Don’t Trust The Cacophony

There are two tiny people running around as I write this, chasing each other. Tiny persons, tots, children.

They are more like little adults conversing in their own way which is why I describe them as little people. I guess I begin to wonder what occurs exactly when we go from being a baby to being considered an actual functioning member of society. The answer must lie somewhere within how much we can contribute to it. Therefore, in those moments I couldn’t help but to perceive them as a "little person" because the behavior they were displaying was so unlike children, and more of a "contributing to society" energy. As it goes, children endlessly inspire me. They are the most determined creatures I have ever observed. They have this willingness to fail and explore and experience. Toddlers communicate in a special way, and like the fascination I have for animals and their thoughts, I always wonder 'What the hell is going on inside there?' These complexities will remain as such until we somehow tap into the telekinetic world and read each others minds.

A scene: two small humans chasing each other between the garden lane, the tops of their heads barely reaching the undersides of the tables on either side of them. Back and forth, and back and forth, running through the puddles, shrieking with excitement. It is exciting! I could see it. They made it look so fun that I looked down at my own unmoving feet contemplating why I had stopped finding joy from mundane moments. My answer: repetition and exposure. I forget to appreciate things the more often I experience or indulge within them. Shavda's voice always pops into my head when I see a sight like this. "My greatest guru is actually my four year old granddaughter. She reminds me to walk gently upon the earth and appreciate its beauty with newness each time," she said to me while we were both tripping on shrooms. Shavda is my greatest guru. At 74 she is like a glowing orb of radiant childlike joy and light. Not only is her hair the starkest white that reflects the sun with brilliance, but her aura is white. Her smile heals, her eyes sparkle, her teeth gleam, her hands hold. Before this piece becomes a complete ode to Shavda, I must lastly state: she epitomizes childlike wonder and excitement.

While appreciating and acknowledging the little people running around my plant nursery I realized that despite my previous notion I was experiencing the world with new eyes, even if the lens was not mine. By observing the newness they were feeling I was led to remember my first time. The interconnectedness of experiences is what makes us relatable, which is how bonds and relationships form. Except until the moment familiarity sets in, it becomes far easier to find things redundant and dull. I tend to consume things, people, experiences with a type of infatuation until these things become absolutely repugnant. This characteristic could be a result of the undiagnosed ADHD my mother highly believes I have. The way my little thoughts work...I am beginning to believe her.

The cacophony of voices in my head like to lie. I know they do. Sometimes they are intuitive and can save me from a situation I should avoid. These days it has become rather difficult to silence their whisperings. Thoughts are like mind flowers which bloom and die with time. This restless and troubled mind runs circles around itself and it always has a problem with something. I then have to ask myself: Is this me and my thoughts or is this a result of my lifestyle lately? Sleep, diet, and substance consumption contribute to our mental health. I know this. I experienced the results of health negligence in Barcelona when I acknowledged that the panic attack I had was not induced by any real panic at hand, but rather by a chemical reaction occurring inside of me. My body was responding to what I had consumed, or more accurately, hadn't within 48 hours. As a result, I almost lost my fucking mind. On days like today I have to sit back and question how I have been treating my body.

What do you call it when you forget to eat? I don't mean: 'I am depressed and I cannot bring food to the threshold of my lips' kind of forget. It's more of a 'I am not hungry and will continue to go about my day until I get hungry.' But then the hunger does not come. Tack on my tobacco consumption which curbs appetite, and fasting until 1pm, a beer after work which fills me up, and soon enough it's 10pm and I've cooked up a perfect numbskull meal. I could find it "edgy" or even comical, but I am more mindful than that. I sit myself down and ask: 'what is wrong'...and then we think. It's been a week of this "diet". Last Sunday I acknowledged it only because the person I was speaking to was trembling with each drag of their cigarette. It could have been from the cold, or drugs, or being malnourished. But then I brought my own cigarette to my lips only to find a slight shake in my fingertips as well-and I was not cold or on drugs.

I found it inspiring and romantic, as a writer would, but there should be a point where my shakiness must be observed as a visceral sign...my body is trying to tell me something. Here I find myself, at the writing station again, using this outlet as a way to figure it out. When I woke up today I thought my problem was external, that the sadness was my reaction to a situation, or the weather, but I have found my hands resting on my heart and my belly several times throughout the day as a form of self soothing. I realize I am not O.K. As I said before, don't trust the cacophony because the voices will instinctively lie. Putting the blame on exterior factors and dereliction can ruin someone, be sure to take responsibility so as to facilitate a new perspective or outlook.

This blog is supposed to be honest, raw, and philosophical, but today I find it extremely hard to fulfill all of these prerequisites I have set for myself. This piece will not belong to me when it gets published, it will be for the world to use and interpret as it wants. I have spent so many hours writing this now, existing within my mind, and I keep looking at the time, seeing the hours pass, causing myself more turmoil and pain. Today time has been representative of my worth. What this means is that I have observed the amount of literal thought I have put into a person and the way it signifies my prioritization of them, where I then have been questioning how mutual that feeling is. As I step back from today and the emotions its brought, I can easily see how stupid my inner monologue has become, but the only way out is through. Therefore I have forced myself into a headspace in order to overcome the situation, be better, and change my attitude.

As a reminder for anyone who struggles with the intensity of their thoughts and emotions: You are valid. You are loved. Love yourself first and the rest will come easily. As a reminder to myself: I love you and I love my life. Be healthy to your body because if not it becomes increasingly difficult to heal yourself-inside and out. Walk gently and relinquish the tendency to stifle your inner child...because after all, despite what the cacophony says, life truly is so fucking beautiful.

Paying Off These Parking Tickets

As I lurched into my car this morning I saw an envelope on the floor of the driver's side. Within it lay a blue and white parking ticket folded up neatly, slightly water damaged from the beach mist. A rush of several thoughts came to mind, but with a sigh I finally said aloud: “FFFFFFFuuck”.

I began to think about the thousands of dollars I owed this city. Debts. The bleak idea of paying off my parking tickets was far easier to bear than the true act of doing so. In a few months, when the bills have stacked, or perhaps when I wake up to a boot on my car and then soon find myself looking up at the sky with anguish, because that was the last possible thing I could've handle that day, I might just begin to shovel out my money. Author, Mark Manson, wrote about the nihilist perspective. He described it as us finding comfort within our individualistic definition of life's insignificance and how on the contrary, it is exceptionally important to keep hope. In Manson's book, Everything is Fucked, he discusses hope and the ways we place value within something, whether it be ethically or emotionally, and how essentially, 'hope' is our own choice. In other words, we are unique in our ability to deem something more, or less, important than our peers, like our personal goals, which give us hope of a before and after story. We are able to see, by the results of our product, how successful we have been, and this success is personal, no one can decide when a work has fulfilled its duty, whether that duty was to help the world, or just help us.

In finding a "purpose", or rather, something we'd like to achieve, life begins to have a meaning, because we have something to work towards. These personal goals are ever changing, we must be mindful of this fact because the ability to change our minds does not equate to failure, or indecisiveness, despite us interpreting it that way, but do not fear. When we commence a project we are met with obstacles, sometimes that obstacle can be ourselves, when we do what feels good rather than what we should do (remember, what we decide is important is solely up to us...we don't have to do anything), and other times the obstacles are out of our control. We may run into health risks that tell us we can no longer work towards being the athlete we always wanted to be. We may live in a city that gets wiped out and flooded by an unprecedented veering river, forced to rebuild from scratch, putting present plans at a standstill. Remarkably, the human desire to survive, not just to survive but to live, forces us to stand up again after falling down 7 times, and this hope, our ability to want to achieve something, will be what drives us hardest. To put it simply: sometimes goals can be unattainable, out of our hands, and when this occurs it is important to be adaptable.

But in reading Manson's book I was not thinking about my goals as much as I was these parking tickets and how they will matter as a before-and-after scheme in my life (I have yet to find any beneficial outcomes). Therefore, I have deemed my debts to San Francisco 'insignificant' for two reasons:

One, this city has so much fucking public transport funding, SFMTA reported a yearly estimate of 90 million dollars in revenue, (which is hardly being used in the right way) that I do not feel the inclination to contribute to its corruption and misuse of my "hard earned tax dollars". Sorry, but the city does not need my money. We don't even know where it goes! The only thing allegedly for certain is that the people giving me the tickets are being compensated with the same money I was forced to cough up. Talk about life being a bitch.

Two, my silly hippy belief on how stupid money is. Currency amounts to something and is nothing. It is little numbers sitting within a virtual world changing from a 4 to a 5 with the swipe of a plastic card. I mean, there are wars happening, does my parking ticket matter to anyone besides myself and the meter maid who's decided they had had enough?

Similarly, I began to think about all of the people I was indebted to, but a different debt, the good kind. In creating a life with purpose it is important to live by a few principles: community, care (meaningfulness), and emotion. With indifference life degenerates. When we have no values or strong beliefs we begin to lack reason or rationality behind our decision making. Imperative to our interpersonal relationships, care and emotion help us create deeper connections and allows us to discover things about ourselves.

I finally learned how to delve deeper, whether that was through conversation, poetry, or personal growth, I began to coax myself out of the protective shell I had once created. I quickly found myself inspired by the people around me just by listening to their journey's and the tribulations they faced while on them. Life had opened up! I was given hope, and because of that I became capable of withdrawing myself from the bleak and cynical perspective I was so wrapped up in. Not to be confused with comparing myself with my peers, instead I realized my problems were my own, and based on my community's success approaching their own struggles, I learned alternative ways to do the same. Reader, the first step to self development is not telling yourself there is something wrong with you that must be erased. You are valuable, you are important as is. Instead it is by the desire to improve a characteristic within us which might have caused someone harm (yourself, or a loved one), and with this desire tough questions need to be asked; about the way we react, how accountable we hold ourselves to our mistakes, and most importantly: 'Am I wrong?'. After mastering this the world expands...and also shrinks.

The older we get the better we get at coping. We know what to expect when things go awry, and we get better at finding solutions faster. Problems get harder, we get stronger...smarter.

I'll pay off these parking tickets someday...but today the problem is that I want to do it tomorrow. As the famous pirate Jack Sparrow once said:

"The problem is not the problem, the problem is your problem with the problem...savvy?"