inadequacy

long long ago, in another story i quoted something about fear by Marianne Williamson. i come around and struggle to come to grips with my own psychology, and although on the surface there is something appealing about fearing one's greatness, right now, it just does not register with this one buddha. this buddha, me and myself, we beg to differ. it is not even my won humble opinion; there is nothing humble in this opinion of mine.

while i wrote beyond 2 sigma, i knew that i was struggling with fear, and that perhaps that fear had something with my capabilities and the sheer potency of my own dreams and visions. that story is one of rebellion, it is one sacred irimi of self-assertion. two years later i find myself wrestling fear at a new level, a level that i am foreign to. it could only be because the whole of who i am discovering to be is indeed a rather foreign me. reinventing oneself along the transient terrestrial path seems like a simple matter of slipping into a new role, but to discover that being repressed for almost half a century and aching to pierce through the layers of delusion, that is something altogether different.

what is fear? whatever it is that i am feeling, i can only call it fear, i know no other name for it. what has me turning in circles is that i have no clue as to what i fear, although it is not the fear of my own strength that i fear. i know that much, and i know how the fear of my own strength tastes and it tastes differently.

still something has shifted. i also do not know what to call that thing that has shifted... is it karma? is it the stars? is it the mood on wall street? certain is that a shift in the constellation of my perception and circumstances has taken place.

while on monday, i could not wait for wednesday, and today i discovered that once more i totally messed up on one of my commitments to get a document out on time, i also am losing track of time and gaining a sense of immediacy which is unprecedented.

yesterday a good friend an and colleague called from germany, and i found myself listening with interest and empathy to a one hour rendition of the events in his life for the past few months. the specifics are his to keep and share, still i would have never expected to have such a conversation with him. he is one of these people who have accompanied me along my path for better and for worse, and our relationship is difficult to understand in the shackles of drugged up mores and corrupt propriety. still, something has shifted in the year since i last saw him face to face. i listed to a story that sounded to me much too dreadful, and much too real...
there was nothing to do but listen, and there was that existential fear in his voice, that fear that i also have known and know, that fear that i had to learn to be friends with, that fear that is nothing more than the certainty that this life is very tenuously anchored on this earth and that we have a rather short horizon for that chimera that we call security.

that i would find myself in existential struggles does not surprise me, i do live a bit recklessly, and to survive i had  no other resource than to ignore many a convention of our times. to deal with my reckless adventure on the planet, i must explore the limits of the rules that are imposed on me, and at the end of the day i tend to care very little about the game because i am far more interested in cracking the code, than i am at winning the game. the game is life. i know that this game can only be won with one last breath and that breath's time is, with a few exceptions, unpredictable. winning the game is not in my hands while cracking the code does fascinate me. that others who do not lead a reckless life, like this friend, end up also struggling with the same existential fears does surprise me.

it was thursday and we must have spent two hours on the phone, if not longer. i confess to not having gotten the day off the ground of my expectations yesterday. i got three things done, none of which were really planned with much advance, it was all spontaneous. besides the long phone conversation with my friend, i had tea with  a kind soul, and i did sort out a bit more of the mess in my cellar. i had planned to do something else... and that thing that i now call fear has me by the balls, and i get nothing done, i feel that i am going in circles, i feel incapacitated, powerless, numb, paralyzed. i have pending deadlines, i have paperwork to do, i have commitments... why on earth am  i paralyzed?

lately i have had days like i had not known possible: all is well, there is a feeling of serenity and calm. those are days when i can shut out the world out, the days when i do not bother to think, the days when i can escape with my words, the days when i paint a reality that is mine and mine alone...

this fear is not of greatness, this fucking freaking fear is of inadequacy. i fear failure. i fear rejection. i fear being laughed out. i fear being ridiculed, i fear being disdained, i fear being told that i am not good enough, i fear. this is my bare, raw fear: the freaking paralyzing fear of inadequacy.

i can deal just fine with my brilliance and greatness.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, brilliance, existential, fear, feelings, greatness, inadequacy

time and again

here i am on a monday, sitting pregnant with emptiness and silence. somewhere along the line of the course of events today, i keep on wishing that it would be wednesday.

it is surprisingly quiet here, it reminds me of the house where i was born in bordeira, that house with that patient garden awaiting for me.

why emptiness and silence?

because. because that is what i aspire to.

on sunday i had an exceptionally good day. no alarm and woke up fairly early for somebody who went to sleep rather late. this has however been the rhythm of things around here for the past months, and the last few weeks have been madness trebled. my five in the morning regime is something that i am missing, however when i go to sleep shortly before then, it does not work in any practicable responsible manner. as the days get longer, and the sun rises earlier in the day, i will be returning to what i call my default mode, that is, up around five in the morning. i just love the morning hours, the silence of dawn and the frail light.

while writing this the day happened: phone calls, more phone calls... and i did get only a couple of things done of the myriad that i had wanted to do today. it was a monday with promise, and short on deliveries.

i like the silence of this house. every once in a while i hear somebody go up the stairs, but not often. i can open the french window and the garden becomes my kingdom. on saturday i got myself some cigarillos, this time danish ones (Petit Nobel, Sumatra). i have not bought any cigars for quite a while and have occasionally smoked on friday evenings with my physics colleagues, a majority of whom do smoke cigars. it occurred to me only on sunday afternoon that i actually could smoke in the garden. smoking cigarettes is nothing that i think is a good idea, but an occasional cigar is like meditation, and one must take the time to savour it. i like these little sumatras... and after all, the danes needed a bit of moral support.

at the tobacco shop on saturday the sales person took it upon himself to recommend the Cohibas or Montecristos... i do suppose that i look like i would not be familiar with the subject matter of cigars. i thanked him for the advice and told him that unfortunately the cohibas and montecristos cigarillos have dropped in quality considerably over the last few years. i ought to know, i used to smoke them until they started skipping on the quality.

what i really wanted to write about when i started this post this morning is the fact that right now my whole schedule is in a state of reconfiguration. regular, usual, average or default seem to have lost their meaning... my day can change from hour to hour... and what is important is that i not lose sight of my goal. one step at a time, i will get there.

Technorati Tags: angel, art, ashes, bordeira, garden, studio

this side of paradise

you being an insider to my life, you know that paradise is the place to find me. paradise.

the last week, that is this week, has been a bit of wonderful madness. i now sit in my new studio among piles of boxes and listening to the jazz inside my head after a few beers and sights of the carnival in town. on tuesday i installed the cable modem and it all went without a snitch or hitch: plug it in and the wireless network was up in a matter of minutes.

now. this studio is about now, just now, nothing else. now and the conquering of that that seemed impossible just a while ago is what the next adventure is about.

while doing the laundry... oh the laundry, the wind, the storm, the boxes... what does it all matter?

on friday i had lunch at one of the local sushi bars with one of my dearest friends and legal counsels. we have known each other for a few years and for some odd reason - mutual sympathy and shared values - we have became friends. i am the aikido one, he is the boxing guy, and  somehow we do speak the same language. if nothing else, i am all excited about him being an expectant father, and to see him follow one of his dreams about continuing his education and expanding his horizons. we had not seen each other in a while, it must have been almost a year... since then a lot has changed, nothing has gone quite like the smooth plan that we hoped for, and yet all is going better than i could have imaged it.

being with a friend, someone whom i trust, and passing review on the past few months did give me an opportunity to get real about what is going on right here. as it is this year started with a floating sentence resonating somewhere in the air around me: if i am a writer, then i might as well behave like one. it feels odd. i am not used to calling myself a writer, yet that is what i am. my boxing lawyer friend and i today passed review not only on the last few months, but also exchanged the kind of confidences that have me stunned in awe on how very connected i can feel to another human being.

then after the old boys club i met another friend, one with whom i have a special project going on, and we end up drinking to some big changes coming up in his life. the changes in his life do affect my own life and bring home how very evidently connected we all are somehow.

of course i have to grin and smile and i am getting a lot of satisfaction out of what is happening around me these days. take for instance the conversation that i had yesterday with a friend, an american writer, and on discussing the relocation of my pied-à-terre she reminds me that to have a new place is almost as good as having a new lover. i corrected her, i think it is better, far more refreshing, and certainly with as much potential for complications.

now, here i am in paradise. my desk is still covered up with unpacked boxes, and my cinema display is still in its protective box while i write on the PowerBook on the dinning table. i like the studio. i love one of the shots from the photo session yesterday at one of the national landmarks... oh yes, there are days when i am just a writer who loves to shoot photos. other days i am just a writer who consults for industry, or a translator. right now i am fascinated with the assertion of being a writer and my own very real lack of identity.

one of the luxuries in my life is my therapy, something along the lines of deep analysis, something to help me come to terms with an history of abuse, something that is both a plain luxury  and a basic necessity. in this week's session it occurred to me that when i entered the pied-à-terre in the old town, the sensation that i had was that it was time to write, not just think and wish that i would write. eight years later that is where i am. however when i first entered that flat this sensation was very strong, just as strong as the resistance that i felt. i had no idea then that it was fear that was motivating that resistance to just follow my desire and need to write. i would perhaps have never discovered the magnitude of that fear if i had not blogged under a pseudonym, like i would have not have discovered the nature of the fear if i had not written under my civil name. somewhere along the line there is something about identity in there. i just happen to think that identity can be a very potent venom. can you imagine being caught within the bars of what you think you might be?

Technorati Tags: authenticity, change, fear, identity, paradise, pseudonym