Photos and Buddhist Practices

When I had reached my senior year of high school I decided that the girl I was dating and I were gonna spend the rest of our lives together. It was the sort of decision you make blindly and impulsively. I liken it to a clumsy, near-sighted idealist declare,"I will walk this tight-rope without my glasses, in the middle of a unlit circus tent." Sure it could happen, but, errr, are you fuckin' stupid man?! Anyway, of course our lives went their different paths in an abrupt and hard to manage reality jolt. The lightning strike brought on depression, insecurity, anger, confusion, but most of all, it made me to go a super-bionic level unwillingness to let go and move on.

After that personal soap-opera had had its last episode, it was quickly replaced by other, more involved, and equally as complex stories. They flashed in and out of my years like Polaroids; Each taken in my own sense of jaded perspectives, etched inside myopic frames, and developed using brisk shakes of emotion and stale currents of my past. Shit was mad smelly, but I just couldn't seem to man up and walk to the nearest shoe store to buy a new pair of kicks to proceed forward with.

After years of evaluating my decisions, past mistakes, progressive triumphs, I have come to many different senses of self-realization. With reference to not being able to let go of past or people, I see that I have difficulty cause of my 'savior complex' and fears of being abandoned. Even though, for the most part, no one involved with my life's pot-holes have intended to hurt out of malicious intent, we all participate in some form of ill feelings towards others.

According to Buddhist practice, there are three basic steps or stages in learning how to help others, or at the least when we can't help to not do them any harm. Them being:

1. Reduce attachment toward life.

2. Eliminate the desire and attachment to samsara

3. Eliminating self-cherishing

Now I see these ideals as a completely beneficial way of living when taking steps towards being enlightened and healthy. Learning how to let go of your past's evils woulda really saved Batman many an hour of therapy. But how does one actually get to a point where they can be like: Yes you fucking hurt me; No I don't hold anything against you; Yes I love you with all my heart; No I won't put myself in your harmful mentality; No I don't harbour any guilt, cause I never intended to hurt you, and only lived as best I could for the both of us; Yes we will move forward; Yes I will love you however it ends or progresses.

My guess is that we have to all fashion the views our personal dealings with our respective paths as one would do when visiting the MET; have an awe and appreciation for the history, love (or in the least accept) the art and the process that produced the history, leave knowing what it represented, then go for a pizza and beer, and plan out your next few moments of living. One day shit might be too difficult to flip back through, and some days you might not want to re-visit the photo album that you've put together over the years. Just remember that you are always able to close that album's cover and do something less depressing.......like going to find a lighter and burning that bitch up. J/K

Peace Y'all

Marsh

Too short on patience for instructions!

Last night me and my little man decided to tackle the ominous task of putting together a Bionicle. For those that don't know what a Bionicle is, just think: a G.I. Joe with holes in it, so it can be put together like a less stressful, less time-consuming Lego set. Fun times....well it was suppose to be at least. Initially when I told my son, "let's put the Bionicle together," he squealed with the type of delight that only a four year old could. By the time five minutes had passed, he basically was crying with a quickly evaporating sense of defeat. But we plugged through the construction in intervals, eventually finishing fifteen minutes after beginning our toiling. Why the hell was it so difficult you ask? Simply put, instructions and patience to my four year old are as good of a pair as me explaining to my parents that I don't think it's bad to listen to gospel music sung by Marilyn Manson (I bet that would be kick ass).

I think that instructions always get a bad rap. They exist in the same mental perspective as preventative dentist appointments, reading the bible, or running three marathons per week to train for that one you're in six months from now. They are all very necessary, but are completely loathed cause, basically, they all require patience (what a dirty word), which really, really sucks. Well, I'm not saying that the bible sucks, cause God doesn't like haters; What I am saying is that after all those years of content, you'd think that God woulda published some Bible-Cliff Notes. Anyway, they're all in their own respect (...they being any of the previously mentioned situations) too tedious, too time consuming, too abstract, and too painful to wait out to see what benefit they've served.....and who wants to be patient through any of that?

What is patience?

Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast.

The problem my son experienced wasn't so much the fact that putting the action figure was really difficult, it was more so that he didn't want to take the necessary time to read through, comprehend, and implement the actions that the instructions described. It was like picture the finished product on the plastic wrapping on the box burned his hands with an unbearable anticipation. So he rushed through and basically picked up random pieces and began trying to force them into different, at-random holes. Now if this were Backstreet that might be ok, but in terms of.....errr bad analogy, forget that one. But you get where I'm going with that. We all have those four-year-old moments, probably more often than the times where our patience actually leads us. I wonder how the whole venture would have gone if he/we would have not only listened to me/others, but would have also read and followed the instructions given to us.

I see following instructions as a test of not only base comprehension, but also as testament to the benefits of having a patience with a life action that someone else has lived through, built, performed that will help you live a happier or more accomplished existence. Those printed or verbal dictations always seem so small, trivial, or even unnecessary. But when it comes down to it, somebody out there wanted to save some over-zealous beginner the head/heartache of going through what they had done way back when. Maybe we could save ourselves the difficulty, frustration, and anguish that normally is followed by our hard-headed, impatient decisions.

I hope that we can find the patience to make our lives easier to put together, or have the patience to stick it out till times get better.

Peace Y'all

try, try, damn again?

My son has found out that Super Mario Brothers is quiet challenging. He has trouble maneuvering the little, plastic-encased rectangular remote in a way that doesn't kill his character after a few minutes of going through the normal Mario growth changes. On t.v. my son grows after he's found mushrooms, gains the power to freeze his opponents or burn them to a crisp once a red or blue flower has been snatched up, and can fly high into the sky after finding a helmet with a propeller on it. Honestly, he's really good at it from my perspective, but from his, he basically is horrible at the game. It sucks to see my little four year old, once confident and very passionately driven, become so scared of his video-gaming failures that he would choose to watch his mommy or daddy play the game he's now too cautious to love. Seeing this I tell him, "don't give up on yourself, why don't you try it again." And with a newly carved hope that's a little less confident than before, he picks up the controller, wipes away his runny-nosed, tearfully exasperated frustrations and failures, and tries once again to not make the same mistakes he made three minutes ago, and best the challenges that cut him down to crying. It's funny how he always shows me a less exaggerated version of what it is to be human, and in my case continually fuck up.

When looking at things (things being the countless life opportunities to start fresh, re-visit my wrongs, and try to make the best of my mistakes) I can see that I'm a full fledged idiot for the most part. Not to say that in all walks of life I'm dunce-capped, I have just noticed that my legacy thus far has written nothing short of a comedic tragedy. Seriously, how many times can you re-write the book of Genesis and have Eve still go up to the apple and eat it before saying, "Hey dumb-ass, the apple is the undoing of the rest of your existence!"? Wow, my friends would never let me hear the end how I punctuated that last sentence. Anywho.......

I guess what it is that has gotten me into my silly situations, revisiting them time and time again has been the fact that I've allowed a combination of ill-advised fears, self-serving actions, and completely impulsive thoughts overtake what it is to make "the best decisions." My definition of the best decisions being: a series of thoughts and actions that produces outcomes that are neither harmful physically or hurtful emotionally to all parties involved. The way I see things, if you consciously work towards being the person that you would like to be friends with, have care for you, and essentially rely on, then the possibility of you doing something harmful or hurtfully is greatly lessened. But, seeing as though this is idealism to an infinitive degree, there is and are big holes in how this "best decision making" is realistically put into action. Cause with every jump you make, no matter how much speed you gain or what flying hats you wear, you might not make it to the destination you had intended to land on, or even worse, you might have made a leap that you weren't meant to make from the beginning.

So what is the solution? It's really sorta sadistic to keep playing the same game you keep failing at, even if you do come at it with a renewed sense of determination and different game plan. Sometimes, you'll get those advantages of an icy flower, but only end up creating an icy relationship from the wrongs you've thrown out there. Other times, you'll burn those bridges with the fiery intensity that you've used in the past to fuel your dreams. Oh weather, lies, and alcohol; headaches, text messages, and money; sex, misunderstandings, and misconceptions. They all make for a very valid reason to curl up, not hit the restart button, digress to being a spectator, and become to scared to take the reigns again.

How sobering.

Long story short, you just gotta get past your mistakes. Being human means a lot of different physiological things. One of the most important of them being our sense of vision. Our eyes have to be focused on what is in front of use to be able to avoid, move forward, and find our way. It's not to say that we have peripheral vision, and the ability to look behind us for what we've already seen, left behind, or are trying to remember. But focusing on your past makes it where you will never make it safely to the future that you're trying to walk, run, or crawl towards.

Maybe I can learn from my son and learn to inspire myself enough to beat that next level of life. And even if I fail again, I can keep working at making the "best decisions" possible with a new way of making them be my reality.


Peace Y'all

knowing thy self

what is it to know yourself? that's a pretty straight forward question; basically all you have to do is to self identify, accurately evaluate your at-the-moment emotions you're experiencing, know the relationship that your emotions have with the reality that you're experiencing, and have a handle of how these relationships influence your actions. yeah, what it is to know yourself is a pretty simple something to identify. actually knowing yourself is always a work in progress. in theory, we always run into new, or at the least different life situations and circumstances. with that realized, our equation of emotions + situations + present state of mind + level of stress + history usually ='s a similar, yet slightly different, reaction than what we in the past have lived and experienced. so, with all these factors and slight differences in self, can you actually say with any real accuracy that you completely and truly know yourself?

the first time i really thought about this concept was when i saw the matrix. the first one, where it was actually something cool to watch, and neo was pretty much a bitch for both the real world and the matrix. and i've just shown my age.....anyway, that was when i thought about it. i had just gone into college, lived through my parent's 7th break up/2nd divorce, and was living with my mother. i was in a place where i was not only dating as much as i possibly could, but i was doing as many things as i could figure that an african american male was suppose to be doing at the time......nothing really was fulfilling though. playing a sport......yeah, boring. going to school....just as boring. dating all the time.....sometimes just as boring. so, what was missing. well, i decided to take some time and actually start figuring out what it was that made me tick. my method was to chronicle everything as a story, exactly as it was felt, and completely in the moment it was felt. it was very time consuming. what i found was that i was able to see a sort of consitent way that similar situations would be handled and play out. in essence, i learned how to recognize what i was, and eventually how to know what/who i was.

as time went on, i did this silly little thing called maturing, well maybe not. but what i did realize is that no matter how well i 'knew' myself in the past, and how i could use the reactions that proved to hold the most success or peaceful outcome in whatever the given situation was, the difference in environment, time, or circumstances proved that what i knew, really held no real relevance to what i was experiencing at the time. needless to say, i questioned a lot of what i felt i had learned, and eventually lost a lot of faith in 'knowing who i was.' even though that time has past, and i have come to know myself pretty well once again, i am confronted with this question: is it really all that big of a deal to know yourself?.....given that you'll always be in a perpetual state of change.

it is my belief that we will always be in a state of evolution, even if it is a slight, nearly unidentifyable state. we can only know ourselves as much as possible for the moment. but even with that being true, we should always be striving to become familiar with, and befriending the new 'self' the very moment it's presented. maybe it's a bit far fetched, but i do believe we can always 'know thy self', even if dumb ass keonu reeves.....or however you spell his name, couldn't figure it out until the third, fucking horrible, matrix ended. thank you neo, you ruined my trilogy.

peace ya'll

marsh

bipolar and perfectly balanced

so inside us all are multiple personalities. depending on the situation, our recently encountered circumstances, and a load of other random variables, one of the personalities takes charge and makes the decisions for the time at hand.

recently i was told that i act as though i manic depressive. yeah, i know that hearing this would make anyone either laugh and respond, "....and fuck you too very much," or become a even more emotional, more secluded version of the self that was present maybe 20 seconds prior to the comment. well, me being me, i disregarded both the person and the comment until i was in a place where i could hear what she said, and more importantly, WHY she said it. ha ha, caps make me happy.

oh yeah, before i go into this, do know that i am speaking about myself, and have not been clinically diagnosed. needless to say, i'm no expert, and can't speak accurately on anything but of what i have read, and what i experience.

well, what is it to be manic or depressive (a.k.a Bipolar). wikipedia's abbreviated definition is:

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, manic depressive disorder or bipolar affective disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. These episodes are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood, but in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, known as rapid cycling.

ok, now that this is outta the way, what did this mean to me? well, obviously when first said to me i was more or less feeling that there really must be something severely wrong with me. when it was said, i wasn't wanting to go detail clean my non-existant button collection, nor was i listening to nivana while chasing zoloft with jack daniels. so i can't say that any extremes of emotions or actions were being had that moment. sure i mighta been pissy, and other times not too controlled; and sure i stay so emotionally intense that i may exhaust myself, let alone others around me, but does that spell out having a problem, or is this what it is to be human?

i wonder how many people out there internalize all their feelings to the point that they forget how to communicate openly with the people they interact with on the daily? in comparison how do you (without the use of narcotics) regulate the level of healthy/'normal' emotional output? and if someone isn't crying to the point of dehydration right after they finished cooking two weeks worth of cupcakes.....or whatever......how can you honestly tell someone who's emotional or introverted that they're not normal enough?

i dunno the answer, and definitely won't delve into it any further, but i will say this: i hope that people will always look to people as the individual they are, and not just another being relative to the person making the judgements.

peace ya'll

The beginning new comes @ a time when you're ready to begin.

Hello all,

This is my first blog; an intiation of sorts to sharing myself with the
random. I have never really thought of blogging or any other on-line
interaction as more than movie reel novelty.....well, save the Canadian
photographer, which will be discussed later. So today, I came to grips with
a few things that have made me change my view on what has up to now been the
normal way I choose to share myself, them being: my lack of knowledge with
grammar rules, my sense of pride in being vocal about my life, my sense of
secrecy and privacy, and most importantly......having anything of any real
substance to say/explain.

Realizations, and getting over shit (emotionally, or working through it
mentally), for me go hand and hand. Sometimes those realizations and g.o.s.
are just moments of working through past issues. Other times they are a
whole new catharsis related to new circumstances and experiences. Well, mine
today was as follows: 1) people need time to realize that life isn't as
serious as they make it out to be when dealing with petty issues, 2) petty
issues are always evaluated on a level of emotional and mental perspective,
3) I am worth a damn, even when others don't say it as often as I say it to
them, 4) we all tend to be our own worst enemies.

Hahahaha, I will really have to work on getting to the point of my
blogs.....but for now I will just be happy with getting over "the blog"
itself.

Well there you have it, my first rant. I've officially lost my online
cherry; and aside from leaving a trial of red words back to me, it was sorta
enjoyable.

I love you. Peace ya'll

Marsh