Stuff you already know.

Breaker Breaker

Last night at around 2:45 AM I was reading a book called King Dork by Frank Portman (highly recommended).  Yes, I know that’s pretty late to be up reading on a work night, but I do what I want.

Anyways, I’m glad I was up, because a remarkable and really screwed up thing happened.  The speakers I hook up to my computer started buzzing sort of like when a cell phone goes off next to them.  You know, that ticking sound?  Anyways, it started as a ticking but it soon turned into a crackling and I thought I heard a man’s voice saying something.

I put my book down, sat up in bed and looked over at my laptop which was closed and completely shut down.  Then from the speakers of my computer I hear a very gruff voice say the following.  I wrote this down immediately after hearing it, so this is an EXACT quote.

“I’ve gotta tell you something before you fight me driver.”

Pause

“I’m a homo driver, so if I whoop your ass I’m gonna grease you up and fuck ya.”

Imagine the creepiest voice you can.  It’s still not as creepy as the voice I heard.  I didn’t hear anything else after that.  My best guess is that my speakers somehow intercepted a CB radio frequency from a couple truckers driving by on the 101 Freeway, but even that seems far fetched.  I have no idea why or how it happened, all I knwo is that somewhere there’s a trucker with a can of grease trying to pick fights.

The Pacific Coast Highway

It’s been nearly 2 months since I did my first entry…  I’m terrible at keeping up with stuff like that.  I think I’ll just have to accept that it’s something I’ll do here and there.

I’ve been working for a show called “Stuff Happens w/ Bill Nye” for a network called Planet Green that is a part of Discovery Studios.  I haven’t had to work the last two weeks because of problems with the show.  I start a new position for the same show on Monday so I decided to go on vacation.  I write this from a hostel on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.  I left Los Angeles today at 12:30 PM and got into San Francisco at about 10 PM.  I took the scenic route up the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur.  Man, was it awesome.  I timed it so that I passed through Big Sur right as the sun set.  It took longer, but it was totally worth it.  I’ll upload stills from the video I took when I get back home.  I’ll probably do a whole documentation of this trip, I’ve done well so far.  I stopped at Elephant Seal Beach which was full of seals with trunks lying around trying to attract a mate.  I got some pretty good footage.  

I don’t really know why I decided to pick up and go on vacation by myself, but so far I’m having a great time.  It’s good to have adventure once in awhile to get inspired.  I want to write tonight but I’m very tired from driving.  I put my clothes in my room and one of my bunkmates was snoring.  This could call for some passive-aggressive coughing.

More soon.  Hooray blog!

The one thing I know for sure.

Nobody has the world figured out.  It’s the one thing we all share in common, yet it’s the one thing that keeps us all divided.  It’s humbling really, to accept that you cannot possibly comprehend how this universe works… or WHY it works or your place in it.  The one thing that I do know is that we are together in this mystery.  We may have clues as to how we got here, but no one knows why or even if there is a reason why we are here.

You can claim that you know, but sadly, you don’t.  This isn’t to say that truth doesn’t exist.  This is only to say that it is arrogant to think that our tiny brains can even comprehend the universe, let alone the rules of the universe.  We just don’t know.  

Truth does exist and it does exists in each one of us.  It’s called our conscience or rather our consciousness.  Consciousness is what creates emotion and emotions are true because we experience them.  We feel them, they shape our reality and our behavior.  They don’t have to shape our behavior, that comes from choice, but they are real and a product of our reality.  Choice.  It’s the one thing we humans share in common.  The ability to choose and the inevitability that the choices we make will affect those around us.

So why not be careful with that?  Why not think about that?  You always have a choice and those choices become truth in how they affect the hearts of those people around you.  What if we all thought that way?  What if everything you did was a CREATION rather than a REACTION.  Just move the C.  Everyday, we create truth just by being and interacting and doing things that move people.  In this way, we make our meaning.  We have control over our collective experience, the key is to realize that.  

Religion in today’s world is used to divide rather than to unite.  It’s become this way because it’s become based on fear and arrogance.  You’re told something is true, you’re told if you don’t believe there will be consequences, you believe that anyone who believes differently than you is wrong.  Fear and arrogance.  You fear therefore you become arrogant to cover your fear.

What are we really afraid of?  I think we’re afraid that we don’t and cannot know things for sure, so we prescribe ourselves a standard by which to measure everything.  This can be bad, especially when judgment is involved.  Judgment leads to division leads to conflict leads to reaction trumping creation.

So why react?  Why be afraid?  We’re all in the same boat, we’ve all got the same questions.  Why act like we have all the answers when it’s so much more fun to discover them?  Why put a ceiling on what we can learn?  Why put limitations on how we can experience, interact with and affect one another?  Why compartmentalize everything and everyone when we’re already in the same compartment?  We’re like fish in a pond.  We know there’s something outside the water, but we could never imagine the enormity of what it is.  All we have is our pond and each other in this moment, right now.  We make our own truth, we make our own meaning every second of every day.  It’s how we evolve.  We learn from the past and we act in the now to shape a better future.  If we think we’ve got it all figured out, then there’s no reason to improve or to learn or to evolve.  If the story has already been told, then what are we doing here?  Nothing?  No, we’re doing something.  That’s why the only thing that I know for sure is nothing at all.

Welcome.

“You know that feeling at the end of the day, when the anxiety of that-which-I-must-do falls away and, for maybe the first time that day, you see, with some clarity, the people you love and the ways you have, during that day, slightly ignored them, turned away from them to get back to what you were doing, blurted out some mildly hurtful thing, projected, instead of the deep love you really feel, a surge of defensiveness or self-protection or suspicion? That moment when you think, Oh God, what have I done with this day? And what am I doing with my life? And how must I change to avoid catastrophic end-of-life regrets?

I feel like that now: tired of the Me I’ve always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the same small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me. So what is stopping me from stepping outside my habitual crap?

My mind, my limited mind.

The story of life is the story of the same basic mind readdressing the same problems in the same already discredited ways. First order of business: Feed the trap. Work the hours to feed the trap. Having fed the trap, shit, piss, preparing to again feed the trap. Because it is your trap, defend it at all costs.

Because we feel ourselves first and foremost as physical beings, the physical comes to dominate us: Beloved uncles die, parents are displaced, cousins go to war, children suffer misfortune, love becomes a trap. The deeper in you go, the more it hurts to get out. Disaster (sickness, death, loss) is guaranteed and in fact is already en route, and when it comes, it hurts and may even destroy us.

We fight this by making ourselves less vulnerable, mastering the physical, becoming richer, making bigger safety nets, safer cars, better medicines.

But it’s nowhere near enough.”

-an exerpt from “Buddha Boy” an essay by George Saunders from his book The Braindead Megaphone.