Strange and Wonderful

The sky overlooking the Port of Wilmington (ILM) is bright and beautiful to those who're connected to the outside world. But in my world, the sky is overcast in a gray mist about the color of the Battleship North Carolina. My world has been sad since Tuesday. 

It's Princess Amy's fault of course. She granted me almost two weeks of unbridled boredom, a record length of time for this mood warrior to be free of anxiety. And now today, for no reason at all-- depression.

Before I say more about that, I should make it clear that I've gotten used to her face, as the old song goes, and I suppose I like having her around. After all, she puts up with the worst of me and that's saying a lot.

But I'm trying to be philosophical today or poetic or maybe fantastical; is that a word, fantastical?

Today it's hard to get in touch with my spirit and I have to look hard just to see my astral body, lying in a heap on the River Walk, held down by the enormous wings that, on sunlit days, carry me above the clouds and put a smile on my face.

If you're thinking that the Genome is having a bad morning, then you're right. A bad morning isn't the half of it. Still, as I write this, I've just come out of 24 South, the caffeine emporium at the end of the River Walk in downtown Wilmington. Not the Wilmington in Delaware; it's the one in North Carolina that I'm talking about. Wilma to my inner circle.

Yes, I have a steaming cup of Jah's brew-ha-ha and I have a Spotify playlist streaming through my earbuds and I can feel my spirit stirring.

Did I say stirring? I should have said rising up on, let me see, how does it go? Something about stones of perhaps the dead past? Ms. Wonder will know. I'll ask when I get back home.

At any rate, stirring, rising up, defiant. More to the point, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! I'm breaking through the clouds and into the sunshine. I'll soar above the abyss!

I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, Genome! Be careful! You may not make it. Better to be calm, take it easy and enjoy your coffee. Remember Icarus.

But I've had it with taking the familiar path. I'm going to throw myself into the chaos of the unfamiliar. I've had plenty of experience navigating the quantum waves of uncertainty and right now I feel like a starship commander running an enemy blockade. 

Amy!, Rev up the hyperdrive to warp speed and jump to hyperspace! We're going through!

I'll keep you updated regularly on progress. Check back often because I can't do this without you. You know that. Leave a comment so that I'll know you were here.

And before I forget, let me say that fantastical, is a word and it means strange and wonderful, like something out of a fantasy story. That's what I aspire to write; something strange and wonderful. 

By the way, Ms. Wonder tells me that the phrase I was stumbling over is, rising on stepping-stones of the dead self. I know! If I'd known the exact phrasing, I'd have used something else. 

You Are Enough

"You've heard it said that you can't please everyone," I said. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can't please anyone but yourself if that."

"Are you talking to me," asked the woman about to sit at the table next to ours.

"He's practicing for the little speech he's giving later today," said Lupe in response to the question.

"Oh," said the woman and sat down at the table apparently deciding that I was no real threat.

Now you're probably wondering what's going to happen next because you know as well as I that this Lupe, mature beyond her years full to the brim with particle physics and differential equations, is about as stable as a hot quark.

And you'd be right to wonder. With a manner that's usually reserved for BFFs, she leaned over to the woman and said, "You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody."

The woman, let's call her Solveigh because she had the look of someone who regularly spends weeks without seeing the sun.

"Excuse me?" said Solveigh. 

"Maya Angelou," said Lupe.

Solveigh turned her eyes to mine as though asking for assistance.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm a stranger here myself."

Solveigh turned to look at Lupe again. Now I was confused. I would think that once would be enough but apparently she's one of the devotees of Rumi and willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

"If you look to others for validation, then you already have one foot on the banana skin," said Lupe and I'm sure she meant it to be an explanation.

Solveigh stood, picked up her latte, and headed for the door. Lupe watched her walk away.

"Too bad," I said. "I sensed that she has an interesting story to tell."

Lupe didn't reply.

"Don't you agree?" I asked.

"Well," said the godneice in a deeply thoughtful way, "you know what they say. You can measure the location or the momentum, but you can't measure both."

"Is this about quantum physics?" I asked.

"Isn't everything?" she said.

"Very true," I said. "Life comes hard and fast, especially when you're not paying attention."

National Coffee Day

So apparently September 29th is National Coffee Day, a day that means a lot to me as so many of the treasures in my life are directly related to and, in many cases, due to the consumption of infusions of that little, dark, bean. The infusions that I call Jah's Sweet Mercy because that's what it is, of course.

Not only has my life been blessed with the gifts redolent in a steaming cup of bohea, but many of the great men and women of history fueled their success on the shoulders of coffee. I'm certain of it. Probably,

I mean to say people like Catherine the Great couldn't have accomplished so much in so little time without the help of caffeine (and you shouldn't believe half those stories). 

I'm sure that I remember reading somewhere that Napoleon spoke highly of the beverage while exiled on that little island and for my part, I find it incredible that Alexander was able to get out of Macedonia without the stuff.

So you can readily understand that when I learned this morning that I had missed the celebration, I decided to celebrate by imbibing an extra cup or two, which is the only decent thing to do, so if you haven't already, do the right thing and stop by your favorite caffeine slinger's stand and enjoy a cup of bean.

Go Bean Traders!

This post was first published on October 1, 2012! I know! I've updated it on Sep 27, 2023! I know! Who'da thunk? I've added this postscript because this year September 29 will be the date of the Full Super Moon, the third one this year if my reckoning is correct. Just more reason to drink a cup of the steaming. Enjoy!

George Takei Believes in Me

Life comes hard and fast and if we aren't prepared, we can be overwhelmed by it. But it doesn't have to be that way. Fierce living keeps me free of the tyranny of emotional overload and I'm convinced that it will work for anyone. 

Sharing my personal life with the general public is not a little scary. Still, this morning I feel much better about it because I've been reading George Takei's blog. That's right. George Takei navigated the Starship Enterprise to destinations where no one had been before. And he didn't stop there.

Mr. Takei continues to chart new paths. George believes in the power of people to change the world. I'm convinced he believes that I can reach my goals if I just set a course and don't waver.

Several years ago I met a man who understood the pain and hopelessness that filled my life at the time. He suggested a different way of living, one that had completely transformed his life. I told him that I was afraid to try. Afraid that I would fail and be left hopeless. 

"You don't have to believe that it will work for you," said this man who I would later recognize as one of the winners in the game of life, "you only need to believe that I believe it works for me."

He explained that his life had changed so dramatically and all for the better because he followed a specific set of guidelines. If I followed those same guidelines, he said, then I would experience the same results that transformed his life. 

I followed his suggestions because I believed in him and it worked! Today I am free of the limitations of yesterday and I'd like to be an instrument of healing for others who suffer emotionally the way I have.

The most curious thing about the path I'm on is that when I do my best to help others, I reap the same benefits. It's a way of life that only works if you share it with others.

That's why I share the events of my life with others--to help them and to help me. It's sometimes funny and it's sometimes embarrassing. It's always a little scary for me, but hey! I believe in George Takei and he believes that I can do this so I keep doing it.

I know! George Takei believes in me! Life is good!

Bring a Tear of Joy to My Eyes

I want to get better

I really do. Living with a spoiled little tyrant inside my head is no fun, believe me. It's a bit like Alice's experience with the Red Queen. You know what that's like. On any given day, at any given time, I'm likely to hear stuff like this:

Now, you see, you're running as fast as you can and

still you're in the same place. If you really want to get somewhere, you must run twice as fast.

This is insane thinking of course and thinking like this leads to apathy, or even worse, avolition. I know, it was a new word for me too when my therapist first used it on me. Actually, I misunderstood her to say avocation and thought she was talking about my blogging. To be fair, Princess Amy's comments are what my blog posts are all about so it was an understandable mistake.

Please don't rush off to WebMD looking for a definition. I have it for you here: Avolition is a total lack of motivation that makes it hard to accomplish anything. Apathy can keep me from wanting to write a blog post. Avolition can keep me from getting out of bed in the morning.

Solutions come when you aren't searching
Over the years I've found several ways of keeping my head above the clouds when the storms of depression, anxiety, and grief come roaring in from off-shore to assault my mindscape.

I don't want you to think that I've found any secrets. All my coping tools are well known. They include things like going for a walk in the sunshine; singing along with my favorite recording artists; and enjoying humorous books, movies, and TV.

One thing I particularly like is reading books by authors who share humorous stories about how they cope with their own mental health issues, issues similar to my own. Looking for the giggles in the absurdities of our lives seems to be a common practice for people with mood disorders.

During one of Princess Amy's recent tirades, I remembered a book that I'd started months ago but lost interest because it featured taxidermy in a very distant and unnecessary way. 

Taxidermy is one of the three subjects that I avoid in popular entertainment. The other two are anarchy and the multiple-worlds theory that claims the collapse of a quantum wave function when observing entangled particles requires a second dimension or universe. I know! You and I share the same opinion!

At any rate, I decided it would be worth the risk to give the book a second try. Taxidermy be damned, was my attitude. There was no bookmark (Remember those?) to identify where I'd left off, so I decided to read a little of each chapter until I found something that I hadn't read before.

I began with the introduction because I feel the intro is basic to full appreciation and besides a number of months had passed since reading it and I didn't remember much of it. 

I felt a little better about tackling the book when the first chapter lacked any and all references to squirrel weddings. I continued reading the second and following chapters thinking that when I got to the objectionable parts, I'd just skip over them.

When I got to the fifth chapter, I was finally in new territory. I'd found the place where I'd abandoned the story months before. Everything was new and I was enjoying the book immensely. I wondered why I'd stopped reading the book on that first attempt. 

Eventually, I came to a funny story near the end of the book that has become my favorite. The author recounted how she routinely watches movies that she thinks she's never seen only to realize when she gets to the big shebang, that she has watched the movie before.

As I read that story, I immediately realized that I'd read that story before. In fact, I'd read the entire book months earlier. Then I realized that I'd experienced exactly the same thing that I was reading about and it happened while I was reading the author's recounting of her experience.

  

I'll be the Japanese have a name for that. They have a name for everything.

It's all predictable until it isn't

It's that kind of experience, a sort of quantum-jump event, that confirms for me that my life occurs in the interstitial spaces between and outside of, the moments of the space-time continuum that Einstein made such a big fuss over.

I've written about it before. The individual moments of time are round--should I say spherical? Moments are like marbles; when crammed together they only touch at one small point. The thread of time is continuous only where the individual moments touch. There's a lot of empty space surrounding the moments and that empty space is outside time.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should give that multiple-world theory another look. Maybe I have some entangled particles in another dimension. I'll ponder it but I'm not getting anywhere near taxidermy!

"Just accept whatever comes along!" ~~ Rumi

Not a direct quote

It's not the best life but it's mine and as I navigate the quantum fields of whimsy that make up my days, I have no better option than to look for all the laughter I can find in the folly. Buffett said that if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.

And so rather than fight Princess Amy and wrestle with avolition, I raise a glass to the laughter that sparkles like sunlight on the sea in those interstitial spaces in the realm of the absurd.

And so, share wid me a cup Jah's sweet mercy, Breden, and we shout down Babylon and sail de ship on home to Zion. 

Fierce Qigong! ~~ The Genome