#bushplane | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dzpenumbra · 9 months

Text

7/17/23

Today has been an interesting day, to say the least. I don't really have words for it, honestly.

I woke up after about 4-5 hours of sleep. It was raining. It's been raining all day, occasional thunderclaps to add a little spice to the monotony. I'm not sure what exactly woke me up, but what kept me awake was very gentle creaks coming from the ceiling floorboards, and my vivid imagination translating that into water leaking and dripping from the ceiling onto my bedroom floor. It was very convincing, very visceral. Maybe it was me still being in a dream-like state, so close to sleep. Maybe the elevated CBD/THC tincture dose added to the immersion of the illusion. Maybe it was because I didn't have my glasses on and my imagination was filling in the gaps. Maybe it was all three. But it once again had me on edge.

It's as though... I'm a constantly coiled spring ready at all times to respond to the next imminent crisis. It really does feel that way. Because... who else is going to? That's a big part of being alone that I find hard to communicate to people who pride themselves in their work and their efforts - let me rephrase that, those who define themselves by their work and their efforts. And thus... define themselves by their pride. Whether you call upon support, reinforcements, backup, a social net, whatever... or if you just have them present and pridefully turn them away at any possible turn as though perpetually trying to vainly prove some kind of point... either way, you have them. They are present. If you have a toolbox in your house, whether you choose to use a screwdriver or your fingernails to take a screw out... at least you have the option of a screwdriver, you know? Or even the claw end of a hammer, and you can improvise with that. You know? But if all you have is your bare hands? It's simply a different life.

Again, it's hard to convey this concept. But it is really the core of a lot of my struggles. And thus... it makes perfect clear sense that my reaction to this... which I have been yelling at the heavens like some dramatic Greek tragedy for several years now... is pleading for help from others. With literally anything. Especially with things that I'm not capable of doing, like... multitasking... or skills that I am yet to develop, in times when I am deeply overloaded and really don't feel I can afford to learn a completely new skill from scratch just to take care of a task that someone else near me already has an expertise in.

Because... in the end... what is the point of a community if each individual is obligated to learn how to do everything for themselves. I mean that, and this has been boggling my mind for a very long time now. "Hey, I'm not that great at marketing or advertising, do you think you could introduce me to a long-time friend of yours who is involved in that? See if they could lend me their skills which they spent much of their lives honing?" "Why don't you learn how to do it yourself. You need to learn how to be more independent."

Who. The fuck. Is independent? Truly. I'll tell you. I'll tell you who is truly independent. Someone who lives in a shack in Bumfuck, Alaska, who needs to take a bushplane to get to their house and doesn't interact with society for years at a time. They are independent. If they have a problem - a clogged pipe, a full septic tank, torn clothes, broken shingles, a fractured Tibia, a horrific nightmare - they must address the problem alone. For there is no one else. Because the toolbox simply doesn't exist, it's not an option. It's not that the toolbox is being stubbornly ignored as a way of trying to pressure someone else to "fix their problems for them"... it's that the toolbox does not exist.

For me? Taking the ceiling creaks, for example. I could've called my landlord about it. The maintenance guy would most likely have said there's nothing he can do about it, it's just old floorboards, they creak, it's what they do. And I would still be here, and I would feel a bit shameful for exposing that weakness to people. I really wish I didn't have that level of insecurity and pride. I mean that. I wish I could wear that on my sleeve comfortably, and I aspire to return to that.

I lost my train of thought. XD I just happened to use the only example where I do have options for support. And what really stops me from reaching out for more support? With more people? I have to rely on the charity of strangers. It's all insecurity and anxiety all the way down with that. And my rational mind makes sense of it by saying "well... statistically... your chances of success in getting quality assistance with these things from someone you have never met before... when you're cold-calling... it's typically near zero. So why try?"

Ugh, this is exhausting just thinking about. How did I even get here... sorta... explaining that this frantic screaming of "someone help me" is simply a shadow cast by the actual problem of "I don't have a supportive social network and everything in my life falls on my shoulders... no pressure". So... when I wake up... and I hear what I think is water dripping? Who is taking care of that? Who will get the container to contain my upstairs neighbors' clumsy spill. Who will make sure the spill didn't reach any electronics and address that problem if it exists? Who will soak the spill out of the carpet? Who will have the expenses taken out of their security deposit if damage is done? It all falls on my shoulders. So... how could I possibly sleep? In that moment, I am on-call. And my body responds to the on-call notification by pumping adrenaline into my system, so I am alert and have energy and have enough sensory focus to perform tasks. So when do I sleep?!?!

I'm always on-call. 1:30AM - on-call. 3PM - on-call. 6AM - on-call. You name it. 24/7. Morning, noon and night. Even holidays. And I guess that's where the franticness of my pleas for support has sourced - how desperately I've just needed someone to watch the fort while I rest.

This is the paradox that I noticed when I was put on pharmaceutical medications to aid in sleep, specifically the hypnotic Seroquel. I didn't know at the time, but most of my difficulty sleeping is a byproduct of not feeling safe or protected - a very common PTSD thing, and anxiety thing, honestly. So... at a very primal level, the brain stays primed to wake up at anything. The analogy I like to use that I hope is relatable to some is... if you were tasked to spend the night in a spooky old house... alone. Every single noise you hear in that house that night, it will pull you from sleep with a fucking jolt. That is... most nights for me. In my own home. Unless I'm in a particularly good place mentally, feeling very supported, feeling a lot of physical security, feeling like people have my back and shit. Otherwise... I'm like a hair-trigger mousetrap of crisis-response.

The paradox that Seroquel introduced was... I would still wake up. I would just be incredibly groggy and incoherent when I woke up. Which instilled way more anxiety. Because now... my problem has not been solved. At all. Instead, I still have to address perceived crises, and I have been given a massive debuff. I don't have my senses about me, I'm sloppy, I'm disoriented. And that makes me more scared. And then I'd start the day the next day, and still feel incredibly groggy and hungover from sleep deprivation and these meds... so much that I genuinely felt drunk and did not feel safe driving my car. So... it started limiting my ability to be present in the world. I stopped driving to pick up iced coffee in the morning, a tradition from a more economically stable past. I stopped going for morning hikes. It greatly immobilized me. I just... I lacked the language and articulation to be able to communicate the handicap that had been thrown on my life, and I really got sucked into this delusion that somehow I was to blame. I wasn't taking the medication properly, I wasn't going to bed on time, I wasn't exercising enough, etc. etc. Somehow, I was to blame.

So... in reflecting on this whole problem now? I still don't fully know how to manage it. Because it puts two survival needs in direct opposition - physical safety and sleep. And one of them has to go. In order to convince myself that I'm physically safe, I must sacrifice sleep. In order to sleep, I must disregard physical safety. And there is really no way to verify if those physical safety threats are valid or false-alarms until after sleep has been sacrificed. So yeah...

An interesting thought popped into my head while I was typing this. My Xbox died today. I don't know how, though I suspect it's because of the moisture from having it right by an open window when I live right next to a river. I don't know. The Xbox was a gift from a former friend who I met through a Minecraft server. We spent a lot of time together, played a lot of games together. I chilled with him online when he met his girlfriend, when she got pregnant, when they had their first kid, when they got engaged, when they had their second kid... I met and played Minecraft with his eccentric ex-biker Dad. He invited me to be the best man at his wedding, having never met in person before, and I gladly accepted and flew halfway across the country on my own dime to be there. He gifted me this Xbox one year, the year the original Fortnite came out so... 2017? Damn, I guess it's had a good run. He worked in the electronics department at Walmart and decided to give me a discount on it, I'm really not sure why... we were both PC gamers... but I accepted the gift.

I've been using the Xbox simply... to play my yoga videos in the morning. That's been the extent of its usage recently. I used to watch Twitch streams on it sometimes, but... not so much lately. And today, I started it up as usual, and it did that "boodaloop" startup sound, then clicked... and then went silent. And it kept doing that every time. So... I'm guessing it's a hardware problem. I'm guessing that's done.

Now... I woke up this morning freaking out about moisture making its way into my apartment and causing problems with electronics. And my day officially starts with yoga... so my day started... with a failed piece of electronics, most likely due to excessive moisture.

Why am I telling this? Beyond the synchronicity? Because when the Xbox died (I assume)... I didn't really care that much. I was frustrated at first, and a bit sad. I blamed myself a bit, but let that go pretty quickly. I looked up some answers on my phone, and moved on from that pretty quickly. I just sorta... resigned to it. And thanked it for its service. And tried to figure out how to do AirPlay from my phone to my TV having never done that before, praying I wasn't syncing to one of my neighbors' TVs on accident. And I succeeded. And that was that. No freak-out, no panic, no "oh shit my life is ruined". Just... aw man... and adaptation. And that was that.

So... why is my brain stem treating little creaks from the ceiling... transformed into the illusion of water dripping from the ceiling... transformed into the illusion of water dripping onto electronics... why is my primal brain treating that as a critical "you must be awake for this now" emergency? Because I can prevent it. I can be the hero who averts this tragedy. With a little willpower, and a little sacrifice, I can avert disaster. All I need is a nice big dose of adrenaline to get my wits about me and I'm up to the task. "Whoops, false-alarm! Good luck getting back to sleep now!"

Still, weird shit that I woke up with that specific fear on the same day that 5-6 hours later I found my Xbox had shit the bed. And I know it died yesterday because I've been using the Xbox every day, it was part of my daily routine. I'm sure it was a hybrid combination of memories of the day when my upstairs neighbors spilled water and it just dumped right through the floorboards like through slats on a boardwalk or something... that combined with the fear of water getting in the open downstairs window from the storms - which somehow it just... doesn't.

I tried to be more disciplined with my sleep hygiene today though. Once I had identified that I was responding to fear with the whole water dripping illusion thing... I immediately got my headphones and put on a binaural beats sleep thing. I laid there for 58 minutes trying and failing to fall back asleep... so I didn't do great with the whole "if you're not asleep within 15-20 minutes, get up and do something for a while and come back" thing. But I did get up. I did a run in Hades, which wasn't the most relaxing thing in the world... XD But got my mind off fear and stress. I ate some trail mix, in case my body was running on fumes. Then I went back to bed and... instead of the music stuff... put on a livestream VoD from a streamer I've been watching for nearly 8 years now, whose streams I've been consistently putting on during sleep for several years now. His immersion in the story, his calm demeanor and his ability to elaborately express his in-game experience always bring me to a very serene place of calm. And he's been a huge inspiration for me. I haven't been listening to sleep music or his VoDs when I go to sleep since I started using my box fan. I fell asleep pretty quickly and caught up on sleep pretty well.

Yoga was silly, and humbling. The yoga teacher was being very goofy and fun in the video, and I appreciated the levity. I needed more of that. And we did this thing where you go from Cobbler's pose and then lift your legs up with your feet still touching and knees still out, but you bring your chest up forward so you're like... perched on your ass-bones. And I just kept flopping around like a toddler trying to walk. It was so humbling. I started laughing. I clearly don't move this way very often! I noticed myself getting a little upset, getting frustrated with myself. "Why can't I do this? What am I doing wrong? I've been doing yoga every day for like 7+ months, what am I missing?!" And I was able to let it go. And just relax. And try again. And try to feel what the pose feels like.

That is such an important thing. In all things. But I always translate it to skateboarding because it translates so well. In fact, I think it was a Rodney Mullen story that I sorta quote here. He talked about his process of learning new tricks where he goes and tries it... and obviously it doesn't work... and then he takes little mental notes... "ah, my foot went here, and my hips were like this... hmm... what if I shifted my weight this way..." And then went back to the run-up and... cleared his mind entirely. Forget all of it. Empty the cache and just go and do it. And repeat the process. Until you feel it. Until it connects. And I say this more from my experience with snowskating than skateboarding (though there are some skateboarding tricks I have this with)... when you have a trick locked down, you don't think about it. You just go... "shove it" and you mimic what a shove it feels like... and you do it.

So that's been my struggle in practicing yoga alone. Not knowing exactly where I'm supposed to be feeling the pose, what it's supposed to feel like... what muscles and joints are activating in which ways, where I will feel it, where to carry my weight. And it's less about doing it "right", and more about... doing what the pose is intended to do. Like... if you've ever seen anyone using a piece of exercise equipment incorrectly. Round of applause for creativity, of course... but you end up missing the point. And that's sorta the whole point of having a yoga teacher... to help you connect the shape to the feeling, so you know what to feel. Like... forward folds for me really stand out. I realized that for months, I was forward folding from my lower back, not my hips. I could barely reach my ankles. I was so frustrated because it was not relaxing it just wasn't working. And then one video had me go from a squat into a forward fold, sorta... going into a forward fold in reverse rather than coming from Mountain pose like I always did... and I raised my hips and still couldn't get my legs straight (of course, I still can't but whatever)... but I realized it felt... very different. I could feel my stomach on my thighs. My hips felt different, like different tendons were activating or something. My weight was being carried in a different location, a bit farther forward. And my hands were on the floor. And I just went... "oh! Oh, okay, so this is what bending farther forward in my hips feels like." All I needed was to feel it... then I was able to replicate it. And I use that hip sensation as a guidepost a lot now.

So... it was nice today to feel childlike. So many adults get so fucking averse to feeling childlike, as though it makes us appear incompetent and weak or something. A weird analogy I had come to me earlier today - as though their inner child were merely a cicada husk shed and clung somewhere deep in their psyche. I miss it so dearly. Every time I feel it, I wonder why I ever left. I want to go running out in the rain with my shirt off, barefoot, and jump in puddles with zero cares what the neighbors think. I want to roll around in the grass. I want to lay in the dirt and study bugs and see what they're up to. I want to point in awe and wonder at a gorgeous sunset, beaming from ear-to-ear simply because of how lucky I am to be able to experience something so beautiful.

Note how all of those things are... outside... in nature... XD Soon...

I'm gonna go a bit mas rapido here because I've been meandering. As I do... I'm a wanderer... I left the beads alone today, except for three. The painted ones... and one of the blue ones. I wanted to test my walnut oil/beeswax finish in combination with the tung oil. The tung oil added a deep richness and a protective layer saturated into the wood fibers. The wax should provide a nice coating which, once hardened, I hopefully should be able to buff to a nice shine. A compromise between the satin tung oil finish and a glass-like acrylic finish... and still continuing the trend of using only organic materials. The painted beads... I'm going to call a failure. I think the oil and the paint did not get along, and that's okay. They were intended to be test runs, much was learned from this. Even after all the coats of oil, the paint just stripped off. Even with the wax on top, the paint stripped off. So... I'm guessing the problem was that the opaque layer of paint prevented the oil from penetrating the wood, and maybe even broke down the paint a bit... and the wax would just... pile on top of this... and when I went to buff, it just pulled off the paint from the very bottom layer, which was only very delicately adhered to the wood surface. Maybe tung oil first... then paint, then wax? Or maybe the painted beads will require a more versatile sealer, like shellac or something. I'll have to explore this more. But my third bead was one of the blue ones, they've been sitting and letting the tung oil harden for a few days now. I gave it some wax and let it sit for a bit, then buffed it. It made... a bit of a difference, but nothing huge. Nothing dramatic when compared to the others. We'll see what time has in store for that.

The rest of my day was listening to (and finishing) The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which was lovely. A very powerful story, very resonant. I don't even really know what to say about it. It lines up with a lot of my life and it has been very thought provoking, and it's been helping me align with what I need right now.

The insight I got was... fear. Fear is my problem. And always has been. I'll get into that and close with my art, so we can end on a lighter note. Fear has such a strangle-hold on me. Fear of upsetting people who have power over me. Fear of scaring "normal" people with my odd and clearly out-of-place behaviors, which have consistently through history been considered an illness or acts of defiance that need to be corrected or punished. Fear of not being able to truly be my authentic self without... imposed consequences. That's one of the first major insights I got, my freshman year of college... "when they find out who/what I am... they're going to <do some bad thing to me>" Satanic Panic feelings. Witch Trial feelings. Holocaust feelings. Persecution. For simply being different. That fear has disrupted and laid ruin to my life since I was 17. And I have been a slave to it.

Now, that fear can infect so deep that it can make convincing arguments that holding eye contact with someone in the hallway too long might lead to something bad happening. That fear is so fucking lazy now that it doesn't even come up with elaborate fantasy punishments like Jesus being brought to Golgotha. It just goes "don't do anything that others might consider odd or else blah blah you know the drill." Ugh, it's so tiring to keep living like this.

And I remember lamenting the days when I would deliberately make an ass out of myself! I grew up with Jackass and CKY! My friends and I in high school were in the video program and we would make stupid home movies of us goofing off and setting RC cars on fire and racing them and pulling stupid pranks on each other and shit. Now? Walking to the pharmacy feels risky. Like I might come across someone who's already on edge, and my body language will be "wrong" or I'll accidentally make eye contact or something... and they'll just fucking snap on me.

So... after learning very clearly that there is no controlling others... and not even wanting to... I adapted into this belief that... if I act perfectly, innocently, friendly, eloquently, all of that... then they will have no reason to hurt me. And I will be safe. That's not controlling them, right? Right? Well... actually...

And that's something I need to talk to my therapist about. I need to be able to just... be myself... knowing that those situations are just part of life and they aren't something I can influence or control. Because that's the free will of another person. And that's just life. I don't think I can influence the decisions of a tiger, I just... show it respect, and act authentically non-threatening, and rely on its mercy. But people... people just... don't play by the same rules as animals. We often make up our own. And you can do everything right... and still suffer someone's wrath and violence.

So... what can you do? Just... resign to it? If someone mugs you, do you just give them your wallet? Do you try to run? Do you try to disarm and incapacitate them? I genuinely don't know. I don't have a plan. I just very often feel at the mercy of others, in a situation I simply want no part of. And yet, the entire situation is a hypothetical that has been concocted in my panicked imagination.

Fear. And my way of trying to confront this demon? Since 4 years ago? Go to the source. Weed. Weed unlocked my deepest fears and let me live them, viscerally, in dream-like highs. And it was able to do this pretty reliably. And I avoided the fucking plant for over 10 years because of it. It scared the living Christ out of me. It was not enjoyable, it wasn't worth the "risk". The freakouts, the panic attacks, the visceral experiences of living emotional nightmares. Every one carried a message, every one had a clear lesson contained for me to learn from. That's what these substances were fucking used for. And I've wanted for so long to just... have someone with me to help me work through them. To be emotionally and psychologically vulnerable with someone trusted, in that state. Because... my loss of my trust for others was born in moments of vulnerability while in that state. It's coming full circle. And someday I will, someday I will be able to get high and freak out with someone, and have it go well. Have it not result in someone else having their own panic attack that I have gone "schizophrenic", or someone taking personal offense at the imposition of "having to" support me in that moment, or even someone fueling my fears and validating them.

It may not be the only answer, but as far as the poetry of life goes... it makes the most sense to me. My fear was ignited in that cave. Every time I try to be brave enough to go back in, I get burned and cast out and grow even more scared of it. And others look at me like I'm foolish for wanting time and time again to go back in. To get stronger, wiser, more resilient, have more tools, etc. And go back. To continue to face off against the dragon, and be defeated, and get back up and do it again.

And more and more... I think the answer here for most of my problems... is meditation. My ability to just... let go. And be okay letting go. Especially when it feels important. Like this morning, when I was laying there trying to fall back asleep, and had a lot of these realizations... and went "I should write this down, this is very important and I really need to talk to my therapist about this in a few days, I want to make sure I remember." That importance compulsion is fucking tremendous. It feels like artistic inspiration, so much that I often feel compelled to combine the two. This journal has been the best compromise I've found so far. The majority of my adult life has been dedicated to me training myself to capture moments of profound importance, moments of intense feeling, like "oh, this is big." Because that's where art, poetry, and music are often born for me. And I often feel like it's my "job" to constantly be ready to capture that lightning in a bottle.

And yet... meditation teaches the exact opposite of that. It teaches that whatever is coming up - thoughts, emotions, anything - acknowledge it... and let it go. Make eye contact, nod your head, and let it blow away in the wind, and return to your focus. Your breath, your focal point, your drishti. And come back to stillness.

You see? For years, I have been practicing the skill of timelining a dream memory within a split second of waking up... and chronicling the dream as hastily and in as much detail as possible before the memory fades. Practicing stream of consciousness writing, in which I let the stream of thoughts flow as unimpeded as humanly possible, and training my fingers to type as quickly as I can in order to keep up with the speed of my thoughts. It's been laborious, and I've gotten quite skilled at it. They are so staunchly the opposite of meditation! They are not accepting thoughts and letting go, they are accepting thoughts and saying "go on, tell me everything you have to say". This has been tremendously valuable in my ability to unravel connections in my subconscious, roots of many behaviors, my own self-narrative. But they do not help in... letting go. And finding stillness.

I end up compelled to work - either on art, or mental heath, or finding my place in the universe - perpetually. Reflexively. Because of how regular and vigorous my training has been. I do this literally every night. So... the simple idea of "I can just let this thought go" often feels... wasteful... because I know very well how valuable and meaningful every thought and feeling is. And I truly believe that. That they all have meaning, you just don't understand it yet.

I remember saying this last year to my therapist. That I don't like letting go of the thoughts, because it feels wasteful. It feels like right now is a golden opportunity to learn something new about yourself, about life. And your mind presents that opportunity to you, insight on a golden platter. Who am I to refuse? Well... here's why it's okay to refuse... because it's 8AM... and you only got 4 hours of sleep... XD

And this little mini-mantra has been helping me a bit, because... I feel like this has become a bit of an obsessive compulsion... The new mantra is "if it's really important, I'll remember." "If it's really important, it'll come back." And that has helped reveal that the big underlying fear there that's driving it is... this fear of having found The Answer, the big one that's gonna change everything... and just... letting it go. Attachment. And that's a big part of my battle, and my suffering. And it's a big part of the work I have to do.

So... meditation needs to be integrated into my regular practices, and I'm planning to do so. I have the books pulled and everything.

And, on a less intense note... I started on the skateboard grip tape. I've been taking progress pictures every time I add a new layer radiating out. Probably too many to make an album of at this point, but whatever. I didn't want to film the progress because I really wanted to work on the floor. I miss just sitting on the floor and painting, there's something very special about it. This has become a blooming mandala that is alternating rounded pedals, then pointed leaves radiating out from the gaps between the pedals... then repeating. I've just painted a base coat of white on them for now, but I plan on adding some color. I'm not entirely sure what, but I found a gold paint that is calling me. And I might do a rich burgundy kinda color with that, or like a deep purpley-reddish-brown like a wine kinda color. I don't know. I'll feel it out. It's been a long time since I've done a mandala with color.

I have to pee. --- So... yeah, big progress made on the board. I put a few hours into that, at least 3-4. And again, all I had to do was just... fucking let go. Just let go and start painting and let the piece make itself. And it's making itself. And I regret absolutely nothing. I regret not a single damn thing with this piece. It is exactly what it's supposed to be. And if it wants a gold center, it'll get a gold center. And if it wants red leaves, it'll get red leaves.

I want to carry this feeling, this approach, this momentum... into the next few pieces. The clothing pieces. The hybrid board grip. The idea of just... slapping on some paint and letting it form itself. It's really scary to do that with a permanent medium that isn't layer-able... like ink... And I will continue to work with that in the near future. For now, this is working quite well. I feel very at home - a place that at the same time feels nostalgic and... right where I should be.

#diary #journal #online journal #stream of thoughts #stream of consciousness

0 notes