Shade

What is fair?

2013-09-03T14:40:00.000-04:00

we step boldly across each other

certain in our certitude,

rapt carriers of our ignorance

the mesh requires vines,

an interweaving of bests and

inspiration - you can keep your

ignorance, but lay, please lay

your best over me

and I will grow strong in you,

best in you

-SER

Fair is how you are to yourself — A conversation with Shaun.

“But that’s not fair!” She says to me.

“What’s not fair?”

“He was supposed to give me the same. Everyone else got equal amounts and I got less because he doesn’t like me.”

“Why are you still there?”

“What?”

“Why are you still there?”

“At work?”

“Yes.”

“Because I need the money, the insurance. How else am I supposed to live?”

“This is living for you?”

…(Silence)

“Your first statement of its not being fair; what’s fair?”

“Equal amount for equal work. If Sarah gets twelve for the same amount of time I put in, then I should also get twelve. Not fair is his giving me less because he doesn’t like me as much as her.”

“Then he’s acting naturally.”

“What?”

“Naturally. Nature. Nature doesn’t know fair. It’s a concept we humans created. If he truly doesn’t like you, then naturally he will have a tendency to lessen your benefits to assuage his emotional context. This shouldn’t be surprising.”

“But it’s still not fair!”

“Do you want to know what fair truly is?”

…(Rapt attention)

“Fair is how you are to yourself.”

…(Absorbing)

“All of life is unfair. No one is born under a special life-clause that guarantees fairness. Nothing about our genetics perpetuates fairness. We have built-in pathways, most of us, for empathy, which, in the end, results in bonding with one another in familial patterns. But there is no fairness legacy. We favor the presumption that we are all born of equal value, but are not equal in our gifts, our strengths, our expression—and this ‘not being equal’ flies directly in the face of the concept of fairness. The first one to cry ‘that’s not fair’ automatically puts themselves in the position of a victim. Perpetuating victimhood is not fair to yourself.”

“But shouldn’t-“

“Shouldn’t assumes some self-context you’re applying to another. There is no intelligence in assuming another will automatically cater to your values, or sense of fairness for yourself. We each walk this earth as self-contained creating individuals. If I value you because you have demonstrated, consistently, favorable interactions and outcomes that bolster my sense and action of fairness to and for myself—and I inspire the same in return—then we will both walk the earth together, stronger. Two individuals whose value is honored.”

“Well…how does this apply to work and my boss?”

“Speak openly and clearly without the victimized emotional context. Let him know your value. If he refuses to honor it, then move up the chain over his head. Speak your truth and value until you’ve exhausted the chain. If you still aren’t valued, then move on. Find people and places where you are valued for your self-expression, your gifts, your strengths. It is the one true way you can find fairness. Fair is how you are to yourself.

At the end of life you must ask the question: have I lived my expression truly, honestly? Have I lived it under a diminished victim presence, or have I treated myself well and with value?

Victims don’t express their truth, they demand from others and their energy is shunted to the effort of feeding their emotional context. That is a waste of the expression of life. It is uninspiring. How often does one favor the company of a victim over the inspired expression of someone who knows their value and expresses it positively?”

…(Silence)

“Stars die when contracting upon themselves; they fail under the weight of their own gravity. We too die under the weight of our own gravity, the feeding of negative states. A star extending outward, expressing truly all it is, inspires life. When it has given all it is, it becomes part of those it has touched. The expression of life continues. “

…(Thinking, takes a deep breath.) “Well, then I hope there’s another job out there for me, because I don’t think my boss is going to like my expression.”

“The universe favors true expression. The universe is bigger than your boss.”

(Smiles)

My child and religion

2013-04-29T11:07:00.000-04:00

My child, today I am going to discuss religion since you have started asking questions.

I take her hand; she is strong, playful, curious. We find a large boulder near a brook and we sit. I pull her onto my lap, arms around her, but lightly, so that she can break free easily if she so wishes. Our eyes squint from the sparkling caused by the sun on the water. The boulder beneath us is comfortable and smelling of moss. Bird song and flap of wing play our ears. And then there is quiet, except for a tiny breeze touching leaves against one another and the sound of water moving over rock. I kiss her soft hair and begin.

“There are three things in life that we all must take in, what we must understand: proof, or truth; theory; and belief.

Now truth is a funny thing. It can be a certainty to all men and life, like physics, where a rock thrown travels at a certain speed and distance depending on what force we apply and what angle we release the rock -“

“And air resistance,” she interrupts in her little voice, her mouth clearly enunciating the word resistance as if it held some special meaning.

“And air resistance. Good. You are very sharp today.” I give her another kiss on the head.

“But truth can also be a personal thing. I have many truths and so do you. They help define us as separate and unique. Special. We all have them. And some of us even express our truths well. Like you, with your tree climbing and your smile and your drawing and the way you say re-sist-ance.

You truths come from all your experiences, all your play and thoughts you think and all the physical things that make you be able to run fast, or give you your hair color.”

“Like from mommy.”

“Yes, you have both of us in you, and a little from my parents and hers and their parents and on and on. Mommy’s and my puzzle pieces fit together. My DNA clicks together with her DNA and the genes express to make you.”

“Mommy has the baby machine.”

“Yes, that’s one reason why she, and all girls, are special. Most of them, with their bodies, can create a child who can create things — including another child. We men can only create things for the child to live in, to play with, to ride in.”

“Men are special, too.”

“Yes they are. But you will learn: men shape the world; women hold it together.”

I sense she has another question, feel her mind processing, but I guide her back. “That is a lesson for another day.

“So we have truths for all of us, and then we have individual truths. Now there is also something called theory. Theory is an idea we think might be true and we want to prove it somehow. It comes from a desire to know a cause from an effect. Like, if I think that more people on the street will look at a person with green hair than with brown, I take steps to put a person on the street with green hair, and then later one with brown, and sit back and look at what happens.”

“Green hair,” she giggles.

“Yes. Green hair. So here my theory can be proven or not. If my theory is proven, then it is a good theory and it has truth under the conditions I tested it. If it is not proven, then maybe I change the conditions, like trying the green-haired person in more than one city, or may all of them. If it still isn’t proven, then my theory has no truth under the conditions I tried.

Either way, it is either true, or it is not true. And it can be a truth for all, or just an individual truth.

Now there is one more thing called belief. Belief doesn’t require the desire to prove anything like a theory does. Religions are based on belief, and for those who invest themselves — give the direction of their lives — in that belief; they require no proof.

It is tied to individual truths, because one cannot believe in a god like Vishnu or the Father of Jesus, Jesus Himself, or Allah just because someone else tells you to. You have to have it in you, some experience that drives you toward investing in that belief, or you are simply going through the motions because everyone else is. And that is an empty existence for an individual.

I will teach you of other religions like Catholicism. I will have Amar tell you about Hinduism and Sy about Islam and others will tell you about Buddhism, and so on. You will go forth with knowledge, as that is the best way to know more things.

Not all people have to have religion to have happiness. There are many who don’t. They go through life finding happiness in simple things like the smile of a child, or the scent of a flower, or the hug from someone they love. They find a purpose in life doing things they love, expressing themselves through climbing mountains, or drawing, or singing, or helping people, or figuring out math problems. There are as many different purposes to life as there are individuals.

Some people spend all their lives looking for a purpose; some people try to give you one. Beware of those who try to give you one. Your purpose is your own, so is your discovery of it. Let no one try to tell you what it is.”

What’s purpose?” she asks, looking up at me.

“It’s your reason for living — why you do things.”

“What’s mine?”

“Just be who you are. It is found in your desire to express yourself,” I tap her on the chest. “You keep listening to what is in you and keep expressing the joy that is in there and you will find your purpose.”

She sighs and leans heavily against me. We watch the sunlight on the water and dragonflys skimming the surface and edge of the brook, green transparent wings shimmering. In the distance, a bird sings a high melody, pure and clean.

I lean in to her ear. “I love you,” and before she can reply, “and that is a purpose too.”

She holds my arms tight, thinking.

Expectations

2013-02-18T15:29:00.001-05:00

Hmmm, an interesting pause as I write this one. Expectations. Expectations are like some cute little kittens you snuggle up against your neck. But not just kittens: soft orange kittens with little white paws and a moist nose and tiny mewling voice that tickles your neck just below your ear.

Not only that, but they also stay that way, perpetually in a state of hurt-your-body cuteness, forever available for you when you need a lift or distraction from what life sometimes unpleasantly brings.

And not only that, there are as many of them as you want. You can keep them all to yourself, buried in fur with cute licking mouths, or share them with anyone in the world you deem worthy.

That’s expectation. It doesn’t require anyone else, only an unfiltered (through the prism of reality) and unchallenged desire.

Those with certain expectations often find that experience has been working behind your back creating other plans. Life’s experience is not just your own. We all have some input in this. If you want to curb unrealistic expectations, you have to look at a few things, especially if it involves another human being.

1. Communicate.

This one kills most people (sometimes literally). Either there isn’t any communication, or there is not being able to communicate effectively, you know, where the other person actually comprehends what you’re saying, and where you allow for the other person to respond back, freely.

With regards to relationships (as this is what this article is focused on, if you haven’t guessed), you have a few ingredients that make up good communication.

Respect for the other - which means their viewpoint, their desires, the way they process things.

A desire and curiosity to understand the other person - give them time to talk in their own time.

A willingness to believe that it is just possible you may be wrong about some issue.

An ability to freely apologize.

A willingness to work toward a conclusion that benefits both. I always hear about “compromising” and I dislike the crap out of that word. “Work toward a conclusion that benefits both” is so much better. It’s a positive. It’s a freakin benefit for crying out loud. Who could complain about that?

The reason I go on about communication is simply because a lot of expectations are internalizations that don’t see the light of day until they aren’t met. If you don’t communicate a desire, how will the other person know what it is? And don’t you dare give me this ultra-crap about “they should just know”. If you’ve said that, feel free to spank yourself with nice, spiky ignorance stick.

Anyone here live inside someone else’s head? Raise hands. Hmmm. So then you don’t really know what another person is thinking, now do you? How can you expect the same from them?

There are times when you may do things for someone that meets certain needs or desires and the other person didn’t even have to ask. Great for you. You’re either very thoughtful, in which case these things will best be labeled under “gifts” with no expectation for return, or you’re a people pleaser and need to understand why. People pleasers tend to give of themselves until there is no “themselves” left to give. There is help for that. Seek it before you disappear.

Some people do things for others because they expect others to do for them in return - of equal or greater value. Bad mojo. These are people I like to put in the “weed” pile in my life. I’m sure there are piles you have of your own. If you are only doing something because you expect the other person to do the same for you AND you don’t tell them what you expect in return AND don’t get what you want in return, then you have no one to be angry with but yourself.

I suspect people like that don’t reveal their expectation to others simply because they know they will eventually end up in someone’s weed pile, either that, or they’re clinging to expectations overrides their wisdom.

Open communication tends to dissolve unrealistic expectations. Seek it out. Practice it.

2. Understand humans, accept them and accept their variety.

Human beings, generally, tend to operate in a manner that favors their best interests. Call it survival. We are all like that to one degree or another, those who aren’t like that at all are most likely not around for us to pick on. Expectations, voiced or not, are a demand on another being whose interests may not lie along the same paths as your own.

Human variety also throws a cog in the machinery, as we each view each other from a completely unique perspective. What you may see as valuable may not be anywhere close to what someone else views as valuable.

Also, we each may or may not have certain sensitivities and intuition that keep us in tune with another or our surroundings. If two people’s interests lie very close on the same path, toward the same goal, then there may be overlaps in thought and action that negate the need for expectations entirely. But don’t leave it up to chance in any event, not if you really want something. Communicate your needs and desires. And give someone slack if they don’t see your perspective right off the bat.

3. Give yourself a break.

Expectations are based on a desire or need for a particular outcome. This is all fine and good if the expectations are centered on you, stem from you, and only include you. But give yourself a break there too; you are human. We sometimes fail to meet our own expectations because of outside influences beyond our control, or because of an unrealistic understanding of our own abilities. If you need improvement in some area or other, seek honest opinions from people who will speak honestly and without prejudice, i.e. people who see you for who you are.

Demands and unrealistic expectations from parents are often repeated in a child later in life. This has the flavor of not living in your own skin, accepting your own value in life, finding your own path. You are valuable, just as you are. The whole of this picture we call life needs your piece to make it complete - no matter what anyone says (including you).

People who don’t have a lot of expectations are often the ones who are more pleasantly surprised in life when good things come their way. They are also less likely to be devastated when something less good happens. Overall, remember that your expectations rarely affect just you and they often cause more trouble in the long run than simply just asking for what you want.

Dyslexia: A Process

2013-01-06T22:05:00.000-05:00

I can’t claim my dyslexia expresses itself in the same way as the majority of people who have it; though I suspect a great many of them will relate to what I write here.

I’ve been studying myself, over the last 4-5 years in particular, and think I have a better way I can relate some of what I, and others with dyslexia, go through on a daily basis to those who might have a hard time grasping/realizing the processes involved internally.

First thing; I want to try a little exercise with you. With the following exercise I want you to try to be aware of what is actually going on in your brain as you process the task I put you through. Simply, try to be aware of the demand of focus your mind shifts into, how it closes off the external to some degree, and engages a part of the brain that is required for the process.

Exercise (you are allowed to round up, the exact number to the decimal point is not required)

Take the number 13 and divide it by 2.

(Remember to try and be aware of how your mind is shifting into another mode)

Take that number and add 4.

Divide by 2 again.

Add 23.

Now that you have that number, and hopefully paid attention to how your brain shifted to a more intense mode of focus, I will relate that to dyslexia.

With dyslexia, that process you just went through, is nearly the same focus required to discern SMIPLY into SIMPLY.

Same effort, or focus.

More focus is required to process the following:

“Teh which standard by aech known is hcaracter.”

Into:

“The standard by which each is known is character.”

You can see how great parts of phrases can be interpreted in a mixed-up fashion, not just character switching, but also structure order.

I have had numerous corrections in the writing of this article so far, where the letters were jumbled and needed to be back-spaced and deleted and retyped to make something easily legible for you - and that’s what slips past the “overseer” in my head that regulates my particular pathway to the written word (it also applies to speech).

Most everything I write has to have a pause period in my mind, where the words are un-jumbled and corrected with a feedback mechanism I have developed over years and years of writing and listening to people (which is a task all on its own sometimes).

What I envision in my head is entirely visual, words too. They take place in my mind as objects with a physical “presence” or feel. (Now I realize there may be a bit of synesthesia going on here, but that is another article all it’s own.)

Try translating the feeling of “mud” into words, and you’ll get an idea of what I have to process when changing my visuals of even text into written word.

This translation process came into conflict with my job at an international shipping corporation, especially during the first year or so there.

In order to reduce the chance of placing the wrong package on the wrong truck on the wrong shelf, supervisors would tell employees to take their marker and circle the printed numbers on the package (that identify truck and shelf location) so as to help focus their minds on getting the right number into the right truck.

My mind doesn’t work like that.

My process is seeing text as objects or impressions; letter and number shapes, color, and feeling that are associated with other impressions in my mind related to which truck it goes into (and many other associations for that matter - thus the need for a specific amount of focus).

When I shift from an interpreting/associating mode to a drawing mode, as in circling the number on a package, my brain goes into a realm where there are no restrictions, no end to possibility - and no easy link back to which number/letter shapes goes to which truck.

Drawing mode, for me and other artists, places me in the immediately realized environment; in the now, with little to zero attachment to language or language-related data. In fact, I’ve experienced writing after a drawing session, one where I’ve spent a good hour or so immersed, and I cannot accurately explain the difficulty reattaching to what letters meant.

For other people at work, the circling thing seemed to help them focus. For me it made things even more difficult. There were two distinct battles going on in my mind for dominance; one pertaining to language processing of data I didn’t write, but needed to interpret-relate, and one to the ever-potential where my creative mind wanted to fill in it’s own words, visuals, impressions within the circle I drew.

I stopped doing the circling thing and my rate of getting the right package in the right truck on the right shelf went up; well above everyone else.

Poetry

What I write is related to visual impression. To me, a visual in my head = physical feel. Not just what an object actually feels like in reality, but some interpreted impression I actually feel in my mind. It also equals emotional context, and continual branch-pathways to other related information.

This rich pool of information makes my poetry visually rich.

You may ask, “how on earth do you do anything with all this going on in your head for everything you hear, feel, smell, taste, or see?”

The answer is simply that I filter out a lot of data, rather it is subdued in its importance. It’s the equivalent of not paying full attention to the sound of the air flowing through the A/C vents, or the refrigerator humming in the background, or the hum of overhead fluorescent lighting while I listen to someone speaking.

When I write poetry, or much anything for that matter, I have to sort through a lot of relational data. Strong impression to feeling is associated to strongly connected visuals in my mind and experience, and they are then translated to word. Most everything is done in my head, and with some exceptions, what you see as a final draft is actually my first draft. I have an editing process that whittles away some extraneous words after, but for the most part it is all processed internally.

This has an interesting relation to how I would do math in school. When a teacher would say “show your work”, I would have a difficult time translating what was going on in my head to get to my answer. Asking someone like me to show my process may require quite a bit of time :) Back then, I didn’t have the awareness I do now of my own internal process.

Reading

For me the challenges of getting past some of my twisting of letters is less of an effort than to read an author who does not connect visually to me. I struggle through some text, some sentences and structure that is dry and not immediately related to a visual flow. This makes reading some authors an immense labor, where my mind tries to interpret not only their foreign sentence structure , but their conceptualization of material.

Prior to my own self-study, I would get frustrated and have little use for text that hit me that way. Now I get frustrated because of the labor involved, but I now understand it isn’t me, it’s the author. In my perspective, good authors and less have everything to do with how well they translate imagery.

Early on in my childhood, comic books held sway and directly connected text to visuals. This kept me reading and later, writing. I still read some of them to this day, they are a great foundation for those with dyslexia.

Listening, or: sound words

Dyslexia doesn’t limit itself to just written text. Some of us have auditory dyslexia too (yes, I am included here).

The same way the brain has to process text for visuals, the brain has to translate sound words into the same. The translation difficulty also works in reverse, where my own spoken words can sometimes come out jumbled, mixed up. Then there are times where the brain gets overloaded and someone speaking words at me makes no sense whatsoever. At those times you may see me straining, tilting my head, or hear me say, “Excuse me?”,or, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that first part…” which has very little to do with my hearing in most cases, which is excellent; I know, I’ve been through extensive medical testing trying to figure myself out. This has everything to do with understanding the sound words coming at me.

When the brain gets overloaded, nothing spoken makes sense. It doesn’t last long, seconds, but in that time the brain gives up completely trying to figure out what was just said. It’s an in-the-moment process, where word sounds come to me as a complete garbled mess, as if all the consonants had been smeared with the vowels into a paste, or some alien vocalization that has absolutely no substance or related meaning. Sound is translated into a visual and texture, and it too has to make some sort of related sense to me. And when it does, it then has to go through the same letter and word-switching process that written text does.

Hopefully, this will give you a better understanding of the processing the mind of a dyslexic has to go through, so that understanding can be passed on to someone near you who may be having difficulty with this disability. Awareness is the first step to understanding.

We each have to find the process that works for us. And though we can try other options, we have to understand that in the end; what works for us - works for us.

I am a Survivor

2012-01-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

I am a survivor

Youth…hmmm. I think that says enough. Blog over.

…

Okay, fine, I'll write more.

My only disclaimer here, to protect the innocent, is that I'm not going to use real names. Okay, they are actually real names, but I'm writing this so you don't think I'm using real names. Heck, I might even just switch the people around so you don't really know who was actually where doing what.

So says me.

There's a lot of controversy about how much we protect kids nowadays from simple things like running with scissors, running with sharp sticks, running with the wrong crowd…yeah, you know who you are. Leather jacket and tattoos, indeed. As a child on the farm, leather jackets actually came from cows you fed and petted the week before, and tattoos came from being stuck with an ink pen during a fight with your brother.

Y'all have gotten too complicated with worry in this day and age. I'm going to recall a few incidents for you now that were culled from talking with a couple of my sisters, brother, mom, and my uncle Don; a man who easily carries on the tradition of his mother in telling a good and interesting story that keeps you sitting still and shutting your mouth with attention.

This first one, we'll call her Denise for the sake of the article, makes one wonder just what the heck she did wrong in a previous life to have had this type of penance dished out.

She has a brother, let's call him Scott, who dropped her down a flight of stairs when she was about 2 weeks old. She was wrapped in a blanket and didn't even cry, her mother said. I imagine it had to be one awesome, well-padded blanket, either that, or she got something jarred loose that disconnected her crying mechanism. I'm sure she made up for that not crying later in life, though. The doctor back then - I'm sure just getting finished pulling a bite-down stick out of a patient's mouth - said that children that age had such soft bones that nothing was probably broke. My non-doctor musing says that she had even softer bones after that fall. But that's just me.

Turns out that Denise also had a radio dropped on her head; assailant unknown. This wasn't a tiny transistor radio either. Back then radios were build to more sturdy specifications and bulk than they are today, durable enough say to withstand even a good thunk over the head of a small child. And you wonder why a lot of the items we use today have rounded corners. Thank Denise and her test-head.

Brothers Scott, and let's call the other one Dennis, didn't stop there. They used to tie Denise to a tree because they didn't want to play with her. Seems her sister, let's call her Tammy, had been sufficiently restricted at times, as well. With Tammy you can hardly blame them. I forgot to ask if this had been done in strong winds or during lightening storms, or when packs of wild dogs roamed the area…I imagine Scott and Dennis didn't quite care either way. Play was important back then, and that took precedence.

Scott and Dennis also pushed Denise off the garage roof, telling her it wouldn't hurt. Now I'm not one to comment too harshly in this case. In my defense I had mattresses down for my sisters to fall onto, and I didn't push, mine was demonstrate first; convince later. I thought ahead with the mattress thing, though mom probably wondered why there was grass on the backs of some of them later... And just what is it with all that crying stuff when faced with a challenge like that? Jeesh.

Those pesky sisters had something called "memory" too. Wonder if a fall down a flight of stairs helped in Scott's case with Denise. I'm sure she remembers things just fine nowadays.

Tammy, ill-fated sister of Scott and Dennis, had also been pushed out into the cornfield and left there when she was about 5 months old. Come'on, there was play to be engaged in and a baby in a stroller or wagon, was surely a limiting factor. Even I understand that one. And her parents eventually found her sleeping, though the corn was pretty high at that point. Almost as if they had practice searching for babies or something, they were that good.

Not to be outdone though, Denise had been left in a church after holy mass by her parents; let's call them Don and Betty for this article. In their defense, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, they did have a bunch of other kids to pack into that vehicle. There wasn't a head count, so it was easy to overlook little 5 year-old Denise. Easy. And they did care about her, they did. It wasn't until the priest knocked on their door at home later, little Denise in hand, that they did the V-8 smack on their heads and realized they had forgotten something.

Camping is also a baby-losing endeavor. Little Denise again. Seems her father Don, missed attaching the lower covering to the fold out bunks that extended from the camper. Denise eventually rolled out of the camper onto the ground. It wasn't until Don and Betty heard the crying beacon of the infant, that they knew something was amiss. It took a while, with all that lack of lighting and all, but they did find her outside on the ground, screaming into the night like she had a right to do that or something. I guess if anyone earned that right, it was Denise.

And you thought crying was just about wanting to be fed or something annoying like that. Heh.

I asked Betty if Denise had been hurt that time and she replied emphatically, "No, our kids were tough!"

They had to be Betty, they had to be :)

Not to be completely outdone, there is a sister of mine, let's call her Soni, who had a few incidents worth mentioning. Another brother, let's call him LaDon, managed to drop her on her head twice. He was 4 at the time, good infant-holding age. His recall of the incident? "She had a big head and all the weight went that way."

Turns out she also got stepped on as an infant by her other brother, let's call him Glen. The oldest sister, let's call her Faye, laid the child sweetly on the floor near the entrance to the living room, and then covered her with a blanket. I was sitting nearby watching whatever was on TV at the time, and I remember seeing Glen walk in and promptly step on Soni. In the ensuing surprise and anger, these words came out of their mouths: Faye - "Who steps on a baby!", Glen - "Well who puts a baby in the middle of the floor?!"

All I could think of at the time was seeing Glen take that squishy step. Soni was just cryin' fine though.

Soni also wasn't a fan of the orange couch as an infant, promptly preferring the air-drop to the green carpet. Something tells me she was just asking to be stepped on.

Speaking of which, even the livestock got in on the action. Cocoa, not a nice cow that day, managed to rush into the barn, prior to milking, and step on Soni in the process. But don't worry, she was around 3 years-old at that point and could handle herself.

I seem to also recall her getting a bump on the head…ok, a tad more than a bump, from playing near me. We were in the haymow hanging and playing on the steel cable that supported the barns wood beam foundation. Well, there was this mass of steel coupling where the two cables joined and I was jerking them back and forth in a testing-of-strength type thing, and Soni came up to play, too. I took one hard jerk on that cable, felt and heard the thunk of steel on hard head, and looked over to find Soni's head bloody, her mouth open in a cry that screamed the remaining pigeons out of the barn. Now what were the chances she would place her head right next to that chunk-of-steel coupling? They were pretty good that day.

My other sister, she shall be called Jackie for this, enjoyed playing in the haymow, too. Add a couple of brothers to the mix and it becomes less likable. LaDon and I had made this rope-and-pulley system that raised kids high off the floor of the haymow. We were ingenious. Talented. We had vision. Part of that vision didn't include Jackie plummeting to the wood floor onto her butt when the rope broke, but we couldn't visualize everything ahead of time. I remember the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that we broke her; she had a worse feeling I'm fairly certain. She did manage to squeeze out of her agony and lungs, "get the milkman". She thought she was dying and I didn't quite contradict her at that time, thinking the same. We ran to go get the milkman. I don't think he got involved at all, but Jackie survived.

She survived long enough to break her arm on the saw-horse jump I had made for us kids. You place a wooden saw horse out in the grass yard, put some good jumping mattresses behind it, and then round up some kids to jump over the thing. Jackie ran for her turn as I was walking back from one of mine. I did remember hearing a hard hit on that wood that I hadn't heard before, seeing the inevitable flop onto the mattress, and then Jackie getting up crying hard and running around holding her arm.

I have to say I hadn't taught them all a safety course prior to the jumping, but in my defense, none of the other kids got broke.

Jackie also got lost in J.C. Pennies, recovered by a nice police officer who gave her an orange soda, and she also ran headlong into an electric fence at another time.

I have to join her on the electric fence thing, though I had the benefit of much more speed. Yep, dad had moved the fence lines without telling us. I took my bike hard and fast down the normally unrestricted field to the pond when something caught my throat and knocked me clean off the bike. I slammed backwards five feet, the bike continued for another fifteen.

Seems we got tough necks.

And no, at that speed you don't feel an electric jolt from the electric fencer at all.

I could go on about how LaDon got shot in the foot - cowboy booted foot, might I add - by another brother of his who shall remain nameless lest everyone think there's a common denominator to all these injuries…come to think of it now, the brother in question ended up shooting 3 of his brothers with a bb gun; foot, upper thigh, middle of the back - hey, he said it wasn't loaded!

LaDon nearly drowned in the pond. Yep, slipped under the water without a splash. I jumped off the embankment, plunged in and saved him.

No, I did not push him under. That was later on, so he says. Playing shark with my other brother, we apparently knocked them off the raft into the water, turning it over on them, and then somehow they had trouble breathing under the thing.

I'll take his word for it. I did save him prior, so I think that evens things out.

My other sister, we'll call her Rhonda (I have 8 of these tough siblings, by the way), was jumping off a parked hay wagon while we were playing superheroes. I had already made the jump, moving aside the ropes that were strung up to hold the bales in from the side opening, and was flying away first. I then looked back to find Rhonda struggling against a rope around her neck, legs kicking in the empty air, a look of wild strain on her face. Well, I flew back, arms outstretched as if I was actually flying…the silly things you do when you're immersed in play…and lifted her up so we could get the rope off her neck. I imagine that at that young age she hadn't yet had her neck toughened up enough by electric fences.

There were more. I nearly got speared in the back from a sharp and rusted piece of steel as I fell from a tree ten feet to the ground. I hadn't nailed down that one board on that limb and off I flew. Such a soft landing on the outstretched branch below, and that's when I looked next to my shoulder and saw the steel. That spanked the reality of the situation right into me hard.

I was nearly crushed to death by several hundred pounds of frozen silage. In winter we dig with multi-tined forks into the silage (chopped corn, stalks and all) stored in a concrete storage silo. The silage closest to the wall was always impossibly frozen, so we'd hollow out a center hole and work our way down. Well, come spring and the thaw, the outer wall of silage decided to melt enough and fall inward. I was up there alone, when I heard a deep, tearing sound. I looked and saw the whole wall of silage coming down at me. I rushed to the side as fast as I could, though everything truly seemed to move in slow motion, and just missed it covering me. It landed partially against my leg without pain.

Gives one a different perspective.

Then I was successfully taken out by a little bacteria from a pitchfork I had been dragging on the barn floor behind me. I pulled the fork up only to set it back down into the heel of my ankle by accident. There was blood, some pain, but nothing that would equal what would come later. I was in the hospital for almost 2 months. At one point an experimental medicine was used and, well, I'm alive and have my foot working just fine.

I only recently found out about the experimental medicine. Some people would say that explains much about me.

There are more stories. But you've read enough now. Suffice it to say we definitely grew up in a less restricted environment. We survived and became tougher for it. Toughness was applauded and admired, and it went right along with play. Hard play was the catalyst that inspired growth, prepared us for what was to come in life. We don't shun a lot of the hard stuff that many do in the new generations being raised, having experienced things the way we did. Our trials and pain brought us closer, taught us about ourselves and the value of those around us when in time of need, and when not.

Telling these stories to each other around the table that night raised in us the strength of family, that we are there for each other, that we would do most anything to see each other safe and together. But also knowing deeply, that we all get to the same spot by different roads. And that bumpy roads make for an interesting ride.

Shaun Rudie

Survivor, Rudie farm

Our Presence, Christmas 2011

2011-12-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

She presses up next to me, nearly touching, her body turned as if about to embrace me from the side. She has a very welcoming energy and I frequently think she is going to talk to me as if we’re old friends. I’ve never seen her before, but a part of me seems to know her. She orders her food, having trouble hearing the person behind the counter, and again she moves as if about to touch me or make a comment, she turns her face to me and opens her mouth to speak, smiles, then closes it. She wears a wedding ring and rocks her hips side-to-side in the fashion of one who is used to holding a child there, comforting it. I get my order and move off, she stays close until I depart, smiling.

Certain people speak out to me, drawing out my intimate observations; some scream quietly to be written about.

It’s December 23 and my mind moves over the flow of people at the International Mall. A constant meter-spiking conversation-white background noise presses on the ears. Voices flower around me from bodies of every size, wrapped in colors that pull as well as poke one’s eyes.

There is no overall style, other than clothed, though a few push that. The variety of human shapes and sizes make challenging work for the clothiers, though egos often distort the designers intent - and sometimes outright kills it. Many of us are a testament to the engineering strength of cotton, though Santa has made even that fashionable; compassion, generosity, and love know no shape, so we all have potential.

It’s truly amazing when one thinks of the number of languages, dispositions, statements of “I”, colors, cultures, thoughts and beliefs, and that we come to one location like this to showcase, share, smile, complain, lust after, love, envy, dream, desire.

Most of us are not isolationists on the macro, and many have no concern about expressing themselves in some way. This is one of my ways; observations of people. And there are many to observe; from the young mother who engages her child with big smiles, while occasionally touching the bothersome silver piercing at her lower lip, to the surgeon who has difficulty hearing my soft-voiced reply describing just what it is I’m doing here with my notepad and small writing (seems everyone writes larger than I), he says he’s nearly deaf, and I notice the fine clear plastic slipping into his ear canal, but I am soft-spoken usually, which makes for an interesting struggle of lip-reading from him, to the child who finds himself on the other side of the tables, both hiding and trying to get his mother’s attention while being just careful enough not to fall off the chairs, to the number of fashionable mother-daughter pairs walking about, some nearly mirror images of each other - and not often in the mother’s favor - youth has its own look, regression stands out, to the woman next to me in purple t-shirt and matching headband who watches me write while chatting with her husband, her glances at my notepad turn into full head-on attempts at reading what I’ve written from an upside down perspective, I let her see it rather than cover it up, figuring she’d have a little challenge reading my word art anyway, to the haggard father who exemplifies the word “haggard”, pushing a stroller that seems built to hold up his faltering steps, weary, shadowed eyes under gray hair that seems to stand up due to a weak electrical charge; his wife, eight content, measured steps ahead of him, carries another child at her chest, wears a smile that seems to say "payback is so worth it".

There is so much inner and outer movement here, I spend nearly four hours this day watching and reading it all.

We are a world of people gently, boldly, secretively trying to express ourselves. The struggle is in holding ourselves in, and it is our crime against nature to do so. Share yourself this holiday, be true to your needs, your desires, your expression of your truth, your loves… and the world will move.

Merry Christmas

Of Mice and Men

2011-11-02T12:39:00.002-04:00

A little about how I come to write this article first. I have a very good friend, Lissette, who keeps tabs on just how long it’s been since I’ve written my last blog, and with her little pokes at my subconscious I swipe my arms across my metaphorical table, knocking aside all my other projects I need to get done before life passes me by, and focus on easing the stress of her poking finger. It is a strong finger. I imagine she could break rock with the thing now.

I’ve had several topics that I want to write about flitting around in my head, so I wasn’t quite sure which to elaborate on. That’s kind of a problem with me, I have too many and often get weighed down by them and the notebooks filled with other writing ideas going back to my early high school. Yep, fifty hours a day would allow me time, I think.

So, I sat down and opened my trusty Scrivener program for writing, my hands poised over the keyboard. A topic about youth and creativity had been with me for a few weeks and I thought for sure that would be what started to purge from my subconscious, but it had other ideas. I generally allow a moment of pause, a state of peace where I think of nothing and let the images in my mind take form, sometimes a phrase or word becomes prominent and that becomes the kernel for what I am about to write.

This time, “of mice and men” came to the fore. Words appear as physically shaped objects in my mind, in this case “of mice and men” floated forward through a shifting image-cloud of impression of merging memories and extrapolated thought…its a rather rich field to see, and perhaps one day I’ll be able to work photoshop or aftereffects enough to get you a visual idea. So far words are my only palette and you’ll forgive me if I paint with colors you may not have seen before, but until I can more accurately convey what goes on in me, this is all I’m able. Another struggle of mine, this being able to communicate well enough. Ah well..

So, of mice and men. Many threads of experience and thought tie together for this one, not all of them pleasant, but all important.

Disclaimer: When I state facts or generalizations about men, it does not in any way include all men and it is clearly understood that there are women who share some of the same directives of thought and purpose/goals and understanding. This article does not preclude them, nor wish to downplay their unique strengths. My viewpoint is mine alone based on my experiences. And I just may use the male form of speech in my pronouns because I’m being lazy male.

So there. (You may imagine me sticking out my tongue here.)

When is a man a man?

Short answer: when he is true to himself.

This covers an incredible gamut in the experience of the individual, but is really quite simple. Men often get caught up in the extraneous directives laid down by their fathers or mentors and society as a whole. What they often lose sight of are the important things in life.

When trying to conform their lives to those directives, something is lost; a connection to the threads that matter.

In my mid to later 20s I made a lot of money, I got caught up owning and working two businesses 7 days a week, which, except for the fact of the lack of sleep and stress from my ex at the time, I did enjoy the work. What I did lose connection to was my family, not my ex and step son, but my born-on-the-farm-siblings and associated relatives and friends; those people who mattered when everything else fell away.

And more than that, I lost connection to who I was.

There were many factors that contributed to that, including an ex who didn’t want me to write because of her own overwhelming fears, but in the end it was that lost connection that put me in a teetering position that left little of me around to actually enjoy life. It became a process where in quite moments I would pull myself out of the grey and just say, “do the work”. It’s a mentality that exists with me today, but has an entirely different meaning.

Back in those days “do the work” was a mentality I used to push aside that extreme emptiness I was feeling and to just continue day to day, to trudge through the grey and darker presence my life had become. I didn’t think about future, had merely enough to just get through the loss of self I was feeling.

Directly at the end of that marriage, and the sale of my businesses, I wrote a 139,000 word novel in three months. I had a lot to say. I was finally able to say it, and I was happy. I have continued saying it to this day, with new words, new stories and, though I have so much ahead of me, I have so much already written and in the books, as the saying goes.

The pursuit of money was never a goal of mine; doing good things true to myself was, and is. Men lose sight of that. They lose sight of themselves because of their accepted societal mien, which can at times be both inspiring and demoralizing, dispiriting. There is balance, but only if an individual understands his true desires and what brings his life meaning.

Does going to a job you hate every day bring your life meaning? Does not taking the time to sit and chat with your sister, brother, cousins, friends, spouse, bring you meaning? They are a thread to welcome parts of you you may have forgotten.

With understanding there is meaning.

What is it you don’t understand about yourself? With that understanding the superfluous falls away, or becomes recognized for what it is.

Men as mice know nothing of meaning, they all become diminutive and very much the same. They get put in boxes, mazes, they get experimented on and are looked down upon. They eek out a living scrabbling for food, keeping ahead of predators, and scraping their teeth down to sharp nubs for the gain of a few more holes in the wall. With enough holes the wall falls down, and with it your house. What’s the condition of the house of your life?

As men who feel the need to support the weight of the world, we have to ask the question: what’s supporting us?

Being true

When something is true in carpentry, it is straight. One can look down the end of a freshly planed board and see a line that would make your mother proud.

Being true to ourselves is like that. There is a straight-line connection to that which makes us, us. It is a line we have to frequently look back to when our minds get caught up in all these pretty curves in the world. That connection to being who we are is essential and unique to the process of inspiring others. If that connection weakens we have to shore it up, and the best way to do that is through some creative endeavor and with time in nature.

Planting seeds, nourishing them, and watching them grow is a creative endeavor, more so because it gets us in touch with nature - an important component of the creative process. Drawing, painting, singing, writing, building, sculpting, grappling, and the like are all creative expressions, especially where there are no bounds or rules, just pure expression driven from your straight-line connection that intrinsic desire within each of us.

Creative play is a hugely beneficial as well, physically or verbally. When was the last time you actually got down and dirty and just all out played. Being adult simply means that you should know when to play. And it’s more frequent than you think.

If you have always had a desire to do something, something that actually made it past the well-meaning, and not, critics of your childhood - and yourself - then you owe it to the world to do it. We are inspired through variety and we welcome you to the pool of the creative to move this world, no matter how small it is. Do it. Make the choices that will benefit you and those around you today.

A wise uncle of mine would often say, ”tomorrow never comes”.

The counter to that is, “I’ll do it tomorrow (or next week, or after I retire, ad infinitum)”.

How many dreams and potentially world-inspiring impulses have been killed by, “I’ll do it later”.

It matters.

Be true to yourself and you’ll have meaning.

Of Poets and Sculptors

2011-10-09T23:43:00.002-04:00

I love the feel of clay. Something about the freedom of "pressing" creation, that imposing of my expression and having it retained in a physical form, is indescribably desirable, concrete, satisfying.

Around me, the joy of cooler weather and company of experienced individuals sharing that same drive, culminates in an excitable agitation which bleeds happiness. One cannot stand in their presence without succumbing to the bump in energy level. They are smiles and kindness and they know what's important in life. They share it and welcome each other's presence as any respectful family who have found each other after decades of trial and error in this life. And they welcome my similarity, patience, and individual spark. It's easy to create in their presence.

My fingers glide over the clay and I find that I move as I would when massaging tight muscles. The comparison only strikes me after having been working on the head (a head likeness of a dear friend of mine) for several weeks now. I find that interesting, that that little nugget of analysis has slipped by me so far, quite certain its awareness rose to the surface because of a massage I had recently given.

It’s calming, the process of working clay, in that environment. I find it comforting to be given my own little space in the world, to be surrounded by such defined personalities who have seen and thought so much. The images and emotions they have played through their bodies over time is vast to embrace. A lifetime of wonder and dream, inspired thought from a rainbow or fresh cut grass, perhaps a diligent bumblebee to light the soul, children with illnesses, the presence of partners and family expressing deep love, or anger, pets who’ve warmed their feet and hearts, passing loved ones stirring sadness, joy of new birth and tiny strong fingers, laughter of every age touching their ears, squinting from sunrises, smiles to frame their eyes with line…

All of that is around me. I am honored among my sculpting mentors. They are all that. They are poem, some edited to concise refinement, some still being edited.

And they are poets, skilled fingers shaping thought for all to see. One doesn’t quite know what will come out of them, they have such a backlog of internal impression and some interesting pathways to the surface. They are also painters, sculptors of wood, actors, mothers and fathers to their creative impulse. They have earned this time, and quietly go about pressing their spirit into the clay of the world.

Sitting with me: writing at IKEA

2011-09-04T18:19:00.001-04:00

I’m going to take you on a little sit down with me to IKEA, one of my haunts for this sort of thing; my observation of individuals and humanity. They are separate things.

I crutched my way though the warm parking lot, past people who were ever so curious about what I did to my foot (cuboid fracture). Little and sometimes not so little glances at the large black immobilization boot I choose instead of a cast. Perhaps they worried it was catchy, maybe a new style would emerge: green hair, body modifications and a large black boot to thump attention.

Cool air inside and the sounds of people shuffling, sneakers squeaking on polished floors, voices reflecting off the same polish, sounding slightly tinny, metallic. The escalator looked at me with shiny metal teeth, and there was just a slight trepidation about stepping on them, having to adjust my position with the crutch so I wouldn’t stumble or get eaten by the thing. I survived to the top.

For the most part people made way, the majority of them very generous with their space and any assistance they could offer if they saw potential need for it. That was a neat feeling, having helping hands and not expecting or desiring it; I like doing things on my own. We all do I think. Just that two-year old in us that got bigger. But I let people hold doors for me if they want, it does make it easier to get through the things - and you can actually see some people enjoy doing the task. A welcome smile and a sense of satisfaction comes across their features. I like seeing that.

I get my food and a little 4-wheeled cart to roll it with, making my way to a table farther away from the main group of observation-ites than I wished, but there were many people here today and I took what I could. And I sat, and ate, and then sat some more. People passed by looking at the man in the white shirt, as he looked at them. About three hours of it, eating my main course and finally easing into sipping my water and taking a nibble or two from my chocolate cake-covered fork - all the while, attending my notepad with my pen: fine, black ball point. I write in columns from the right to the left down the page, my poetry also. Been doing that for many many years, feels right, and my thoughts flow. The following is certainly not all I thought, but it’s what I wrote, just a little peering into my mind this day.

Does it fade? So many little happenings assail us, attach to us, wedge between us…is the connection only present when we pull ourselves from view ? When the night closes and we fatigue against one another? Perhaps starting something, perhaps only drifting off near the other’s embrace? Of all the people here, very few, omitting parent and child, touch – something I observe for long periods.

Perhaps it is my playful nature, my need to share on a physical level that makes me aware of this absence in others. The parents each attend a child, though not each other.

Ha! A man just touched me on the shoulder, "excuse me, can I borrow your salt and pepper?"

I reply, "sure" and slide them across the table. No doubt he had read my thoughts and wanted to prove me wrong.

Such bright color on such subdued persons, what wants to get out?

We are a quiet order, obeying the subtlety of civilization; dress this way, interact in this manner; be not outspoken unless you are a child, have a personal injustice to address, are rude, obnoxious, or inebriated; are on meds, off meds, or narcotics, bio-chemically over-emotional, distraught or traumatized… What was holding us together again? Oh yeah: we want to be next to each other. We want family.

And by darn it, family just has to accept us.

My foot is telling me the weather. Just how does a bone break suddenly gain a degree in predictive meteorology? And accurate, too. Suppose the fact it tries to direct my thoughts is what bothers me; I like my thoughts going to far more creative pursuits, or coming from them. Not sure just how it all works up here, why mind flows from and to pathways I find interesting and need to put to paper. If only you could see what doesn't make it here. I have yet been able to accurately describe the "feel" of my thoughts, the imagery and “presence” of the “all-at-once”. Until I've created the words, I'll not be able to define it, but then would come the challenge of trying to articulate for you their meaning. Sometimes I think it's a silly pursuit, that and too exhaustive. How best does one create meaning?

I might as well ask my foot.

I so enjoy color, shape, and movement. The color “laughter” conveys the delicate and hearty mechanism pathways to a freed heart. Eyes tell me the hidden, the desire, the soft that needs protecting. Deception is there too, anger, sadness and yes; life, so vibrant it's splashes about me inspired, bumping my thoughts, my body, to another energy level.

Shyness, boldness, sensuality, sexuality…I connect a little there. I like to immerse and explore that powerful presence/field/animal. It has its own movement, color, shape, is quite simply tied to my breath. Like laughter, I suppose. Conveys a freed heart...and body.

Home: Journey to Wisconsin

2011-08-17T10:51:00.001-04:00

Home

Effortlessly slipping back in time, that’s what it was. Well, perhaps not effortlessly. It took three days and fifteen hundred miles to make that trip. What was effortless was transitioning through the pockets of values each state and population held on my way there.

Big cities and small form around the practicing values held in the hearts and minds of individuals gathering in one place to form family. Agreed upon associations and presentation of like minds, the structure of law to prevent breakdown of ideology and also create some sort of equilibrium we call “fairness”; the family becomes society.

Varying levels of home-like comfort, accepted values, draw individuals to specific societies. Whether these are wanted values, or established values, the end result is a need to fit in with those of like mind, attitude, presence.

The following stood out to me.

Atlanta, as a city, was massive to me. As in having a weight, a bearing that seemed founded in squat, dense lodestone. I drove through the heart of it, pleasantly spending time in traffic that allowed me to observe its scope from the ground level. There was such movement, such flow of being that had some place to go, some place to get to now. Concrete, steel and glass formed by hand and machine, by creative minds taking time to imagine a presence, an interconnected flow and travel that would appease both function and form - as long as it didn’t get too high off the ground. And it was unmoving humid. Living in Florida I understand humidity, but Atlanta’s humidity was on a massive scale, no ocean breeze to move it along.

Paducah Kentucky stood out to me as well. There was more a level of comfort there, homy-ness, than I expected. I loved the mountainous pocketing of it, nestled and hidden away, approachable through roads dotted with slow moving semi trucks cut in the rock earth. Sheer yellow and brown limestone walls topped with green…this was earthen massive, a surrounding panorama of backlit mountain and clouds with not enough lift, skirting them like vaporous frill.

I took time sitting in a local mall, wanting to observe the people. Here’s what came of it:

Observation 8-2-11 Kentucky mall

A stork lady walked quickly past, her upper body lean and speed only emphasized her "escaping a predator" air, her head snapping side-to-side as she carried her bag in one folded "wing"

Everyone, a small group overall, seems to be in a hurry, many making an appearance repeatedly moving through the central crossing; it is not a big mall. One teen and his friends try to make a sale of a plastic bracelet with only his personality the marketing tool: rambunctious, too eager and pleading, yet sure of his smile. Hasn't sold it yet...I'm fairly sure he won't.

The mix of fashion here is an order of magnitude different from Tampa Intl. Mall, seems here is a lot less care about it, a home grown amalgam more closely tied with where they want to be, rather than what or who they want to look like.

Then there was the state of Illinois. It is a long state. There is a lot of corn. That was the majority of my seemingly endless trek through. Corn. Sky. Long, uninteresting roads. And it was seemingly endless. Cell phone service was out for thirty minutes at a time, not a pleasant thing when you are using the phone map feature to guide your way.

And did I mention the corn and sky?

Northern Illinois was dotted with wind turbines, massive grey and white pinwheels forcing the air to servitude. As unattractive as they were on the horizon, and jutting up behind and around homesteads, it was certainly more interesting than…any guesses?

Next was Wisconsin. Wisconsin was felt in the air, a cooler, cleaner quality that allowed my body to feel rested just driving through. It was home. It was as if some genetic expression was being satisfied, some weight of the world was being removed. It was sturdy, green and gentle hills touched by four crisply distinct seasons. Family moved over it, on earth turned by plow. Through hardship, toil, the satisfaction of a days work behind them, a flavor of nature lovers living with the land, valuing it and the life abundant.

A family reunion, my grandma’s family on my mother’s side, brought me in touch with smiling, energetic faces and minds, some cousins I hadn’t seen since they were five or six or younger. Most had children of their own, which only added to the number of names I had tendency to forget. Throughout all my interactions with them, there was the unerring tilt toward witticism and humor, a distinct need for playfulness from the majority of them. A genetic trait? I found out later on the swings and climbing equipment that none of that was lost on the children, my younger brother (now forty) among them, as he walked backward on a rope with nearly the same balance skill he had had as a child.

Impressive to not lose ones childhood talent with all that life throws at you. Home is where you get to flex it, to play…and they have to accept you.

Doomsayers or “Those propagating a negative view of the future”

2011-07-17T14:59:00.000-04:00

This is written in response to the prevailing negative-laced oratory found on many radio stations recently, and by recently I mean since the radio was invented. Okay, maybe not that long, but it does underscore man’s lean toward the propagation and lingering on subjects based on negative patterns or negative events occurring in the world.

Doomsayers. The word evokes an image in my head of a ragged and somewhat filthy, long-haired man in tattered robes holding a sign saying the end is coming, or that the end is here.

The only difference between what I see in my head regarding that word, and what’s going on today, is that the doomsayers of today tend toward harvesting a crop based on one’s fears - something they’re getting better at decade after decade, a fine-tuning of evoking the right emotional response from you.

The crop in this particular case can be either financial wealth, shifting of political power, or both. One may say that this sort of thing is been going on for some time, but in light of the world’s financial strain and our awareness of tragedies occurring in the world, it seems to be getting more of a foothold.

And awareness is really where it’s at. Tragedies have existed throughout history, we are just now in a position, an age, where near-instantaneous transmission of events are readily placed before our eyes from “news” organizations, most of them having just a wee bit of desire to sensationalize for profit.

It’s interesting that our awareness doesn’t often extend toward ourselves. It seems we are so willing to become victims and be led down the path to our salvation by someone no less elevated than a greasy car salesman.

Now don’t you all get on me about how car salesmen aren’t in the slightest way like that… okay, I can’t even hold my laughter on that one. If your experience hasn’t been with a car salesman in that regard, then just pull up images of disreputable snake oil salesman from the 17 and 1800s. My apologies to those car salesmen out there who are honest.

(Smiling)

My simple caveat: Beware the gloom and doomsayers, look in their back quarter and see what they are purveying, that they don't speak about. Many are out to sell using fear as a motivator, and their product, the answer to your fear.

It disturbs me that people are oh so willing to dehumanize those elements who are in power. We are all people, we all stretch out from the same base desires. Position in society, or placement in an organization does not instantly make one evil or inhuman.

Unless one is a sociopath, or has a genetic expression that is been tilted, or DNA that it's been damaged whereby gene expression goes awry, there are levels of understanding and empathy inherent in all of us. The only difference is in the level of attention and action toward others versus self, or self-preservation. And self-preservation is a powerful motivator for those selling product.

There is a saying: power corrupts. In my experiences I have found to be true that if one is already corrupt, bringing them to power does nothing to reduce that corrupt base. Power itself doesn’t corrupt, it’s the individual power is placed upon that determines the expression. Which brings about another caveat: know the person you put in positions of power. Do the digging and take the time required to know and understand those you wish to elevate in society.

The problem with positions of power is that the people drawn to take those posts have somewhat of a craving for the benefits that life brings. Put in another way, and a little more dramatic I might add to make the point; dictators don’t rise to power because they are gentle and caring people with a great deal of empathy. People with those qualities don’t actively seek to step on others, or limit, or crush your liberty to see their goals achieved.

I’ve had personal experience with some financial wealth hard work in my later 20s produced, and I have found people do change with the power that money brings. For myself, I simply became more of the person I was, and most people know me to be a fairly good person, with both empathy and ambition. But the position I was in, the wealth I had, didn’t alter my base, it didn’t pervert my ambition and it never, ever, caused me to look down on others or make me think I was better than anyone else or more deserving.

I won’t say that it wasn’t enjoyable having the president of the bank greet me every time I came in, or that every teller knew my name without ever having met me, or that other business owners in the area were all to happy to personally do business with me, a preferential treatment I neither desired nor sought out.

People changed.

There were other people riding my financial success at the time, who also become more of what they were at their base. One particular person became more greedy, would look down on others and frequently voice that opinion, and so on.

What you are at your base is what you will become, with or without money. If you are a miserable person, feel that the world owes you something, then that is only amplified when you have the power financial wealth allows.

Financial wealth is just opportunity, it is a solvent for some doorways that would otherwise be closed to you. Being wealthy does not corrupt you. Not having cultivated a good moral base, a clear understanding of who you are and importance of those around you, makes corruption an easier path.

There is something twisted, though, I feel, in preying on other peoples fears merely for your financial success. When every aspect of an advertisement is geared to pluck at your fears, or to elevate your sense of anxiety about a subject (as in those using fear to gain political power), then do your homework and find out just why you are reacting to what they are saying, rather than to headlong fall onto the pathway of their promises.

Seek solutions in yourself first, in your immediate life, and in those around you. Find ways to help others dealing with the same worries you have. The solutions you come up with, the actions you perform, can only help you in the long run, and it takes the focus off of wanting to become a victim, rather than an active participant in your life.

The doomsayer mentality, once accepted and replayed then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pathways in the mind and body then are expressed toward that confined thought, and propagate outward. Rather than seeing opportunity and potential, and positiveness, one becomes locked in a cycle that regurgitates the fear the doomsayers are all to happy to play to your ears.

My morning

2011-05-22T18:08:00.003-04:00

The alarm, a nice chirping sound clip from Star Trek the original series. Communicator opening I believe, something pleasant, yet persistent enough like the chirping of a cardinal to whisk away lingering dreams.

And they do fade, not willingly, I was rich in them, whole body wrapped in an experience collected from bits of my experiences, loves, family, home. I flew the night previously, just leapt into the air and flew high, the land falling away beneath my feet as the mind and body screamed with freedom.

Can’t fully recall this mornings’, home, again, someone close to me was touching me, speaking in a manner relaxed, open, giving. It was comfortable. I don’t fully recall because I didn’t take the time to. A minute or so of peace would have brought it all back, but another part of my mind decides it wants to turn off the alarm, get the day started.

I give in.

Predawn is spent at a measured pace, my morning ritual tending to the body’s needs and readying myself for close proximity to people later. A brief minute or two is spent looking and reading The Universe in a Nutshell by Hawking. I enjoy the diagrams relating the text, it’s how my mind sees. Color and shape are felt, images are brought to life in some creative stir inspired by words. I am beyond my room, flitting easily on the event horizon of a collapsed star as it pulls all light in.

I close the book. Time to eat.

The kitchen light is automatic, turning on a the right hour so I don’t need to bother with the switch. Yes, I know, such an effort. It works for me. A daylight fluorescent bulb sitting in an upturned dish with a flexible stem attached to it, quite simply the same as the Pixar lamp in their movie intros. I like that little lamp. It’s got moxie. I was surprised, the fluorescents are normally terrible light, this one is dim to be sure, but its color is warm. It feels good.

Cereal comes out, boxes stuffed in the refrigerator, pull them out past the milk, the protein powder. It’s a little challenge not to knock anything over and I succeed. A little victory for fine motor movement. The bowl awaits and is soon filled with three different cereals, a Great Grains mix I have also fine tuned. Lethicin granules are next. I pour out a mentally measured amount, the teeny yellow balls hit the flakes and skitter-spill every which way, most nestling deep in the flaky layering. Whey protein follows, vanilla, gets to form a little mound atop the sharp flakes and dried blueberries. A good, but careful spoon weaving ensues, like rousing lettuce leaves for a salad, so that nothing finds its way outside the bowl. I am mostly successful. Milk melts the powder and lethicin together, gives the flakes something to settle into.

At my desk food goes in me. A quick check on google news just to make sure we haven’t been taken up in the ballyhooed rapture. Thought not. A sign of the times.

Men are still men.

A little Frasier episode to pass the time of munching on protein powered cereal. I have to admit, it does taste good, and I enjoy the witty humor along with it.

With the bowl set aside I start digging into emails, sending a big one to a cool aunt of mine. She asked for it. I liked being in her presence the last time I saw her, nearly a year ago now. She was open, curious about me, as we hadn’t seen each other in a very long time. I think she enjoyed that I smiled and laughed much, and probably wondered just what I was going to do or say next. I have to say, she caused some of that laughter, more than some I think. I like her.

My mind dances with other projects, including this blog. I won’t be able to write it until later. A short story comes to mind and I think about putting it here instead. I will save that. I return to my philosophy project, play with design of the website for it. Yesterday I had filled a page with my mind about it. It sits next to me as I type now, a big sketch book that does more than hold sketches it seems. A new poem made its way in there as well. That’s the thing about poetry, it doesn’t care in the slightest where it gets put down, so long as it’s put down.

I digress.

I pull up movies of last week’s training. Brite Benning moved wonderfully, executing her hip movement naturally and prior to her relaxed punch to the man she had just turned over. I assemble a clip and slow the action down, do a voice over pointing it out, to post at a later date. Training for as long as I have you tend to see beauty in movements others may see as violent. I just shake my head, she has such a functional body, beautiful it moves like poetry. Pure physical poetry.

See…it doesn’t matter where it gets put down at all.

In my day...

2011-03-28T17:53:00.001-04:00

She smiles, radiant, playful, unmistakable presence, a keen mind used to making a path if one isn’t available, and then pulling along all who wish to come. Confident, most assuredly. When in doubt a small child comes out, hesitant, curious, frustrated with herself for not getting something she knows she’s fully capable of getting, though her body seems to be taking its time with it, having its own way with her. “Educate me”, it says, driven, and she looks off to the side, letting pressure and resistance create imagery in her head, a path, something for her to grasp in a new way. She tests it, plays with its limits, and eases into new thought.

She grins, a little tilt to her head that says she is one-hundred percent mischievous in thought and will. She has an open honesty about her, sometimes direct and unabashed, though given to expression only to those she cares about, or doesn’t care about. Those in-between get a hesitance, an “I’m not sure where you ‘fit’ yet” stirring; externally it displays as a quick glance and thoughtful, almost “disinterested” poise. But internally, she’s working, filtering, analyzing in a way she may not even understand, but intuits accurately. Oh, she’s playful, a sputter of self-effacing laughter parts from her and then turns to cartoon curious, a light plaything to briefly rise above the stress she wholeheartedly put herself gleefully in.

He is loud, oh what an expression, volume limiter broken or never installed. He has a core of joy he can tap into at will, radiating through his body, through the stern sharpness of his experience and out to us as wit and self-humor that spills laughter from us - we simply cannot help it. He captures us, we wait for what he’s going to say next. He has that unique blend of “I am macho…but don’t hurt me.”

His is reserved contemplation, a whole mind full of wisdom-bits collected from the oddest places and then assembled in that mercurial mix of childish wonder and clarity. His gift is his patience, his empathy, his ability to communicate what he knows just how you need it. He is that humble, wise man on top of the mountain contemplating the universe…while watching Zatoichi: The The Blind Swordsman on DVD.

She is clever as her smile, a warm beauty with a mind troubled by her experiences and steadfast faith that she is where she needs to be, though she may not fully care for it at times. She is dutiful to the cause, though flexes when I am around, something I take note of secretly and appreciate immensely. She has just the right amount of soft edge to prod me, challenge me, at times humor me, and most importantly, respect me, as she does others. Perhaps a little more. She gives of her time and hopes so for the best. She is that touch of care, a warm blanket given from afar…and she might, just might backhand you if you get that blanket dirty.

These are just some of the important people in my life. My daily existence is populated by their grace and I am fortunate. When they read this, they will know I am have described them accurately, others meeting them, knowing them, will agree I have done them justice. I left out a lot in the descriptions, this is but a small part of their essence, but important, defining. Who wouldn’t want to know them, befriend them? I mention nothing pointless (in this context) like skin color, style of clothing, religion, position in society, wealth, weight. I have described who they are as it matters when we connect.

It is their value that colors my world.

How to Inspire

2011-03-17T17:05:00.002-04:00

How to inspire

Little else gets us moving positively in life than inspiration, whether that inspiration comes as a result of frustration with something that goes against your grain, or from something that completely meshes with it and lifts you to another level, one that clarifies or simplifies, or shows you a new way of looking at things.

The following are ways, from my direct and observational experience, of having to inspire people for decades, pushing them past physical endurance limits as well as mental barriers that kept them in place, kept them bound to a plane they weren’t even aware they were on.

I am often dismayed by the number of women, specifically, who succumb to this “falling in place” and staying there. It’s often expected of men to push past things, to “man up” and to leave the providence of physical matters to them, and all that hooey. Wonderful inspiration for those men who achieve it, wonderful for the male gender.

If you haven’t noticed (beyond the pleasant obvious), women have a physical structure, musculature, mind and spirit to carry them quite capably through this life - and certainly through yours.

I knew this from early on in my childhood. My mom did the work of any man, and often had more endurance doing it. Not sure if that was just from determination, but it equaled out in the end either way.

Are there physical difference in body size and gene expression? Absolutely. Differences in testosterone levels? Most assuredly. But you find this among the male of the species as well. Education, support, hard work and persistence level the playing field quite a bit regardless of gender.

I know this personally; I have a chipped tooth from a powerful overhand jab from a female student of mine (trust me, you’d have no idea she could do it looking at her), as well as enough scrapes, bruises, joint hyperextensions and chokes to keep me sharp and on top of my game when I’m around the “weaker” sex. (In my twisted view, that’s inspiring)

Personally, I think the “weaker sex” identifies a person who lets ego and emotion trump logic, knowledge and experience.

By example

Like in the examples above, people who surmount obstacles, or surpass accepted norms regardless of gender, catch our eyes, minds and spirits. Where it crosses boundaries, such as when women perform feats of physical skill (typically a male-dominated field), and in some cases mental, as in the sciences, men are inspired beyond their gender. The obverse is true, too.

It often takes someone working within or breaching the fields of your possible and imagined abilities to catch your attention. When gender-crossing occurs like that, then it is inspiring regardless of the source.

Having a physical personae demonstrate inspiring values, traits, or feats from a distance is inspiring all in itself, but having that person directly in your life, someone you can stand in the presence of, raises the inspiriting factor by an order of magnitude. Some of the men and women I train and have trained with literally stun, spark unabashed smiles, and otherwise elevate one’s mentality of what was accepted in life.

And just so you know, regarding inspiration, age isn’t a factor.

By being honest

Being honest with and about yourself lays everything on the line and is terrifying for many due to the desire of wanting to be liked, loved, or simply accepted. Follow your path honestly. If you don’t know what that means, or haven’t found your path…well, I guess I’ll have to write about that sometime. Suffice it to say that everyone has one, a path driven by your own internal inspiration, something heard in the quiet of a park, or residing in your childhood dreams.

When you are honest you allow others to see the truth that is you, simple as that. People deny their truth for the examples given above, because of how it will make them seem to the people around you. The funny thing about that “need to fit in” mentality, it lessens with age and alcohol.

Accept others

Accept others as they are so they can be honest expressing themselves - allowing a person to be themselves around and with you is inspiring. It helps remove that “need to be accepted” and puts it in the category that you are accepted.

By standing out

People along later on in life get to the realization that there is more behind them than there is ahead of them and through biological changes and experiential evaluation, one’s thought processes change. As we collect experience in life we tend (many of us) to discover just what is important, what matters.

And when you look at the people of the world who are inspiring, or who stand out as figureheads, or examples of powerful personalities, you realize they aren’t in that position because they do their darndest to fit in. They stand out from the crowd because they stand out from the crowd! They follow their path regardless of how it looks or is accepted by those around them. They are honest to their truth no matter how the chips fall.

This differs from the mentality of one who wants to stand out for the purpose of standing out. That is something without foundation and the energy of which wanes easily. People stand out in life because they listen to that inner drive in them and follow it wherever it may take them.

Take satisfaction in the fact that you are completely unique.

It’s the commingling of individuals in a free environment that promotes growth in myriad form. The interaction of which supports, sustains, and elevates the human condition beyond the base of one. But it starts with one. One individual, unique to all in the world of billions, finding their truth, expressing their gifts and daring to stand out from the crowd. Its effect is like a flame passing among unlit candles, sometimes even just the spark of which is enough to ignite fully.

Exercise your greatness - build your greatness

Having a mind and body that is refreshed, strong, and resilient only increases the effectiveness of your gifts, even if your gift is simply being the best greeter at Walmart - such a job is actually valuable. I’ve had my spirits lifted in my day by someone who greeted me with such enthusiasm and vibrance, it was hard to do otherwise. And the reverse it true as well.

Having a strong foundation physically, mentally or spiritually has a bleed-off effect of enriching your talent, your gifts, and their expression (it also helps you live longer). Like the greeter example, our energy, positive or negative, bleeds off onto other people and can be long lasting, coloring one’s day, and yes, even changing someone’s life.

Find new ways to better yourself, or old ways that you know work. If your talent is art-related, then take classes, or read up on and try new ways of expression in it, or try a different medium. Whatever your talent or drive, seek out ways to refine it, to improve upon it, increase the depth of your knowledge of it and exercise it. As in writing and finding your own voice, you have to write, write, write. Practice makes you.

Dare to dream - dare to pursue the dream

Going beyond what is accepted as norm requires vision and persistence. Persistence by itself is simply a rodent running in an exercise wheel. Vision, dreams, are a path to opportunity as unyet realized. Period. Coupled together you have things that inspire the world. Dare to dream, dare to pursue the dream. Put your well-meaning critics in the dustbin of the ordinary.

Poetry

2011-02-28T12:49:00.003-05:00

Poetry is a subjective medium. I write it for myself and without regard to “catching” the most favor with readers. I express it based on spontaneous impulse, intuition, and/or the niggling little wordsmith in the back of my mind who absolutely must speak no matter what I happen to be doing at the moment.

I’ve been writing poetry seriously for over 20 years, being mentored early on by the late poet Ruby Shackleford, teacher for over 60 years, including at the college level. She authored seven books of poetry and was an accomplished artist exhibited throughout Wilson County, NC.

I have to give credit to this kind woman, who took time out of her days to speak to me one-on-one, share her thoughts and poetry and to point out things that might make my own poetry better. I had the benefit of chauffeuring her around and we were never in a rush. She was such a value to me. On the technical end she never said, “do this”, rather, she would say something like, “think about another word for this one,” and would even simply cross out parts of my poems that didn’t need to be there.

More than the technical aspects of our meetings, she would go on about the wonder of words and how she always had dictionaries about her house to pull from. It was a craft, it required research and a way to define that in you which wanted to speak out, and to do it as succinctly as possible while retaining the whole of the experience. There was never thought as to how others would view your work, only that you express it clearly.

She also “forced” me to try styles, like haiku, cinquain, acrostic, etc., to see how I would work in an “confined” structure. I did well, but my own voice tended toward free form, though I have my own particular style in that.

I share an excerpt of a letter she wrote to me:

“…is to tell you quickly that your fine letter & the poem was one of my season’s best greetings. You are my miracle! No other “student” I’ve ever had has grown so rapidly from a 1st grader to a college grad! Your poetry “sparkles”. You are really moving on. Please try to reach newspaper, magazines or any other modern public communications.”

How can one not like, or want to continue to do their best, with positives such as those?

Finding one’s voice is a difficult thing, it requires time, patience, the ability to listen to yourself and others (constructive), and repeated expression. It helps to come back to your expression later on, look at it with the objective eye that time apart from the work gives, and then, if with written word, read it aloud to yourself. Listen to how it sounds, how it flows. And feel completely free to chop it up and refine that which isn’t refined.

Anyone can tell you they don’t like your work, your expression, but does what they say have any basis in reality, or is it merely something they react to simply because of their own emotional state, opinion of you, or other perception not really having to do with the work? Having someone say,”I didn’t like that poem, it made me feel sad” isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all. They drew something from the experience that triggered an emotional response. Your expression will have that effect on people one way or the other. If you did well.

There are those whose comments are simply a self-serving reflection of their need to feel good about themselves, even if it makes you feel bad. Those are often easy to spot, as well as those who are afraid to tell you their truth because it may hurt your feelings, so they only exude positives.

The really great ones, from my perspective, not only tell you they liked it, or had problems with it, but also told you why, as it pertained to their experience. I love knowing how my work affects people. It tells me something about them, and I love learning about people.

As with most criticism, look at the source. If you value the source, then honestly look at the constructive elements of their response, how it can make you better at what you do. Getting emotional or letting yourself shut down serves no purpose to you the individual. Let not your light dim! I cannot express that enough. Remember: your voice is something no one else has. Express it.

So without further ado, I present to you a breakdown of some of my poetry, from my own objective view and then from my personal view as I was writing it. I have done this for a couple of people (on more personal or intimate poems) and it opened up an understanding, and beauty, they weren’t aware was there. Some poems are far too personal, and would reveal too much about the object/person of the poem without their consent, so you won’t be seeing those (probably). Others would reveal a great deal about me…I’ll think about it. At any point, here’s one that doesn’t expose myself too intimately.

I write these breakdowns somewhat stream-of-conscious, so please bear with me as I minimally pay attention to punctuation or grammar during this process. That is the only caveat you get : )

Breakdown: it’s work

mini chimneys burning

themselves before me,

decaying amid the

night sky and lamplight

purpose forward, the

Grind, spark illicit

thought, desire of the

genome and age of

rending that which

constrains, forbids the

freedom of our

nature

Objectively

It’s work implies struggle, moving through difficulty, or with some exertion. Mini chimneys implies small sources of smoke, people, walking ahead of the author…decaying amid the night sky, brings image of not only smoke wafting upward, but parts of themselves disappearing into the night, darkness, toward end of life..lamplight indicates light that isn’t the best source of illumination, not bright, or only bright in patches… purpose forward is a goal toward something, a choice based not necessarily on desire, but other motivation…the Grind, capitalized, it stresses the goal and its importance, a job, grind implying being crushed, ground up, parts of you tearing away…spark illicit thought indicates the previous generates thought not accepted by society or others…desire of the genome is base genetic expression, food, sex, safety and doing whatever it takes to maintain/acquire those…age of rending that which constrains, speaks of time when base genetic expression dictated action, where rending/tearing free of that which is constraining, be it any who impose constraints, or nature itself…forbids the freedom of our nature, again nature is indicated as base nature here, our constraints of job or accepted social norm forbids/constrains our base nature…ties in with title it’s work, implies then that it is not merely work, but work to keep our natures contained.

Personally

Walking from the parking lot to work early morning (before 5am) my mind had great impulse to write what I was witnessing, people walking and smoking in front of me, their breath, their lives being burned up in the exhaust they put in the air, mini chimneys, the smoke, their lives, drifting up into the night sky where there was nothing more of them to be seen/experienced. They were unhappy, their mind on each step in front of them, doing something they had to do, passing under the lamplights overhead illuminated this unhappiness. I could see in their movements, men whose physical structure was meant for more freedom, more challenge than what they were getting, things that put their own life in their hands, where they chose their path and pursued it, an inspiriting that their genetic makeup knew, but had long since forgotten. It was there though, in their movement, their purpose and drive…it was controlling and containing that energy and base desire that was the actual work in their day to day lives.

Now, here’s your task: I will break down two other poems (or more depending on how many responses I get and the time I have). I ask that you contact me and let me know which of my poems from writerscafe you would like me to do this with. I will select from the requests, and then post them at the end of this blog when complete.

Thank you.

(Contact me on facebook, or with the email link at the right of the page)

Losing fat - The Ming Crunch

2011-02-24T19:26:00.002-05:00

The Ming Crunch - How to lose fat (I did not say how to lose weight) in 12 weeks

GOAL: A healthy, functional body with lower body fat.

A lot of you aren’t going to like the suggestions I make here, but know that I have some extensive expertise in this particular area and know just what I’m talking about. This article is brought to you because a lot of people over the years have asked me for some quick information to help them get weight off. This kind of bugs the heck out of me. Anyone can take weight off, but wouldn’t you rather reduce body fat?

Most “diets”, especially “fast”, deal with dropping water weight and/or muscle mass. This is not hard to do. It is also not great for your body. And you will not be able to keep the “weight” off. Rebound is a reality. A conscious (that’s an important word, look it up please) healthy diet and exercise program is a choice. You want to make choices you can live with for the rest of your life (it’s your’s right? Who else is going to do it for you?).

First off

First things first: If you aren’t prepared to make a commitment to having a healthier body for rest of your life, don’t read further. Just go back to your cheese-covered nachos and leave the heavy lifting to those who can commit to a choice.

(50% of you have left this page at this point, pulling your greasing fingers from the keyboard and are going to see what’s in the fridge you can take back to the couch. 40% of you want to do the same, but are so intensely curious as to what this guy is going to say that you stick around for the next part. 8% of you are determined to try the stuff this guy writes down for a whole 2 weeks, before succumbing to the aforementioned. 2% of you will commit to it like you do the changing of your kid’s diapers while holding a spatula in your hand making pancakes for your spouse, wearing super fluffy slippers on your feet so that you can simultaneously mop the floor while moving around.)

Cut it out

I’m not talking about stopping the poking in your sibling’s ribs while trying to agitate your mom with her annoying screams (okay all ready, jeesh). I’m talking about dropping the following from your vocabulary and food intake. (Do this. You’ll live, and life will still have flavor. Trust me.)

Drop the following 4:

Alcohol

Soda

Any fried foods (yes, I said any)

Cheese (don’t you fight me, I said drop it. “But what about..” No. “But?” No. “How about low-fat?” No. “Fat-free?” Yes. “But I don’t like fat-free!” Then why suggest it? And: too bad.)

All ready I hear the wailing, “but life will have no meaning, I’ll have nothing to live for! WAAAAAAAAH!”

Too bad.

I’m not called Ming the Merciless for nothing. You on this ride or not?

You also get to eat the other stuff not listed on the 4. That means pasta, breads (try choosing whole grain), cereals, vegetables (there’s a lot of these freakin things, try a ton of variety and eat the ones you like), baked foods, steamed foods, fish, chicken, turkey, red meat (try to limit to 2 meals a week of red), etc.

Sweets

Limit this to 2-3 times a week. If you have a sweet tooth let it know when it can be satiated, not the other way around. Plan days that are “treat days” and stick to eating your sweets then. Mine is typically on the weekend.

The secret

(You get to add those 4 thing back into your body after 12 weeks.)

Yes, I said 12 weeks.

The other secret

Sweat, or: working out really hard exercising.

(“WAAAAAAAAH!”) Cut it out, you’re only encouraging me.

Here’s the minimums:

Resistance exercise 3-4 times per week, 30-45 minutes per session (the heavier you train the less time, but man, you better be sweating and having 1-minute rest periods max). You must move weight. Isometric movements aren’t enough for this course.

Walking 90 minutes five times per week (2- 45 minute sessions if you can’t do the whole 90), or 35 minutes running 4 times per week. And I mean a BRISK walk (please look that word up), not some lollygagging mope. You made the choice, remember? Be happy about it. You should feel energized and have mild muscle fatigue from the BRISK walk. (Did I have to capitalize that word again? Oooh yeah, you know I did.)

Working out earlier in the day also kicks up your metabolism for the rest of the day. Train early if you can.

___________________

Awesome resistance training can be found with a good trainer, or bootcamp class that actually moves weight (whether it’s a car or kettle bells) and works plyometrics.

And women, I know you love to work legs and butts (I love it too), but you’ve got to challenge yourself to working that upper body in the same frantic and possessed way.

And men, we all like looking at our big guns (biceps) and chest, but you need to blast the legs and butts too. Seriously. That lightbulb-shaped body just won’t cut it.

Who’s still with me?

As I said, we’re all about losing fat, not weight. Muscle mass is heavier than fat. If you are training properly, you will increase muscle mass, so you’re actual weight number will go up at first (and girls, knock it off, the “but I don’t want to be bulky with muscle” excuse is ridiculous and doesn’t work with me. We should all be so fortunate to add muscle bulk as quickly as you image you would. As it stands, it’s an excuse that doesn’t hold up. You aren’t going to be Lou Ferrigno in 12 weeks, or 5 years for that matter. It’s too specialized and intense a field to pop that much muscle on.)

Though your weight number may go up during the first few weeks, you will trim down, as more lean muscle mass increases your metabolism. Clothes will fit better and you’ll feel better. You’ll be more mobile and niggling pains will go away.

The other other secret - how to eat, 5-6 times per day

Eat the pyramid method. No, I’m not talking the food pyramid. I’m talking about the following:

Eat your biggest meal in the morning (or start of your day).

Eat nutritious snacks in between meals, preferably with high quality protein.

Taper off your other meals to where your smallest meal is before bed. (This will also depend on when you train your heaviest: training heavy means you generally eat somewhat larger portions to help recovery)

Drink 6-8 oz glasses of water a day. I said water. You can have a sports drink on top of that. Don’t skip the water.

Add high-quality protein to your diet through protein bars or shakes. You’ll need the extra amino acids to help repair and recover from your training. (Eggs, and specifically egg whites, are a healthy and inexpensive choice for quality protein if you’re on a tight budget.)

Breakfast

Eat your breakfast! Over the couple of decades I’ve been training people, two things stand out for people who don’t eat breakfast: migraines and being overweight (or they just can’t seem to ever lose weight no matter how hard they train).

You goal is to increase your metabolism, make it more efficient to burn fat. When you starve yourself, or calorie omit for long periods of time, your body’s metabolism slows down. Calories are shunted to fat stores to help survive the “starving” period. Keeping your body supplied with nutritious (look that one up too) food every 2.5-3 hours, along with exercise, helps to increase your metabolism.

Our bodies are made for positive physical stress (exercise). Why else would you have muscles that respond positively to resistance exercise? Why else would the body, through it’s own pharmacy, produce chemicals and hormones to help you feel great as a result of the same?

The opposite is true as well. Muscle atrophy and improper calorie consumption produces a whole host of short and long-term problems, most requiring mobility assistance later on, increased perception of pain, and the inclusion of harmful drugs required to counter a harmful lifestyle.

Calories

You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know where you are.

I’ve written (long ago) on how to work your calories, finding your basal metabolic rate (the number of calories you require at rest - that means the number of calories burned by your body even if you were to do nothing but sleep all day), etc. I’ve reproduced the article here: (http://corejkd.com/main/Nutrition_and_Core_JKD_Aug_2004.htm)

I cover “rest” there also, so I won’t add much to it in this article. Rest is important, healthy eating and plenty exercise will help you rest better.

Habits

If you associate your food intake with television, then drop television and pick up reading, writing, choir practice, painting, etc. In other words, find out what triggers an unhealthy association for food other than hunger. Emotional eater? Get a journal/diary and write with a hunger, rather than stuff feelings down.

It comes down to paying attention, being aware of things you do, and their triggers. With awareness, there’s realization, and with that there’s the ability to make habit changes.

People get overweight because of unhealthy habits. You get out of being overweight for life by making new habits.

After

After the 12 weeks you can start to slowly integrate those 4 elements back into your diet. But don’t go crazy. By the end of 12 you should have some new taste experiences and also have the awareness on what feels good for your body. With time away from fat, you lose a taste for it, or rather you develop an understanding of how horrible it is to feel it settling on your stomach and slowing you down.

Compensate/regulate your calories by reducing others if you add the 4. Remember, you are trying to maintain a fairly healthy daily calorie total, trying to keep fat to 30% of your diet or less. Remember, fried foods are calorie dense, and fat stores more easily as fat on your body than carbs or protein.

Keep up your training to compensate for your calorie intake. You should have a better idea how that works now. Calories consumed above what’s needed to maintain your current weight needs to be burned off. That means get your butt out and exercise off what you put in your mouth.

So to sum it up:

Make a choice, stick with it.

Drop the 4

Eat your breakfast and 5-6 smaller meals a day

Sweat with the minimums (you can go higher) of resistance training and cardio

Change to new habits

I include here a few picts of what my training and this does for a body (mine):

How to treat people

2011-02-13T15:52:00.003-05:00

How to treat people

No major caveats here. Most (sane) people will respond to the following positively, and application of such would relieve a lot of tension, not to mention increase a synergy all around.

Who are you?

This is one of the toughest statements in the English language it seems. As humans we have a tendency to group people according to comparative reference, “that which you have experienced”, in an effort to protect ourselves or loved ones from physical or emotional pain. The descendant logic tree for this usually starts out with our senses, sight and smell first, then, if that isn’t offensive, we breach beyond to the next phases, categorizing people (in no particular order) according to height, weight, hair coloring, clothing, state of health, sound of voice, etc. There are some people who also place skin coloring at the forefront of this analysis, to which I personally find no value, other than in how different coloring adds to the beauty of the human visual spectrum. Skin coloring has no relation to character and personality. Think about it, really think about it…none.

It’s also somewhat of a shame that people put value in political stance or religiousness, or lack of, as priority when evaluating potential connection to others. Certainly, there are organizations and groups whose mandate is based on a foundation of hate or lack of understanding, thinly veiled, or blatant, and it is understandable to not want to associate with them. But when politics and religious or non-religious stances are used to support or express base fear (denied, disguised or undiscovered), then it becomes a tragedy for civilized structure. The “unknown” becomes a place we place our fears. There’s a lot of room in the unknown.

The next phase in categorizing people is broken down by the “defensive” investigator with questions like, “what do you do?”, “where do you work?”, “who do you know?”, “where are you from?”, “where did you go to school?” and so on.

If the person is pleasing, or at least acceptable in the physical aspects, then people add the other questions to define potential for supporting or advancing their own personal human network infrastructure. Beyond that, questions are asked based on personal preferences, comparatively, in order to find similarities with new people to establish possible friendships or deeper relationships.

What really matters though when connecting with someone? Similarities, commonalities, yes, but what else? What question can you ask someone to gain a meaningful understanding of them?

Ever ask anyone the question, “what inspires you?”.

Now that’s a question that’ll give you a couple of pathways: flummoxed or not flummoxed.

Flummoxed:

A) the person has never thought of the question because they are not at a point in their life where they have examined themselves and what makes them “move” in this life, or they’ve done the personal work, but have never had anyone ask the question, so an answer was not readily available.

B) the person has an answer they would love to share, or are uncomfortable sharing because of how they may be perceived or accepted.

C) they have never been inspired in their life (unlikely).

Not flummoxed:

A) the person has an answer they would love to share, and do. And you gain a deep understanding (if they are honest).

B) the person has an answer they would love to share, or are uncomfortable sharing because of how they may be perceived or accepted.

Accepting a person for who they are:

I have other writing I do, a lot on the human condition, my anthropological philosophy, if you will, to be published at some future date. (Yes, it has a name, just not for release yet). Here’s a little guideline from it that will help you accept a person for who they are:

Creed of the Individual ©

I am not my skin color

I am not my parents or siblings

I am not my sexual orientation

I am not my nationality/ancestry

I am not my religion

I am not your fears

The person in front of you is an experiential individual, no two humans share the same experiences. Each is relayed through the makeup of their physical chemistry, genetic expression, or personal interpretation and response. Accept them for that. Allow them their unique expression and interpretation, it will allow them to grow, and that growth colors the world richer.

Many miles up, our earth looks fairly uniform in color and substance, not a lot of variety, browns, blues, whites, greens. As we move closer and closer, we realize there is nothing about nature that exists in complete sameness. People are like that as well. Time with someone reveals twists and turns in thought and creativity and expression that one doesn’t at all see from the package of skin and hair we are first presented with. The more honest a person is in their expression, the less time we have to deal with “weeding” people out, or into, our own experience.

Now there are people who may read this and apply some righteous indignation about how one simply does not accept evil, or destructive people into their lives. To that I say, let’s have a little common sense here and keep our “obvious” heads on so I don’t have to state the same.

Accepting a person for who they are means that you don’t project on them what you want them to be. It also means you don’t pigeon-whole them into containers because outwardly they seem to fit a certain category you or others have defined.

Have patience and demonstrate respect. Respect = to regard highly, and: willingness to show consideration or appreciation, and: admire (someone or something) deeply, as a result of their abilities, qualities.

In the corporate structure (and I do have some frustrating experience here), the best managers and supervisors - and most productive as a result, allow their employees to be themselves within the confines of company protocol, safety and job description. They simply let the employees do their work - and they appreciate them for it. The worst managers and supervisors are those who love to micromanage, and who express that love to the employees under them. Micromanagement wastes employee resources or denies a person the opportunity to “shine”. Micromanagement is assuaging one’s own OCD by expressing it on another.

I could go on there, but I simply don’t have the time to delve into that particular brand of insanity; micromanagement, not OCD (I have a novel to finish after all).

Recognize and support their strengths

How do you recognize someone’s strengths? Patience, observation, and giving one the freedom to do “their thing”. When you give someone the safety net of letting them be who they are, they surprise the hell out of you with their ingenuity, creativity, and gifts - some they may not have discovered until you gave them the opportunity.

Once you recognize a person’s strengths, you can best support them by simply asking the question, “what can I do to help?”. Don’t assume you have the knowledge to know the particular internal pathways a person goes through to demonstrate a gift. If you want to support someone, ask that question, and then do it if you can. Especially if the answer is, “let me be”. An individual is such an internal exploration, they may not even know how to answer that question, but I assure you, you letting them know you are there to help if you can does wonderful things for the spirit.

Appreciate them

I’ve written about this before. This is where you showcase - without wanting to receive anything back - your respect, admiration and even love for someone. Do it. There isn’t enough of that in this life.

We’ve all been there

One other obstacle to overcome when defining how to treat people is accepting the knowledge that we’ve all been there. We’ve all felt pain, we’ve all had hardships - some greatly more than others. In the end we all want what is best for ourselves and our loved ones and we all want positive life experiences toward a brighter, more connected, future.

Because of the land I was raised in, I value freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and prosperity for everyone. Because of my experiences in life, I have learned to champion and highly value the creating human individual. At our base, that’s what we are…no matter where you are.

Taking for granted...

2011-01-31T12:06:00.004-05:00

Taking for granted…

First I have to preface this intended article on the basis that I am talking about people who love each other, even adore each other, and wish for a long happy life with that person. I have some experience in this arena, and from perspectives a lot of you probably wouldn’t believe (one or two of you might). I am going to talk from the perspective of a male with female, but it applies to all. It’s just a perspective I’m comfortable with.

Setup

Some relationships are set up to fail from the beginning for many tried and true reasons (I’m referring to reasons why people get together in the first place): Alcohol, peer pressure, expectations from parents, expectations from self at “established” ages in life, expectations for a mate clouding the reality of who is actually standing before you, dishonesty from the mate about who they are, your own dishonesty, immaturity, mental disorders (not a joke, though I chuckle from some experience), wanting to get out of a bad situation, religion, loneliness. Yeah, just a few. There’s more, but these cover a lot of bases.

Reasons why people stay in failing relationships: fear

Okay, I’ll elaborate on that just a bit. Fear of being alone, fear of financial loss, fear for children, fear of breaking established friendships and family ties, fear of being alone. Oh, I said that one. Well, it’s a big one.

Seems we humans find comfort even in negative relationships. It’s that persistent and adaptive part of our species that screws up a lot of lives including offspring. But just as we can adapt to ongoing negative stimuli, we can just as well adapt to new challenges that in the long run better ourselves and are better for ourselves and those connected to us.

Reasons for failure of a relationship are often rooted in the setup surrounding the forming of the relationship and those reasons that have little to do with us as a unique and creating individual.

I’m not going to here go into how one needs to establish themselves as a whole person instead of trying to find that in someone else. Or that no one else can make you happy, you make yourself happy. Someone else can boost you to new heights, inspire you to grow, charge you with feelings of contentment, joy and even wonder, but you have to do the work on knowing yourself, liking what you know, and then expressing your gifts.

That’s another article.

Assuming…

So let’s assume that we are talking about people who are together for better reasons than listed in the setup above. You met the person doing something you love, or were introduced, and a spark or a familiarity came over the both of you. You have a lot of things in common, you think alike, you have the same motivations in life, same religious views - or lack thereof, you like the way each other looks, smells, feels. You like their energy. Not a bad place to start.

Humanity reasserts…

So you’re in a relationship with someone you love. Humans have a propensity toward pattern, recognizing them, exercising them. Every human being is unique. We all have some commonalities regarding needing to eat, breathe, sleep, use the bathroom, we have generally the same physical modalities, and we all have a desire to express ourselves in some way.

Life comes at us and thrusts upon us the mantle of responsibility for ourselves and others. With that, we care, nurture, love, share. Some of us take more than we give, some give more than they should (in a way that reduces their ability and, dare I say, necessity, to remain healthy, mentally, physically, spiritually).

There is a certainty that opposites attract, and then bug the hell out of each other with that opposition later on. As the years move on we tend to fall into predictable patterns, not for just our own selves, but for those we love. And over time that, and they, become so much accepted “background” that we often don’t think of them until catastrophe or unhappiness stirs one to motivate attention. We listen (or cover our ears if the voicing is too loud), look at the situation, promise to do better, and then return to familiarity. To pattern.

Take a look…

Instead of allowing pattern and moving our loved ones to the stigma of “background”, we need to actively step outside ourselves, and our lives, and truly view what is, and who is, before us. Take the time, literally, schedule it if you have to, take it away from all those other things that are truly the background to the two of you moving through life.

Now that you have that time, just sit, watch the other person (they don’t have to know about this, and it would help if they didn’t), take out a pencil and paper and just observe and write what you see and feel. Let your mind comb over all they are and do for you, for themselves, what makes you smile about them, what makes you think about them when you're not with them.

You can do this mentally, but writing it is incredibly valuable feedback, we react to it differently when we get away from just that mercurial, insubstantial thought process and see it in concrete, and unchangeable form of letters and words on paper. If you’re so inclined, draw pictures that represent what you see and feel about the other person. This isn’t to be graded or corrected in any way, so don’t care about spelling either. This is for you to recognize the person you love a little more clearly, and to make you see value in what you may have taken for background noise.

Appreciate…

The next step is to appreciate the person you are with, the one you love and admire are inspired by, the one you smile at when you see them after a long day. Appreciation can be shown in so many ways, but the most important, and memorable, have to do with you and your time. Stop your life. Introduce your loved one to that opening in time, and spend it with them as wholly as you can. For the minutes, hour or 10 that you have, set aside worries and commitments and immerse yourself in a moment of sharing. Sharing your verbal appreciation for them, sharing your muscles in cleaning the house with them, sharing your hug or massage, or a nice thought on paper.

Anyone can buy a rose, but how many of you have taken the time to draw a rose, cut one out of paper? Made a little song for your partner. Think of it as a commitment of self to a process that requires your time and energy, just like work. Just like your favorite hobby.

An appraiser has to really spend time looking at that painting, or that house, and immerse themselves in the detail before he/she understands its value. When you take that time to look, including some good memory, you may recognize some of the things you’ve taken for granted.

Appreciate (verb) : recognize the full worth of

Love has really only one requirement: that you show appreciation for it, in some way, at some time. Don’t be snowed in by that “unconditional love” stuff, it doesn’t exist (except in most cases of mother/child father/child). Not in any meaningful way between two people who share a life together. Just try taking advantage of your partner using that “well, she has unconditional love for me”.

Reasons…

As I said, people often get together for the wrong reasons, and stay together for the wrong reasons. The key is, is it working for you? Is it enough to make you a better you when you’re with that person? Is there something about them that inspires, or makes you love life all the more? And is your presence in their life doing the same for them?

The saying, “some people are in your life for a reason, a season, or for a lifetime” is a good take on things. Allows you to continue with an understanding that if the person is with you for just a reason, then figure out what that reason is. Learn from it. Apply the knowledge, ‘cause if you have to move on, at least you’ll take it with you, and hopefully that will help prevent the same problems in your next relationship.

Onward…

And remember, life moves on. There are some wonderful people out there, millions of them. And maybe quite a few who will inspire you into a wonderful relationship. Just remember to appreciate what you have, and what you have to give.

Inspiration

2011-01-23T21:30:00.000-05:00

Inspiration

My latest inspiration came from a couple of close friends of mine who inspire me in different ways to “stay the course” on long endeavors like writing a novel. One is a rather smart woman I admire for many reasons, she sends me tiny visual tidbits when I’m past my deadline for writing my blog that are meant to provoke me to action. Here’s one of them from her recently (I share because I like the visual pull):

“Having expected some and gotten none, the hand apathetically withdraws back into darkness…”

And another:

“A mild whimper grew in intensity until it reached the crescendo of loud wails…”

I sure didn’t want the image to get any worse, so I stopped my life a bit and sat down to write this. After all, I all ready had a rather good day getting my other projects done, chapter 11 of my novel is well under way and my cooperative art project has been added to.

Another inspiring woman (and I really mean that) has been taking my creative “intention” and making me accountable for it. We recently signed a pact for a deadline for our individual creative projects - an exciting and grueling co-commitment. It’s a pact after all, worlds will explode if we don’t come through.

I tend to have many paths for my creativity to express itself. They are tied around a few mainstays of my personal identity: writing, art, and guiding my fellow martial artists to new physical, and in some, spiritual, heights. Breaking that down:

Training people for physical individual expression is challenging and rewarding. You have sets of rules you have to follow, physics for one, where you have no say in the matter as far as physical constants, range of motion, or mass and inertia are concerned. And then there are functional body mechanics, refining one to standards of efficiency, or doing the most with the least. Beyond that it’s taking what is before you, the individual, finding out what they bring to the table and then helping them free themselves from some of their mental and physical restraints (self or other imposed) so they can function fluidly with another creating individual. Elements of chess, physics, and freedom of expression combine to make a statement of the creative self. It isn’t about hitting or throwing or kicking. It’s about living and dynamically creating in the present. The worries of life surrounding training disappear and one is taught to immerse in the present.

Writing is an immersion in a kernel of thought/visual that blossoms into a visual/emotional/textural expression of characters and story. In my head it’s wonderful, powerful, a vast expanse of world-shaking creation. On paper, on screen, I have to connect my words to my immersion so that everyone else can see, and hopefully I convey it with enough practiced connection that what I see and feel internally gets shared with some accuracy.

In art there are two forms of expression I am currently involved in. Figure drawing and…Anashun. Don’t bother looking up Anashun, I made up the word (poetic creative license remember? An amalgam of Anna and Shaun) to describe a particular freeform drawing experience shared by two artists - the results are pretty awesome (at least we think they’re nifty).

Figure drawing is taking in what’s before me, connecting to some internal mechanism that exists completely in the present, and then drawing on paper what I see. The process is an un-encumbering of what I experience in the rest of my daily life. The critic is silenced, the world shuts out, and I…well, sometimes I hum. I’m silent enough that I don’t bother anyone else, but what can I say, the body does it’s own thing when I shed my attention of time.

Anashun is taking what someone else has started and growing from that. The internal mechanism is different than figure drawing. Figure drawing has rules of line and proportion, Anashun has one rule (well, two if you add the 25 minute time limit), you must branch off of what has been drawn (essentially a refined doodle). From there your mind takes in the visual, intuits your own connected creative tie, flavors it with your individual expression, and then draws. Absorbs the newness of the combined. And draws. The immersion is wonderful and very time-shedding. The end product is…well, for us at least, inspiring. We’re branching into other modalities too. You work 25 minutes with it, pass it to the other artist and then they get it back to you a day or a week later when they’ve added to it. Quite interesting what two creative minds can express in relation to another.

Isn’t that what it’s all about though? How we all connect, share, create, and then express anew? That’s what inspiration is about, a shared experience. Whether that experience is witnessing the way sunlight plays on water mist, a child’s laughter, processing a complex math equation, or just you going about your life being true to yourself and expressing that truth freely. That’s inspiring. And that’s world-changing when we share it.

I have inspiring people prodding me to new heights, truly wonderful people who share a tie to me that is supportive and bleeds creative. I am fortunate, and I let them know it frequently by thanking them in some way. What they inspire me to do inspires them and others.

Thank the people around you who inspire you in some way, if even with just a touch on the arm or a wonderful, heartfelt smile. That smile can make someone’s day, and someone else’s, and on and on. A ripple effect of the positive.

Inspiration doesn’t work if it isn’t out there working.

Women...part 1

2010-12-27T19:28:00.003-05:00

a woman is like a

candle on a dark night

flickering, teasing, warming,

burning

and always beautiful,

difficult to hold,

contain

changing with the

amount of air you

give her

lighting your path

-SER

Disclaimer:

Being a man I have a fairly good grasp on what makes me tick, for the most part - and how women make me tick, challenge and inspire me. The following is an expression based on my own introspect of my own experience and those of other women whom I have known as companions, close friends, associates, or through distant, and not-so-distant observation.

It is also an expression based on intimate, long conversations with women. One in particular gave me the wisdom of her years and life experiences, intense that they are, specifically for this blog. Her analysis, observations and experiences color this writing in areas where my knowledge and experience could not possibly go. I value her thoughts and thank her most sincerely.

This does not claim to include all women everywhere. For the most part, one can apply the following words as prefix: “generally speaking”. There are exceptions. And some exceptional exceptions.

Women are the world

Without women there is no continuation of the human species, on a biological level alone they should be valued and cherished for that. Men don’t birth life, they only impregnate, the process of a women shapes a human being into existence and through her value of nurture, she cradles life, protects it and allows it to thrive.

Generally speaking.

Yes, there are some women to whom the word “nurture” is a completely foreign concept, and there are some who spend their life living out their own unresolved demons, bleeding their struggle onto the life they bring into the world. (Yes, this applies to men as well, but we are talking about women and their more direct emotional involvement and experience with a child along the lines of the perspective “women are the world”. So there. Take off your comparison hats for this read please).

The parallels between women and nature are interesting. We state “mother nature” for a reason. We live in this world, it provides the sustenance for us to live, the materials to protect us.

Where men put up structures we think are strong, nature hurls herself at them, continually forcing us to reevaluate our design, our structure, forcing us to strengthen and or adapt to the fluxing pressures and unseen nuances, or be swept away helplessly in the roiling onslaught.

We are different, but the same in our need to express

When one states their are no differences between men and women, well, the thought is laughable. Yes, generally, we have two arms, two legs, we eat, sleep and think, we have skin, we have hair, and on and on. Similarities abound. Anatomical differences define sex. But genetic and hormonal differences define masculine and the feminine - and through that, a tendency or not toward emotional context, relevance, and expression.

Are there more masculine women? Surely. Feminine men? Absolutely. Again, this is a product of genetic and hormonal expression. Being true to one’s self means working the hand you’ve been dealt in life and expressing who you are as an individual. When we do that, then yes, we are certainly more alike than not.

Anyone who has had sexual intercourse knows the differences between states of vulnerability. A man does not have to be receptive of the partner, or in a physically vulnerable position for the act of procreation (I speak only of what I know, have experienced, and what my female “counterpart” for this discussion has experienced. I cannot speak to homosexuality or the like, as it is beyond the purview of my experience).

Men are also more concrete in thought (one could say “concrete” is a somewhat inflexible medium - and this might even explain certain fundamental religions. One could say). For men, definitions of life fall into compartmentalized processes that build upon each successive, and successful, development before it. Generally (read the disclaimer, jeesh), a woman’s more realized, or experienced, emotional connection and nature give way to a living, mercurial state of being that swims with intuition, dines on sensitivity, and sleeps with vulnerability.

Challenge

Our differences are a good thing, if for nothing but challenging each of us to better states. The interplay and dynamics of the pragmatic and the emotional fill our world with color, flavors, texture and thought that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Masculine and feminine states invite challenge, invites growth and inspiration. It reaches into men to make them realize vulnerability and the emotional fabric that is woven in and through their lives, supporting them, nurturing them. The knowledge and experience allows them to proceed strengthened by a connection to something that is truly a part of them.

Remember the valuable saying, “know thyself.” If you don’t fully know yourself (or even partially know yourself), then your aren’t as strong or as capable as you believe.

Examples of unspoken challenge are readily apparent. What man hasn’t lifted more weight, ran further, or did things louder in the presence of a woman or women?

Competition

(Yeah, be ready to read the disclaimer again)

Women are more competitive with each other than they are toward men. Women won’t compete with a man in the same way as she will against a woman for a job. She will tend to yield more and in doing, also makes possible their lower pay rate and positions.

In this same vein, and perhaps because of it, women don’t have the same camaraderie as men. Where men can have multiple, trusting, close relationships, women often do not, having perhaps one or two they trust to the ends of the earth, if at all. If men are competing over a woman, it is usually an open expression that yields to the dynamics of male admiration for each other.

“Try your best, and when she dumps you that’s when I try” is a phrase that would fit male experience. Men admire each other, especially when one has greater skill or proficiency in any particular way - especially with physical attributes. And we don’t personally attack ourselves for not matching those qualifications or meeting standards another man we admire has. We still have qualities we are proud of.

Men will flex their big biceps and revel in their size even if we carry a big pot belly to go along with it. We still feel good enough about those big guns to get us over any other deficiency we may have, we feel good about ourselves and life goes on.

Women are more devious, preferring subterfuge and “back stabbing” to get the focus of their desire - most specifically with regard toward getting a man, but not limited to that. How many women can tell you a personal story of how a “friend” of theirs went behind their back to steal a boyfriend, or a male interest they were willing to approach? Or who verbally slighted you with a man to her favor? Not all women do this, but enough to make this statement true.

Confrontation

Men respect a physical confrontation more than a woman does, it’s in our experience. It keeps us from readily, or emotionally challenging another man when we get bent out of shape. When men get into an emotionally charged disagreement, and all avenues of our limited experience with speech have been exhausted, a physical confrontation is often next. The toolset we draw on then is a good right cross, a hook, or other practiced, or physical weaponry.

Women tend to bully and intimidate rather than throw down. This keeps verbal barbs fresh on the mind as weapons, and emotional degradation and blackmail to the fore of experience with such matters. There isn’t an immediate thought that a physical confrontation is imminent, or the logical outcome.

(Continued in part 2)

Women...part 2

2010-12-27T19:28:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer:

This does not claim to include all women everywhere. For the most part, one can apply the following words as prefix: “generally speaking”. There are exceptions. And some exceptional exceptions.

- Women Part 2 -

Upbringing

Greater delineation of our differences comes from our nurturing, or lack of nurturing, and environment growing up. Here are some examples that, for better or worse, help shape us separately in life:

Toys

Here the media plays an important, gender-specific, role in influencing children in play. It is the boys who play with dump trucks and guns, not the girls (personally, I think women with knives and guns are sexy, but that’s me). And how many girls are playing with the easy bake oven, as opposed to the male majority of chefs in the restaurant business? Methinks there are a lot of boys playing with the ovens behind their sister’s backs.

Girls aren’t encouraged to play rough and tough. This I can’t understand, having trained many women over the years in self-defense. You are doing your child an injustice by not letting them, or encouraging them, to express physical skills. Training the body trains the mind, it encourages self-reliance and independence, it enhances coordination and (in strength-related play) keeps bones strong.And physical play is a huge stress reliever.

Childhood play sets up a lifetime of positive characteristics that help them deal with the world and adversity. Less women would be victims of crime if they are taught early on that they aren’t weak or incapable and that rough play isn’t just for boys.

Emphasis on looks

Where boys are told basically to scrub their face, wear clean clothes and to comb their hair, girls are trained to view and apply lip or hair coloring, face-painting (yes, that’s really what it boils down to. Come on, you apply it with a brush, right?), type or style of clothing and mannerisms, “a lady sits this way”, etc.

Women are trained for emphasis on looks for what reason? To attract a partner, and with the majority of the population it is for attracting a male. For most of us, a man is sexually attracted to the opposite of a man, and the more brightly colored the distinction, the more attraction. (If we are talking about physics and biology, highlights are more immediately noticed than shadow - this is with regard to coloring, but also psychologically with personalities. “Noticing more” and “being able to live with” are two very different things).

Yes, there are differences in degree here as well. Some men, myself included, prefer a more physically capable woman, as opposed to one who is soft and has the right paint job. And there are women who feel more comfortable with a less-masculine or dominant man.

Sexuality

Girls are taught to withhold and boys are, more or less, applauded for sexual conquest or expression. This certainly has to do with girls getting pregnant at an early age and becoming a burden on the parents, as well as the way we view girls as weaker and to be more protected than a male in society.

There is also an emotional context women deal with with regard to sexuality and the person they engage, as opposed to a man’s sensitivities (stop laughing). Certainly, emotional maturity is not at it’s peak for decades (if that) and men, not having any great ties or understanding for emotional states tend to not be sheltered the same as women. In play, when a boy gets hurt, he may cry a little and then move on, whereas a girl is expected to be held and assessed for more possible damage. She may also linger in her mother’s or father’s arms longer for emotional comfort than a boy (her comfort, or the parents’).

I do have to put in a word about parents and the media over-sexualizing our youth. There are parents who talk about, and sometimes in depth, about their little Suzie or Johnny having a girlfriend and the associated references - this at 4 years old and less. Gearing up children for behavior you really don’t want them to engage in, or somehow feeling the need to live through them, is inappropriate. Let a child live a child’s life.

Expectations.

Think for a minute just what expectations you have set up for your female child, or just women in general. Female children are expected to empathize more, to show care. They are not immediately chastised for crying. Household chores or yard work is different, relegating the heavier lifting to the boys and the cleaning to the girls. Boys fix things, girls have boys fix things. Discipline is physically harsher on boys, and girls are often spoken to logically and told why something was wrong. Boys get to choose the sports they go into more than a girl does.

Expectations are also a byproduct of observation. A child watching her mother change her hairstyle or color, or make comparisons to other “more beautiful” women, and then manipulating her features to reach a perceived aesthetic or to assuage insecurities, teach the child that change is important and to not accept yourself for who you are. Insecurities are passed on to a child as effectively as a bad gene.

Gender-specific expectations relating to personality development - and micromanagement of such - are a limiting thing for a creative, unique, child.

Breathe, just breathe

Women have this terrible attachment to guilt for some reason. It drives many of their actions and stimulates many a depressed state - as well as causes them to run themselves ragged pouring over children’s concerns, husband’s concerns, friend’s concerns, pet’s concerns, world concerns…well you get the idea. Knock it off all ready ☺

Men are not afflicted with this to the degree women are (and some women may say “not at all” and I wouldn’t fully argue the point).

Women seem to take time for themselves only when they become so overwhelmed that they either collapse or are admitted to the psyche ward. Little hint here: that doesn’t help the people depending on you.

Take time for yourselves at regular, scheduled times (because some of you have to put this down in writing and have it signed by a judge) during the week. Each week. Every week. From now until you’re in the ground.

The more you’re refreshed and physically de-stressed, the more functional you become, the more pleasant you are, and the more it bleeds out onto everyone you touch. And you touch a lot of people. So, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it because it is better for them having a happy you around. If they have any brains in their head (or desire for self-preservation) they will give you this time, they will create it if it doesn’t exist, they will move a mountain to see you are taken care of. And remember this little bit, guys: In a life-death scenario where she has the choice to save you or your child from drowning, the child gets saved. So bump yourselves up a little bit on her ranking system by treating her well, it may mean the difference between life and death one day.

Breathe now, take in a deep breathe and let it out slowly and know that we are immensely happy you are in our lives. You inspire us and challenge us to become more than we are, you’re beautiful to look at and you smell really good. And your touch…well, it’s so much home.

After all, women are the world.

Men...

2010-12-13T12:32:00.001-05:00

(audio link)

So here I am writing about men. A dear friend of mine wanted this, so blame her : )

Here is the disclaimer, please refer back to this when or if you come across something that invites your ire saying, “why, that isn’t so at all!”

Disclaimer:

Being a man I have a fairly good grasp on what makes me tick, for the most part. The following is an expression based on my own introspect of my own experience and those of other men whom I have known as close friends, associates, or through distant, and not-so-distant observation. This is specific to my experience and observations and does not claim to include all men everywhere. For the most part, one can apply the following words as prefix: “generally speaking”. There are exceptions. And some exceptional exceptions.

Now, on to the writing.

We have feelings.

This might come as a shock to a lot of women, but we do. And, our feelings are just as important as yours are. Feelings for us, however, aren’t some grand vista we enjoy frolicking in, sharing or expressing to the delight of the other men around us.

For most of our lives we’ve been geared toward action; creating, destroying, fixing, protecting. When plagued by an emotional onslaught, which could be something as terrible as a tear rising because of witnessing something beautiful in nature, we tend to make sure no one is around looking as the emotion works its way through us. If someone else is around, another man for instance, we shift from the focus of the emotion to a physical expression, or turn the uncomfortable welling up into something that can be joked about. Sort’a takes the sting out of the tear, so to speak, and puts us back on the path of being strong again.

Emotions = weakness. That’s what most men believe, or are taught to believe. It’s a soupy, mushy, wet…are you getting the picture here? Nothing about those last descriptives says “strong”.

We are conditioned from youth to be strong, all our play, challenges, posturing and confrontations are based on what we can physically do. We aren’t in the position of throwing emotions at one another, preferring a nice, solid knuckle sandwich instead. It’s easier to deal with, states intention and decisiveness and usually clears things up within seconds. For the winner at least. The loser has to deal with the stuff we aren’t taught to deal with, the emotional aftermath.

I dare say women aren’t quite “taught” how to deal with emotions either, they just have more practice and experience using them, though there are exceptions (please go back and read the disclaimer), most women aren’t raised expressing their physical strength for fun and fighting in lieu of emotional awareness. We are all taught solutions on how to deal with the situation that causes the emotional uprising, but rarely how to understand why we feel a certain way about something, or ways to reduce emotional stress through journaling or meditation or, get this, understanding the other person’s perspective. Fix the problem, not create an understanding (which, in turn, fixes the problem and better matures us, emotionally speaking).

We like to be admired

Why do you think the knight had shining armor on and not dull armor? We like to be admired for our pretty feathers, proud and spread out to attract…oops, sorry, that’s a peacock. But the point is the same. Why the heck do you think we build all that stuff? Or exercise our strength to help out when we can and another cannot?

I’m not talking about putting us on a pedestal and throwing flowers at us, I’m talking about the little things we do that makes us men. We like to be admired for opening that jar of jelly, or for lifting more grocery bags at one time than you can. We like to be told how strong we are, or how well we did something, especially when it comes to something that flexes our male (generally speaking, go back read the disclaimer) strengths.

Now, you can say everyone enjoys that, and you’d be right, but it’s different with us, it puffs us up and makes us want to do more of that, makes us feel that we are fitting in the world properly, in our place. Don’t forget the praise, male-specific praise, include touch or a hug to top it off. It. Works.

We have a mouth, or: we like to be heard.

“Once you get a man to talk, he just won’t shut up.” - Anyone have that problem? Most likely not. Men are often cut off mid sentence, or run over (yes, poor poor men) when we are trying to express something. And let’s get to the point: yes, we don’t always know best how to communicate (again, knuckle sandwich remember?). That requires a ton of patience on the other person’s part, but the reward for such patience is incredible. Words tend to be connected to feelings and feelings are something we don’t spend a lot of time understanding or wanting to understand. See the connection? When we are cut off or not allowed to express ourselves verbally (patience remember?), we are cut off emotionally and we may shut off, or build resentment for not being able to have a voice.

It’s important. Listen to us please, and try to value what we say. The more practice we have, the better connected we are to our emotional expression - just don’t try to force us to talk for cryin out loud! Whew, don’t do that. Just hear us when we start to open up. Don’t finish the sentence, don’t jump to a comparative in your own experience and interject. Let us finish what we are saying. Wait a few seconds as he might not be done. Then ask a question. Questions are a great way to get people to talk. They tell the person we want to know something, and if you’re doing it right, it also says that you just might value what we have to say. And if you value us, we feel good about being with you, will talk highly of you, will climb a mountain for you. (Yes men, that value thing goes both ways, don’t forget it, ever. And I mean ever.)

As with any relationship, words coming out of someone’s mouth to another someone they supposedly love, should never be tinged with insults or degradations. Ever. If one can’t talk to someone without cutting them down, then that person should not talk, and needs to deal that bunch of emotional garbage and behavior with a therapist. Don’t put yourself through that. Language is a beautiful thing, it should always open doors, not close them. And certainly not smash them to bits and then stab you with the little pieces.

So there’s a little bit on men. Secrets if you will. Spread it around. You might be surprised who doesn’t know this stuff.

Middle Child

2010-12-05T12:34:00.002-05:00

(audio link)

The middle child, hmm. Interesting things have been written about them, and as far as studies and research goes I can only make comparisons where they intersect with my own truth. Here are a few things I will comment on, these are typically suggestive of the middle child based on research, both ongoing and complete, as well as logical extrapolations researchers have had to go on when subjective topics were breached.

Sometimes they feel invisible

In my own way that wasn’t something I worried about or concerned myself with. My nature growing up with eight brothers and sisters tended toward following my own path very early on, I had to discover my own path through a lot of solo play and analysis of my environment. This, by itself, meant pulling myself out of the stream of “what everyone else was doing” and focusing inward on my thoughts and imaginings, creating my own worlds. This tended toward seclusion, spending hours and hours imaging and creating, so in a sense, I was invisible for a lot of the time as I forged my own path.

I was an introvert, whether it was a product of my deep introspect, environment, genetic tendency, or all of the above, so being out of the limelight was more a pleasure to me than the reverse. That changed later in my early 20s as I got fed up with the associate of my introvertedness - shyness.

There is a related theme in research about how the middle child often has the fewest pictures in family photo albums. That is a truth I have experienced, but for different reasons. For me, it was because I was always the tech-child, the one behind the camera, or off doing something by myself when photos were being taken. Looking back, I do wish there had been more photos of me, would have been interesting to see me at many more stages as I moved through life.

I suppose there are other middle children who struggled to be noticed in their family. I had no such concerns. I simply never even thought of it. By itself, it was a non-issue.

The middle position (birth order) is one of the prime forces behind science and social revolutions

I’ll keep you posted on this one ; )

May be especially influenced by their peer groups

Not for me. Quite the opposite in my case. There was much I simply didn’t value about what was going on with cliques or other groups, especially in school. I valued, and value, the individual, and that was difficult to find in a group of people looking to be accepted by each other. The close friends I did have had unique, expressive qualities, or they accepted me for who I was, and not who I was with.

Overall, being the middle child of so many had its advantages. I could get lost doing my own thing fairly easily, and was left alone in that regard simply because I think my mom was just curious what direction I was going to take. She had the wisdom to give me that freedom and just see what happened, giving me the sage advice, “You can do anything you want and put your mind to (in life).” She said this with full conviction and it is something I keep with me to this day.

The phrase “he’s a late bloomer” was wrapped lovingly around me…well, at least maybe more so as something to mollify her own brother’s and sister’s questioning minds about me at family gatherings when speaking of their children. In retrospect, I probably put the kind woman through more than her share of concern regarding me. Had she known about the risk-taking I did up in trees and off of roofs and…well, it’s better she doesn’t know about all that.

But, late bloomers are in good company too. From Grandma Moses who didn’t take up painting until she was in her 70s to Dr. Ruth Westheimer (yes, you know, the lady who did a stint as a sniper in Israel in her late teens) who started her famous radio talk show in her 50’s. The list goes on, Ian Flemming, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain all were late bloomers with regard to when their successes touched the world.

Some research suggests that middle children are more likely to engage in dangerous sports or careers that have an element of danger and/or risk.

The above line was in regards to the middle child wanting to be noticed and needing to find ways to stand out. As I wrote before, I was never one to need or want the limelight, preferring to be in my own safe corner of the world, creating. I have to believe my risk-taking was something genetic. Yeah, I’d have to agree with that one. Though I don’t consider my training and founding my own martial art defense system dangerous, enough people do that I think it might qualify. And I suppose I have enough injuries over the years to endorse that qualification. And, um, there’s that stuff about the roof-jumping and other such that won’t be revealed till my later years. Perhaps.

Middle children are inventive, more independent, and are born mediators and negotiators

I have to agree with those statements and I think they are related well. With enough children above and below me in the family, I saw many ways of how not to do things. I’m sure there was some understanding about how to do things, but they aren’t as easily remembered as all the how not tos. We were/are a community all on our own, each brother and sister a completely unique individual, so growing up I had my own research venue to pull from and personalities to deal with.

I had to be inventive on many levels. Risk-taking creates its own obvious demands so I won’t go into that. But I did find myself as a child listening to and trying to understand both adults and children for the purpose of trying to redefine arguments or to make someone feel better when something that wasn’t pleasant happened. I wasn’t always successful at expressing my care or concern, that skill took many years to develop (probably won’t ever stop being refined), but I think I got the feeling across that I was there, that I cared.

There were graphic, and sometimes violent examples where I had to negotiate for my safety or the safety of others, which I won’t go into, but I’m alive, as are loved ones, so I at least functioned adequately for the task.

I favor those who are independent, like myself, those who do their own thing not for the purpose of being seen as independent or unique, but because it is a natural part of their development and expression in life. Its funny when you think of those who wish to be seen as unique only to fit in and be accepted by those who they want to be a part of. There’s the example of all those young girls trying to emulate Madonna during her heyday, claiming they were expressing themselves as unique, but all dressing up in Madonna fashion. Unique just is, it doesn’t emulate.

Conclusion

My own childhood experiences characterizes the middle child thus:

Middle children do take longer to find their path in life - using a lot of trial and error. The dynamics of children above and below, which seem to be more easily cemented due to the parent’s focus and growth and experience with raising a group of children, help define my position on this. Once the older children are capable, they tend to share in the workload of raising, and as a byproduct, allow middle children to be influenced by a developing older child - who may have other attention focuses. This doesn’t give the same stability or directional influence attention an experienced parent gives. It also doesn’t give the same sense of authority to the middle child, allowing them to bend rules to find their own way. It’s easier to get lost and rebel to an older sibling than an experienced adult.

Middle children are exposed to a unique flux of developing personalities and minds. In all of this, they not only have to deal with their own “sorting out”, but also sorting out the maelstrom of flexing ids and egos around them. This is where the need for negotiating and mediating has to come into development, out of necessity to try and instill a sense of order in their own world. They are often besieged by attempts at control from the older ones, and attempts at manipulation from the younger ones. You may say they are the same thing, but they are not. An attempt at control implies one is coming from from an assumed position of power, and can use manipulation as a means to an end, but in my experiences it is often more direct than subtle. Manipulation, especially from younger children, doesn’t often stem from an assumed position of power, so their needing, creative minds have to engage in manipulations subtle and gross to achieve their ends.

Middle children do need that one on one time with a parent (they may not often get as much as other children in the family). I fondly remember two major influences in my development, both in self and in connection with my parents. My dad isn’t a verbose man in the slightest. I remember spending hours riding on a tractor next to him when I was around 10, as he plowed and then raked a large field. I spent most of my time standing next to and leaning on the tractor fender as the angle of the tractor tilted because of the furrows created. Clods of dark dirt would kick up and sometimes be thrown against the fender, making a dull metallic thump under my hands, my mind taking it all in, the lay of the land passing beneath us, the distant tree line perspective changing, the dark birds landing confidently to pluck freshly uncovered worms from the upturned soil.

Much later, when we were level, switching out the plow and pulling the rake behind us, the air changed. A wind rose, spraying us with fine dust from the topsoil that had been aerated and broken up. I would occasionally sit against dad on the little bit of seat he could give me as the sky turned deep orange and red as the sun closed the day.

Dad didn’t have to say anything, and I don’t recall many words passing between us at all, as we were both pulled into the experience of nature around us and our minds wondered freely. I knew he was there next to me, I could smell him, feel him as I bumped against him. A part of my mind that noticed such things, told me I was safe and reveled in the assurance that he was there.

With my mom, I was probably a couple of years younger, we were walking out toward the woods on a clear and beautiful summer day. The air was full of the scent of cut hay and the occasional darting peep of a bird intent on insect treats among the hay rows. Mom has this wonderful voice that consists of patience and happiness and groundedness. She started asking me questions about science, one of my favorite subjects, more particularly on molecules and their invisibility and such. What was so important wasn’t the content of what she was asking, though content was a wonderful joy of mine and she knew it, it was how she seemed so completely interested in what I had to say on the matter.

One answer from me would get another question from her, never disputing or correcting my expression, but showing only more curiosity and then, get this, waiting for me to formulate my thoughts and complete my response. She listened to me, heard my voice. That was powerful. It’s power reaches into my life to this day with any women or person I spend time with. And its something I take my time to exercise when someone is speaking to me. This “being heard” stuff is powerful indeed.

Thank you for listening.

Left-handed

2010-11-21T13:32:00.001-05:00

(audio link)

My first conflict with being left-handed was in kindergarten. I distinctly remember gripping my large pencil firmly in my left hand and drawing on a very pulpy type of paper with lines on it. I had my tongue out (as is apparently essential for balance for 5-year olds attempting to draw) and was pressing quite hard, quite studiously, when all of a sudden there was a terrible pulling on the pencil. The teacher had tried to get it out on the first attempt, but hadn’t counted on my farmboy grip, and the pencil stuck. I remember being a little confused as to just what was going on, but continued on my path to self expression. The teacher snatched at it again and got it this time. I looked at her a little cross and still confused, her face only displayed, dare I say anger? Even a little disgust? Yep on both counts.

The teacher, in all her well-meaning goodness, promptly took my right hand, opened the fingers, and placed the pencil in it, a calm, but satisfied look on her face now that she had won. I looked at the pencil and, knowing that I had to finish my drawing, promptly placed it back in my left and continued with the drawing as if nothing unusual had happened. I really remembered completely forgetting the incident with the teacher at that point, it was a non-issue. It was a blip in my little-tasks-in-life that became a voided thought.

Until she grabbed my pencil again.

This time she let out an exasperated puff of air, having to wrestle it from my fingers. I wasn’t thinking about it at all, but apparently my fingers remembered the violation. She finally got it out and again placed the pencil in my pried opened right hand. And again, I looked at it, remembered my task, and placed it back in my left where it belonged. It felt proper. I looked up at the teacher and she had this slightly angry, “fine, have it your way!” look on her face. I wasn’t too into accepting others’ emotions at that age, lucky for me, and I went back to my drawing without another thought to her attempt at subjugating me.

I find it interesting that I recall that incident quite well. I have other memories from that age, and some very clear ones from age 3, but why that one? The other memories I have of those very early years didn’t quite seem so…pivotal. Yes, that’s the word. And I feel that in it’s own way, it was life-changing, at least a life-statement. Here I was at the age of five asserting my individual nature without conscious application. It felt proper. Being left-handed. [Related: psychiatric research has found that people who are most left-sided in their lateral preferences are also the ones least likely to attempt to shift their hand writing preference from left to right due to social/cultural/family pressure. Hmmm. Now I feel better.]

I suppose that seems like an odd thing to say, I mean, I don’t suppose right handers give a thought to feeling “proper” about their handedness, but us left handers have to take whatever solace and we can in this right-handed, man-cultured world. I make that last distinction for a reason, I mean when was the last time you ever saw a left-handed tree? Nature it seems, doesn’t have a handed sway. No left-handed streams or fields. Okay, you’re thinking they don’t have hands. I’d say you’ve been peeking, good job. Awareness of your surroundings is valuable. With regard to those things, I imply a left or right-most distribution. Presence.

Some mammals, on the other hand (not quite a pun there), seem to demonstrate a handedness. Cats, for instance, will prefer one paw over the other when fishing an object out of a glass, or the like. Chimps tend to use one hand over the other to insert, and then draw out, a reed covered with yummy termites from a hole in the mound, and horses tend to favor one hoof with which to stomp with.

But animals in nature don’t define a civilization’s functionality on handedness. Unlike man (scissors, hand tools, double doors with center pulls). Animals also don’t build philosophy or superstition surrounding handedness. Again, unlike man. Seems it wasn’t too long ago, historically speaking, that we were still associating sin, evil and death with lefties. Sitting at the right hand of God and all that. Who was on His left anyway? Oh that’s right, the Holy Ghost. There we go again, even ghosts get the left association.

When one reads accounts of people from as little as thirty years ago tying their child’s left hand behind them so as to force right-handedness, it makes one wonder how much of that mentality still prevails? And just how many of you right handers out there are closet left handers because of such fear-inspired forced-correction?

Now, there have been advances in my time. Scissors come in many flavors now. I remember trying to use a scissors as a child in school (and at home, but don’t tell mom about the encyclopedias. Listen, those beautiful photos of snakes were just calling to be cut out and used to scare my sister). Cutting out circles was particularly difficult using the right hand. I remember the frustration of trying to use a scissors upside down in my left, a painful experience, and then having to try and use my right for the task, another painful experience. My mind just wasn’t in it.

Speaking of mind, please check out Dr. Betty Edward’s books on drawing and creativity using the latest left-brain/right-brain research to get you to “see” with the right mind. Very functional material and a great education on our creative connection.

I find brain research on the subject particularly interesting. The phrase “the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing” has biblical origins not actually pertaining to handedness, but I find that in training people in self-defense that phrase has greater meaning with a majority of people. A lifetime of prominence with one hand, one side of the body, tends to make the other side ignorant of actions, motions, feeling and fine-tuned subtlety that the other side enjoys freely and effortlessly. That has it’s own problems when it comes to predetermined visualization and established neuromuscular pathways when learning new motions/actions, all those set patterns can actually be deleterious in training something new, live, and dynamic vs another live, dynamic partner. Surprisingly, that’s when the ignorant side often shines. It simply doesn’t know that it doesn’t know, and it accepts what is present without predetermined “prejudice” or “sway”.

In all the world, only 10-13% of us are left-handed. I look at that and just have to say, “wow”. That’s not a lot. There’s even an international left-handers day on August 13th to celebrate.

Disproportionate to the numbers above, we lefters (I am a poet, I have poetic license to make up words) find ourselves in the most public and interesting of forums. For instance, eight of the presidents were left-handed, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Just to throw something interesting in the mix, other noted lefties are: Marie Curie, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Lewis Caroll, H.G. Wells, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Paul McCartney, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. And I have a brother who’s left-handed, a growing artist in his own right..er, I mean left.

Looking at some statistics from my own family supports research that indicates where there is dyslexia, there is a higher percentage of having a family member who is left-handed. And left-handedness is genetic (gene most closely linked with it is LRRTM1, found when trying to locate a link between dyslexia and handedness). And it is passed down from the father.

It’s quite interesting looking through and back on the family line. Out of nine of us kids, my brother and myself are artistically expressive and left handed. My father is an artist in his own right, a cartoonist who could easily spill articulated images onto the page when us kids pestered him enough growing up. He’s right-handed, but we forgive him for that. I have some uncles who were carpenters, creating some very neat pieces by hand back in the day, as well as one who was a published writer and poet. And I have a sister who is actually quite good at poetry, but I think I’d have to lock her in a room alone to force the words out of her. Practice, sis, practice.

I could really go on and on, there are so many interesting points to make. But I will end with the following. Since I’m talking about handedness, I should probably also talk about “mindedness”, as they are interrelated. Left-handed people, in general, access more of right brain functioning. Right-handed people, in general, access more left brain functioning. Separate brain hemisphere functioning is called brain lateralization. I find it incredibly interesting that the left and right sides of our bodies are cross-wired like that. Left brain, right body - right brain, left body. Overall, we tend to favor one processing methodology of mind over the other - hemisphere dominance - though all of us dip into the other at times to function adequately in the world and with regard to specific stimuli, as I do with my writing - not particularly a left-handed, right-minded strength.

In writing this I’ve had to convert a lot of imagery (how I think), guided by intuition, into words, sentences, paragraphs, trying not to care about spelling or editing what I write until later. It’s like there’s this overall (holistic) conception of what I want to say channeled out into a thin stream that my left mind gets ahold of and then does it’s “word” thing. Read Dr. Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. You’ll learn how to actually feel the cognitive shift. Quite interesting indeed.

I’ll leave you with a famous gent’s saying that I find particular favor, and truth with, especially if you follow his works and life story. He proved the value of his statement and lived it, powerfully flexing his right mind to assuage some of his anxieties and need to probe the mysterious. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He wasn’t quite a left-handed person, he used both, but there’s no question he was in his right mind.

For those of you who like tables, I include one here for you. Thank you for reading.

Left brain dominant	Right brain dominant
• Visual, focusing on images, patterns	• Verbal, focusing on words, symbols, numbers
• Intuitive, led by feelings	• Analytical, led by logic
• Process ideas simultaneously	• Process ideas sequentially, step by step
• 'Mind photos' used to remember things, writing things down or illustrating them helps you remember	• Words used to remember things, remember names rather than faces
• Make lateral connections from information	• Make logical deductions from information
• See the whole first, then the details	• Work up to the whole step by step, focusing on details, information organized
• Organization tends to be lacking	• Highly organized
• Free association	• Like making lists and planning
• Like to know why you're doing something or why rules exist	• Likely to follow rules without questioning them
• No sense of time	• Good at keeping track of time
• May have trouble with spelling/finding words to express yourself	• Spelling and mathematical formula easily memorized
• Enjoy touching and feeling actual objects (sensory input)	• Enjoy observing
• Trouble prioritizing, so often late, impulsive	• Plan ahead
• Unlikely to read instruction manual before trying	• Likely read an instruction manual before trying
• Listen to how something is being said	• Listen to what is being said
• Talk with your hands	• Rarely use gestures when talking

Dyslexia. Left-handed. Middle child.

2010-11-07T13:26:00.001-05:00

Dyslexia. Left-handed. Middle child.

(audio link)

An interesting mix, wonder how I got through school at all. Yep, that’s me. I imagine people outside of driving in a car with me and giving left-right directions, probably don’t know of my peculiarities. In fact, it was in just that case that a dear girlfriend of mine commented to the likes of, “Oh my God, you really are dyslexic.” Left and right have no attachment in my mind, if given a direction of “turn left”, I have a 50-50 percent chance of getting it right, though in truth it’s less chance than that in real practice. Now, if you say turn left and point to the left with your hand, then I got you covered.

I am assuming a lot of people who know me, don’t know this about me, and it’s certainly not something I go around telling people. Well, until now. Why? For one, I think it’s quite interesting. I also think that if anything I say here can help someone else who’s having the same challenges, then it’s worth the exposure.

Things really hit home with me when I started working at UPS three years ago, where I part-time load the brown trucks for delivery. When I started I was loading anywhere from 900-1300 packages in three or four trucks in about a 4-hour shift. Accuracy is big with UPS (though one could accurately claim some managers lose sight of that when feeding their ego, but I digress). If I have trucks designated 6A, 6B, 9D and so forth, it becomes more a mental workload than physical - and the physical workload is substantial. Here’s a little in-depth from two perspectives:

I heft the box from the conveyor belt, grasping it by its opposite corners, and noticed its label: 6A-4000. I move to the truck nearest me, glance at the placard with the 6A designation, and enter it, placing the box on the appropriate shelf and leave to get another package, which may be for this truck or one of the others.

That’s what I grasp to be how other people do it. For me, it goes something like this:

I heft the box from the conveyor belt, grasping it by its opposite corners. I sharply focus on the 6A designation, a mental pause that has to be enforced internally lest the numbers “reshape” to the ones from the truck 6B I just came from and had in my head, the other numbers don’t quite matter yet. I turn to the nearest truck and spot the placard, again sharply focusing on the designation, look at the label on the box in my hand again, and enter the truck. Here the second numbers matter, I find the 4000 shelf and place the box there, tilting it again to make sure the label does indeed have a 6A designation on it. If I am at all distracted with other thought or simply under pressure of time or other stress, an interesting thing happens: as I walk away from the shelf, the remembered image of the label can actually reshape in my mind, or quickly shift to be remembered as a 6B or even a 9D. I mentally doubt the accuracy of what I had just seen, and go back to re-read the label, confirming it was indeed the 6A. I leave the truck to go get another box.

Sometimes, I have to go back more than once.

This process is mentally fatiguing. After 200+ boxes you actually feel your brain is sore (it’s more like after the first 50 or so, but practice lessens it some). It’s the focus that has to be enforced to keep the image of the numbers in your head accurate. And it’s easy to doubt them. My double and quadruple checking has its benefits, it made me the most accurate loader in the entire building for years. People just have no awareness of what I have to go through to maintain that.

During the first year I came to an impasse, where the effort was so difficult I asked if I could change the label designation to something else. I had to tell management it was simply getting too difficult to keep a 6A or 6B straight (didn’t mention dyslexia). They allowed this, mostly I think because of my performance level, and they wanted to keep that high. So I got them named words for the most part, instead of full alpha-numeric, which helped greatly, but I had to be careful there as well. In truth, I have difficulty with ODIN and MING and other combinations I tried, my brain doesn’t do well with their similarities. ACAL and MING work for me, different enough, not as many same straight vertical lines.

Most dyslexics are visual thinkers, I am nothing less than. This helps when remembering situations, people’s faces and the like. Names to faces is difficult unless I can attach the “meaning of that person” to the name, and even then it isn’t a guarantee. Some of my marital arts students may often noticed me calling them or others by a different name. Let’s say a girl named Anna, bears similar qualities in that moment to one named Paula, then for me it’s easy to slip out Paula’s name for her when addressing her. I’m sure plenty of people do that once in a while, for me it’s frequency that makes it stand apart, and the difficulty of trying to reattach the proper name to the person even after knowing I made the blend. Often times I will pause, or appear to be going on to another thought, as in, “that was really great…” where I am trying to insert a name. I’m actually pouring through a lot of mental attachments and hoping the right one connects in time.

Being a visual thinker has its advantages, though. Especially when doing things I am passionate about or have great interest in. In high school, in classes I enjoyed (as well with teachers I enjoyed, and this fluctuated), I could mentally recall full pages of text and images as if reading them, chapter after chapter. Today I don’t have the word-for-word accuracy I did back then (at least not in that quantity), but the content is there. Anything less than interesting or passionate is like loading boxes on the trucks.

There are other problems, writing a “d” and substituting a “b”, things like that, but those relating to writing aren’t as difficult to catch for me for some reason. Probably because I’m a bit passionate about the expression process of writing. In that I’ve been fortunate, I’d dislike not being able to communicate properly this way. With reading it’s a mixed bag. Writers who tap into a more visual expression when writing tend to be easy reading for me. Writers like theoretical physicist Brian Greene, novelist Peter David, Octavia E. Butler or Dan Simmons are worth mentioning in that area. And there are many others. Some writers for me, however, make reading like sledding on rough gravel, not only is the ride bumpy, but quite disturbingly loud.

And then there’s that counting from 100 to 0 test. I really thought I’d sail through that. Quite surprised how my brain tripped and struggled through some of it. I made it to zero, but I mangled about twenty digits and their order along the way. Like I said at the start; interesting. And did you know there is such a thing as auditory dyslexia? I’ve tasted a little bit of that.

Writing this article is a rather big thing for me. It’s about revealing things we consider weaknesses about who we are. No one likes to do that. Especially me. I went through a period of time where I had every eye exam possible (every one, all the way to CT scans) and in-depth hearing exams as well, because I simply didn’t want to admit that there was something else, something of the brian’s interpretative functioning that was the cause of problems I was having. I discovered that my body is in great shape, my mind too, I just have to work harder at some of the things I didn’t know others didn’t have to.

We’re in good company, though, there are some impressive, successful dyslexics out there, and historically. And there are many things we do excel at.

Maybe this article will help you look at people, or your children, differently. Certainly, no matter what our outside presentation, we all struggle with something. That perspective at least might help you in dealing adverse characters in your life. We are all not what we seem.

I’ll voice about the left-handed and middle child in the next articles. Thanks for reading.