Something Today is Missing

I just watched "Midnight In Paris." I had wonderful escapism. The movie also was under 100 minutes like movies used to almost always be in the 80s and early 90s. Short but sweet.

The movie was nostalgic. Woody Allen ties Gilles Pender (lead character) and his tremendous break through to realizing people of all times prefer the past to the present. This enables him to do what is right and important for him now and progress in his life. What I found interesting is that whether his first novel succeeds or not (so validates him to his ex fiancee and her family) is not resolved or even important. The question to be settled is does his decide to settle in Paris and not repeat his earlier mistake to leave, or does his submit to the same old groove, marry his two-timing fiancee and fall in line with the values he's trying to overcome. He does make the higher choice. And the historical personages who guide this choice for him hail from a time when questions like this were more important than if his novel succeeds or not. Or perhaps their height of creativity is a place where answering the success of his novel isn't important but there are plenty abounding then and now who would feel it is.

Leaving the cinema the bustle of Whyte Ave continued. It had not struck midnight yet and the air was warm. I was a little stunned. The movement from that delightful place of escapism to the immediate reminder of present life left me pondering. There is so little I connect with today. Not just today the cultural present, but also today the inner experience. I feel like a shroud is gradually getting laid over my consciousness and I am fading to obscurity. Brain damage is described as a loss of consciousness. Now I am not hammering full time employment out I scarcely am desirous to remain awake or active for the majority of the 24 hour clock. I prefer to waste in bed fighting anxious calls to get up if I've laid in far too long.

But then I also have dreams. This morning I dreamt about the tomato plant on my balcony I've solidly neglected. It was a gift. In my dream I saw the plant had wasted away and I needed to give it water. Inside I felt genuine protectiveness and externalization to this plant. A feeling so well remembered in the dream, so patently absent in waking life: externalized care. It felt natural and affirming of my humanity. For I wake to have the day erode higher creativity and strap a harried consciousness with mundane questions like as if I were frustrated Gilles' novel wasn't shown to succeed or fail. The question is will Gilles succeed or fail. This has to do with his life choices, not accomplishments.

I have swum through the last three months in thick, tepid waters. Social isolation. Plenty of time to reflect. A creeping sense I am losing my God-given self-consciousness. I am replaced with autonomic self-awkwardness. Treading water and lasting out to those around like they are buoys and not people also staying afloat on self-effort. No wonder I can latch onto anyone else. I would sink us both. I am struggling since I am not seeing the real human questions in my life right now. I am also fighting since I will not know which ones are genuine and which are proxies for internal tension.

Escapism is tremendous relief. Even the Bible remarks those who are in pain shall drink wine to forget their misery. All others risk ruining their lives with wine. There is some grief or affliction so great sometimes appropriate escape is given us to find naturally. Some escape I have done has been much more harmful than good. Drugs, sex, displaced aggression; these are a few that have given me more lashes than balms. And now I am needing to discover again, after so long a time of unrelenting fear and pain, how the human deals with these things so as not to make them lasting.

And I reflect how this same creature I wrestle now has come to me in seasons long past. Then my youth enabled less speculative methods of acquittal. More instinctive, too. It is coming back again to me now in the recognition I have fought this same creature before and after my life changing injury. And each time the infrastructure was there to do away with any prolonged stay. But now I am deceived and bewildered enough to assume I will always be disconnected if such uniformity of surround is even possible. Where is the me in this?

Inherited Pain A Curse to be Hidden

Frankly if a lump of who knows (pain) is remembered suddenly to recur throughout all of life a better bridge is given to present and past history. Beholding the lump I am more connected to a problem I dealt with instinctively and much better when I was younger. Not having a name for depression or training in its manifestation, I imagine a guiding duty to be cheerful or industrious dismissed the courtesan at first rouge. Simplism neither seeing the temptation nor demon steward of its action, too innocent to be seduced. Typically by pleasure and herein lies the rub. It is not by pleasure. I am betrayed into a state of being by a clouded history of micro-decisions. You do not choose how you feel but by what is permitted from your values. Before real pain I was too insensitive, and before junior-senior psychology I was too unsophisticated. But the real waker was after going to the psychiatric hospital.

I no longer believed in pretty much anything I believed in. During the hospital confinement, God and Christ rolled in our ward and every Bible verse became pertinent and referential. The Bible is an asset if you're oppressed by a system directly not giving a shit for your self- determination. You can only leave for fifteen minutes at a time. You have two releases a day. The kitchen is only open from 4 to 5pm, where Sanka instant coffee is served. Bed by ten. Breakfast at seven fifteen. Sorry you can't sleep some nights for the man sitting on his bed staring at your knees. I am Shadrach, Meshach and Abedigno! 'I will not eat at the king's table when I get out.' After the daily confinement, however, the drudgery of beholding life's mess in one's own apartment didn't trigger the euphoric events, which really releases tension. I have fallen down a gorge.

This lack of direction and sense of shame persisted for months of inactivity to coincide with my resumption of work. The glaring disappointment is something, a symptom of a long curse of differing content over the years. Were my ancestors inbred? What is this sack of demon carted around from continent to continent to end up in residence in me, I wonder. The threat and fear of mediocrity, the growing proof of it. Accepting the people you admire are understood from knowledge and not from likeness. Or that the great movers of history are part of a game you can know but you can't see. That Orwell called the book "Animal Farm" and what I had not noticed until being shown the evidence in the world is this title, though it may emphasize the animals taking over the farm, implies the surrounding farmers are all surrogates over their own cattle. Though the animals took over this one, the general rule is society is ruled by a small group for whom we have no access to and little knowledge of. I am someone else's cattle.

But this is just content.

In other times I had other blocks. My divorced parents. Life of distraction to hide pain. Yet every explanation defied emphasis on the one constancy: a bag of pain. And something I have battled every season of my life, memory I need to affirm and take solace in its recurrence. For I beat it then! This gives hope to now.

Limiting Beliefs

I am going to be completely selfish and publish an attempt at being obscurely personal. This is an endeavour to account feelings and have them posted on the world wide web as a gesture of significance. The problem is life puts a small group of people in a pit of rock bottom and it fades away. People drift off. Most you lose track of but some you hear had a horrible time and gave up entirely. And then you become one. A person in a rut, a life crisis, a deep depression, existential despair. In this world, reality and your internal is indistinct; the feelings feel real. In fact, grating to the point you loathe to spam this creature in familiar terms. But worse in its contagion, an Athenian miasma spewing out from Oedipus' loins to all those around you, who do not know you anymore. You lost your sense of having a self, almost like losing a science or technique and not an entity you still know well enough to grieve. It stinks.

Strangely, from learning what evil is trying to do I have become prone and prostrated before its effects. Evil wants to prevent accord between men and women in marriage; I have zero mojo for woman. I am shut-up and void of remarks-- even to customers! An absolute struggle to remain focused and attendant on worldly demands. It is darkness without corresponding light, unlike: I will not attend to life, I will attend to x. ... Description is a wound for historicity to make understanding peace with. Since the psychological pathogenesis is painful in itself (for bad memory of long nights' grasping), this experience doesn't feel like self- absorption in self- absorption. Show- absorption- to- self- torment. The ~experience- experience.

Reading 2knowmyself's "Limiting Beliefs" article:

I can't learn a new sport now, I should have started younger.

It's very hard to find a decent job these days, there is no way I could have a proper job.

No one gets everything in life. You have to choose.

(etc.)

I related to these sentiments! Substitute "new sport" for "general thing" and it's all correct. Most importantly, the bats swirling above my head that drip poison into my mind's perception. I feel whipped and sunk. Beaten. Nihilistic. And it's related to fear of one thing of all: change. The reality of prolonged sunkenness makes even change an enemy. At least my beliefs and ire over how much society has been disturbed to change sees change as giving into social pressure. So I cannot change to happier state. Even give the opportunity and I have shown to not be into life enough. A mute companion, lost in distraction fixed in place by a shroud overhead. Limiting Beliefs discussed not living up to potential from beliefs in false suppositions inhibiting growth. It's pointless to express.