Existentialism.

For many reasons I feel like I'm waiting for a new chapter of my life to start.
I'm making some progress but it's not enough. I'm getting restless and bored.

I want to formulate grand schemes. I want to leave New York from some yet to be determined location. I want to be more responsible about everything. I want a simpler way. I want to be near the water. I want a dog. I want to write. I want to make things. I want to create something larger than myself. I want to heal and be healed. I want to be free.

I feel like I'm waiting for this big thing to happen and I'm not sure what that big thing is.
Good or bad, I just want whatever-that-big-thing-is to hurry up and get here already. It's eating me up alive.

Crazy Talk.

I'm reading a really interesting book written in the eighties called the Body Electric. It's basically about how the body is wired neurologically speaking... and how and what causes the body to heal (at least some of it anyway).

I'm reading a whole section right now about how organisims like worms and salamanders regenerate limbs.

This book also talks about acupuncture and how it's basically like a more elaborate game of Operation. I haven't gotten there yet.

It's crazy but I've been dealing with a lot of my own spirituality the last several months and I find myself oscilating between ideas of atheisim and something along the lines of taoisim or something rooted in nauture. I've been reading books like this to try to come to come up with awnsers to the exisitance of God (I use the term "God" loosely because I do not believe in any sort of intellegent being that watches over me or cares for me).

You're probably wondering what I'm talking about..

I don't think in the grand marvelous scheme of the universe I matter. I find it comforting to know that I don't matter and that I got to be here for a point in time, and that when I'm gone, it'll be like I never was at all. I take great relief in knowing I am small. It's also comforting me that in the scheme of things there's nothing that separates me from the sofa I'm sitting on right now, my cat, or the tree outside my window. In the end, we are all matter and it's glorious to know that for right now, I am apart of this big beautiful, crazy organisim that makes up our world and our universe and that's enough for me.

The only thing that holds me back from being an athiest is that I believe all living things have an energy force around them or that they exude and that I can't let go the idea of the existance of the soul. Not a soul in an intellegent sense.. but something. There is clearly something different about someone or something that is alive vs something that is dead. There is something missing from a dead being.

Back to what I was getting at, I'm wanting to read books like this because I'm hoping learning about how the brain and the electric impulses of the body work will help me understand that maybe this whole idea of the "soul" or "energy" is made up and that really, it's just all in our wiring.

I think I would sleep better at night if I had an definitive answer.

Also I'm obsessed with Marian Diamond:

Watch it on Academic Earth

Between Heaven and Earth

I just finished reading this book that was on a recommended reading list for my Intro to Shiatsu/Intro to 5 element theory class this last semester.

It's written by two acupuncturists (who were also among the founding members of the Black Bear commune in CA in the 60s and early 70s) and is a really brief and simple overview of how traditional Chinese Medicine works.

The Afterward shattered my heart into 1000 pieces....

The ending sums up what I've been searching for in terms of how I achingly wish how the world I live in was and the deep primal yearning in myself to get back to my true self and to feel the interconnectedness between myself, others, and all things. It also resonates with some of the ideas I've come up with, within myself, in regard to my own spirituality and what it means to be human.

"The Paradigm of Chinese Medicine engages us because of our discomfort with "the way things are," socially as well as personally. We face environmental, political, economic, and health crises that are challenging our core perceptions, values and beliefs

We realize that cigarettes and alcohol cause major health problems, an accident in Chernobyl impacts on dairy farms in Norway, pesticides sprayed on grapes injure the children of farm workers, military aid to El Salvador encourages the violation of human rights, eliminating steamy rain forests alters the temperature of the entire planet, and toxic chemicals dumped upstream poison the people downriver. But our ability to deal with these problems is handicapped by maintaining a worldview that ignores what we know. We name isolated problems, reducing whole puzzles to a segregated pieces, ignoring the relationship between the bits. We worship nouns (things an and of themselves) and snub verbs (process).

That fifty-million children are at risk of perishing in this decade from lack of food and medicine could be remedied. That one in six children in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, could be amended. That missiles that deliver nuclear arms are designated "peace keepers" deserves serious questioning. Our priorities (values) and our conceptual models (paradigms) are ailing. Confronted with the dangers of war, destruction of the Earth, and inhuman practices toward each other, we have global as well as personal healing on our minds. Chinese Medicine represents the remembrance of a world made in a different image.

Today, as civilization escalates in complexity, our daily lives are compartmentalized. We are mandated to keep our emotions under cover at work and trained at an early age to keep our bodies hushed. Our spiritual lives are often preempted by the urgency of economic survival. Isolated from a community of support, families no longer run households or raise children collectively. Many fathers do not live in the same home as mothers, and many do not share in the lives of their children. The meaning of family and community has become elusive, its integument fragile.

We are readily herded into compliance, discouraged from drawing the road maps to guide ourselves toward the cooperative pursuit of fundamental change.

Education focuses upon teaching children to accept, compete, and conform rather than question, collaborate, and invent......

By choosing between mutually exclusive either-or options, we splinter our world into winners and losers, masters and slaves, superiors and inferiors, haves and have-nots. Such hierarchical divisions are reinforced by a self serving morality. We choose between what's good for body or mind, me or you, my business or environment, my national security or yours, means or ends, swaggering and swearing, to defend what we arbitrarily decree as the righteous side of this tissue paper wall. Rather than honoring our gender and ethnic differences with mutual respect, we confuse equal opportunity with homogeneity, crushing our diversity and imposing upon ourselves the banality of a mass monoculture.

Instead of perceiving the world as a living organism, we see it as a machine that exists for our short-term profit and convenience. We experience ourselves as cogs in the machined rather than cells in a breathing organism. Instead of recognizing the interdependence of all living things and pursuing partnerships, we set up institutions whereby one species, race. or nation overcomes and dominates another.

This fragmentation in our outer world is echoed by our inner life, by how we experience ourselves. We lack interpretive systems that connect our deepest aspirations with our personalities and the shape and performance of our bodies. We lack a language for appreciating our physical, emotional, and spiritual life as one seamless, uninterrupted story...

Feelings of being disconnected exist inside us, between us, and above us, as human beings in relation to the cosmos. Over the last centuries we have ruptured our felt connection with Nature- Heaven- and Earth-depriving ourselves of the sense of belonging we once held sacred."

Such a classic excuse it should be bronze by now..

Jim and I are kind of in a tough spot.

He's selling his old G4 and a screen he hasn't used for it that he bought during the summer. I'm taking basically nearly everything I own and never wear to Beacon's Closet.

Belvedere might be sold to the glue factory. Charlie is going to get a cat agent. Either that or live out a period of his life like Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby.

I'm trying to tell myself it's going to be ok.

There's plenty of fancy technology, clothes, and cats to be had still..

So I haven't posted anything in a long while and I've decided it's time to try to keep up on this thing.

Things are ok. Worried about some things but overall everything is good.

I started Massage Therapy school almost two months ago. It's been difficult yet very new and positive experince to have to be in my body, learning to be in my body, being with another human being in such an intimate and compassionate way. Lots of growing pains for sure. I'm not the best, but that's not really the point for me. I'm still not sure if it's exactly the right fit for me but I feel like I'm on the correct path or near where I need to be.

I've really enjoyed starting to learn about the human body. I'm starting to have a greater appreciation for our bodies, what they do, and how perfect they are. It's mind-blowing to me that nature over billions of years can evolve life into a living organisim so complex and beautiful with all of its perfectly working systems. It's almost unbelievable to me.

It's also made me much more away of what we do to our bodies and I find that I've started to have much more compassionate and empathetic thoughts about people I see on the train or on the street in regards to their bodies. How painful it must be for an older person who's hunchedback to have posture like that or how difficult and tragic it is to see someone so obese that they have a hard time doing simple daily activites.

I feel like I've become much more aware of my bad habits, how I treat my physical self, and how I wish to live and wish to have optimal health well into old age. So it's been really great in a lot of ways!

Important Influences part 1- raised by the television

So a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook I forgot about but was a huge influence on me when I was 4 and 5 and really explains everything and why I am the way I am:

Seriously, this was my first impression of what a fashion show was like. I wanted to BE Miss Piggy. In this scene from The Great Muppet Caper she is the epitome of feminine beauty and glamour. I wanted to swim around with syncronized swimmers and I often practice when we would go to the public pool during the summer. When I was the Student of the Week in Kindergarden I think I even said I wanted to be a syncronized swimmer like Miss Piggy when I grew up but my teacher told me that it wasn't a real career and then asked me what else I wanted to be and she put down "nurse" for me.

This let me to think about other influences of televison and movies in my formative years that were important to me that make me the person I am today. I thought I would provide a photo and video list of these things...

First and formost:

Miss Donna Summer. Specifically dressed up in her gorgeous pink waitress outfit. I would make my mother play "She Works Hard for the Money" over and over starting when I was 2 or 3. I thought the lyric was "She Works Hard for Mommy" I was obsessed with Donna. Around the time I was interested in her, another music icon emerged. For the longest, I though they were the same person. Donna Summer apparently sounds a lot like Madonna to a 3 year old.

Madonna was a big influence too, specifcally in this outfit:

Who reminded me of two of my ultimate fashion icons, Peaches and Cream Barbie:

And Dream Glow Barbie:

"We Girls can do anything. Like Barbie!" Oh silly 2nd wave feminist advertising executives.

Which brings me to another strong woman of the 80s:

Mary Lou. I totally had the leotard when I was a kid. I think my favorite is that horrible dribble of milk on her face at the end..

I totally would wear my Mary Lou Retton leotard and dance around with a ribbon on a stick in the front yard.

Part 2 to come later!!

Time to get serious..

I signed all my bankruptcy paperwork today. I'm not sure where it is at now, I'm assuming with interest I have about $55,000.00 in credit card debt. I'm still nervous about a lot of things. I feel like there are some things stacked against me. However, I am feeling better about a few things I was worried about and that despite the outcome, even if it's shitty and horrible, it'll be over soon.

I'll still be in debt from the school loan I just took out but that's ok and a good investment.

For now, lets assume all is going to go swimmingly and talk about the things I'm looking forward AFTER the discharge:

-Really strict budgeting. I haven't been as careful as I have been since I stopped paying my credit cards but it's definitely has simplified things for me and it's not nearly as hard as I thought it would be getting by. In all, I'd say, I'm less stressed about money than BEFORE I stopped paying my credit cards. I want to really start to buckle down though.

-Saving all the money I can! I've become so much smarter about the purchases I do make and I feel like I buy a lot less things out of feeling "entitled" to them. I can't wait to save an emergency fund and then, eventually save for large things I want. :)

-Starting an IRA. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to starting some sort of retirement fund. I hope to save 100.00 a month if I can manage for 2-3 years and eventually go up to 200.00 a month after that.

-Health Insurance! I think there's not much to say besides that. For me, its tax deductible! If I can afford it or not really depends on what I'm making while I'm in school.

-Getting ahead on tax payments! Yes, actually paying ESTIMATED taxes until waiting until April to sort it all out.

Let's just hope that things go well for me...