Unadulterated (Blog #790)

Leave a comment May 29, 2019 CoCo

What to say, what to say? I’ve spent the day, most of it, with my face buried in my laptop, either reading books or looking at books on online stores or libraries. If I could do this every day, I’d be a happy camper. That being said, I’m sure my eyes would fall out, if my brain didn’t fall out first. At one point this evening I HAD to stop reading a fascinating book about Chartres Cathedral–did you know that the Notre Dame (Our Lady) cathedrals in France are laid out in relation to each other in the shape of the constellation Virgo?–because I was absolutely famished. Later I stopped to exercise. A body has to eat. A body has to move.

Photo/Drawing Credit: Jane Adams

One of the books I read this afternoon was by Guy Kettelhack and was about–quite frankly–gay men and sex. And whereas I don’t intend to go into details (you’re welcome), the author had a lot to say about how we, as people in general, suppress or try to ignore various aspects of ourselves. Our sexuality, for instance. Because we think certain parts of ourselves are good and holy, and other parts of ourselves are wicked and vile. At the very least something we shouldn’t talk about on the internet. But Kettelhack says, “Every part of you is true.” The idea behind this statement, I think, is that even those desires, fantasies, and emotions we deem socially unacceptable, first of all, exist whether we want them to or not. Second, they exist because they have something to offer us. Third, and along the lines of yesterday’s blog, we’d do better to interact with all of our parts consciously rather than unconsciously.

Another thing Kettelhack says is that permission is letting yourself be who you already are. In terms of sexuality, I know that I’ve spent a lot of time (historically) trying to convince myself I wasn’t something I am–gay. But in other terms, I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to convince myself I wasn’t a number of other things–upset, angry, unhappy, even happy. This has caused me to distrust my own body and emotions and instead try to substitute who I am for what I’ve thought I should be–as told to me by the church, a self-help book, or even so-called friends. This is one of the worst things, I think, that a person could do–discount their own inherent wisdom, the truth of their experience because someone else says something different.

And yet it happens every day.

This isn’t to say that if you have a sexual urge or unpleasant emotion (like anger) that you should take it out on the world around you. But it is to say that you’ll get further by acknowledging how you really feel than by depressing your authentic desires and internal reactions. Recently I was considering confronting someone, and my therapist said, “Do you want to but feel like you ‘shouldn’t’?” And whereas that wasn’t the case, it reminded me of countless other situations in which I felt like I “shouldn’t” speak my truth or do what I really wanted to because it wasn’t socially appropriate, I imagined I’d hurt somebody’s feelings, or I was afraid someone wouldn’t like me.

It’s not your job to make anyone else happy.

The problem with this way of living, of course, is that it puts someone else’s imagined experience above your actual experience. Or even their actual experience above your actual experience. Either way, you’re the one who ends up suffering. I’ve known people–usually gay people–who have married someone just to make that person, their parents, or god happy. But here’s a slap in the face–it’s not your job to make another human being, your parents, or even god happy. (If god hasn’t figured out how to be happy after all this time, that’s his problem.) Indeed, you CAN’T make anyone else happy. Sure, maybe you can do something nice and evoke a smile, but when has anybody else been able to make YOU happy? Like, permanently, deep down? It just doesn’t work that way.

As the saying goes, happiness is an inside job.

Your inside job.

My therapist says that when you’re honest, first with yourself and then with others, you give both you and others a gift–the gift of you authentic response. By being honest (and the honest truth is different than your honest opinion), you give others permission to do the same. Because we all teach by example. Like, if I live a closeted life or pretend to be someone I’m not, I teach others that “this is the way.” But if I live an authentic life, one in which I speak my truth and honor my body and emotions, I naturally imply that it’s good and safe and right for others to do the same. I suggest, and I’m saying it clearly now, You don’t have to hide anything about yourself in order to be accepted or loved.

From my perspective, the world is lacking in honesty and authenticity. Granted, the words gets a lot of lip service these days. But if they were truly “a thing,” the world would be a different place. That is, if you think you have truth in your life and yet your life looks the same as it did ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, I’m gonna suggest maybe you don’t. Because truth is married to change. It comes into your life like a wrecking ball–it has to–in order to remove all that is false within you–your false perceptions, your false beliefs, your false relationships. This is why I pay my therapist so much money. My friends tell me, “Maybe it’ll work out. Give him a chance.” My therapist tells me, “He’s a fucking asshole. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but he is.” But I do want to hear it, even if it destroys my fantasies–because I’ve lived under illusions for decades and know they don’t lead anywhere but Pain and Suffering.

No, give me something honest. Give me something real. Turn my life upside down if you have to, but give me something true.

Back to the constellation Virgo being associated with gothic cathedrals. There’s a lot of theories as to why. For example, Virgo is associated with the spring (she’s technically a late summer zodiac sign, but she first appears in the sky in the spring), with new life (the new life you’ll have if you let truth wreck your old one). Also, Virgo is The Virgin. Again, the virgin birth is often used to symbolize the birth of one’s spiritual (rather than physical) life. And whereas virgins are immediately thought of as sexually pure, symbolically they remind me to be internally pure. Not pure as in text-book perfect, but pure as is wrecking-ball honest. Pure as in “I can handle the truth,” even if isn’t pretty or socially acceptable, which (here’s something that sucks) it rarely is. Pure as in unadulterated–integrated in all your parts; whole in your body, heart, and mind; complete .

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

You've really got to believe in yourself and what you're doing. Again, it comes down to integrity and making something solid of yourself, something that's so well-built on the inside that it can handle any storm.

One Little Thing (Blog #535)

Leave a comment September 16, 2018 CoCo

Last night while star-spotting, I found Coathanger for the first time. Coathanger is an asterism (a group of stars that only WISHES it were an official constellation) that looks like a coat hanger (duh). Only visible through binoculars, Coathanger is located between Altair and Vega, two of the three stars in the Summer Triangle, which is also an asterism. Anyway, after driving out-of-town to the darkest spot I could find and panning the Summer Triangle with my binoculars for a few minutes, I finally found it. There it was–clear as day.

Er–clear as night, I guess.

I can’t tell you how excited I was about finding Coathanger, despite the fact that it was the only new star arrangement I clearly identified last night. I actually squealed out loud. Sure–it was just one little thing, but it WAS one little thing.

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned that I was going to try to get to bed EARLIER, exercise MORE, and drink beer and coffee LESS. Well, it’s twenty-four hours later, and that’s what I’ve done. After stargazing last night, I gave myself a bedtime–lights out by one in the morning. Oh my gosh, y’all, I slept great and actually woke up with a “certain amount” of enthusiasm. When I came bounding into the kitchen at ten-thirty with a smile on my face, Dad said, “What are YOU doing up?”

At breakfast I gave myself another “boundary”–no coffee after noon–since I read in Why We Sleep that caffeine has a half-life of seven hours, meaning that seven hours after you consume caffeine, fifty percent of it is still in your system. (I also read that caffeine doesn’t tell your body to wake up, but rather blocks the receptor sites in your brain and body that receive a self-produced chemical that tells your body to go to sleep.) Anyway, science is science and facts are facts, and I’ve decided that in light of the science and facts with which I’ve been presented, it clearly won’t do to keep consuming pints of coffee at all hours of the afternoon and evening.

So wish me luck.

For exercise today, I went for a walk/jog. And whereas I got home and my stomach STILL looked the same as it did before I left, I’m telling myself that’s okay–my goal is to be in better shape by the spring. That’s two seasons or twenty-four weeks away, which I figure is plenty of time to see results if I simply make several small, positive changes and STICK TO THEM. I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes, but I usually have a sense of when I’m “serious” about things, and it feels like I am.

It’s time for something different.

Today I read that during NREM (non rapid eye movement) sleep, your brain decides what’s important– what to keep and what to throw or away, what to move from short-term to long-term memory. (REM sleep is when your brain INTEGRATES what’s kept with what’s already there.) So after reading about this throw-away/keep process, I applied it to my Amazon Wish List, the place that for the last eight years I’ve collected hundreds of titles of books that have peaked my interest. Come on, Marcus, I thought, there’s NO WAY you’re ever going to read all these things. (This is called being honest with yourself.) PLUS, dozens of them don’t even look interesting anymore. So I deleted maybe half of them, which still left me with more books than I could possibly read even if reading were my full-time occupation.

It’s effective because it’s consistent.

What I like about the way NREM sleep works is that–ideally–it happens EVERY DAY (er–night). Like brushing your teeth or taking the trash out, it’s effective not because it’s this HUGE thing, but rather because it’s consistent. So I’m telling myself that I can be consistent too–about taking simple healthy actions, about periodically getting rid of what’s no longer useful, beneficial, or interesting. And whereas the process of change is often overwhelming to me, I’m trying to approach it as I approach learning about the stars, asterisms, and constellations–one little thing at a time, one little thing at a time.

[Astronomy screenshots by the Stellarium app. In the first one, Coathanger is labeled along the line between Altair and Vega. In the second one, you can still see Altair on the left, then Coathanger (unlabeled) on the right. HINT: There’s a big red circle around it.]