They weren’t speaking to me, I know it.
Although fear of social failure drives me to believe so, when I inquire as to whether generic comments others make, in person or on social media, are directed at me, the answer is no; either they were talking in general or about someone else.
Therefore, I have no reason to believe anyone is talking about me.
In conclusion, no one talks about me and I am already dead.
I had once worried about reaching this stage in my life.
Like, you know, totally, like, for sure, what if, OMG, I was never ever famous or, like, umm, I haven’t accomplished anything, like, real, you know what I’m saying?
Let’s see, where was I? Firefox requested a reboot to install an update and after it rebooted, it opened to the tab with an open Facebook account, where….sigh….the lovely, beautiful, smart Guin was promoting an upcoming event. Dang it, woman, why can I not get you out of my thoughts?
So, although I was dropping into a meditative writing state, I’m in another state of thoughts, I’ll go with the thoughts I’m in.
Yes, I like to dance and when I do, I give my all to my dance partner. Admittedly, for those who open their bodies to me, receptive in a sensual, if not sexual way, I reciprocate probably more than I should. It’s possible for both the dance partner and me, the moves we share on the dance floor, the connections we make, are better than any sexual act could, would or should be.
I’ve purposefully never shared a connection like that with Guin, nor she with me. I feel like we’ve kept it above the neck, so to speak, making eye contact in a familial way, almost like sister and brother or father and daughter.
That’s why it’s so odd that another part of my thoughts imagine us raising a child together when I can’t imagine having sexual relations with her.
To make up for this mismatched thought set, I try to help her with her “child,” the local dance group/community she has formed with which she has bigger plans.
I step in every now and then like a distant brother, father, uncle or grandfather, knowing that I have a way of taking over a room and attempting not to take over the dance group when I get involved, sticking my nose in, stomping around with my clumsy feet and stirring up the mud, but that’s just who I am. I’ve stopped making apologies for being my blundering self.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, rediscovering recent thoughts.
In junior high school, my sister, two years younger, told me one day that all her friends thought I was weird and that I had weird friends (“weird” at that time being a euphemism for gay), implying that she didn’t like it because it made me unpopular and interfered with her social status. I asked her which friends and she told me a few names. I asked those friends if they thought I was weird and they said no, meaning someone was a liar. I trusted my sister and understood that people will talk about you behind your back and lie to your face.
Unfortunately, because of that incident, I grew to mistrust other people.
Deep down inside, I think all people lie in one form or another — to be polite in social settings, to save face, to close a dishonest deal, etc.
Rare is the person who tells it like it is and doesn’t care about the consequences.
I know I lie. Like, for instance, tonight I took my wife to a local dance studio for West Coast Swing lessons. I didn’t really want to be there; after the lessons were over, open dancing began and I made a false excuse to leave, in order to avoid dancing with other women and having to look them in the eye, leading me to want to seduce them on the dance floor and attract sexual attention just when I promised myself I would stop doing that.
Of course, my wife knew my lie — that I had a sore ankle — was probably false but she accepted the lie because it’s part of being a social animal, feigning an injury to avoid confrontation with another animal.
I haven’t figured out how to dance socially and avoid the sexual animal inside me [deja vu — how many times have I thought or written that?]. Does that have anything to do with my sister calling me weird? There doesn’t have to be cause/correlation for everything, does there?
Anyway, back to my meditation.
Reaching down within myself, sensing no “fair” cause and effect in society/culture, letting go of cultural practices of imposing fairness rules (including government, sports and religion), knowing that I am who I am, which has recently included thought trails linked to social media posts, taking me away from living at a higher level of thought — more abstract, less personal…
Forgetting who I am for a moment.
Seeing how this solar system’s arrangement of sets of states of energy are progressing, looking “forward in time,” as the saying goes…
Without the trickery of religious miracles, scifi time travel machines, magic, faster-than-light-speed space travel…
Hearing the change in the tinnitus tones in my thoughts…
Feeling myself hunched over the laptop keyboard…
Smelling the mold that is in the sunroom after heavy rains forced water through sunroom roof crevices…
What separates a set of algorithms that can coordinate to rewrite themselves creating something we can’t recognise from what we call consciousness as exemplified by living creatures such as humans, birds, and forests?
If I remove myself as an individual from my thoughts, removing everyone as individuals from my thoughts, what do I see?
The patterns that emerge include the rubbish we create — in nature, nothing is wasted, there is no trash, no treasure, no rubbish, no junk, no landfills, no toxins — everything we touch, everything we create, everything we destroy is the same.
By embracing what others have called optimistic nihilism I have been able to see the future more clearly.
Global warming, high un/deremployment, massive species extinction — these are concerns of a single species on a single planet — the universe is benign.
The transportation of people, of goods and services, for the act of global trade between members of our species, essentially the movement of sets of states of energy, what value do we gain by decreasing overall the amount of transportation? How do we change the model of the profit motive to accomplish such a feat? What would Maslow have to say about altruism today?
Thoughts to ponder as I close this blog entry at 2:21 a.m. on Saturday morning.
