, these then-unborn children of mine and isn't it droll to say something like "Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Some Fucking Awesome Sex" but, God, do I see through you, you meme-machine.  You hipster.  You Friend of the Like.  You wouldn't know the first thing about being a father, even though I know you are one.  SO.  I don't care.  I don't care if you've fathered a veritable gaggle of girls.  Your self-righteous, better-than-thou attitude is sycophantic and cloying and playing to a breathless cadre of twenty-something girls on Facebook you want to fuck who think you're SUCH AN AMAZING DAD and gee if only YOU'D sired my children everything would be going fine.

And everything is going fine.  

So, I got angry, and I'm not sure there was a point.  Maybe I'm jealous.  Maybe that's worse than anger.  Or maybe I'm right.  Either way, I'm definitely hungry.  I wish I had a peach to eat, but there's just goddamn Granny Smith apples.  

Tomorrow will be better.   

A Very Precocious Youngster

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 20, Verse 12

"If you have good eyesight and good hearing, thank God who gave them to you."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I got my first pair of prescription eyeglasses in fifth grade, but I think I actually started needing them two years earlier.  I even took the socially frowned upon step of taking a pair of cheap plastic red Mickey Mouse sunglasses, poking the dark lenses out, and wearing them to school.  They had little Mickey Mouse emblems on the temples, but otherwise I thought they looked sharp.  You know, like something Elton John could have gotten away with.  Mrs. Henderson, on recess duty one day, told me to take them off before I got hit by a fifth grader.  

But I didn't just want glasses, I really couldn't see.  I complained to my mother that I couldn't see the blackboard (we had blackboards back in 1987, but they were green) and that the picture on the TV looked fuzzy and that it was hard for me to see my face in the barber's mirror while he was cutting my hair.

"There's nothing wrong with you," she said to me, "you're just a little theatrical."

The test done by the school nurse in fifth grade at the health fair proved otherwise.  Maybe "health fair" isn't the right word.  I don't know what the hell it was, really, but I remember they herded us all into the room where they did the book fair, (maybe that's why I call it the "health fair") and they gave us each a rectangular punch card divided up into sections.  One was for vision, one was for hearing and there were other sections, too, for-- I don't know what-- penmanship?  White blood cell counts.  I don't remember.  But there were four or five stations that we each had to visit.  They had the machine with the headphones that made beeps and you were supposed to raise your hand when you heard a beep in your left ear and all that other business.  I liked the hearing test a lot, and I thought about how sneaky the test was-- like, were they really trying to fake us out?  Would they make a beep start in your left ear and then do a Doppler kind of thing where, just as you're raising your left hand, they move the sound to your right ear?  

I aced the hearing test despite my burgeoning paranoia, but the vision test didn't go so well.  I triumphantly brought home the note from the nurse recommending an ophthalmic examination and placed it smugly in front of my mother on the kitchen counter.  She thinned her lips.

"Don't look so disappointed," she said.

A week later, we were in the car going to the eye doctor.  At last, I had gotten proper validation.  There was actually something wrong with me-- it was exhilarating.  I almost peed on the Oldsmobile's seat cushion on the way to the optometrist.  Once we arrived and I met this guy, the excitement waned markedly.  He was as big as a condominium and he smelled like the inside of a pawn shop trombone.  His breath, which he made sure to provide you with a ample dose of, was rancid and tobacco-hued and his teeth were the color of old newspaper.  His gut was shaped like the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle.  

Okay, okay, you get the idea.  

One last thing, though-- his paunch completely covered whatever genitalia that might have at one point existed down there, but he was constantly adjusting the longitudinal aspect of the crotch of his pants during my examination which, of course, was conducted with the lights off.  I made the mistake of complimenting him on his three piece suit, which he probably purchased at William McKinley's garage sale.  

"You're a very precocious youngster.  Do you know what 'precocious' means?" he asked as he leaned in towards me with some ophthalmic instrument or other.  

"Yes," I replied, pretty sure I was about to be molested.  For some reason, my mother had seen fit to stay in the waiting area, probably because all three of us couldn't fit in the exam room.  Regardless, it left me alone in there with this malodorous walrus.  

"If I can just get through this," I told myself, "I'll get to have glasses."

And I got through it.  I'm pretty sure the sweaty, heavy-breathing optometrist didn't rape me, or if he did I've successfully repressed it, and anyway, a couple hours later, I had my first pair of eyeglasses: gold-colored double-bar specs that would have looked half-way decent on your average octogenarian.  I was in heaven.  

I've gone through maybe forty pair of glasses since then.  I suppose it didn't help that, for three years, I worked at an optical shop and have remained solid friends with the manager, who still gives me frames and lenses at-or-near cost.  I've had designer, knock-off, vintage, antique, plastic, metal, and everything in between.  The latest frames are plastic Tart Arnels from the 1960s, brown up top, clear plastic on the bottoms.  I love them.  For how long?  Hopefully a very long time-- they were expensive, even for me.  I am extremely fickle with three things: watches, cars, and glasses.  Why?  I don't know.  My wife often jokes, "I'm glad you're more consistent with how you feel about me than about your watches, cars, and glasses," and I am too.  I talked to my therapist about the everchanging items on my wrist and my face and the car seat beneath my ass.  He was kind of flip about it.

"You get bored," he said.  

Wow!  Only $50 for that?  What a steal!

I can remember trying to convince my mother early on, around late elementary school and early middle school, that I needed to see a therapist.  That something was wrong with me.  I got the familiar refrain of "There's nothing wrong with you," and "you're just a little dramatic" and got sent on my way.  It seemed odd to me then as now that, in the face of some pretty obviously aberrant behavior, my mother was content to stick her head in the sand until some clinical or authoritarian voice told her otherwise.  I wonder how I'll be as a father, when my children come to me claiming to be sick in the head or the heart or the eyes.  I guess I'll have to struggle hard against the impulse to ignore or reject, because looking up and looking in is scary.  And they're only seventeen-and-a-half months old, and I'm scared already.            

A Back Entrance

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 8

"Everyone admires a man with good sense, but a man with a warped mind is despised."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Almost three years ago, when I went back into therapy for the first time since college, I sat cross-legged, like a girl, in front of that guy and said,

"I just don't know if I'm a good man or a bad man,"

And, fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't cock his head, squint his eyes and say, 

"Are you fucking kidding me?  How old are you?"

I don't like the words "identity crisis", because I think they were made up by some slackass with too much time on his hands and a very good grasp of what educated white people will grasp onto to explain why they're annoying, plus I don't think being unsure of yourself is necessarily a crisis. It might be.  I don't know.  I've never watched "Dr. Oz".

I'm not quite sure why I went back into therapy.  In college, it was free, and I rocked that couch every week for a significant portion of my time there.  Other people my age looked forward to beer pong, Frisbee golf and pussy, while I always got up out of bed faster and with more energy on the day when I knew I was going to therapy.   

In college I treated therapy the same way I treated everything else: like it was a performance.  It was a one man show and it just so happened that there was one person in the audience, too.  And that didn't matter to me-- the way I performed there might as well have been a thousand people crammed into that hopeless office replete with '70s-era furniture and a broken HVAC system that made the room approximately 327 degrees all year long.  I loved telling funny anecdotes from my past to the therapist, who never really thought to rein me in.  For me, watching him laugh, until he was sometimes doubled over in his chair, was therapy, and I would leave the Health Center practically walking on air.  I was doing what I was born to do: make someone else feel better.  Forget that that was supposed to be his job.  

Well, sort of.  

I didn't really understand the point of therapy in college, I just knew that, of all the buildings on campus, even the theatre buildings-- that was the building in which I belonged.  I knew it, it couldn't be denied or argued.  In fact, I was so sure of this that when I came in to schedule my first appointment, the stereotypically dowdy secretary said, 

"You know, there is a back entrance that you can use for your appointments."

I looked at her like she'd just said something dumb.

"Why would I want to use that?"

Of course-- why would I want to use that?  I was just going there to perform a 50-minute monologue.  Looking back on it, I now realize that this is pretty much as healthy an attitude as you can have about utilizing behavioral health services.  Private entrance?  Why?  I'm not going to get pube extensions or have a swastika done in henna on my forehead-- I'm going to talk to someone who can hopefully give me some insight into my life, my behavior, my thoughts, my feelings and my relationships. Why should I need to slink into some hidden away door shrouded in trees and secrecy?

Of course, that insight that I'd hoped to gain kind of didn't happen, at least not all that much.  You know, cuz I was far too busy pretending I was Spalding Grey.  Which-- don't get me wrong-- was great fun.  I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for it.

And so when college was over, I stopped going to therapy.  After all, what would a guy with a freshly-ended relationship, no direction, an oversized nose and a B. A. in Theatre need therapy for anyway?  I went from job to job, stupid apartment to stupid apartment and, all the while, I wrote.  I wrote plays and editorials and commentaries and I pissed people off and I made people laugh and I appeared in shows and I made very few friends and lost quite a bit more, I started dating this cute girl who was living in Pittsburgh and miraculously she moved out here and became my wife and all the while, through the living and the crying and the writing and the eating and the television and the operetta and the paychecks and the junk that passes for antiques and the family dinners that grew rarer and the jokes and the meanness and the huggles and the sleeping, I guess that thought started to get more and more incessant-- 

Am I a good man or am I a bad man?

Obviously, I know that this particular dichotomy, like most of them, exists only in my head, and only to torture me and make me hand over $50 every other week to a guy who probably doesn't need it, at least not from me.  

But, here we are.  

I don't try to entertain anymore.  Sometimes I see myself trying to shock him-- with some depraved thought I've had, or some terribly awful comment I've made that I repeat for his benefit.  A cutting remark, an acerbic bit of nastiness that I've offered up from the meaner part of my soul.  

He's perfected the art of being nonplussed.  They teach it to them in school, and I'm sure there are those out there who are better than him-- but he's good.  

"I know you want me to agree with you sometimes," he said to me once, "that you're bad-- but I just don't see it."

"You don't understand.  You're not with me all the time, you're not in here.  You don't know."

"No," he said, "but I know enough."

Maybe that's what this blog is, in the end, it's me ripping off my shirt and tearing at my skin to pull everything apart to show you, to make you see, to force you to look and inspect and be horrified.  But maybe there's just a doddering old man in a funny tie behind the stupid curtain.  

Well.  At any rate; I'm going through the front door.