sensei and i: another one, another me

labaroche, france, april 19, 2006

this week i have had to give in to my body and let my ego suffer a bit of embarrassment. on sunday afternoon and monday morning i did not train thus missing five whole training sessions although i did show up on both days for the matinal zazen at dawn. my wonderful little ego would rather have had me on the tatami for every session, however my body informed me that that was indeed unwise. my head felt like a whole storm, and my throat like sandpaper while i ached all-over which i could not imagine was just from the previous five hours of training. if that was not enough, i also felt totally drained and with zero energy. on monday morning after breakfast i went back to bed and slept the sleep of the exhausted, and that after a night of a good nine hours of sleep. you see, i am just not very wise. when on saturday i went to bed, it was after having been up for over 48 hours.

the sleepless sting was on top of a pleasantly disturbing evening spent with a friend discussing something that i thought belonged to the past, was long dead, and safely filed away under problems resolved. but no, one whole evening was spend dwelling on whatever that was that is not yet complete in spite of all my declarations that it is complete. i am back to the drawing board, back to rewriting a story that i had fancied finished.

today being wednesday and after another nine training sessions i walk out of the dojo shortly before noon while a training is in session and bump right smack into a sensei. he started the conversation by noting that he had missed a colleague and i at yesterday's dinner and then we went on to discuss connection and disconnection in a multicultural world.

berne, switzerland, april 23, 2006

my head is full, my body feels light. labaroche was a whole lot more than i had expected, full of surprises. today has been spent doing laundry and trying to make order in both my head - an hopeless task for a chaos lover - and in my office. i took a few pictures of the cherry blossoms in the garden that were not when i left for labaroche, sent a few emails, answered a few phone calls, made a few phone calls. alive.

will i dare?

sensei and i, will follow.

Technorati Tags: aikido

telling the stories as they emerge: i put a spell on you and other great songs from screamin' jay hawkins

april 12, yesterday, was a remarkable day more for what i will not write about here, than for my own jubilations of another day lived and celebrated. alive and kicking, very much so!

the day went by too fast. after a visit with one of my most intimate friends, i returned home on tuesday evening to give in to an impulse. click by click i sailed, and by midnight i felt that it is liberating to give up on the excuses and  do that that i want to do. do it now. stop thinking. perhaps the time was wrong, and indeed getting up on wednesday morning was a forced action. i was graciously rewarded, my morning was pure joy. what is reward? what did my reward consist of?

it could be that my own reward consisted of nothing else than the fact that i declared it to be so.

i am plowing much too slowly through the pending items, yet i am plowing. patience is not a skill that i possess. patience is a skill not a virtue. while i can work on acquiring a skill, i am lost when it comes to acquiring a virtue. my choice is simple, this is my world, i call that characteristic that endows and seem to favour some humans more than others, and that we often refer to as patience, a skill.

if there is an expression for my mood today, it is happily confused. confused and happily do go together. i personally do not believe in happiness, do not really know what it is, and yet days like today have moments that i can only describe as happily confused. the pursuit of happiness is to me, futile. why would i pursue a non-existent chimera called happiness? i would have to believe in it first, wouldn't i? well, i don't. go eat your muesli, bitch to your bosom buddy, and this is how i see my fucking world!

it was around 4 pm at the bus stop when a disheveled woman addressed me with the preface that she wants to ask a stupid question. she wanted to know if the shops close at 4 pm on wednesday. i look at her in astonishment. that is by far not what i would call a stupid question, but then the poor soul could not necessarily be blamed for suffering from poor self-esteem or lack of self-confidence. i greatly appreciated her efforts at being polite and considerate of the stranger that i was to her. confused as she seemed, i loved her very presence. now, there it was wednesday before easter and i had totally forgotten those christians usages of making holidays out of friday and monday around easter. rats! i have myself a few groceries to get, and i certainly was still thinking that i would go to training on friday and then stop by at the migros at the train station to get the items that i need to take on the trip on saturday. by the way, it is on thursday before easter that the shops and banks close at 4 pm. the migros at the train station has extended hours. progress in switzerland is made patiently. twenty years ago, there were no shops open outside of the very strict shop hours. i still do not know of a 24-hour supermarket anywhere around here, but well, i am not sure that that is an absolute necessity.

there is no use in telephoning me...  the song goes, and last night i gave my paradise in italy a call and we found ourselves in a most technical conversation about beef which had me on the verge of unbound laughter... loyalty and serenity can have the strangest expressions.

to cut a long story short, i am offline until the 22 of april.

Technorati Tags: breakthrough, connection, consciousness, muddle, real virtual, reality, refections, unsaid, untold

the daily dose is missing!

ok, i give up! there is nothing else possible, i must give up. give up and accept that it is the way it is.

my garden is once again covered by snow, and i am not in the mood for such mercurial jokes, even it is april and all. a friend of mine today handed me over an mp3 player that got me excited until i tried loading it with my own stuff, and then discovered that because the freaking machine is infested with DRM software and a few other odd ideas. there is no deal between that mp3 player and my mac. needless to say that apple also plays in this charade a major role in the tragedy act called DRM. somehow this roused mismatch  reminds me of some relationships, the plugs fit but the communication is incomplete. incompatible software, we call the problem these days. hardware is always compatible. no fucking!

but it has been one hell of a day. it started with me waking up feeling sick to my stomach. i am not quite sure what caused the nausea, headache and upset stomach. possibly too much imbibing on sunday night or my general overall indigestion due to avoiding dealing with real life problems. oh, yes, i am in the mood for going on a guilt trip, but do not rub your hands together in delight about the upcoming self destructive act of my beating myself to death. flagellation and guilt is for losers, and i may not be a lot of things, but i have never subscribed to the idea that crowns losers. guilt is a strange concept to me. why do people ever feel guilty?

guilt, according to my most trusted little dictionary, the oxford english dictionary, is the state (meriting condemnation and reproach of conscience) of having wilfully committed crime or heinous moral offence; criminality, great culpability. yet for some odd reason i have observed that most people go through a complete guilt trip based on acts that they had no clue would induce any offence moral or otherwise to anybody. then others who so well trained have also taken it upon themselves to go tell others not so well trained to go and feel guilty because they did this or that, and none of it was either criminal, heinous, or otherwise offencive. gee wheez, i am full of it, ain't i? guilt is an emotion! guilt is not just an emotion, it is also one based on belief. i have always suspected that indeed my saviour would be wikipedia. there are days when i feel like being a totally egocentric cynic, today is one of those days. i could not give a fuck anything really, at least today. even the freaking weather is annoying me. yes, there is no other kind of cynic, other than an egocentric one, especially when it snows and the dance in front of the magic mirror is about to start again. mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

in its over thousand years of existence in the english vocabulary, guilt is one of those rare words whose meaning has not drifted much through time.

it could be that yesterday i had news that made me feel - another freaking nuisance, feelings - that i am just another naive mindless pollyanna trudging obliviously through the currents of our warring times. this time i have been damn lucky, and that is only because i have dear friends who somehow know how to make miracles happen. in a way it is as though a miracle had happened last night, and that may indeed be what had my innards upset.

i am sick and tired of this kitchen sink now. i am sick and tired of all these feelings coming and going. i am most annoyed at all the believes others insist on pouring on me as the wholesale truth.

we all believe in something or other, if nothing else i do believe in my own nihilism, but why on earth impose it on others? are we not free to believe whatever works for each one individually? why must my own belief represent any sort of absolute truth?

i am a nihilist monk.

Technorati Tags: feelings, guilt, monk, nihilism

from the dashboard of my beautifully insignificant life

1. my brother skypes me while i sleep and leaves a message "hey sis"
2. in the late evening i made flan with goat's milk, today i am set on preparing some tandoori chicken, dal and some rice
3. it is raining, and i love the sound of the rain. i love walking without a hat or an umbrella and just feel the rain drops falling on my face and head. on days like this i miss not having a shorn head. 
4.... i could ramble on and on.

the daily dose

my jocoseness got me into a bit of communication trouble last saturday at a funeral, and it seems that my emotive fiction gets me into other kinds of trouble. last night after a dear colleague left my place following a much promised indian dinner prepared by me, i got a phone call from another friend across town. i knew that i was in trouble when i asked him what effect my fiction prose had had on him and he replies that that is something that he would like to talk about in person, not on the phone.

you should have seen my thoughts running wild. gee whiz, it is that bad, really. then he clarified his reaction and then a whole lot of nonsense made sense to me, and i realized that indeed i may have taken one hell of a big bite. now the question, can i chew on it without choking.

so, i had a lousy day yesterday. lousy is perhaps a much too relative and meaningless qualification. lousy is because i did not do one of my regular activities only because i felt physically exhausted and totally out of it. lousy because in my indian cooking there was something that tasted off to me, although my colleague ate with ferocious appetite, i was not impressed by my own cooking yesterday. in our after dinner conversation it occurred to me that i had forgotten to add a few spices at the end of the cooking process. no wonder, it did not taste right. however not all was a disaster yesterday, lots of good stuff happened.

i had an excellent session with my analyst, great dinner conversation with another physicist, and my friend from across town did provide the iota of much needed sanity to the day, even if at first it all sounded much too catastrophic.

the truth is one hell of whore, ain't it?

Technorati Tags: insanity, the daily dose, truth

how on earth are you today?

today it really sucks. it is raining or snowing outside, even the weather can not decide, and the thermometer has dropped to a nice balmy 4 C. somedays i have no other recourse than to throw in the towel, it is one of those days.

this here blog is about the many attempts of answering the routine question "how are you?" and a place to dump my feelings, vulnerabilities and half-baked thoughts. some love what i write, some hate what i write. clearly the stuff is polarizing. i particularly do not care one way or the other. if you do like what i write that is fine, and if you do not that is also fine, but remember that there is nothing compulsory about reading what i write. i write for myself and those few of my friends who do care to read it on occasions. now given that recent scientific evidence has it that the written word has a rather random chance of being understood or not, it is perhaps not too surprising that this polarization takes place.

to add insult to injury, one of my many fascinations with writing and linguistics is exactly because of the severe limitations imposed on written expression. i know of people who write with a most dismal use of both syntax and grammar, and somehow they do manage to communicate. just one week ago after training my sensei and i were discussing this very issue, although we are not self or otherwise proclaimed communication experts, we have come to realize that communication is not what is said or written, it is what gets understood. this very state of affairs does make the whole enterprise of writing, speaking, or communicating very tricky indeed. sometimes the shit hits the fan, and sometimes i totally loose it. trolls are one thing, but internet stalking is a bit too much for me. stalking is a crime, while trolling is just silliness in high doses.

i get stalked, and it is not a comforting feeling. i made a mistake last night and went in for a IM dialogue with my stalker because i thought that he was just  a troll, but i was not sure. trolls i can deal with. no, this person is a stalker, he knows my identity, he knows where i live. for once i am really happy that yahoo does cooperate with law enforcing entities, although i do wish it was not to stifle  freedom of speech.

Technorati Tags: communications, freedom, freedom of speech, internet, stalking, troll

strange things do happen

when one supposedly blogs anonymously.

in all reality this is not an anonymous blog, it is one maintained under pseudonym and one often categorized as fiction. after all in my reality, there is nothing but fiction.

a truly anonymous blog would have a few other technical refinements which this one user is not willing to bother with. still, it is rather odd when i do receive what can only be considered hate mail, even if it comes via yahoo IM. somebody out there really hates what i have written here and in the blogs signed "cairo otaibi." ok, i have a troll on my heels, and i was stupid enough to engage in IM conversation with the pervert.

it is easy to say that it does not matter, but it is not easy to just ignore the expression of malevolence and aggression. if i had not been watching my shadow all the while posting and writing for the past two years, i could perhaps fear that i had somehow done something horribly wrong.

what is hate? i really wonder what that emotion is that we call hate. why project one's one frustrations onto another being? recently i listened to a good friend of mine tell me the not so very pretty story of how his ex-partner is now giving expression to her own frustration and discomfort in the form of aggression, even physical aggression, towards him.

there are mutterings of the less enlightened character that often hit me at just the time when i am finally just able to deal with them. people say something or other, and then it is always a matter of choice as to whether i will take it personally or not. in fact, all utterings and mutterings are usually not personal, we like to think that we can make them personal. they are as personal as the rain, and we will get wet if we stand under the rain, still there is nothing personal about the fact that it is raining. the same goes for a lot of what is said and gets said between humans. most people, like myself, do have a certain tendency to be very preoccupied with their fascination for the own belly button. but why throw your own crap at others?

i suppose i needed a reminder to go back to the karate dojo. i have not trained much karate in the past months, and i do not want  it to be a year of staying out for whatever crappy excuse i might be able to invent. not that it would matter much, still, last month i was at a special training and i did enjoy it much. my discipline is aikido. one of the reasons is that aikido does enable me to deal with my own shortcomings and the other's aggressions. a martial art, first is art. but why is it art? i think that most people think that they are clear on the martial aspect. for me it is the inner journey, the jihad, the know thyself until you disappear. anybody who ever got anywhere in a close call knows that you are being your best when you do disappear, when the self disappears. when the self disappears your do not react, you respond. one of my sensei's said something very wise on the subject of injuries: injuries, he said, are the refection of one's frustration and aggression. bingo! it so goes for the psyche.

when you want to hurt another and throw blows at them that denigrate the other, or that you think are aimed at the other's soft spot, who do you think that you are hurting?

i have recently written about fear, and how paralyzing that fear can be. it is paralyzing, it stops me in my tracks. this fear, this fear that i have embraced recently is rather simple: it is the fear of pain. as i look back into my childhood and teenage years, this fear gets me, it paralyzes. still, it is not by negating that i can deal with it. it is also not by transforming it into aggression projected on to others, usually those who i love or love me, that i can deal with it. i can only embrace this fear, embrace this pain, they are all mine and will always be. the pain of abuse is nothing that one likes to revisit, i certainly do not. revisiting the pain of abuse is like death, but only worse. in revisiting the pain of abuse you are both dying and still alive; it is truly frightening. as some wise man once said, the best students get the toughest problems.

last night i had a long phone conversation with a good friend of mine mostly about money and family... it was a great conversation.

Technorati Tags: abuse, aikido, blogs, karate, pain, personal, writing