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I'm no good at being angry. One of the most common situations in which I get angry is when my parents question what I am doing. I feel the impulse to defend myself, to argue back, and most often, historically, I have. I am fuelled by an anger inside me that I am learning to let pass as smoke rather than add brush to.
That anger is directed at myself. After a reasonably tame discussion with my dad about pushing weights, gymming, and running, I went into the shower and as I stepped into our new white bathtub, anger still smoking away inside me, an idea assembled in the smoke: I'm not angry at him. Rather, I am angry at myself, for being angry, but also for not accepting that I may not have the correct answer, and given that, for believing there is a right answer. And I ought have it.
It made me think of others' arguments, when others get angry. I don't believe we get angry at others because of what they do, even if they are unreasonable or incorrect - I think there is a part of us that already recognises that as what it may be. And I don't think we get angry at them because they may next be unwilling to accept the correct or more reasonable view. I rather think we get angry because underneath all the thoughts we have about right and wrong, about what we are arguing for or against, we know there is no fight. We are angry because there is nothing to be angry about. We are angry because we can't justify our anger. That knowledge is ever-flowing; accusations and defenses slow it to a trickle.
We know, on that foresty floor, among the rocks and the arrangements of sticks and foliage, that peace is liquid, porous, and uninterruptible.
I ask of anger, is this anything?
One way I learned to change my behavior is to progressively add and maintain these mental barriers, or checks, before I communicate with people. So if there is a particular social interaction I want to reduce, I remind myself to reduce it before I start communicating. Slowly, it begins to stick, if I keep up the checks, and over time that is how I develop my social interactions.
Passing through these gossamer checks allows me to tame what is undesirable or unacceptable in my behavior and relating to others. In this way, I eliminated unwanted talkquisitions, such as saying "Oh my God" excessively. I caught myself saying it, then stopped, and when the trigger came to say it again, after a few unsuccessful times, I held it back. After a while, I stopped thinking it.
Checks are useful for mental conditioning. It's like reinforcing children to think before they speak.
Living without checks would be quite freeing, though I recognise it would run the risk of my thoughts cascading and potentially drowning chances at further open-mindedness. I don't know.
Who I say I am isn't who I am. I try to be as honest as I can when people ask me, even when I do utter a word or two about where I come from, or what I'm like and what I like. That's my story though, not who I am.
My girlfriend said she likes to be many people. So anyone who knows her, doesn't really know her, including me - they know faces of her, but after she goes home, she's back to being a fog, the people she's worn discarded.
I used to think that being many-faced was unethical, and I tried for some uniformity, but I accept that it isn't possible. Different situations will pull out different coin sides. Who you may see talking with friends is going to be different to who you may see teaching English. It's not that I'm being dishonest - that was my gripe with it, that it's fakeness - but rather, real. I don't present myself in just one situation, so I don't just have one appearance, one hand of cards and method to play them.
Astounding things may arise from the fog. I surprise myself sometimes, too. It's worth living with the acceptance that yes, I have tendencies and preferences, but I also have the conviction and ability to go being those comforts. Is this reinvention? Only if previously it was definition. If not, then it's a continuing, an expansion. Motion.
Fog rises, and falls, and rolls over landscapes.
I found myself worrying, as I have been the past few days, about my upcoming driving test. I think I will feel a kind of shame in not passing it - I project it out. Projected, I should say, because as I type this, I don't feel I will. I'm still worth love. I'm good enough to pass it. I trust my abilities will stack up, but if they don't yet, so be it. I am good enough. I am worthy, in other words, to succeed. The outcome isn't what I am basing this on, because I don't know whether I am to pass it yet. Today whenever I began the worry thoughts, this thought of I am good enough came to me, as an answer.
Triumphantly, thankfully, it came from within me, whereas before it would come from outside of me, whether from my girlfriend's vocal chords or correspondence, or from music.
I am enough. I take out the 'good', because that is not my domain. I don't know whether I will do well in the test, whether I will remember what to do correctly. I trust I will. Do I trust my body? Thoughts deny me that. I trust God.
I am enough, for thy will be done.
The ending of the second season of Mad Men happened with all the characters being written in places so that there can be drama, suspense, mystery, love, lack. Stories, I'm becoming aware, are designed by the writers, or by the writers of writers, that is, those that influence writers, to have particular effects, to pass on messages. It's not accidental that while Don was away, Duck tried to take over Sterling Cooper. And this move tells the audience about Duck's values, his allegiance.
To design, etymologically, means to mark out, to outmark. Some mind saw a particular animal in the sky and drew lines to form a constellation, a connected story. One event with many repercussions.
Mad Men also carves a river of thought into the world of advertising, and how designed wants are, how created they are, so products are purchased, so happiness is attained, even if fleeting.
I think of my writing, and what I am to do as a writer is design a world and circumstances within it to point to particular things I decide on. That isn't hard, because that's what essays are for, and other writings I have done. I wonder though what it takes to write something, to say something through a write.
These writes here that I have written, they sometimes were whims, sometimes designed whims trying to be writes. I wrote because I wanted to say something, though I didn't always have something to say. I fear that, in imagining a writing future. What if I don't have anything to really say, anything substantial that I genuinely want said. I have ideas that migrate through the sky of my mind quite often - points of interest, observations - but there aren't that many things that I wanted to sit down to write something long about. Shorts, yes - I have kept a blog. I suppose if I kept thinking, I could've written more. But I also notion that thinking about what to say comes from not having anything to say, and I'd rather be silent.
Can there be a writer that doesn't write? A designer who doesn't outmark, except once maybe when he does, when he feels the push to write, or something akin to that force of inspiration, that drive. I venture that the desire to design, to say something, has to come from somewhere. Why did the creators and writers of Mad Men desire to create and write it, to design it for the audience? There must have been an impetus, a story that they wanted told. One that they really felt ought be told.
That's the story I've yet to know. The writer is listening for it.
With the near-square of floral-patterned paper held down by my keyboard, she made a paper crane, as she was watching the beginning of Mad Men.
It's looking at me without eyes, through its thin beak head, its wings in position to soar towards the ceiling, up until that flight resting on its paperback tail.
She told me to throw it away.
She is my girlfriend.
Reading this morning I noticed a little diluted black spiral dot in my vision. A few minutes ago, I looked at my hand, and saw it again, slightly towards the right of the centre scope of my sight. Normally I don't notice it, I suppose because I often process things further away from me, and when I read, half my vision, that is, the imaginary proportion, doesn't recognise the activity as just regarding black ink on an off-white page.
When I was young my grandmother told me not to look directly at the sun; at times, daringly, I would take a squint and then close shut my eyes as the glare readjusted reds and greens and yellows, the climate or rainfall map of the eye's geographical regions fading to a bright black. Maybe this is a spot left from the moments of that, a mole, freckle, or beauty spot that I, as opposed to everyone else, can see.
