Must Have Used The Wrong Line

Filed in the "just when you think you've seen everything" file....

I have an imaginary point system when it comes to men and I'd wager most women (and men!) do too. Like most people, I have automatic deductions and additions that I apply. Do you smoke? Sorry, no. Are you really listening to me? Score! Look like you haven't bathed in a while? Bzzzzzz, move along. Are you into me without being disrespectful or lewd? Dingdingding! Wear your jeans too tight and under your gut and your hair too 'business in the front and party in the back'? See ya!

Some of my rules are obvious ones and others deeply personal. I don't have a lot of rules, but the ones that I do have are hard and fast. Otherwise, I think I'm pretty fair. I start a man out at the base point of zero, and then I let the chips fall where they may. It usually doesn't take long for the guy to provide me with reasons to add or subtract. Experience has taught me that it's generally a pretty good system.

My good friend Harl's mother passed away this past weekend. I took off work for a few hours this afternoon to attend her memorial service. After the service we all went to the church's dining room to eat lunch and I was seated across from Harl and her husband.

Soon a man with curly, probably dyed surfer-blond hair and who looked to be in his mid-50's sat down in the chair to my left. He took one obvious and appraising look at me and said, "Who are you?"

Before I had the chance to respond to what I hadn't decided was either a direct or a downright rude inquiry, Harl's husband told him that I was Harl's friend from high school. He then introduced the man to me as Harl's uncle, her mother's brother. Ahhhh. I dismissed the rudeness/directness issue immediately, taking into account that the service had been rough on all Harl's family members. I introduced myself by name and he responded in kind. I gave my condolences and we made small talk while we settled down to eat.

Imagine my surprise when not even a minute had passed before I had to whip out my internal slide rule.

Let's see......he tried to impress me with his Harley (-5), he placed his phone down on the table between us and let me know I needed to call my number on it (-5), and he told me to walk slower the next time I went back to the buffet so he could enjoy the view (-10). All those, while horrible attempts at pickup lines, were at least amusing so I comped him (+5). But oh, he wasn't done. Ten minutes into his sell he asked my name again (-5.) And finally, he capped it off by telling me he wasn't into relationships (which actually upped him +5!) but he lost those points in nothing flat by saying it was because he preferred to love 'em and leave 'em.

I had to respond to that last comment. "Not really selling yourself here," I told him dryly. That made Harl laugh out loud. He tried to explain it away by saying he'd given me a bonus because instead of finding out he was an ass after he kissed up to me for months, he was being honest and making me aware that he was an ass upfront. I had to score him a few points for a quick recovery (+5) but it still didn't make up for the whole impending ass-ness possibility (-20.)

All in all, he didn't do well at all, checking in at -35. Even at that score he was in my Oh-Hell-No category. But trying to pick up a chick at his sister's memorial service?

Insta-FAIL!

((Song: "Right Place Wrong Time" by Dr. John. Lyrics here:
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/sahara/rightplacewrongtime.htm))

Way Back In The Hills....

Listening to bluegrass makes me feel like a child again; it stirs up a deep sense of nostalgia that other genres of music don't manage to do for me on a consistent basis. Disco makes me feel like dancing, the blues bring me down, jazz makes me feel mellow or cool, and rock? Rock is harder for me to narrow down because it inspires many different feelings in me depending on the lyrics and tone of the song. But bluegrass is easy to define.

If you knew me, you wouldn't peg me for a bluegrass fan. As a general rule my preference in music, whatever the genre, is lyrics-based. I listen primarily to the words first and consider songs as poems set to music. I'm not a fan of the hick mentality, and I certainly don't cotton to Christian music. Bluegrass is at its heart everything that I don't like and yet, it calls to me. The ex used to tease me about it because it was so incongruous to my ethos. Much bluegrass music is at the very least gospel-tinged if not seriously religious. I know that, but I can't explain it -- when I listen to bluegrass the religious aspects of the genre don't make much of an impression on me. I don't even really hear it because it feels so 'right' springing from this 'from the dirt' style of music. Something about the banjos, the mandolins, the picking of the guitars and the harmony of voices blending lend themselves to singing about the divine anyway. It's rugged and markedly individualistic even as it conjures up friends and family, love, and a place to hang your hat. It's a basic form of song from the heart and soul. Uplifting even when it's sad or lonely. It makes me sit and tap my toes and smile. It makes me ache for the Midwest of my youth and the times I sang along with my dad when he played his guitar. It makes me remember.

I'm not a fan of today's alt-country at all but I enjoy much of the old steel guitar stuff. Whatever the genre I like authenticity and for me, when it comes to country it doesn't feel authentic if it's borrowing from other genres. If you're going to be country, be country. Embrace it, invest in it, play it like it comes off the back of a hay wagon with three or four boys picking guitars and fiddling. Country has lost much of that, dipping its toes in the blues and slowing it down or diving into the rock waters and speeding it up. In bluegrass, that back in the hills feeling remains.

I don't think I've ever featured a song on my blog but there's a first time for everything. I should probably do it more often. I don't have the lyrics for this one so you'll just have to listen to it right here. It's Paul and Pap Wilson singing "Way Back In The Hills," a song written by Bob Amos and performed originally by Front Range. Enjoy!

Now That I Am Starting To Remember Who I Am

They say, "Ignorance is bliss." They also say, "Know Thyself."

Well....which is it? You can't have both.

Ignorance of sitations and events -- such as when someone you love takes a risk or if you did without realizing how close you came to danger -- can be blissful. It's often easier to accept loss of control if you're not even aware that you were out of it. But I don't buy the saying when it comes to self-knowledge. You want to stay ignorant, live in a fog? Really? You think that leads to bliss? More often it leads to confusion. You might lash out or self-flagellate and be miserable and not even know why. How sad that sounds. If you were living in misery wouldn't you want to know why you were?

Knowing thyself is a long process often fraught with peril and many people never even get there, but the knowledge you earn when you do isn't even the really tricky part. It's what you do with the knowledge that counts. Making the conscious effort to take the knowing and translate it into action. Making choices based on your authentic self and not the self you wish you were, the one you want others to think you are, or the one you desire to be. Facing what you know is true instead of dodging it.

Some people willingly throw themselves down in the middle between an obstacle and a solution and begin waging a battle royale between the way they think they need to live to be viewed as "right" and the way they know they need to live to be right with themselves. Some people do it because they give too much power to others and are too concerned with how others would view their behavior to allow their authentic self free reign. Others do it because of internal struggles, most of which have their origins in the dynamic duo of pride and shame. Perhaps buried mommy or daddy issues manifest by defining a range of restrictive behaviors that can't be indulged in (even if these would be beneficial in their situation) because their parents exhibited them and pride won't allow them to be "like" their parents. It might simply be a desire to maintain a particular self-image at all costs.

Put in plainest terms, when you behave in a manner consistent with what you know is good for you, you'll feel good as you're doing it. This is true even if you're doing something difficult. If you know that the reasons you're doing it are consistent with your authentic self you'll only rarely wake up in the middle of the night wishing you could be doing something else. You'll rarely walk through your day feeling angry, resentful or stifled. You might feel exhausted, stretched thin, or worried you might not find the strength within you to carry on but you'll rarely feel a deep sense of "not-right" if you're doing it for the right reasons for yourself. You'll take pride in the trial and in the knowing that when it's all over the doing will have sustained you instead of depleted you. You'll feel better having done it.

If you don't, though -- if you're consistently miserable and resentful, if you trudge through your day with lethargy or a sense of hopelessness, your heart a bird fluttering against its cage -- what does that say about the scales you're weighing everything on? If you keep telling yourself that you're doing the right thing but wonder why your mind and your heart don't jump on board waving that banner, then what behavior are you exhibiting?

What's with the martyr complexes? And why do we think it's so noble to be a martyr?

Whether you martyr yourself for others or you martyr yourself to outdated ideas of who you "should" be while blinking rapidly past who you are, the act of martyrdom brings poison to your internal table. At first you might say to yourself that you believe you're doing it out of charity and you don't expect anything from anyone in return. The reality of it is that you feel there's been an exchange made. Since the coin you've delivered is the sacrifice of a portion of your authentic self you expect to see some sort of tangible return, something of equal value from those you gave so much up for. This expectation rarely comes to fruition and it exists even if no one else is ever aware of what you sold.

What, then, is a valuable return? Initially it's appreciation or respect. At first the "thank you's" and the "I know this must be hard for you's" are enough to sustain you. Initially. But at best appreciation from others is a temporary poultice across a wound that never quite heals as long as the effort of acting in a manner inconsistent with deepest needs and emotions remains.

As time goes on more and more must be done to cover the wound. Whatever appreciation you get isn't enough. You start to feel like the world owes you something. You know you gave your coin willingly and it shames you to feel like you do but you expected equal value here! You think that someone else can give it to you and you get frustrated when it doesn't work that way. Of course it doesn't, and you know why? Because the only coin that really DOES matter doesn't come from without. The container you're trying to refill has only one existing source of fuel and that fuel springs from an internal source. It's like replacing gasoline with propane. You can putter along for only so long before you start seizing up.

The best example I can think of is a mother who whines that nothing she's ever done is appreciated. We all know someone like this -- miserable, petty, deeply unhappy, demanding and whiny. No amount of external appreciation is enough to wipe away the internal truth of a life that has been sacrificed for others. It's a gaping hole that can never be filled in. It's like quicksand....

Is it any wonder that martyrdom leads to misery?

((Song: "Starting To Remember" by Duran Duran. Lyrics here:
http://www.mattsmusicpage.com/duranduran/lstarting.htm ))

Is Keeping Me Waiting....

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called. ~ A.A. Milne

--

Pooh might not have had the word for what he felt but he knew how primally pleasurable it was to feel it. And it is so verrrrry delicious, isn't it?

According to Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion, this feeling -- commonly known as anticipation -- is one of the eight primary emotions (the others being anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, trust and surprise.) You'd think love and hate would've make it to the top eight but if you take a moment to reflect upon it it makes sense. Neither one of those could ever be called a simple or biologically survivalistic sort of emotion, now would it?

Is anticipation a survivalist emotion? Hm, perhaps.....perhaps not. But it is most definitely a simple one. See object of desire, desire it, take possession of it, relish the moments that hover between the have and the have not.

I adore those moments. Anticipation skating across my nerves, basking in the combined delicacy of agony and ecstasy. In the seascape of my emotional hitches and swirls there is always this one truth -- there, floating in those moments, is where I feel most alive. Perched on the edge of that space where I know that I don't know and I can't wait to find out. The control freak that I am devours those moments when control has abandoned me briefly but will soon return with a crash. Even when it's ghastly or agonizing, it's beautiful.

I'm not a risk-taker...well, at least not when my life is at stake. I've been known to risk my emotions though. There's no going back if I lose my life. No do-over's. In contrast, not risking yourself emotionally is like dying by degrees. It's merely existing. You won't die if your heart gets bruised even if it feels like you might. We're here to learn, my friends, not hide, and time is of the essence. I know my emotional landscape is a resilient creature, by design created to learn just as much (and often, more) by getting hurt as well as by keeping safe. The high of risking and experiencing a psychic return for my risk gives me a thrill unlike few things I've experienced. It's addicting. In other words, while I'm no adrenaline junkie I'm definitely a dopamine junkie.

Those anticipatory moments feel like taking a hit. Yeah, you might come down and crash hard, but wow.....what a rush!

((Song: "Anticipation" by Carly Simon. Lyrics here:
http://www.carlysimon.com/music/Lyrics/Anticipation.html ))

I'm On A Ride And I Want To Get Off

...but they won't slow down/the roundabout."

Those lyrics have been bouncing around in my head for the past hour or so. So much of life seems routine and predictable and then -- every once in a while -- something comes along that shakes you out of your self-imposed coma. It's really hard to stand back and let that something drop away and force yourself to step back into the routine. You find every cell in your body aching to remain in that maelstrom that makes you feel alive instead of existing.

We all know people or places or situations (PPS's) where that aliveness takes hold more readily. Like the proverbial yin and yang, your soul sparks when you face that PPS. It can feel sexual or even be sexual but mostly it's stronger and deeper than that....it's sensual. It feels warm like home even when it scares you half to death. It's primitive, it's unexplainable. You might want to try to explain it because people have a need for understanding in a cause and effect sort of manner, but you can't really face it with reason as a tool to analyze it or as a weapon to confront it. You just know it when you see it. When you do, if you're smart you hang onto that PPS. It is a silver thread joining you to being alive. You don't question, you enjoy. You learn.

It might seem like it would be very hard to deny that you could have this connection but humans are a very contrary species. We can talk ourselves into things, talk ourselves out of things, tell ourselves we don't want things that we do and tell ourselves we want things that we don't. Denial, it is said, is more than just a river in Egypt. Denial is one of our greatest attempts at channeling the whirlwind within. So yeah, it can be done -- people do it all the time. Some live their lives avoiding any contact with that river and others dive in headfirst and do only what their desires tell them to do.

I know it's hard to tread that line between living authentically and living in denial. Allowing yourself an occasional dip in that river might seem too dangerous. You might get caught in the undertow. It's why many people choose to avoid that risk and content themselves with walking on the outskirts of life, especially if they're the type that get so lost in the forbidden revel that they find themselves swimming out too far.

I can't stand not taking that risk. I waded in a pool where I didn't belong for years. It isn't something I regret, necessarily, for I learned about life and about myself while doing it. And I did belong there, once upon a time. But I spent more time yearning for my authentic self during those years than I did actually going about the business of being my authentic self. Life isn't the practice run, it's the main event. You gonna stand behind that curtain until the fat lady sings?

((Song: "The Reflex" by Duran Duran. Lyrics here:

http://www.geocities.com/ladyxanax13/Lyrics/TheReflex.html ))